The Eleventh Step reads, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
Since I believe that one’s relationship (or not) with a higher power is private, and that in the context of the rooms of recovery it verges on being an outside issue, I won’t be getting into it here. However, there is no question that the meditation part is critical to healthy emotional growth for alcoholics and other addicts, and that it’s important for the population at large, as well. (See the preceding link) That being the case, and because meditation has gotten a bad rap from folks who think it’s tedious and difficult, I thought I’d hit some of the high points about how to meditate.
In a sense, meditation is planned boredom. We purposely put ourselves into a situation where we have no choice but to live with our thoughts. This was common a half-century ago and more, because life contained far fewer ways of filling up time with relatively unnecessary things. By that, I mean things that don’t increase our quality of life, but that simply fill up empty time that could more profitably be spent in — boredom.
Human beings need these periods. Our days are filled with things that take up our time, but that do nothing to uplift us. Those of us who have been able to slow our brains down and spend a couple of 20 minute periods a day in meditation have found that if we do so regularly, things just seem to get better. During those periods, we seem somehow to fit the irregular pieces of our lives together a bit more smoothly.
Have you ever driven several miles, only to realize that you remembered nothing about the trip — not only the trip, but what you might have been thinking, the songs that played on the radio — nothing? Have you ever come to with a start, and realized that you had lost a few minutes? Have you ever been so deeply engrossed in reading a book, or listening to music, that you were oblivious to everything going on around you for several minutes — even hours? If you have had any of these experiences, you have been in a meditative state. Whether we call it hyper-focusing, daydreaming, or “lost in thought,” it’s all the same thing. In our fast-moving world we have come to think of these periods as wasting time, when in fact they are probably the most important parts of our day in terms of emotional health and general wellbeing.
We are naturals at meditation, and since we already know how, the idea of doing so regularly may seem less of an ordeal. It really isn’t difficult, although it may require a bit of patience and acceptance to begin with. We only have to learn to do on demand what we already know how to do unconsciously.
That is surprisingly simple. We simply remove other distractions. We find a quiet place, indoors or outdoors (outdoors is best). We desert our phones, iPods, books, lists and the other things that tyrannize our day — including the other people in our lives. We sit quietly.
Then we simply let our mind wander. If we find it focusing on problems, chores, ideas for new projects, our love life or other specifics, we acknowledge their presence and then let them drift away. We don’t dwell on them. If they come back, we say, “Okay, there it is again,” and we let it go.
After while, we will drift into what amounts to a daydream, where we are no longer conscious of trying, our minds wandering where they will. That is meditation. We are not working at thinking about specific things. Quite the opposite; we are giving our minds a chance to function a bit on their own, undirected, and able to exercise themselves without interference from us.
It takes a bit of practice to reach a point where we can do this more-or-less on command. Most folks find that about fifteen to twenty minutes a couple of times a day can work wonders, once we get the knack of it. Just remember that meditation is for its own sake. It has no specific purpose. If we start looking for one, we’re approaching it wrong.
Try it for a couple of weeks, then keep on if you find it rewarding. My guess is that you’ll be online buying meditation supplies (that you really don’t need) before you know it.
It isn’t uncommon for me to get questions about nutrition, particularly the role of vitamins in recovery. Let me say at the outset that I have no desire to get into a debate about it. There are huge industries with a vested interest in promoting vitamin therapies, and they use extremely effective advertising to attract people to their products. Many of those folks swear by their various courses of nutritional supplements, and that’s okay. I’m not going to buck the current of billions of dollars worth of merchandising, nor am I interested in changing anyone’s mind.
Let’s Not Take Boston To Chicago
I know I speak for the entire Sunrise family when I extend our deepest concerns and sympathy to the victims, families and others whose lives have been devastated by yesterday’s awful tragedies at the Boston Marathon and nearby. We have friends, colleagues and former clients in the Boston area, and some of us have family there as well. Words can’t express our dismay at these events — one more example of folks’ inability to resolve differences without violence.
Ron P., one of my therapists when I was in treatment (you know, back when everyone was eating fermented fruit that they picked up on the way to the water hole), used to have a favorite way of putting things. He’d ask a simple question, or be listening to someone going on at length in group, and then he’d say, “C’mon! You’re taking it to Chicago!” Then he’d bring us back to the point or, as often as not, make it for us.
I couldn’t help thinking of Ron while reading snippets here and there about the Boston bombings. One theorist blames the US Government, who are allegedly trying to frame the opposite political party. Still others are sure they know who and what ethnic groups were responsible, and so on. Blah, blah, blah.
The bare fact is, no one knows who was responsible except for the people directly involved. It is likely that the rest of us will know more soon, but it’s by no means certain, and it’s important that we keep our heads and not jump on our horse and ride off in all directions like the codependent cowboy. It’s especially important that we keep these issues out of the rooms of recovery.
We all have our feelings, and many of us aren’t that good at keeping them to ourselves. If we feel as though we need to talk about things, we need to remember the first rule of sharing in the rooms or elsewhere: keep in in “the I.” We share about how these things are affecting us and our recovery. We do not voice opinions on outside issues, in violation of our traditions, and we don’t take a chance of offending others in the meeting. We are not there to ride a political (or religious) hobby horse, but to facilitate our recovery, and that of others.
Let’s keep our primary purpose in mind, when tempted to air the opinions that all us addicts have in abundance, shall we? As a bonus, it may prevent us from having to eat crow later, when our pet theory may be shown to be incorrect. Let’s not take Boston to Chicago.