"Boredom Comes From a Boring Mind" Hatfield

I hope it doesn't become tedious, and I bore people by repeating that 'strength through vulnerability' requires more strength than any bully could ever imagine. That the earth will be inherited by the meek doesn't mean by the weak. Meek is Greek for 'Power Under Control.' Turning one's will over to God is not 'weak.' Looking for the good in every human being is not a mental disease or defect.

I remember a story from Melody Beattie about so-called strong people riping the blanket off of someone because 'they don't need it' ('it' being a crutch). She said they have the blanket for a reason, and even if it's a crutch, they might freeze to death without it. It takes some people time to heal, and it's not our place to decide what that timeline is. Sure, ripping off the bandaid is a good idea so as not to prolong the ordeal of removal, and 'Cold Turkey' has its place, but not every person knows the internal struggle someone is going through. Plate said to be kind because no one knows what someone else is going through. Also, in a book that I like, I read that we should be hard on ourselves and gentle with others. A gentle word turns aside anger.

Some people call Faith a crutch. Think what you will, but loving people after being hurt by people requires great strength. Forgiveness based on Faith is a crutch. But I'll walk on water with my crutch if need be.

Here's a poem about fragility that, in part, made me love this poet:

"somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

― E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

Who are the Creatives that Encourage You to Create?

What author doesn't make a writer want to write? LOL! OK, joking aside, any author that went through a lot to rise above difficulties makes me want to write.

Jesus never wrote that we know of. He lived what he Spoke. Some poets lived their poems, so we might not know of some of them, but some had the wherewithal to live AND write their poems.

ee cummings is one of my favs, and WH Auden, too.

I read Myths, Models, and Paradigms by Ian Barbour in the '80s, and I'm still writing about what I learned (truth expands, just like God's Word).

Greg Boyd's book, Repenting of Religion, still has me thinking/writing, as did his Letters from a Skeptic.

I believe the Holy Spirit moves in my Heart, Soul, and Mind to write and speak (and when to be silent, so the DROPPED ROCKS themselves can be heard to cry HALLELUEIA).

God Said, Let There be Paint

Just a few words I had on God’s Portraits. www.youtube.com/shorts/P7ECuq4sN-g

Hundreds of breakthroughs, mostly unnoticeable, littered my path to distract me toward lessons deeper than life itself. Dozens of breakthroughs, all unique and seemingly independent, left me to wonder if this was/is The One (Breakthrough of Breakthroughs)!! But several years trudged on in the life of happy choices AKA destiny.

Then more and more and deeper and darker the lights become useless, and the rays of darkness with immense, mysterious beauty engulfed my entire comprehension. Every brand of the holy-water tear was tasted and tested, recognized, and labeled like Adam's un-naming animals and plants. Only trust and choice remained as I floated in the dark river of death. Now darkness is as day and daylight can longer require of its captives mud and straw, for the sacred rains dissolved all meaninglessness of this illusory world. The hibernation lasted until the oceans dried up, but the living waters served up spiritual oxygen.

Some years ago, I was traveling the Dark Night of the Soul. Had you ever made this journey yourself, the above-stated 'Musings" would be second-nature and ironically indescribable with logical vocabulary, a sacred space where poetry alone eclipses the sun of reason, giving birth to the Rumi and Hafiz beyond life & death.

What started my journey was twofold: the first divorce, and the second, a relationship with a practicing alcoholic herself ultimately being found dead by her daughter, cause of death, drinking. A book had been recommended by a public speaker (and friend) from Hazelden presenting at “The Recovery Church” in St. Paul. After the presentation, I drove to The Mecca of All Bookstores (Barnes & Noble) looking for the recommended book, titled, "Addiction & Grace," written by Gerald May.

I found it on a bottom shelf, but next to it stood another book that enchanted my soul with moonlit trees barely discernable on its’ cover, titled, "The Dark Night of the Soul, penned by the same author. The "Spirit in my Chest" verified I was to have this book, so I carried it and the other book to the clerk and made my purchase. One might easily read the book, “The Dark Night of the Soul” in a day, but it took me two & one-half years to read it because I was living every word. One more year elapsed before I had reason to believe I had come through to the other side of marginally normal living, back in the world but no longer of the world.

Making the mystical journey is not strongly suggested for the strong, for the strong will collapse and perhaps fail at the Herculean Vulnerability required to pass this test.

Thank you for feeling these words.

I couldn't look at this write for long...back then. Make your wounds your wisdom. I remember who I AM every day. Those days are gone.

It’s all beautiful, every crevasse of wonderment. Trust is the ultimate freedom.

Is Misery a Choice?

We have a while before Easter is upon us, but here is my preamble for it this go around. It’s an odd mixture of serious and humorous, ironic and dry. More will be revealed. Lots of quotes and references will be only partly attributed.

Earliest attribution I found to this ‘misery’ quote.

IN RE the Bob Marley Quote, "The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.": Everyone is worth feeling pain over, but suffering/misery is optional. Pain & suffering are just words; interchangeable words, as are the words ‘guilt’ & ‘shame’. People bicker about silly things. If you do or don’t like anything I say, credit or blame God. God is the only reason I’ve survived this long.

The gravity of our addiction to judgment can clutch us, almost like a Black Hole, where even light itself finds itself captured. If we go through the Black Hole willingly, we get squeezed, birthed, and plop out a new person on the other side, slathered with primordial ooze and blood. It ain’t easy, but it’s worth it. Simple, not easy. Let Go Let God.

If that seems too daunting for rebirth, I get it. Try the softer, easier way. Be angry, fine, but don't let anger’s aligning plots swallow your spirit. Say NO! Anger can fuel wrongdoing; becoming the person you are mad at (or worse) may result in hating the hater. Deal with anger before it becomes rage, and it deals with you. Problems caught while they are still small are usually quite manageable. Let that stuff go, lest at night you lay your head upon your pillow with an unquiet mind. Anger is the dubious luxury of normal people, but for some among our ranks, it is fatal. Restlessness, irritability, and discontentedness foreshadow relative proximity to that Black Hole. But I’ve found in life that if you run from it, and avoid your Dark Night of the Soul, it will come around again. You’re orbiting the thing in ever concentric oblong circles. Most of our problems share the same center or axis point: Death…and New Life. If you have not learned to see the beauty in pain, life will refund your misery (and multiply it, too). It’s all up to you, though.

If you’ve read the Big Book, you’ll get the following, maybe.

Twists and Turns of Human Nature.

"Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations." (Big Book pg 64).

The Big Book also reads at least twice that "...our troubles are of our own making...".

We begin veering off course when we get this backward by saying "our troubles are of others' making."

As I heard Mark L. describe Alcoholics, Addicts, and Codependents in a Hazelden Alumni event:

An Alcoholic is someone that crashes their car into an oak tree and afterward says, "I gotta quit...driving.

An Addict crashes into an oak tree, and gets out of the car laughing, saying, HA! It wasn't MY car!

A Codependent crashes into this same tree, and a few hours later is back with a chainsaw cutting the tree down, saying, "It's YOUR fault!"

Anger, oh, anger, for where art thou, anger? IF anger erupts from our hearts, whether aloud or a silent explosion, THEN we risk a self-imposed abyss swallowing us whole, body, mind & soul. I wonder if Jonah and the Whale came into your mind as it did mine? Hmmm…

We built pedestals in hell. We blamed someone else for the fire that we ourselves stoked. We lived close to that fire, sweat pouring from our brows in the furnace of our self-undoing, like an eternal run-on sentence.

Resentments and anger can fester and generate pollution that perpetually creates freight trains of misfortune in its logical course. We generate fear in and around us, fashioning our existence through free will. Do you remember that the door to hell is opened only from the inside?

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." Bob Marley

There is a way out of this bubble. Who will have time to trip on pain, suffering, guilt, and shame if we are busy loving God and others as we love ourselves? Let's quit playing the self-sabotage and blame the other guy for the victim-mentality thing.

In Aikido, one guiding principle is to work on seeing things from the other person's point of view. 'The customer is always right' addresses this paradigm. This choice, an attitude, helps one avoid merging with the seeming problems of life and at least allow breathing room to not exacerbate the glitches in the matrix.

Bob Marley still affects us today, as do many other excellent role models that we fondly quote. These role models had shortcomings. Who among us is perfect to cast the first stone? But we become ‘Quoters’ of those who have risen above severe life challenges, even to the point of resurrection. Check out the following Slide Show (I hope you laugh a little):

Focus on solutions, but don’t force solutions; don’t quit before the miracle happens. Keep plugging away until 'accepting life on life's terms' becomes your mantra. Having a profound alteration in our reaction to life is a bold way of living. When a problem arises in life, have a long series of automated responses (response-ability) to select from and utilize. This habit is acquired, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, but repetition as the Mother of All Learning eventually morphs the entirety of our spiritual experiences into One spiritual awareness. There is One who has all power. That One is God. May you find God now.

Written by Gerald May

The Universe sings One Song and is as patient as Eternity. The Universe is conspiring to give us the best life possible at all times and in all places. Happiness is a choice, and peace defies reason.

“ “If you care enough, you’ll find a way.””

— Quote Source ~ P. K. Ireland

Few people place a candle in its holder, light the candle, then carry it outside, in broad daylight, then set it down, and walk away. The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow...” is an assumption that candles are only lit when it is dark. That's part of our real issue in society today.

Someone recently asked a question on a chess page while showing a chessboard position, saying that it was a foregone conclusion that black would lose the queen, and I answered that they were mistaken. I was taken to task for two days over my answer. I proved that black didn't have to lose the Queen. No matter what moves were illustrated against my contention, it stood true. Black would lose the game in two moves if black did what I suggested, but black lost the game...WITHOUT losing the Queen. People change the question or try to, and then gaslight those who are not fallible in their reasoning along the lines of the question at hand. Go Focus Yourself.

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Harold Simmons Jr., AKA "BUBBA" Ex-Con Poem

Spirits seem to always be within distance

they hear when I weep and can sense the danger

around the corner when I am blind to it

what are their names?

I want to know so much about them.

Time after time, they rescue me from the steel jaws of death

even when his teeth are in the very mirror of my existence

why me?

Who am I to deserve such guardians after creating so much chaos

and living in so much deceit?

I have lived with that question

hanging from the cobwebs of my mind for so long

hardly even giving thank

I'm in so much fear of it because I never could grasp

an understanding of it

but today, I had no choice but to know they exist

and are at work carrying me through life

and loving me even when I'm hating myself.

Today I can no longer take it with a grain of salt.

today I want to know those spirits

so I can talk to them

embrace them

sing to them and give them thanks

so much thanks

Short & Sweet

To believe we can't walk on water is to create a desert of the ocean.

When we are ready, we hear, we see, we feel, we intuit, and decode meaning in everything.

https://youtu.be/OHzqvmqGh2s

Live & Let Live

Live & Let Live I equate with true equity for all: Freedom of Speech and the pursuit of happiness.

If you know me at all, this poem elevated my life and consciousness, and I’ve mentioned it in many of my speeches.

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My Podcast is about hearing, in big part, marginalized opinions/voices, whatever they may be.

Peace Out~

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Anxiety, Codependency, Escalation, Rejection, and Trust (Good Policing).

Many years ago, I was interviewed by Minneapolis police on their radio show. I wish they still had that show. I remember feeling grateful that this contact with police differed from The Bad Ol’ Daze. But I want to offer a heartfelt word for cops.

Police themselves need MI help and should have On Call help. Being a cop is almost as stressful as being a cashier. Dealing with the crazy side of humanity is what many fields contend with, and the incidence of mental illness in such fields is relatively unmeasured, probably due to fear of stigma. If a cop or anyone admits having MI issues, they risk losing their job (or fear losing their job). Realizing one is human while under extreme, long-term stress should not be stigmatized. Cops should have 24/7 access to psychological help without anyone knowing the details of their issues (except for perhaps supervisors with an ROI).

It seems like people that need help the most get it the least. Every American should take de-escalation training, irrespective of their area of expertise. Even experts can struggle. A peaceful, easy feeling is a choice that many people have no idea how to access. I frequently witness people making excuses for the poor treatment of their fellow, i.e., marginalizing offenders, cops, homeless, alcoholics/addicts, etc.

I've met MANY people in my 31-years of sobriety that are sober. Judges included. The judges are working intelligently to give offenders REAL help with issues like drug courts and creative sentencing. I've spoken to many LEAs and see the utter look of disdain on some of the audience member's faces. Conversely, I've also seen the look of relief and gratitude on some of the faces. The point of my saying this last piece of information isn't about who did or didn't like what I said. It's about my discovery that the one/s I THOUGHT were mad at me… wasn't. Seriously considering points of new information that impact their future course of behavior is challenging for anyone.

Apprehending a mistaken course of conduct is tough. Sure, perhaps a conscience was punk-slapping the inner critic. I thought these very same people couldn't wait for this piece of their training to end but would sincerely thank me after the speech. I was at first surprised. Now I know people are not what they appear. Give them a break. I suspect they were glad to learn that some offenders do change. I was living proof.

Put compassion first; lead with trust that 'change is possible' and that people are doing the best they can with the tools they have. Don't be part of the Hate Boat. Let's give each other the tools we need. Sure, we're not all in the same boat, but we're on the same ship.

An addendum thought. It seems like many people forget who they are (forget their humanity). I remember how many police officers would scowl (after hearing someone complain about how their handling of a situation was hurtful), saying they are not social workers. Such responses are what untreated MI issues sound like. We are all prone to Compassion Fatigue. Especially cops.

Make your wounds your wisdom. There's still time.

“When we are anxiously attached, our inability to trust the intentions and behaviors of others will often lead us to escalate situations and then reject attempts to reassure us. It is a painful and dramatic spiral.” ― Mary Crocker Cook, Awakening Hope. A Developmental, Behavioral, Biological Approach to Codependency Treatment.

Community Standards on facebook

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”

― Søren Kierkegaard, from The Journals of Kierkegaard.

The good news is that it's none of my business what others think of me, just like it's none of my business what I think of myself. When I get out of my own way, life goes great. For me, God-Esteem goes farther than Self-Esteem. When I surrender, I align with my Higher Power and we become One.

I posted the following on facebook last year:

The mainstream media keeps people stupid and docile because 'bread & circuses' are where the money is. Follow the money. It's not a new idea. Presidential elections are circuses and the team you vote for feeds you YOUR bread. Feed yourself. The bread is already yours and the people in power are middle-men insurance agents and media prostitutes 'protecting' you (for a fee) to keep you from taking care of yourself.

Think for yourself. Let freedom of individual rights be your platform. Individual rights are the only means to guarantee the Greater Good. Collective rights emanate from individual rights.

Community Standards come from Individual Standards, not vice-versa. Forcing solutions, imposing harmony, and all the outside-in stuff is useless.

Ancient Greece made its greatest strides when they were free to do both good and bad things. My greatest single regret I see coming from Ancient Greece is how they made the human psyche divided against itself. They over-focused on the mind and left the heart out of balance with the mind. One manifestation of this illness came from the idea that "Feelings are not facts." Truth is, the mind and the heart are One.

The mind is the thinking part of the heart, and the heart is the feeling part of the mind.

Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge and pointed out that his leaps of higher ideas came suddenly, intuitively.

The 'dictionary' of Einstein's life exploded like a bomb in a printing press office, and the letters of the dictionary flew everywhere BUT came back together in a beautiful order.

After all, the dictionary and the Bible both contain the same words, albeit in a different order. The EGO exists as an illusion in the mind. The heart is not so deluded, and that's why the battlefield is in the mind and not the heart.

The mind is supposed to protect the heart, for once the heart goes, our destiny goes. A poisoned heart is a most tragic state of affairs, with forgiveness and peace defying all explanation and knowledge rushes in to save the day (if we surrender to the Holy Spirit).

My Sponsor used to say, “When I wanna make God laugh, I just tell ‘em MY plans.

God’s Plan. The is One who has all power, that One is God...

Seeking/researching without an agenda is an intuitive art of discovering the Invisible. No one is more invisible/anonymous than God. God hides in the Atheist, the Agnostic, but hides even more succinctly in the religionists. I've seen God in prison, as there's no prison wall so thick that God can't get through it.

I've seen God in the eyes of an Atheist and have seen God living most vibrantly in the eyes of the Agnostic who is willing to question everything. Being teachable is being open to questioning everything.

I loved God beyond reason and still do, and in so doing have released a peace greater than all understanding. Lean not unto your own understanding. Don't make everything all about you, your loved ones, or your enemies. Human reasoning is laughable. Rule 62. Forgive everything until forgiveness becomes the laughable joke that it is. If I am unoffendable (I'm not surprised there is no word as "unoffendable" in the English lexicon), there's nothing to forgive.

Yet, cast not the pearls before swine; be as wise as a serpent. Forgive everything.

If there is nothing to forgive, who is your enemy? The enemy disappears into the illusion that ego gave it to hide in. EGO seems more real than God, but with ego, there is no truth in it at all. Ego is a liar, and can only dance in duality and the addiction to knowledge (eating from the tree of the ego of duality or the ego (knowledge) of the duality (of good and evil). Forever learning, but knowing nothing.

Only in the human mind can ego subsist itself. Humans are the only ones that can talk about something that doesn't exist. Maybe that's why Existentialism resonates in my life like the echoes of God crying from the wilderness. Truth without paradox is dead.

Truth, like God and Love, is One. God, Love, and Truth have no opposites, for they are not of duality. Sure, sometimes I hear and don't object to 'My truth" and "your truth", but it's kinda chicken shit. It's childish to do my truth/your truth game. It's childlike to met in the realm beyond good and evil, like the field that Rumi mentioned.

I have experienced many miracles in my life, have witnessed the Hand of God, and heard the Voice of Christ; from these spiritual experiences have come spiritual awareness. Sometimes I describe Sponsorship as the practice of making the Comfortable uncomfortable, and the Uncomfortable comfortable until the Sponsee is (equally) at peace with everything. It makes the burden light, the yolk easy.

My Bible in prison.

When I chose to not work on the Sabbath in prison, I kept getting thrown in The Hole. It was a number of lovely mini-vacations because at the time 'The Hole' was the only place in prison that had adequate heating, (thanks to the federal courts).

Eventually, the problem of my not working when they told me to work on the basis of religion was starting to annoy the administration, until one fine day the Associate Warden called me and my Cellie into his office and asked/demanded to know why we were not working on Sundays. I said, "Because God said not to" (in the Bible). The Ass War slammed his tightly clenched fist on his desk and yelled, "In this prison, I'M GOD!" I simply said, "No, you're not."

Art by Bruce Hong

Magically, I was removed from any job that required Sunday work. I was not at war with the prison. It was genuinely my belief. It was not my ego, but my willingness to obey what I understood as a commandment.

Oh, by the way, about a year or so later, God died of a heart attack.

Look, I ain't pretending to be all that. I fall short every day in many ways, but I do my best to echo God's Love back to God in the form of a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and trust that if God thinks I have a defect of character that requires removal, I'll get some help. In the meanwhile, I suspect that shortcomings might be God's way of reminding us who God is and who 'ain't' God.

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, seeking ONLY for knowledge of God's will, and the power to carry it out. Thy will be done...even when I am clueless about how to make it happen.

Can One Hit a Target they Don't Have?

Your mind is a very strange thing. As soon as you give something a name, logos, and a genuine aim, it’ll reconfigure the world in keeping true to that aim.

It’s actually how you see to begin with. We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are. If you set the intention of aim as a task, as best you have to be genuine (integrated) about the aim as a task. Bring your thoughts and emotions together, then make your actions match your words. Then you have to get them in your body so you’re acting consistently. To be genuine about the aim is beautiful. Once you aim, the world will reconfigure itself around that aim, which is very strange but it’s technically true. Perhaps the best exemplification you’ve no doubt seen is the video where you watch basketballs being tossed back and forth between members of the white team versus the black team. While you’re doing that, a gorilla walks up in the middle of the video and you don’t see it.

If you thought about that experiment for about five years, that would be the right amount of time to spend thinking about it, because what it shows you is that you see what you aim at. The maturity of intention stops colliding with expectation, and then you’re able to see things you’ve never seen or imagined before. Maybe this is why Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.

TRUST has no agenda, even when it aims.

Take Your Power Back from Learned Helplessness

Before I sobered up, alcohol was like a rope or noose around my neck. Steeped in Learned Helplessness, I was powerless over alcohol. The addiction to drinking made my ‘problem thinking’ run riot. Alcohol in my bloodstream became an insidious saboteur, infecting my thinking.

I experienced a profound alteration IN MY REACTION to life. Pre-sobriety, over and over and endlessly over again, ODAAT, I sold my freedom for a drink. Post sobriety, spiritual awareness grew in my consciousness.

Sure, I had spiritual experiences as a drunk, but the power of spiritual awareness came later, as did the ability to do something useful with the spiritual experiences. It’s like the joke about knowing one has the right to remain silent but not being able to keep one’s mouth shut.

Consider how we coerced ourselves by broken beliefs that served as self-made prisons. Others did not constrain us; the Big Book reads that our problems are primarily of our own making. A prison psychiatrist told me that it is a foregone conclusion that I would spend the rest of my life in prison. NOTHING CHANGED until I got honest about the noose called alcohol that was strangling my life.

Here’s one illustrative lesson that explains ‘Learned Helplessness’ well that I would like to pass on for your consideration. It describes what happened and what we thought happened in our lives—the newfound freedom and happiness rest in awareness. Unlearning is key to that awareness. Step 4 was the Virus Scan, and Step 5 was the delete key. For me, Step 6 was one of the happiest days of my entire life. I still had to work on other things, like Steps 7, 8, and 9, but I was amazed even though I was barely halfway through the Steps.

Elephant Training

When elephant trainers catch a baby elephant, they tie one of its legs to a post with a rope. The baby elephant struggles and struggles, but it can’t get free. For days the elephant pulls and strains at the rope. Gradually it learns that struggle is useless, and it gives up.

When the elephant grows up, the trainer keeps it tied to the same rope in the same way. And even though it can now break the rope and get away, it stands passively and waits for the trainer to come and get it. It has developed what is called Learned Helplessness. It has learned that the struggle is useless as a result of repeated failure experiences earlier in life, the elephant has learned a self-imposed limitation.”

So how does Learned Helplessness affect humans?

It’s a condition where a person has the power to change their unpleasant situation yet does not attempt to use that power because they have learned to feel helpless in that situation. No one is perfectly free from the trap of learned helplessness; the point is to grow along spiritual lines. Not even the most successful people with long-term sobriety find themselves free of all character defects. But the difference is those who are successful have surrendered their willpower and embarked upon a simple, straightforward plan of action to overcome their most significant limitations in life.

Alcoholism is a LOSS OF CONTROL. Essentially, learned helplessness is a practical feeling of lack of control. A lack of control over one’s prevailing circumstances ensues when we drink, sometimes called a trainwreck. In the worse cases, learned helplessness leads to clinical depression in individuals, and alcohol depresses the brain even more into a downward spiral. You often hear people say who relapse: “It’s useless…”, “There’s just no way out….”

Learned helplessness limits people’s belief in themselves, while Steps 2 & 3 DELIMITS people. Sobriety leads to confidence without conceit, healthy self-esteem through God Esteem, and an attitude of gratitude that we thirst to pass on. Alcohol-induced limitation leads to a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem, which leads to a lack of self-worth, which leads to procrastination and finally settling for mediocrity at best, and insanity, prison, or death at worst.

Given any particular situation, a sober individual would have a fair idea of how to get out of problems. Yet most are afraid to take any action. How many of you feel that you’re stuck in a stagnant, unsatisfactory, unchallenging job? You know you could be much happier and earn a lot more, but the fear of change that things could be worse on the other side has kept you from taking massive action toward your desires. This is ‘Stinking Thinking.

There are thousands of stories of individuals who have risen above unimaginable circumstances to live extraordinary lives and become people of prodigious influence since 1935. A few great examples are Lois Wilson, Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, and maybe the person you look at in the mirror every morning. These people all took enormous strides and were willing to go to any lengths to overcome their ego limitations, freeing themselves from the trap of learned helplessness.

Take the noose from around your neck and free your life! Or, as they said in The Matrix, UNPLUG! Never believe any story that doesn’t empower you. Take what you like and leave the rest; kick out the angry renters that live rent-free in your head.

“...one of the primary differences between alcoholics and nonalcoholics is that nonalcoholics change their behavior to meet their goals and alcoholics change their goals to meet their behaviors.”

Release the blocks, drop the rocks, and fly free!

You Can't Handle the Truth

Truth is not ‘relative’, but the perspective on it differs for everyone.

I heard a speaker say some people stay in their shit because it's warm(er than the people around them).

Shit is like a blanket. People' just call it like it is' or callously say, 'It's the truth! You can't handle the truth!' 'Calling people on their shit' reminds me of snatching a blanket away from someone who, in their consummate wisdom (because they know precisely what the other person does and doesn't need), kicks their crutch or snatches the blanket away (and they freeze as a result). I think it was Melanie Beattie who told the blanket story in Codependent No More. It's been a long time since I read it, but it made sense to me.

I remember someone's Sponsor (venting?) in a meeting, saying he finally told his Sponsee to quit calling him because he doesn't do anything he is told to do anyway, and he's going to die from drinking. Yes, the Sponsee kept relapsing, calling from Detox, jail, and wherever. But our prescription is almost a prayer. When anyone, anywhere, REACHES OUT FOR HELP...we know the rest of it.

I mentioned in that very same meeting a metaphorical story about an obese man who was having a heart attack that called out to someone for help, but the person told him to F-off, saying he was warned for years that overeating might kill him and that he should have put down that last hamburger. Yes, the Sponsor was obese. I ain't judgin', I'm jis' sayin'. Another saying I heard in early recovery, was BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD, THERE GO I.

A saying I once heard in a meeting opened my heart. 'We don't shoot our wounded.' The Big Book generally reads that we should be hard on ourselves, not others. I also heard Oprah say that we should make our wounds our wisdom. Beating people over the head with truth is not why we are here.

It's a hard pill to swallow, but there is not anyone residing on Earth School that couldn't turn into a purely evil, toxic person, totally willing to kill or injure others. We can kill a person with a word if we aren't careful. It takes a lot of work not to be an asshole when we are upset, and the irony is that many of us don't know any better. But the "I didn't mean to" argument is useless if you drive drunk and kill someone. You have to mean NOT to do something. Given the worst life scenarios, maybe anyone could grow up to be a serial killer. Wounded people wound people. Healed people heal people.

Truth without compassion is cruelty. Attraction, not forcing solutions, is critical. If you like something I say, don't give me any credit. There is One who has all power, and it ain't me. If you turn your will and life over to the care of God, then you'll see and hear God everywhere. If you DON'T like something I say, take it up with God because God is why I'm still kicking it on Earth School. Thank God life ain't fair because if life were 'reasonable,' I'd still be in prison, be in a nuthouse, or be 6-feet under your feet and forgotten long ago.

Like the line of a 70's movie, "Hang up the blame thrower." I LOVE THAT THIS SAYS GROWTH STARTS WHEN WE TIRE OF OUR OWN SHIT (we're taking our own inventory). I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and quit drinking. People in The Rooms loved me back to health. Go where the love is.