We Should Never Have Come

Warning: Unpopular political opinions ahead.

I've just finished reading The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley. Hartley is a white journalist who grew up in Central Africa, and, after being sent to school in England, returned to Africa as a war correspondent for Reuters. He was in Somalia during the civil war and famine, and in Rwanda during the genocide. His story is interwoven with the story of Peter Davey, a friend of his father's who lived and died in Yemen, in defence of the British empire. I highly recommend the book, but you need a strong stomach to read the second half.

The theme of the book is summed up by something Hartley's father said to him shortly before dying: "We should never have come. But when we did come, we should have stayed."

Hartley reminded his father that they had, indeed, stayed. But it makes me think about the presidential election, and my dilemma over the candidates' foreign policy stances.

If Obama wins (as I know most of my family dearly desires), and he makes good on his promise to evacuate our troops from Iraq within months, will we someday be telling our grandchildren that, having come to Iraq wrongfully, we should have stayed? Are we really willing to destroy a country's stability and infrastructure and then just walk away because we're getting hurt? And won't pulling out make the world hate and despise us even more (if that's possible)?

But looking slightly further abroad, the most disturbing thing about all the candidates (as far as I can tell, except the Green Party platform) is the abject kowtowing they are all doing to AIPAC. I realize that a person can't get elected in this country without getting into bed with AIPAC. But is anyone else as terrified as I am that unconditional support for Israel will lead us to an even worse mistake than invading Iraq? Will we be saying in 4 years, "We should never have invaded Iran"?

Such is the stuff of nightmares.

That Pesky Driver's Seat

Recently a situation has arisen in my life that is causing me to slide back into anxiety. I realize that I'm falling back into an old pattern of behavior - trying to alleviate my anxiety by controlling. My brain has been busy with a million contingency plans, somehow trying to convince myself that if I have a plan for every possibility, nothing can go wrong. This seems logical, but it actually has the effect of increasing my anxiety level exponentially.

Lao-Tzu asks:
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

This seems easy enough if one is alone in the world, but when a family is involved it is hard to accept that everything will be all right if left alone. It is hard to trust that the universe can take care of my loved ones without my intervention. It is hard to believe that I do not have to do anything today to solve the problems that may arise in 6 months or a year. It is hard to let go of the imaginary reins and let the horses guide us safely to peace and harmony.

Just for today, I will remain unmoving and welcome all things.

Our Father

I am one of the many alcoholics in A.A. who has a strong visceral reaction to calling God "Father." Whenever I hear read in a meeting the part in Chapter Five where it says "He is the Father; we are His children," or whenever we close the meeting with the Lord's Prayer, my gut instinctively revolts at the comparison of my Higher Power to a father.


Perhaps this is partly because there are so many bad fathers in the world, but even if I consider the ideal of fatherhood, I don't want to have a "Father God."


For one thing, having a Higher Power who is like a father would keep me in a state of perpetual childhood, and isn't one of the struggles of the alcoholic/codependent (among many other people) to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves and our feelings as adult human beings? I don't need a God who wants me to surrender my needs, my desires, my feelings, and my thoughts because I don't have the capacity to think and feel rightly for myself. The Higher Power I seek has already given me the capacity for right thoughts, right feelings, and right actions ("right" to me meaning realistic and loving), and I need only draw from that well of rightness that the Universal Spirit has implanted in all of us as mature beings.

The other thing I can't tolerate in a Higher Power is the fatherly characteristic of punishment. I used to think that people who saw the Judeo-Christian God as a punishing God just didn't understand the Bible correctly. But as my sister rightly pointed out yesterday, when she wonders where she got the idea that God is a punishing God, she realizes it is from reading the Bible. No matter how modern Protestants try to camouflage it, the God of the Bible is, prima facie, cruel, vindictive, vengeful, and angry.

What kind of a God demands the blood of an innocent creature to assuage His wrath? What kind of Father demands that men sacrifice their own children in order to prove their devotion to Him? Abraham was at least provided with a ram at the last minute, so that he could kill an innocent animal for no other reason than to satisfy God's bloodthirst, but the moral of the story is that he was willing to kill his own son to make God happy. Jesus Christ!

And that brings up the final horror: what parent among us would demand a blood sacrifice (not just a few drops, like the evil spirits in Pirates of the Caribbean, but blood to the last drop of life) before He would forgive His children, and then actually require and accept the death of His own son in fulfillment of those demands? If a human father did that, we would declare him insane or deserving of execution.

I know all the Christian arguments on this, but once the scales fell from my eyes, I began to see things as they really are. And I don't want any part of a God who thinks He is my father.


Just for today, I will seek a Higher Power of my understanding.

Blessed are those who are persecuted...

Thinking further about my automatic thoughts of "Why is someone doing this to me?" and trying to figure out how that thought has served me, I come to another core belief.


When I am being "done to," I am the victim, and it feels good to be a victim, even when it hurts and destroys my serenity. I think this started in early childhood in a home that was pervaded with a sincere devotion to Judeo-Christian values. Biblical teaching is riddled with the concept that being victimized and persecuted for your beliefs is inevitable, and means that you are doing the right thing. The message is that if you believe correctly in the right God, and act accordingly, the world and its evil will conspire against you.

While the converse is not expressly stated, it follows naturally to us: if we are persecuted, then we must be right and good. The more victimized we are, the more essentially good we must be. I must have internalized this idea very young. I still clearly remember a dream I had when I was about seven years old in which I was burned suttee-style for the sake of my beliefs.

Feeling like a victim also allows me to abandon responsibility for my own needs, and to be hurt and angry when they are not met. If I am supposed to be a victim, I need to create situations in which I expect other people to take care of me, but make sure they won't be able to do so successfully. In essence, it means that I try to set up the people I love to fail me in some way. Then I feel justified in my belief that no one really loves me, and trusting others means I will get hurt.

This behavior is so ingrained and familiar that I constantly discover it in myself. Last night, as my husband and I were planning to go hiking this morning, I knew that we didn't really have time to do it before I would need to take my daughter to her art class. I automatically thought that I should not remind my husband about the class, so that we would end up being late and it would confirm my belief that I can't trust anyone. After all, this class happens every Saturday, and he should remember it as well as I do.

Fortunately, this time I caught myself thinking in this sick way, and reminded him about the class, giving him the opportunity to confirm a different idea instead: he cares about my needs. What a revelation!

Just for today, I will not be a victim.

I am lately bothered

That has always been my favorite line from Ode to Billy Joe. It just seems to express so well that feeling of vague discontent that so often troubles me.

But lately I have put my finger on something specific that changes my mood from serene and peaceful to anxious and resentful. It was another insight gained during meditation after yoga, although in quite a different way.

Simon has a lot of difficulty in concentrating, especially when there are external noises, and there are a lot of those in our apartment. Not only do we live essentially on a freeway (no one drives less than 50 mph on our street, and it's a major thoroughfare for emergency vehicles), but the sound dynamics of the shape of the building bounce the echoes of voices in the pool area right into our dining room, even when the crappy louvered windows are closed. So meditation is a real challenge for Simon.

One evening, the time I was deep in a sort of yogic trance contemplating the dual nature of the universe, Simon got frustrated at the noise outside. He slammed the yoga book closed and stood up angrily. My mood immediately changed to fear and anger. I knew that he wasn't angry at me, and yet I was angry at him for being angry, and I couldn't figure out why.

After several days of digging around in myself, I finally realized that my automatic thought at the time was "Why is he doing this to me?" The key words, of course, are "to me." It must be a remnant of my unrealistic core belief that I am the center of the universe, and that everyone else is thinking about me all the time, or, if they are not, they should be.

Ironically enough, I think it is the exact same automatic thought that prevents Simon from successfully meditating. Not that I presume to understand his core beliefs, but I recognize the same symptom: "Why are those idiots driving by so fast? Why does the neighbor downstairs play his video game so loud that our whole floor shakes? Why are there people laughing and having a good time by the pool when I'm trying to meditate? They are all doing it to me!"

I'm able to accept that the people driving by and the neighbors are not trying to bother me, but it's a lot harder when it's someone in the same room with me. It's a challenge to accept and believe that Simon is not being angry to me; he's just being angry, and that's okay. It doesn't need to affect my mood at all. Maybe if I repeat that a million times I will start to internalize it.

Just for today, I will remember that other people's emotions don't happen to me. They just happen.

Maybe it's not hogwash after all.

Since I got married, I've been doing yoga with my husband almost every day. We have this book on Hatha that was written in the seventies and is still in print. I was really reluctant to start it, partly because I am naturally averse to exercise for the sake of exercise, and partly because it just seems so bean-sprouty. I was convinced to try it by the Mayo Clinic, who recommend yoga as an alternative therapy for all joint pain, including carpal tunnel syndrome, from which I had been greatly suffering.

Strangely, I've found that I really enjoy doing it, and it makes me feel lighter, more youthful, and just generally toned up. It also eliminated my carpal tunnel syndrome for a while, although it has come back again the last couple of days.

But the really weird and unexpected thing is that I've been having these spontaneous Zen-like thoughts when I sit quietly and "listen to my body" at the end of the session, especially the more difficult sessions. I'm starting to think that there really is some spiritual truth to be accessed just by the practice of yoga. The first time it happened I suddenly felt as one with the universe. The next time I truly felt the duality of the universe and of God, and accepted it as good (how Zen can you get?).

Last night the session was very difficult for me, as I was really tired when we started. But after the exercises, as I was sitting quietly, I started to think about the voice inside of me, and how it is a sort of guru who knows the way my body wants to move. At first I had my normal reaction to those sorts of insights, and started having automatic thoughts about how different and special I am. Then it came to me that everyone has a guru voice inside him/her, and that each of us can listen to it if we choose. Then the Zen moment:

I remembered how my son Peter and I used to sneer at school administrators who said in speeches something like "Everyone here is a winner" or "All of you are special." Peter says that if everyone is special, by definition, no one is special, and that therefore the administrators are really saying that no child is special. We got a lot of amusement out of it.

Then I saw that that is exactly the truth: we are all special, and therefore no one is special. We are all unique, and yet we are all human, and have the same exact spark that makes us not only human, but a part of life, and all living beings have something of that same divine essence. I felt great self-worth, based on my very being, and also a great humility and respect for other living beings, as well as a oneness with all.

Sheesh. I never thought I could write such twaddle and actually mean it. Is this spiritual progress?

Just for today, I will remember that everyone is special, and therefore no one is special.

Better Dull Than Dead

I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy getting married, having a honeymoon, and going back to work, all of which has taken a bit of getting used to.

I was shocked by the first day of work; after about 7 hours of hard mental concentration I really wanted to relax by having a drink. I even thought about going to the bar downstairs and knocking back a couple of shots of Jaegermeister before going to meet my husband for dinner, thinking that insidious alcoholic thought: "No one will ever know."

I have to learn new techniques for relaxing and resting my mind. Yoga and CSI help, but I think it will take some time for new habits to replace my automatic thoughts of needing a drink.

The other night I was talking to a 2-day-old newcomer after a meeting, and she was expressing the same grief I often have over losing the ability to be the life of the party and have a good time drinking with friends. An old-timer was trying to convince her that sober life could be fun too. I was trying to agree, but a part of mind was protesting that nothing is as fun as going out and getting drunk, and that sober living is really kind of dull. But then I realized: what option do I have? Getting drunk isn't fun for me anymore, and if I do it I will soon end up in an institution or a grave. Watching CSI and crocheting may not be as fun as staggering home after demonstrating my affection for everyone at the bar, but it's better than losing everything and becoming a crack whore.

I think.