Love

Peace in the Presence of Turmoil

November 28, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“Peace

Is an inner awakening,

And this inner awakening

We must share

With the rest of the world.”

― Sri Chinmoy

Finding the way of peace is a journey addicts in recovery long for. Turmoil and chaos is created by the junkie worm every day an addict lives. In desperation, addicts search for escape from the insanity that rules their life. Even in recovery, many continue to struggle in search for peace in the midst of sobriety. Stopping the runaway train going down the track is a relief but not necessarily peaceful. The question remains “How do I create calm out of chaos?” “Is it possible to have peace when there is a storm that rages all around me?” Of course, addicts are not the only ones who want to know the answer to this quandary.

In 1975 thousands of Vietnamese fled their country by sea following the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Crowded into small boats, they were prey to pirates, and many suffered dehydration, starvation, and death by drowning. When challenged with rough seas, many in the boats panicked causing the boat to sink and many to drown. Thich Nhat Hanh remarked in his book Being Peace that when one person remained calm and lucid, knowing what to do, he or she would help others to avoid capsizing the boat. When their voice and facial expression communicated clarity and calmness, others trusted, listened, and avoided capsizing. (Page 12)

Addicts in recovery are boat people trying to survive the currents that pull and tug them back to the sea of addictive behavior. There is panic and an onslaught of craving that crashes against the recovery program of every addict who desires to escape the domination of addiction. Recovery requires that you become a peaceful person who sits in the midst of the storm around you with perspective and poise. Where does this panorama of equanimity come from in recovery? Consider the following:

1. In the midst of addictive chaos, return to being true to yourself. The demands of recovery are intimidating. It is tempting to compare your recovery journey with someone else’s recovery journey. Some people are talented presenters. At a speakers’ meeting some tell wonderful compelling stories about recovery and you wish that your recovery life looked like theirs. But it doesn’t. It simply looks like yours. This is a time that is important to maintain perspective and return to being true to yourself. That is all you must do. Remember an oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do and be. If there was a demand that it grow and look like a palm tree, it would be in trouble. When you think you and your recovery must be something you are not, you will get into trouble. Just be you. It is your only requirement. Being true to yourself is where you will discover poise and perspective.

2. Seek Understanding. It will provide compassion toward yourself and others. Addicts in recovery come from a lifestyle of self-absorption. Addicts want what they want when they want it. Their life is about taking up too much space. There is no perspective or understanding that makes sense except that which leads to achieving a desired fix with their drug of choice. It’s a very narrow view of understanding. This distorted thinking does not change overnight in recovery. An addict must seek understanding in order to cultivate compassion for others. Understanding transforms addict behavior. Understanding why you do what you do accelerates self-compassion and love for others. It is common for an addict to compartmentalize their thinking to only seeing the world from their viewpoint. Yet, when you expand your understanding with deep listening, it provides a depth of compassion for self and others. For example, I recently celebrated a birthday. However, my three sons failed to recognize my birthday. I was disappointed. Yet, when I explored the situation that each was experiencing, it provided understanding. One was traveling out of state. Distracted with covering responsibilities for a small child and engaging pomp and circumstance of a special event, he became distracted and overwhelmed with his own agenda. Another was distracted with the adjustment of a newborn and suffered from a lack of sleep and the responsibilities of being a new father. A third did call me, belated, while snow skiing. He was huffing and puffing while boot packing his way up the mountain for his first ski rendezvous of the season. His thoughts were about climbing to the top of a mountain, not my birthday. When you put yourself in other’s shoes you awaken to deeper understanding which creates room for compassion for the conditions you encounter in your world. Practice understanding.

3. Practice cultivating community. Most addicts struggle with creating harmony and awareness in a meaningful community. Addicts tend to isolate. If they do create community it is with those in the group that they can “relate” to. Everyone in a 12-step group is an addict. We all can relate to each other. Addicts tend to be rigid and unable to adjust or become flexible with who they connect to. A 12-step community is a good place to learn how to create connections with people you would normally not relate to. This exercise is a secret to long-term sobriety. It is important that an addict take with them the ability to create community wherever they go outside a 12-step room. While easier said than done, mature recovery goes beyond a 12-step room and includes vulnerable sharing with others engaged throughout the course of life. Developing community must become a priority for addicts in recovery.

Peace in the presence of turmoil can be achieved when addicts practice community in the highways and byways of their lives. It is anchored when addicts are true to themselves and deepened through understanding.

Yesterday’s Guilt

August 22, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt” —Plautus

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night swimming in yesterday’s guilt. Things that I have done that hurt others years ago and have forgotten. Now, I remember them as if I had done them the day before. I tell myself that I have already made amends to them for the destructive behavior but guilt lingers. Sometimes it was something I did that I never told anyone about. I am the only one who knows. Recovery and activity over the years buried the behavior way down deep and now it somehow has worked its way to the surface of memory, and I ponder what to do with it at 3 am! Do you ever have bouts with yesterday’s guilt?

Guilt is not a pleasant experience. It’s the hound dog that never loses its scent and always relentlessly pursues. There are overlays of guilt. You wake up each morning with the desire to do right. Yet, before noon you have already acted out with an addictive substance or process. Your heart descends from your chest to your stomach. There is a bitter taste of failure and guilt that seems to permeate every cell in your body. There is an overwhelming desire to be someone else, somewhere else. You feel sad, lonely, desperate, and guilty.

Guilt is a feeling experience that dominates most addicts. Even in recovery, guilt becomes a nemesis that is difficult to shake. Not only do addicts feel guilt about the destructive things they have done, but also the good things they never completed. Lying in bed replaying the things you did that were so hurtful. Like a nice warm glass of regret, depression, and self-loathing, guilt powerfully dominates the present with past memories of hurtful behavior.

How do you manage guilt when you are committed to a life in recovery? Yesterday you stumbled. Maybe you did worse and fell off the edge of the cliff. You got drunk and killed someone driving. You had a sexual affair with your brother’s partner. You molested a child. You broke your partner’s heart with addictive behavior that created unbelievable pain for people you really love. How do you deal with the guilt that dogs you every waking moment?

1. What happened yesterday belongs to yesterday. There is an old saying in recovery that “Yesterday ended last night.” This is true. Guilt is caused by too much past, and not enough present. Wallowing in the mud and memory of past destructive behavior will never help you live free and clean in the present moment. Every day is a new day. It takes discipline to wipe the slate clean and live in the here and now and not be dominated by yesterday’s failure.

2. Guilt never rectifies past behavior. Guilt serves to remind you that you did something that hurt you or others. Sociopaths often don’t feel guilt when they hurt others. You do. Let guilt do its work and then discard it. Upon becoming aware that your behavior was hurtful to another, recognize that guilt is no longer useful to you. Feel it and let go. This will take daily discipline. Each day guilt will visit you. Practice forgiving yourself which means that you choose to not hold past behaviors against yourself and are committed to walking in the opposite direction from destructive behavior. Recognize what you are doing to rectify hurtful behavior with healing action and then dismiss guilt by taking action that demonstrates guilt-free living. Practice letting go of guilt moment by moment.

3. Make amends. The 8th and 9th steps of the 12-Step program suggest that you make a list of the people you have harmed and make amends to them. These two steps pave the way to clarify and release guilt. Amends must be a daily practice. We hurt each other continually both intentionally and unintentionally. Amends create flexibility in relationships. It is unnecessary to defend your intentions, simply own the reality that your behavior hurt someone, and make it right with a simple apology. In this way, you eliminate the environment that breeds guilt.

4. Learn to love your enemy. People tend to alienate unwanted feelings because they are uncomfortable. Guilt is one of those feelings. Radically, when you embrace guilt and love it for its worth, it will help you become more sensitive to ways in which you hurt others and the environment you live in. While it is not meant that you brood with guilt, it is helpful to listen to the message that guilt is sending and take positive action toward resolution. Proper management of guilt produces compassion for self and others. Guilt feels like an enemy to the soul. However, learning to love your enemy (guilt) will cultivate deeper appreciation and love for yourself and others.

Guilt can be redemptive and can trigger love. Hating yourself and the feeling of guilt within intensifies the possibility of unwanted behavior. The power of self-love builds bridges to the destiny of future healing and positive actions.

Uncovering Meaning in the Hard Places of Life

March 23, 2023 by Ken Wells

When I was in 7th grade the basketball team I played on was upset by our crosstown rival Central. They obliterated us on the court. We were favored but beaten badly. I went home and took the loss really hard. I always took losses hard. During my funk of shame, disappointment, and anger, my Grandma Wells, who was living with us at the time, came to me with a steaming cup of hot sassafras tea with the root in it. She said, drink this, it will help calm you down and bring you peace.

At the time I did not want peace, I only wanted to have won that game. However, I did drink the sassafras tea and it did help me settle down a bit. Today I remember the smell and the taste of the tea. Yet, I also remember the bitter disappointment suffered in the loss.

Through the years I have learned the value of utilizing the concept of velvet steel when faced with difficult defeat, loss, and disappointment. It often requires steel to be velvet with yourself when you emotionally struggle with hurt feelings. Strong feelings like shame and resentment require the capacity to be gentle with yourself while initiating emotional steel to refuse to beat yourself up or wallow in self-pity. A velvet steel mentality is necessary to sort and sift meaningfulness in the hard places of life.

There are many insights to finding meaningfulness in life that depend upon a velvet steel mentality.

When facing the difficulty of hard times, don’t let yourself be defined by the struggle you experience. When you are down and depressed it is easy to conclude this is happening because you believe that is what you are—down and depressed. It is so human to be dominated and defined by the feelings that move through you. Addicts struggle with this concept. They go to a meeting and admit to everyone that they are an addict. They say “my name is… and I’m an alcoholic” or other addiction. They are encouraged to do this because they have lived life in denial to a point that it is costing them dearly. So they need to admit their addiction. However, they are not an addict. Addiction defines their behavior, not their sense of self. So an addict must apply velvet steel to face their addictive behavior (i.e. “I am an addict”). They must also apply velvet steel which fosters an embrace of their sense of self as being “an unrepeatable miracle of the universe”. In the midst of struggling to survive and be sober, this skillset is challenging to incorporate. It requires slowing down your brain and applying velvet steel to the mix of thoughts.

Plunge into the present moment of experience and focus on being present in the moment. Addicts talk about having a “monkey brain”. Their mind races to every thought possible and they can’t stop ruminating about what used to be, ought to be, and the unknown future. This is a very hard place for addicts to be. Some addicts live on edge during waking moments. It becomes exhausting. Velvet steel requires one to be gentle and not demanding in an attempt to slow ruminations. It requires steel to bring one’s mind back to center and be present in the here and now. Addicts connect this skillset inwardly through practice, not perfection.

Like Michelangelo, who carves away the excess to reveal a beautiful sculpture, recovery is about carving away the excess in order to free the inner beauty that has been waiting to be released. Most addicts enter recovery rugged and raw. Creating a calm inner spirit requires fires of refinement through trials and tribulations. An addict doesn’t sign up for this course. It is just what must be embraced. Velvet steel is necessary for addicts to patiently persevere in the midst of the ups and downs in recovery living. The development of recovery skillsets requires a commitment to daily conditioning and training. Sometimes you take 2 steps forward and 5 steps backwards. It seems that you are digging yourself into a hole. Trusting the process in applying the 12-Steps demands the embrace of velvet steel. Be gentle with yourself when going backward while embracing a steel mentality to persevere and move forward. Velvet steel helps to remain determined to carve away the excess in order to free the inner beauty of recovery.

Refresh your life with what is sacred. No matter the pain, life is where you are. Addicts are forever wishing they could be anywhere but facing what is in front of them. The intensity of discomfort and pain triggers addicts to fantasize. The steel side of recovery helps an addict hold h/her feet to the fire of the here and now. As muscle to this skillset develops, the sacredness of the here and now is refreshed. The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. The velvet side of recovery cultivates beauty no matter where you are, regardless of the pain.
Recognize that the dearest things in life cannot be owned, they can only be shared. Addicts frenetically grasp and clutch for what they can call their own. When you take away an addict’s drug of choice, they feel panic and think that all hell has broken loose. They hold on with a death grip to their drug of choice that has become their identity. During moments of craving, sharing is an anathema. Grasping and clasping, they squeeze what they mistake as life, taking the life they know and making it far less. Materialism can be this way. Once we commit to making things “mine,” we unleash a career of gathering and storing. Life can become about my possessions, my money, my power and position. We can gather and store so much that we become constipated in sharing the dearest things in life—love, compassion, and community. I know a community that has stored millions of dollars but cannot share their fortune with meals for the homeless, citing that the storage must be saved for a rainy day. Velvet steel is required to gently and forcefully take away the mental locks of what is yours to open your heart to what cannot be owned but only shared.

In exchange for the promise of security, many addicts put a barrier between themselves and the adventures of future personal growth that could put a whole new light on their personal lives. The late Scott Peck describes in his book The Road Less Traveled how life can be like a journey through the desert. Upon reaching the first oasis, many settle in and refuse to go farther. They hunker down around the amenities of shade and water and live out the rest of their lives never venturing to complete the journey through the desert. Addicts can find that oasis in recovery.

Becoming sober and ending the craziness in behavior is enough. They often settle around the oasis in the recovery they have discovered. Yet, there is no settling in personal growth. It requires that we embrace the adventure of individual growth and expand our awareness well beyond stopping destructive behavior. To do so an addict must initiate courage to leave the oasis and journey forward into the desert. Most addicts do not make this choice. It relates to the fear of free falling. Who enjoys this experience? Yet, detaching from the predictable and embracing the unknown in order to expand growth and understanding in life requires a commitment to walk through the entire desert of life experience. This authentic trek requires the velvet steel of personal courage. Those who decide to make the trek discover freedom and serenity in recovery living.

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