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Well. I do now.
Lack of awareness encourages stagnation. Becoming the sum of our past gets to be a painful burden - more and more so as time moves on. An unhappy past amounts to an increasingly unhappy present.
It is awareness of the embarrassin
gly little and petty things like the incident I am about to depict, that help us grow:
I had a serious problem within my own self this morning. A situation that had the potential to kill me. It happened at the gym.
My trainer had her personal workout time at the same time as mine. She used the elliptical machine right next to mine. A strange thing happened.
As I was working out on my elliptical, I found myself strangely compelled to compete with her. It lasted just a minute but the urge was strong. So there I was comparing my speed with hers then trying to match my stride to hers so she wasn’t going faster than I was going. (Weird beings, we humans.)
It is not so much the secret approval seeking that is so revealing as it is is seeing why this was happening. This is a gift.
I realized I was actually looking for her approval of me (believing she would be noticing my speed at all) The reason I wanted her approval (here is where standard psychology fails us and simple spiritual awareness provides real insight) is because I had a resentment for her going back to last MAY when she didn’t return a phone call to me.
I must have buried the sucker down were all suppressed annoyances and irritations go, instead of handling it properly. Weird stuff eh? It’ll kill us in the end.
She is a sweet little thing (With a tight set of muscles that could put you down in the blink of an eye if necessary) and probably had no idea what was going on and had no idea how her presence affected me this morning. (Do we ever know all of the good or harm we bring to fore just by our presence?)
This is the beauty of mediation. Meditation as an ‘action’ is nothing in itself. It is just an exercise, - a stress rehearsal, for real-life, if you will.
It’s how you ‘get’ and how you can live AFTER you practice the awareness granted through it. This is the gift.
You come to realizations that would never otherwise come:
This is a resentment that I failed to process through the spiritual Step Ten machine – then additionally it somehow fell through a crack in the Step Eleven nightly inventory routine – BUT here it is now caught in the wonderful spiritual net that is the result of meditative awareness.
It is because of awareness of the situation that it is allowed to vanish.
- No effort.
- No ‘trying.
- No “direct amends" due at this time.
Not even a premeditated "plan" to seek forgiveness or relief and have it happened – no seeking of relief or the ambrosia of forgiveness. Not even ambitiously endeavoring to “do the right thing.”
Just a spontaneously “letting go” of the negative emotion (resentment) that sprung as t result of a simple, forgotten “annoyance” that cropped up some nine months ago - (forgiveness I failed to proffer her way back then) Love I did not give her.
These are simple realities of the human dynamics which affect us all. Most of us do no
t want to be so aware as to see them. Most people want to suppress their resentments and not see them ever surface in order to languish in an imaginary spiritual aloofness and to secretly bask the sweet judgment of others – playing God.
Many of us are interested in achieving spiritual bliss, not effortless, non-egoist, and God aligned neutrality. And there are others who upon reading this article will think,
“Holy crow! If I could only be that aware, then I could finally, at long last learn, to love others."
Had today’s event at the gym not happened – (and events like it which happen all the time in life) - if I did not have an effective meditation the daily effect of which is an increased awareness of these things – that resentment might have collected in the craw of my psyche together with a multitude of others, making me increasingly miserable and guilty and dissatisfied with my Program (Wondering "WTF? I am 12 stepper – I am suppose to be happy, joyous and free. It must not really work" or I am a real hypocritical piece of shit.) until finally I would need to repeat yet another 4th step inventory – or else drink – or else kill myself. Either of these options would accomplish the same thing -- stop me from feeling the pain.
The cool thing is now I love my trainer and I would have my trainer love me – by forgiving me for my shortcomings.
Very insightful those Big Book co-authors! The SOBS knew – or if they didn’t know then they were surely inspired in their naiveté - moved to include mediation in Step Eleven even though they had not yet mastered a technique themselves.
Peace & Love
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
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