high school

wanted to be popular

starved myself.  tried to fit in

with the “cool” crowd.  failed

body image

roll round the middle.

ate too much.  need to exercise.

real problem, cancer.

 

clarity

find your way back now

practice body awareness

during addiction

 

March 1, One Year, One Day at a Time – Courage to Change

What a great day.  Spent the morning writing haiku and preparing for the workshop I am teaching at Midtown Yoga on Sunday, March 2 – Weight Control (control is not really the right word) thru yoga and diet.  I am so excited about gather a group of people who want to talk openly about food, weight, body image, societal norms and pressures and all the other things that go into separating us from ourselves and our bodies.  Food is not the enemy.  It is simply the fuel our bodies need to function at an optimum level of efficiency.
We are not defective.  Mary Oliver puts it so beautifully in her poem, Wild Geese.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I wish there was a magic spell I could cast over all those who will attend the workshop, one that would give them the courage they need to change.  I saw this quote on Facebook today.  Joe Somodi posted it.  Perfect for the workshop.

So true.  In his book The Four Desires, my teacher, Rod Stryker says, “the single hardest yoga practice is the same for everyone.  It is called change.  It is challenging to create and maintain a new trajectory.  Courage is almost always a necessary ingredient of change.  Fulfilling your potential and achieving your destiny demand that at some point you stand on your own and become your own leader.”  So true.  I have learned that the hard way, by trying for years to be what I thought I should be, what I believed others wanted me to be.  Never worked.  I was miserable, bulimic, alcoholic, depressed, suicidal, mean, anxious, angry, paranoid and unskillful.  NO more.

I know who I am.  I am charisma and I bring healing light to the world.  I am an incredible mother and grand mother.  I am a loving and sexy wife.  I am a damned good writer and I am getting better every day.  I am not here on this earth to please others, I am here to live out my dharma and by doing so I contribute to the well-being of the planet and everyone on it.  I am light.  I am love.  I am joy.  So are you.

‘No Big Deal Dharma: Notice, Relax & Let Go”

Growing up in an abusive home, I learned to skillfully abate pain and fear.  I simply disassociated.  If my father came into my room at night, which he did with some regularity, I closed my eyes and imagined myself elsewhere, anywhere away from the present moment.  When my father beat up my grandmother, I hid under the bed and refused to come out.  Determined to pretend it never happened, I closed my eyes and decided never to look back.  I only remembered the event after years of a reoccurring dream in which I saw myself in my bedroom cowering under the box springs.  With the help of hypnosis,  I relieved the that terrible night and in so doing we freed of another repressed past event.

In adolescents and early adult hood, I used sex, food, cigarettes and alcohol as strategies to avoid painful experiences and memories.  I stayed away from home as much as possible and finally moved to another city to get away from war-torn house in which I grew up.  Marrying at 21 seemed like a good idea.  What would be better than having someone to take care of me?  Well that did not work.  My first husband and I fought incessantly.  We drank to excess and smoked a lot of pot.  He was a good man.  I was a ticking  time bomb  waiting to detonate.

I left him and found another man, sexier, more exciting, dapper, and almost famous.  We lived the bohemian lifestyle, a ratty roach infested apartment, parties every night, sex, drugs and rock and roll.  We married but decided not to be monogamous.  Our motto was, If it feels good, do it.  After out first child, born at home, we bought a house. I got a real job at a law firm and we set about the business of growing up.  I never could get the hang of it.  Insecure, jealous, depressed, ridden with guilt and shame, I never believed that he loved me.  I was ill suited to be a parent and desperately wanted to die.  So I had multiple affairs, drank myself in to a stupor every night and blamed him for my woes.  He was never to blame.  The ghosts from my past were gaining on me.

I stopped drinking in 1990.  Something deep inside told me, “You must get sober if you ever hope to sort this out.”  I did.  I went to treatment for co-dependency, a real buzz word in the 90’s and for bulimia.  I left my second husband in 1997 for the fourth and last time.  We have both since remarried and are good friends.  We celebrate holidays together with our two children, present day spouses, our grand baby and another one on the way.  Life is good.

So what have I learned?  Go toward pain and suffering.  Do not attempt to run away from it.  You cannot hide from the past.  It will find you and f_ _ k you up until you deal with it.  “Wherever you go, there you are,” bigger than life, day in and day out.  This is it.  Why use all the resources we have to repress memories and hide from our fears? There is another way.  Joan Halifax Roshi explains:

In opening to living and dying without defending ourselves, we liberate a tremendous amount of energy. When we let go of our reference points, we open ourselves to a new way of being and perceiving. This is the realm of not-knowing. Although it can be frightening to be this transparent to life, we now have the resources with which to welcome fear, to be present for it, and to transform it through our awareness. In this way we break the habitual patterns that we have used to defend ourselves against feeling fear. This is how we heal.

Simplicity and directness are doorways to this open state. Rather than continuing to use concepts to distance and protect ourselves from our experience, we relax into the present moment.

She calls this ordinary state, “no big deal dharma.” It is simply everyday life. With no need to edit our reality, we can relax and sit with things just as they are, not good or bad.  We notice, relax and let go.  How, you say, can I do that?  Meditation.  Meditation teaches us to notice what is right in front of us.  We learn, as we sit, the longer we sit, to relax into the present moment whatever it brings. As we cultivate the ability to sit and see, we learn to relax into what is called, “not knowing.” Se begin to understand there is nothing special to realize.  We just are in this present moment. “There is nothing lacking, nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing extra.”  This moment and every moment is unique.  Wow.  So powerful and yet so simple.

January 31- One Year, One Day at a Time -Hot Bod

Hot bod.  You know that commercial with the Arian man and his south american counter part running up and down the bleachers?  Young, hot girls are watching, starry-eyed, swooning because the two young men have such great bodies.  Really?  I have a hot body for a 62-year-old woman.  Okay is that arrogant, or am I giving you the facts?  Why do I even want to write about this?  Why, because tonight at dinner when the 3 other people we were with talked about procuring second homes, selling and buying condos and the like, I thought, what am I doing with my life?   Writing, teaching yoga, counseling, doing life coaching and ….I have a hot bod.  I just snickered.  This is really quite funny coming from the girl who, in eighth grade heard the gym teacher tell her, “You are weak and terribly over weight.  You should be ashamed of yourself.  You need to lose weight.”  She was so angry all because I could not pull myself up a climbing rope.

And so I was for years to come.   That was a turning point for me. I immediately started dieting, starving myself in hopes of attaining my goal, the perfect weight, 110 pounds.  I only weighed 120 to start.  Was I even overweight, or had my body not quite caught up with my….What am I talking about.  I was at one time heavier than I am now.  Embarrassed about my weight I dieted, took pills, used enemas and tried my best not to eat at all.  If I did eat and especially when I overate,  I took laxatives.  No one, no one was ever going to discover my sordid secret.  I ate and ate more to escape feelings for which i had no explanation.

Today, I do not eat or drink to cover up or hide from who I am.  I do not drink or eat too much to escape my feelings. I enjoy food and alcohol to the extent that i am having fun with friends. Over consumption of food and alcohol does not erase the past.  We each must do that for ourselves. Learning not to be a victim of the past does take time and effort.  No matter who you are, the past does effect you.  Samscaras, our perceptions of what has happened, the scars those experiences created are a sticky spider web waiting to ensnare us.  We cannot change the past but we can kill the spider, that part of ourselves that works feverishly to weave a web of self-made obstacles, false ideas of who we are, illusions of reality, avidya, a film that covers our eyes and hearts obscuring the truth, misapprehending, creating confusion and fear.

Ha, I have to laugh.  My perception of myself, me seeing me as having at hot bod for a 62-year-old grandmother may well be just another filament in the spider web I am trying to escape.

I am falling asleep sitting up in bed.  I must to go to sleep.  I will be back in touch tomorrow.

Eternally Grateful

Short recap of my life story.

Lived in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house with nine other people. My father was a rageaholic and an alcoholic who sexually abused me,verbally abused my brother, Scott, beat my grandmother, and forced my step-mother Elaine to have daily sex with him.  She was pregnant 7 times in as many years and gave birth to four boys and one girl in that time span.  My father rarely worked.  My step-mother attempted to support our family on a weekly salary of $90.00, her wage for managing a boutique department store.

A straight A student, I played the violin and was a junior high cheerleader.  Entering puberty, I I started drinking, smoking and having all but full-blown sex with Micky Stilson.  Quit orchestra, snuck out at night, spent evenings at the skating rink where I could flirt with older boys, and smoked in public.  Somehow maintained my grades, while my already low self-esteem plummeted.  Mick was the classic bad boy. Cheated on me, ran away from home, dropped out of school, stole his dad’s car, even got into an altercation with a police officer.

Seeing the writing on the wall, I asked my mother, who abandoned me when I was a year old, if I could come to Memphis and live with her and my step-father, Bill.  She consented.  I contacted a lawyer my mother knew.  He took me before the judge, who, because I was 16 and “of age” according to Indiana law, was able to end my father’s custody and free me to go south to live with “Mommy Dearest.”

More abuse, physical and emotional.  A mother who served me alcohol on daily basis, took me out drinking with her, allowed me to smoke at home and at school.  What more could a girl ask for?  Mommy and Bill moved to Florida when I was 18.  I stayed in Memphis. I has attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for two quarters and dropped out due to a nervous breakdown.  Probably attributable to the alcohol and drugs I took during that time.

Once back in Memphis, I found work at what was then St Joseph hospital as an insurance clerk.  I filed claims for patients. When my parents moved I found an apartment with an across the hall student whom I befriended while at UT.

By now my bulimia was in full  bloom. I had used laxatives for years to control my weight.  I ate compulsively until I made myself sick and then did everything but throw up to eliminate the evidence of my over consumption.  My digestive system became dependent on the pills I took and the enemas I self-administered.

Began attending St John’s United Methodist Church, found God and moved back to Indiana to “save” my family from damnation.  Instead I introduced my already screwed up brother to a gang of thugs and drug pushers with whom I spent most of my time after I gave up my evangelical work.

My soon to be husband, Jeff, rescued me from the den of inequity, brought me back to Memphis and, foolishly, married me.  It is a miracle we did not kill one another.  After 7 years, an affair and an abortion, he divorced me.  I went back to school to finish my college degree.  Again, I excelled, majoring in both French and Psychology.  Met my next husband, Jackie, and moved in with him in less than a week’s time.  I graduated, but turned down an opportunity to go to grad school in Psychology and a teaching job in France to stay home and have children.  I worked as a paralegal at a local law firm.

Prior to my law career, I worked at Squash Blossom, a natural food store in Memphis, for Jimmy Lewis who, unbeknownst to me would be my third and final husband.  He eventually hired me away from the law firm, offering more money and an opportunity to be a leader.  I hated working for the attorneys, most of whom were arrogant, crude and misogynistic.

Jimmy and I were both married.  He and I both had daughters.  I filed for divorce, but continued to live with Jackie because I did not have the resources to move out.  Jimmy and I went on a business trip to Atlanta, a natural foods convention, shared and room and ended up having an affair, falling more deeply in love and…..Jimmy’s wife found out.  We came home, arranged to live together in a duplex we rented for a year.  Big mistake.  We lasted 3 months.  I got pregnant by my not yet ex-husband and Jimmy moved in with his parents.  He eventually got a divorce from his then wife, but lost custody of his daughter Alyana, from whom he is still estranged.  A few years later, Jimmy remarried. He rehired me.  We tired to work together, but could not keep our hands off of one another.  I was banned from shopping at Squash Blossom.

Doomed to living with a wonderful man whom I did not love or trust, crazy as hell, depressed, suicidal and unable to care adequately for my two children, I reached out in desperation to a friend, Lou Hoyt, who became my first yoga teacher.  Through her I contacted Felicty Green, a 6 foot tall South African Yoga teacher who at the time lived in Seattle.  I went and spent a week with her.  She became my Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga is a witch (or one of a trio of sisters of the same name) in Slavic folklore, who appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking elderly woman. She flies around in a mortar and wields a pestle. She dwells deep in the forest, in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs, with a fence decorated with human skulls. Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter or seek her out, and may play a maternal role. (Wikipedia)

I went back and lived with her for three more months.  Yoga became my life line.  Over the span of 29 years, I have studied, practiced, trained as a teacher, opened and operated a successful studio, and trained over 100 others to be teachers.  But most importantly yoga gave me the tools I needed to be a great parent.  Yoga saved my life.

Jimmy and I married in 1999.  We are friends, lovers, partners and more.  My children, Katie and Jordan, are both grown and living with their partners here in Memphis.  I am so proud of them.  Every time I hug them, when I tell them how much I love them, I am reminded of what a gift my life is, and I am grateful to be who I am today.  What was once impossible becomes possible over time through the practice of yoga.

Guilt and Shame

Meditation is not a panecea.  More often than not sitting still, watching my breath is like being locked in Pandora’s Box.

“Let me out.  I need to move.  Anything but sitting here watching the guilt and shame flash across my mind.  My fault.  My fault.  My mother did not love me because I was flawed, deeply flawed from birth.  I lacked compassion.  I did not love and respect her.  She needed me and I pushed her away.  Sane mind intervenes.  Wrong, you are not to blame.  Okay, but what about my family?  I abandoned them.  I left them high and dry.  My brother living on the street, another one prematurely dead.  Two more under employed, self- medicating to stay alive.  A sister who will not return my calls.  I am to blame.  I am selfish.  I use people.  Damn.  I just want to sit for 30 minutes and find some peace.  My addictive personality is constantly looking for the click.  I see the years I spent over-eating, drinking, doing drugs, being promiscuous, as me looking for a break from all the guilt and shame.   I hear Pema Chodron’s words, “Always meditate on what provokes resentment.”  What does she mean?  Sit with the pain?  Observe it?  “Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice.”  Instead of reaching for a drink, a cigarette, chocolate, or the telephone, ask, “How can I practice now, right on this painful spot, and transform this into the path of awakening?”

“In essence the practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.  Then we feel the bodily sensation completely.  One way of doing this is to breathe into our heart.  By acknowledging the emotion, dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves about it, and feeling the energy of the moment, we cultivate compassion for ourselves. “

I am not to blame.  It is not my fault my mother abandoned me.  I am not to blame for my father sexually abusing me.  I did not force my brother to become crazy, to live isolated on the streets.  Nor am I responsible for my youngest brother’s death.  He smoked the cigarettes that killed him.  I can recognize how I feel and know there are millions of others who feel this same pain.  When I can see my confusion, fear, loneliness, my addictions, my strategies to avoid with compassion for myself, I can extend compassion to others who, like me, want to escape the incessant pain.  Then, Instead of being alone, frail, feeling worthless and desperate, I feel joy, because I am practicing vulnerability.  I am opening my heart to the pain of the world and in so doing I gain wisdom and courage.  If I can practice in the midst of pain and confusion, I remember that this is my path.

Pema writes, “Our patterns are well established, seductive and comforting.  Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough.  Awareness is the key.  So we see the stories we tell ourselves and question their validity?”  When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that is our path?  Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.”

This is how our desire to help not only ourselves, but all others will expand.  “Don’t try to be the fastest,” “Abandon any hope of fruition,” and “Don’t expect applause.”  This is my life.  I want to live it loving myself and others, not working for constant validation.  The forgiveness I desire is an inside job.  The longing I have to be connected to others is my path.  My pain is the solution to all I seek.  May the warrior in me refuse to retreat.  When I practice, when I train to be loving and compassionate, I can only hope to:

“…see that we’re (I am) rarely able to relax into the present moment….to  see that we’ve (I have) fabricated all kinds of strategies to avoid staying present, particularly when we’re (I am) afraid that whatever’s happening will hurt…also to see our (my) strong belief that if only we (I) could do everything right, we’d (I would) be able to find a safe, comfortable, and secure place to spend the rest of our (my) lives.”

This illusion, the illusion that constant joy, happiness, and freedom, is just an attitude adjustment away is the source of all suffering.  Sitting with the stories, the pain, the attempts to avoid life, the fears, the injustices…resting in awareness is the cure.  Practice, practice, practice with compassion and loving kindness.  Chodron states, “Staying with pain, without loving-kindness is just warfare” and we all know what that looks like.  Heal yourself.  Heal the world.  Sit.  Breathe into your heart.  Be brave.  Be kind.  Do not run away from yourself.  You are the answer we have all been waiting for.

Help For Problem Drinkers

“Everything in moderation, Petty.  Everything in moderation.”  My grand mother, Momo, shrunken and twisted  by a recent stroke, clenches my hand and probes my eyes.  “I love you, Momo.  I love you so much.”  I am thinking, how can she be so kind, so loving, so thoughtful?  She must be in such pain.  She holds my gaze.

This is the grandmother who worked as an accountant well into her eighties.  She did people’s tax returns and kept their books.  She knit, crocheted and needle-pointed up until she had the stroke.  She came each year for a month-long visit.  Everyday at 5:00 pm she put down her needle work and said, “I think it is martini time.”  She never had more than one.  Today, I believe in and attempt to exemplify my grandmother’s dying words.

“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.”  (St. Augustine)

When I was struggling to overcome my bulimia, I often said, “This would be so much easier if I could just quit eating.  People who smoke too much can give up cigarettes completely.  The same is true of alcohol.  I cannot give up food.  I need it to survive.  This is so f _ _ king hard.”  It was hard, but I did it.  Today I eat whatever and whenever I want.  I particularly love dark chocolate covered almonds.  Ymmm.  In treatment, the therapists told me, “You can never, ever eat almonds again.  They are a trigger food for you.  If you eat them, you will binge and that will throw you right back into your bulimia.”   I guess they were wrong.

I do believe that moderation, the ability to make wise choices, depends on the individuals willingness to look at his/her unconscious thoughts, ideas, and patterns and how these things drive behavior.  My bulimia and a ten-year abstinence from alcohol forced me into long-term therapy.  I attended a week-long inpatient program at Caron in Pennsylvania where I retrieved long-lost memories of sexual abuse.  Bulimia is a by-product of such trauma.  I learned what drove my over eating and subsequent laxative use.  I wanted to stuff painful memories and present to the world someone who was a picture of health, physically and mentally.  What a crock!

Yes moderation requires work, but the result is freedom, freedom from fear, freedom to choose, freedom from rigidity and the prison it creates.

If you have a problem with alcohol, food, cigarettes, shopping, gambling and the like, ask for help.  Tell someone about your concerns.  Ask questions.  Do research. Quit the habit for at least 40 days and see what happens.  If you cannot quit, get help immediately.  Do not be the victim of an out of control habit.

Here is a resource you might find interesting.   http://www.moderation.org/whatisMM.shtml.  The following are clips from their website.
Why is a Moderation Program needed?

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and many other independent researchers, there are four times as many problem drinkers as alcoholics in this country. Yet there are very few programs that specifically address the needs of beginning stage problem drinkers, while there are literally thousands of programs for the smaller population who are seriously alcohol dependent.

By the time people reach serious stages of alcohol dependency, changing drinking becomes more difficult, and treatment is usually costly. MM believes that this situation needs to be remedied in the interest of public health and human kindness with early intervention and harm reduction programs. Moderation programs are less costly, shorter in duration, less intensive, and have higher success rates than traditional abstinence-only approaches.

Nine out of ten problem drinkers today actively and purposefully avoid traditional treatment approaches. This is because they know that most traditional programs will label them as “alcoholic”,  probably force attendance at 12 step and abstinence based meetings, and prescribe lifetime abstinence as the only acceptable change in drinking.

They may also have real concerns about how their participation in these programs will affect their jobs and ability to attain future medical and life insurance. MM is seen as a less threatening first step, and one that problem drinkers are more likely to attempt before their problems become nearly intractable.

Not surprisingly,  approximately 30% of MM members go on to abstinence-based programs.  This is consistent with research findings from professional moderation training programs. Traditional approaches that are based on the disease model of alcohol  dependence and its reliance on the concept of powerlessness can be particularly counterproductive for women and minorities, who often already feel like victims and powerless.

Outcome studies indicate that professional programs which offer both moderation and abstinence have higher success rates than those that offer abstinence only.  Clients tend to self-select the behavior change options which will work best for them.

What is Moderation Management?

Moderation Management (MM) is a behavioral change program and national support group network for people concerned about their drinking and who desire to make positive lifestyle changes. MM empowers individuals to accept personal responsibility for choosing and maintaining their own path, whether moderation or abstinence. MM promotes early self-recognition of risky drinking behavior, when moderate drinking is a more easily achievable goal.

What are the basic premises of MM?

Behaviors can be changed. MM agrees with many professionals and researchers in the field that alcohol abuse, versus dependence, is a learned behavior (habit) for problem drinkers, and not a disease. This approach recognizes that people who drink too much can suffer from varying degrees of alcohol-related problems, ranging from mild to moderate to severe. A reasonable early option for problem drinkers is moderation. Seriously dependent drinkers will probably find a return to moderate drinking a great challenge, but the choice to accept that challenge remains theirs.

Moderation is a reasonable, practical, and attainable recovery goal for many problem drinkers. Outcome studies indicate that brief intervention programs are successful and cost effective.

The Values that guide MM:

Members take personal responsibility for their own recovery from a drinking problem.
People helping people is the strength of the organization.
People who help others to recover also help themselves.
Self-esteem and self-management are essential to recovery.
Members treat each other with respect and dignity.

Alcohol: The MIddle Path – Keep Questioning

F_ _ k this not drinking.  Even though I am not drinking, I still woke up at 3:30 am and could not go back to sleep.  I still have a headache every morning.  Maybe that is a result of the bit of sugar I had last night.  I could quit sugar too.  Why not give up eating and drinking all together?  When is enough, enough?

I do not feel closer to others.  I actually feel as if I have created a self-imposed prison.  I did not have dinner with a friend last night because I knew I would want to drink if I did.  Well f_ _ K that.  I wanted to drink anyway, and I missed spending time with someone I love very much.  Why am I doing t his?  Do I really believe I am an alcoholic?  People in AA would say, yes, you are an alcoholic because you think about drinking.  You question your drinking.  I dare say there are others out there who sometimes drink to excess, who think about what cocktail they will have in the evening, and  who plan a party with the idea of what special alcoholic concoction they will serve.  Are all of them alcoholics?

Saying that every person who ever thinks about alcohol or makes plans around alcohol is like saying that only Christians who believe in Jesus will go to heaven.  When my daughter was in Catholic high school, she dared to question this doctrine.  She was in a required religion class.  The nun was explaining that all those who did not believe in Jesus Christ were condemned to eternal damnation.  I do not know exactly how she worded her disagreement, but she made it clear she could not believe in a God who would turn his back on the majority of the world’s population because they did not take Christ into their hearts.

In the same vein, I do not believe that all people who questions their alcohol consumption are alcoholics.  One of the basic precepts of yoga is svadyaya, self-study.  It requires going so far into yourself that you do not come out until you find peace with that which is deep within.  In the book, 365 TAO, on page 344,Deng-Ming-Dao says,

“Don’t be inhibited.  If you hold back from achieving your hearts desires, you will become bitter and frustrated.  If you hold back from expressing yourself, your creativity will stagnate.  If your hold back from taking action, you will become impotent with timidity.  Don’t stop anything. Let your uniqueness flow freely.

In the beginning, one must adhere to structure — artificial though it may be )) until one attains the proper understanding to behave with uninhibited spontaneity.  Thus one must spend a certain amount of time studying structure until there is no need for structure.   By that time, one will have thoroughly absorbed the secret of moderation and one will be able to act with correctness and spontaneity.

How ironic is it that the above was today’s reading?  There really are no coincidences in this world.  Everything we need is here in this moment.  I have spent the last 30 years of my life, in self-study.  I am always learning more and more about myself, about this thing we call being human and about the world I live in.  Krishnamurti, the great teacher and philosopher cautioned, (this is paraphrased) “Beware of breaking out of one prison only to create another.”  He also said,

“Don’t be afraid to be discontent, but give it nourishment until the spark becomes a flame and your are everlastingly discontented with everything so that you really begin to think, to discover.  You see, without this flame of discontent your will never have the initiative which is the beginning of creativeness.  To find out what is true you must be in revolt against the established order.  So one must have this total discontent –but with joy.”

I must say I am not experiencing much joy these days.  I have the “discontent ” part down.  Where is the joy?

My self-study continues to come back, again and again, to my mother.  The bitch is dead, but she haunts me.  I see her drinking, daily, sometimes throughout the entire day.  Then I see myself as her.  I am not her.  I have not spent an entire day drinking since my college days and even then, I never woke up and drank a beer first thing in the morning.  My mother used to make those weird hangover concoctions with beer and tabasco and a raw egg.  Ugh!  Even when I am with friends who have cocktails at lunch, I rarely drink because I know it will affect the rest of my day.  I will feel sluggish and groggy, and I probably end up in bed.  I do not want to spend my precious time recovering from a glass of champagne.

The practice of not drinking is bringing up so many questions.  I am grateful for this time.  As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I believe freedom, moksha, real freedom, is the product of a self-understanding.  I am not you and you are not me.  “This is not your life, it is life itself and we are all in it together”…  I continue to offer my struggles to the highest good of all.  I do not believe for a minute that I am the only one who asks myself the question,” How much is too much?  How often is too often?  What is enough?  Do I have a problem with alcohol, food, television, shopping, reading, and so on?

My dear friend Cyndi Lee just spent  7 days in a silent retreat at Upaya, a zen  center in Sante Fe.  When I spoke with her last night, she talked about how challenging it was to be still and to have rigidly defined structure.  She said, “There was nothing to look forward to.  Every day was the same.  We sat in meditation, we ate, we cleaned our rooms, we rested, we sat again, we ate, we meditated, and we slept. ”  She said there were times when she dropped in to  the routine and was comforted by it.  I admire her courage.

But I also know that we are “householders.”  We live in the world.  I practice yoga and meditation on a daily basis so that I can be a part of the world in which I live.  I am grateful for teachers like Cyndi and Rod Stryker and others, including myself, who spend time in reflection, apart from outside stimuli, but I know for myself, and I would hazard to say for Cyndi too, that we do it so that we can be a part of the greater good, so that we can serve others,not permanently separate from them.

My favorite grandmother, Momo, told me on her death-bed, “Petty, always have something to look forward to.  Just a little something.  And remember, everything in moderation.”

What would life be like without our friends and families, without the daily events we plan, the things we do that engage us?  My grand baby, Amelia, comes to our house every Monday.  I love our time together.  I anticipate the day with wonder and excitement.  She brings so much joy into our lives.  I enjoy having friends over for dinner, or at least I did, until I quite drinking.  We are hosting a neighborhood party this Friday.  We planned it over a month ago, before I decided to give up alcohol.  I love all the people who plan to attend, but now I am dreading the event.  I will be separate, just as I was at the luncheon on Sunday.  I will have fun, I always do because I know how to pretend,  In fact, I pretend so well that I am now not sure when i am really enjoying myself.  When is it an act and when is it real?

My whole life, I have felt separate, different from others.  Yoga teaches that this kind of thinking is an illusion.  There is no separation.  We are all one.  In AA, they say that this feeling of being separate is what drives alcoholics to drink.  I do not believe that is entirely true.  Acknowledging separateness is accepting the human condition.

For a long time I worked with the sankalpa, ” I am happy to be sober because I feel so much closer to my friends and family.”  Oh but if that were the case!

Looking back, I remember clearly that to stay sober for the 10 years that I did, I gave my entire life over to AA.  I gave up all my old friends, I spend hours in meetings and with other recovering alcoholics.  Yes, I did not drink.  Yes, I was sober, but my life was incredibly small, limited.   Depression set in.  The doctor put me on prozac.   Was it because I was unhappily married?  Was I disatissfied with myself and my life?  Will I ever be satisfied?

Tantra teaches that life is ever expanding, that there are no limitations.  Paul Tillich taught that the answer to every question reveals  a deeper, more profound question.  We start with small inquiries and keep moving higher and higher into the realm of the vast unknown, but we continue because we know there is more.  This is because, according to Tillich, a lifelong pursuit of philosophy reveals that the central question of every philosophical inquiry always comes back to the question of being, or what it means to be, to exist, to be a finite human being.

I do not want to give up all my friends to live a sober life.  I must find my own way.  I do believe there is a middle path.  When I went to treatment for bulimia, the counselors there told me I would always have an eating disorder.  I do not.  When I quit smoking years ago, people told me I would never be able to touch another cigarette.  “If you do, you will start smoking again.”  I did, now and then, take a drag off of a cigarette, but I never returned to daily smoking.

I will find the middle path for alcohol.  I will.

The journey continues.  Day 10.  Still sober.

P.S.  I wrote my therapist last night.  This is  the man who saved my life two years ago..  Here is what I said, “Do you have any openings this week for an appointment?  Feeling strangely psychotic.  Not suicidal.  Watching myself thoughts go from one extreme to the other.  Have not ingested any alcohol for 9 days.  Been going to AA meetings which I hate, blogging about the whole thing.  I really need to get clear about my relationship to alcohol.”  I am seeing him at 1:00 pm on Wednesday.