6:55 p.m. - 2004-09-25
spiritual experiences

Matters of Spirituality

Several things converged today to bring me to todays post, the first being an email discussion between me and Art Caldwell, in which we agreed that some people's perception of life is so different from the masses that trying to figure out how to read the "norm" and behave similarly is like speaking another language that no one else understands. We included ourselves in this odd man out group. The reason I bring this up will become clear when I describe the intense spiritual experience that changed my life and made me aware that there is indeed a higher power somewhere out there in the cosmos.

Later on in the day, I read a post by our good buddy Boxx who brought up a spiritual issue in which I wrote a comment which caused her to leave me a comment and me to leave her another one.

In the mean time, I finished "The Lovely Bones" which, contrary to my yesterday's post giving it a bad review, turned out the be pretty good in the second half. I enjoyed the last half of this book so much that it posed spiritual questions in my mind, which I have been thinking about all day.

Finally, just before I got on Diaryland to write todays post, I tuned into Cosmicrayola, and she also had a spiritual theme, with a link to a lovely prayer written by a young girl facing yet another hurricane in Florida.

One of my personal spiritual beliefs is that different things converge to point out the direction one should take to fulfill the will of the higher power, whom I choose to call God. Enough little signals have pointed the way today for me to tell about my one and only, awsome, unforgettable, supernatural, spiritual experience.

OK, I mentioned above that Art and I talked about problems with perception. Up until my spiritual experience, I had spent most of my life trying to "act as if"...in other words, not perceiving things the way most people do, I also didn't know how to behave in response to what other people did or said. I would try to fake it, and watch people carefully and respond in a manner which I though was "normal". This wannabe behavior usually got me looked at in funny ways, shunned or simply not accepted. I think that this quirk of my personality is what caused me so much emotional pain and why I chose to medicate with drugs and alcohol. I was always accutely aware that I felt like I didn't fit in and the alcohol made me feel as if I did, but had the opposite effect of making me obnoxious.

When I got sober, I no longer had the magic, personality in a bottle that I thought I needed to get by. I felt as if every little thing I did was being watched. I was very uncomfortable around other people...whether it be in a crowd or one on one. Being with other people without booze was painful, pure and simple, as painful as if someone had shoved a dull blade through my stomach.

My early experiences with AA, forced me to put myself into groups of people whom I thought of as "normal" and "sane". I had not yet learned that these people completely understood me and had simply gained a manner of living through the 12 steps that allowed them to function and to enjoy life.

I had only been to a small number of AA meetings since I was discharged from the rehab. All of them were uncomfortable and each time I spoke I felt awkward. At one meeting I made my comments and must have said something that didn't make much sense to the rest of the group. I could see it in their faces as I glanced around the table. Instead of thinking, "OK, they didn't understand, let me clarify", as I would do now, I took it oh so personally. Instead of seeing faces that registered an expression of misunderstanding, I read each face to say "She's a nutcase".

I thought about those expressions all week long. In the beginning, I was attending a meeting a day. 90 meetings in 90 days is the suggested prescription to kick off a successful recovery. That week, I didn't go to any other meetings. The expressions on the faces festered inside my feeble mind and grew 100 times more confused in my memory than they ever were in reality. I was not ever going back to AA again.

The next Thursday rolled around and I knew I wasn't going back to that meeting, yet I knew that it was my only chance. I knew that if I didn't go back, chances are I would drink again. I wanted the promises the sober people in AA told me about. I not only wanted sobriety, I wanted to function in the world of the normal.

That day I sat on my couch in my living room alone, crying. I shook my fists at the ceiling. I yelled at God to reveal himself. I balled like a crack baby. I shouted out to the heavens, "Why me God...why do I always do and say stupid things that make people look at me like that?"

All at once the room grew bright. Not bright like a cloud passing from blocking the sun...bright-bright....blinding bright. I felt a sharp twinge in my head, not a pain, but a definite twinge. At the same time I felt the twinge, I felt the message. The message was definitely in words.....not spoken words, but an impression of words as if the Almighty had picked up a giant cosmic branding iron and seared it into my soft cheeselike brain. The words were "They've known you in so many other ways". Along with the word came a complete understanding of what the words meant.

I can best describe the meaning of the words in an analogy. You are at a party socializing all night long. There are times when you are laughing, times when you are standing, times when you are pensive, times when you are sitting and seriously absorbed in someone elses words. There are times when you a speaking, times when you are turning to greet someone and times when you raise your eyebrows and are on the verge of uttering a word. Someone is taking snapshots of the evening....they snap one of you when you are in animated conversation. The resulting picture is unflattering and makes you look unattractive and rather stupid. The kind of picture you throw away because you would never want anyone to think of you looking like that. And no one does remember you looking like that because it was a split second of the whole.

The message meant that it is the whole of you that defines your character. The panorama of who you are is what people remember and define you as. Not one little look, one little inference, one little sentance, one little piece of all the times they have known you.

This spiritual experience changed my life. I did go back to that meeting and to many others. I did stay sober and I have never again felt like I was being examined under a microscope or felt like I had to throw away anything because of anything I said or did. I try to behave in a charitable manner to other people and be kind and in the cases where my humanity takes hold and I am rude, selfish or mean, I always go back and apologize, making amends for being so. This spiritual experience has made it possible for me to love myself as well as others and those that I find hard to love can at least be tolerated. Knowing this allows me to live and let live. Those that like me do and those that don't don't and that's ok.

May your God bless.

P. I. Yarnsmith

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