and then of course my research brain got curious. what a great treasure trove to delve a little into to find out what specific things people are grateful for! i spent a few hours to analyze it a bit and cam up with a few surprises and a few things that were expected.

family was the biggest theme. i found 25 mentions of it. most of them were about children, e.g.

three wonderful children with their own uniqueness

and almost as many about spouses, e.g.

climbing into my warm bed, with my husband who loves me, and listening to the rain softly falling all night long……

then a surprise – the next category in “family” was dogs, before mothers, etc.:

for dogs who never tire of seeing me.

chitowngreg’s blog is a 12-step blog, so understandably, there were a lot (21) of expressions of gratitude about recovery and 12-step programs, like

i watched, “crazy heart”, last night. a story about an alcoholic country singer/ songwriter. made me very grateful for my sobriety and the second chance i was given.

indirectly, some of the comments where gratitude is expressed for those kinds of things would also fall into other categories such as spirituality and friends (because of the strong fellowship aspect of 12 steps). i found surprisingly few (5) for friends (“the companionship of friends”) and 4 for spirituality (e.g. “playing ave maria in a little while at mass this morning”).

i was also not necessarily surprised but perhaps “pleasantly confirmed” that those gratitudes contained none of the cultishness that 12-steppers are sometimes accused of.

another topic that came up frequently was basic needs, possibly inspired by greg’s intro to the post about how lucky most of us are. if your combined household income is over $ $26,400 a year, you’re in the top 10% of all income earners in the world. think about that. for many of us westerners, that’s mind boggling. when i think of how many people i know who are wringing their hands because they only make $25 an hour, it’s refreshing to hear this

thank god for running water!

and then there were more comments (14) about the weather/nature than there were about health (11)! that was perhaps the biggest surprise. i would have expected for health to be right up there with family. of course this is anything but a scientific research project – still, i find this remarkable, something i’m thinking of following up (maybe i’ll write one of my brainblogger articles about this sometime soon). loved this comment:

i’m grateful to have had a glorious weekend on the boat and that this afternoon there was a wonderful thunderstorm. we came back through the rain but were safe. nature in all its power!

another surprise: of all the gratitudes i looked at (about 140 altogether), this was the only one that explicitly mentioned nature.

here’s one about health:

i’m grateful today that i can think and speak in words. a dear friend is wordless after a brain hemorrhage, and it’s very hard.

other things that were mentioned more than once, with some examples, and in order of occurrence:

blogging

i’m grateful to have blogs that allow me to reconfirm i am doing the right thing in my life.

gratitude itself
people like you who remind me why i should be grateful when i’m grouchy just because its monday

personal growth

having the courage to ask “what am i going to do,” rather than sitting in pity saying “why”

mornings (that was another surprise – mentioned 7 times)

the possibilities of the whole day in front of me

also home, work, baseball (!!!) and peace.

i can’t
god can
i better let god

these pithy words come from the first three steps:

1. we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable
2. we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.
3. we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him.

depending on one’s interpretation, that can sound quite defeatist (“i can’t / i’m powerless”) and cultish (“i better let god / turn over our will”).

in my occasional musings on how the 12 steps can be used outside of traditional addiction recovery (for example, here are some thoughts on step 3) i’d like to propose that these seven pithy words and these three steps can be useful for anyone as a guide in their lives.

we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

it may not be alcohol, it may not be drugs, food, work, cigarettes or caffeine – but the truth is that there are a lot of things inside and outside of ourselves that we are powerless over, and that feel totally overwhelming. i have no power over the traffic, you have no power over your boss, joe has no power over politics. but it goes deeper than that – it is our reactions to these things that truly trouble us – the feelings of helplessness, the endless worry, the anger. we hate these feelings, so we run to do something about them – TV, romance novels, potato chips, blackjack chips. at the root of that are fear and pain and avoidance of fear and pain through escape into instant gratification. so how about:

step 1: we are run by fear and pain and avoidance of them, and that the endless cycling between those two is exhausting and overwhelming – it is insanity.

we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.

is there something greater than fear and avoidance of fear? god? maybe for some. how about for those uncomfortable with or plainly disinterested in the idea of god? the 12 steps are informed by underlying principles such as honesty, hope, courage, integrity, love, justice and service – all positive, life-affirming, values that are greater than our little egos and ids, our inner factories that constantly crank out more fear and fear avoidance. here is my proposition, then:

step 2: we remind ourselves that by holding on to our values, we can rise above fear and instant gratification and leave insanity behind.

we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him.

the awareness that there is an alternative to fear, pain and instant gratification is a good start but it is not enough. a lot of us are aware that there are problems. we need to make a decision to do something with that awareness. this decision, by the way, needs to happen on a daily, hourly, sometimes minute-by-minute basis. fear and pain and our desire to escape them are incredibly strong; if we want to let go of them as prime motivators for our lives, we need to counter them with our values, virtues and beliefs on an almost constant basis. one of my favourite quotes is freud’s about us having but a “thin veneer of civilization”. i firmly believe if we are to keep this world going, maybe even make it a better place, we need to do everything we can to make this veneer stronger and thicker. we literally need to become more civil. isn’t that one of the main goals of democracry (a concept deeply informed by civility): to create and nurture an environment where citizens need not be governed by fear? just as we need to keep working on and fighting for democracy, we need to keep building our own personal virtues and values. here is my suggestion for step 3:

step 3: we decided to lead our lives by our virtues and values.

i would be very interested in hearing your thoughts about this.

pain often comes from non-acceptance. if i find that i can neither change nor accept a certain reality, i let it go for now, knowing that it is the first step in overcoming my misery.

if i allow it to pass through my life without trying to change it or escape from it, grief will leave me a more finished person. the problem is non-acceptance. my mind says, “no! no! i can’t bear it! change it! fix it! make it better!” round i go, giving myself no peace until, finally, i stand still and let myself feel the pain. accepting whatever comes – the sorrow as well as the joy – … is recovery.

the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. – john f. kennedy

“i love you; whether you love me is beside the point”

i accept whatever is put before me, knowing that acceptance is fundamental to spiritual growth.

how we humans hate discord! we have a talent for creating it, of course, but we don’t like it … i need to simply endure, go straight through a difficult discordant time without yielding to the urge to escape into my rut or to yell for somebody to fix it. … as i practice acceptance of life’s discords, life turns around and gives me harmony.

image by mshades

the wild mind and the wise body

i like this article by the wild moods that takes the actual here-and-now feelings and sensations of mental illness and uses them to get in touch with mental health

… take a second to think about how the wild moods sign themselves on your body. glurky stomach? acid stomach? headache? flushing heat in the chest? but it may actually take some concentrated focusing to see what the body is doing when depressed or anxious, because we can get so used to experiencing these signatures as depression and anxiety that we are not really aware of them as distinct and repeating physical sensations.

so why is this important, to become aware of these sensations? because when we are able to be aware of the sensations as physical events, then there is the opportunity to break the cycling whirlpool of mood, where negative thought causes unpleasant sensation, which generates another negative thought, reinforcing another negative sensation, and around and around, deeper and deeper.

the empty bowl

joanna poppink is a counsellor who helps people with eating disorders. she offers the buddhist ritual of the empty bowl as an active meditation tool, inspired by a thanksgiving post about how people struggling with eating disorders might get as well as give benefits by helping to provide food for hungry people. joanna poppink suggests entertaining an “unseen guest with an empty bowl” as if they were sitting at your table with you.

the idea is to make an extra place setting with an empty bowl at your eating place. before you eat, look at the empty bowl. pray or meditate or think about or send kind thoughts to people who face this empty bowl every day.

put money, as you can, small even tiny amounts are okay, in the empty bowl in appreciation for what food you have available today.

i propose that this is useful for anyone, with any problem. for example, when i went through my last fear-of-flying adventure (something yet to blog about), what helped me the most was imagining that i was connected to other people who were in pain as well, and imagining sharing with them whatever small goodness came my way (e.g. a drink of water, putting on warm socks). this is, by the way, also a 12-step principle. the suggestion there is that one of the best ways of dealing with the affliction of addiction is to help others with the same problem.

speaking of which …

buddhism and addiction

darren’s blog is about the intersection of buddhism and the 12 steps. here he talks about attachment and realization:

for us [addicts], teachings on attachment are a no brainer. tell us we’re attached to our betting, babes, booze or benzos and we’ll give you an eyebrow raise and an, “and your point is?”

… this process, looking at the condition of our minds, returning to the present moment, noticing our attachment, is kind of like digestion. the teacher echoed my thoughts in saying that zen practice is like adding the right enzymes. as we engage in observing, not reacting and being present to our lives, we become more familiar with what we really are underneath all the concepts, grasping, attachment and addiction. we take a bite of zen, digest samsara and shit out realization. clean like a whistle.

more addiction: hoarding

one city has a lovely entry on extending good wishes to a neighbour whose life is burdened by hoarding, an addiction perhaps, or an obsessive-compulsive behaviour (i tend to see a lot of connections between the two)

the real fruits of my internet search for information about compulsive hoarding turned into an extension of my meditation practice in cultivating compassion for someone i don’t even really know. i can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to live as a hoarder, but i can imagine the suffering and the courage that it takes to start the real, hard work on improving your life; sorting through things, throwing things away, decided what is worth keeping, how do you start over? and having to think about all the things that led up to the hoarding that could have been a trigger or a lingering cause. i think it really does take courage.

i would like to close this blog post by sending along some metta (e-metta?) to my neighbour across the way.

may she be healthy, may she have happiness.

stigma

finally, a post on stigma. echo pen touches on an aspect of stigma that, i believe, is not talked about enough – self stigma. i believe that one of the best ways to deal with mental health stigma in the world “out there” is to strengthen our own feelings towards our mental health. if i believe that i am deficient, it will usually come through in my communication with others. when i believe in my own strength and worthiness, i can deal with societal stigma from a place of strength.

recently, while meditating, irrational thoughts and memories of the stigmas issues i’ve dealt with [came up]. i have experientially recognized them as irrational self judging and self defeating. when these thoughts come during zazen… i explore them including feelings of apprehension, worry, guilt, resentment…the bodily feelings of anxiety… all in the context of the here and now..become aware of them accept them and then i let them go, and continue sitting with clarity and peace.

that’s it for this month’s buddhist carnival.  if you have any submissions for next month’s carnival (march 15, 2009), please send them to me here, or, if you have a hard time connecting to blog carnival, drop me a line.

how do you feel now that barack is official? i’m still in shock. waiting for a big news release about some kick ass exec orders reversing idiocracy. one of the big questions for me is how to practice buddhism and the principles of 12-step recovery around politics. on one hand, i care very deeply about the state of the nation. but not just the nation, or certain people in the nation who i like.

in the 12-step world, we are to be of service to everyone. in buddhism, we’re interested in the total liberation of all sentient beings from every form of suffering–forever. so how do we deal with our strong feelings about, say george bush for example? do we have the right to have anger towards him? certainly, from a non-buddhist perspective, we should be angry. but in the 12-step world, we know that anger is the dubious luxury of normal people. in buddhism, we strive to have compassion for everyone, even, especially, the ones who make us angry.

for one thing, karma says we cause our own suffering. anger is suffering. holding on to anger is holding on to suffering. venting our anger is causing more suffering. understanding equanimity is also a buddhist tool that we can apply. george bush and barack obama have the exact same buddha nature. how could they be different? we can also practice compassion. how does it feel, deep inside, to be george bush today? can we imagine that he, like us and all beings, wants not to suffer and wants only happiness.

your comments are welcome. let’s see how people really feel about this topic. be honest. let it out. i’ll respond to the comments in a few days.

darren littlejohn blogs here and is the author of the 12-step buddhist.

warning: if you’re not into god or religion, please wait until the end of the post, don’t get turned off the second the g-d word comes up!

step 6 says

“were entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character.”

background: step 6 comes after step 4, where an individual takes a thorough personal inventory, and step 5, where this inventory is shared with god and another person.

if we want to make this a little less heavy on the god language, we can translate step 6 like this:

“were entirely ready to work towards change, accepting help, and without immediately jumping to the desired results.”

we can also rename the “character defects” (that’s 1930’s language) and call them unhelpful attitudes and behaviours.

we’ll deal with the working towards change in a second. first, though, a few words about accepting help.

if we’ve been “trying” and pushing for a different life for a long time and nothing has worked – maybe it’s time to take a different approach. maybe it’s time to accept help. this help may come in many ways, and it’s good to be open to the many ways. it might be in the form of a pesky co-worker, a pet or an article in a newspaper we don’t normally ready. it may be god. whatever it is, it’s probably not going to be the petty, demanding little ego that’s been driving the bus for way too long.

and a few words about “entirely ready” and “not jumping to the results”. when i work with people, one way i can usually see right away that it’s going to take a little while is when they have a one-dimensional view of what they want. it’s usually coached in words like, “the only way this is going to work is …” or “i couldn’t use an X, it has to be a Y”. being entirely ready means being open. you want to become a happier, healthier, more giving person? then open yourself to the possibilities.

so what about this “working towards change”? the question here is, do you REALLY want to change? often, that’s not the case. we may want to become more accepting of others not because we truly want to open our hearts but because we’re teed off at the constant bickering. so really, we want to get rid of the bickering and all kinds of aspects of not being accepting are just fine, thank you very much.

if that’s the case, the unhelpful attitudes and behaviours need to be taken under a magnifying glass.

here are some questions that can help:

1. how has this attitude/behaviour helped me in the past? how has it helped me cope?
2. what is it doing for me today? what do i still get out of it?
3. can i get what i truly need in some other way?
4. what is this attitude/behaviour doing to me? how does it hurt me?
5. what is it doing to others?
6. what are the consequences of hanging on to it?

this is an entry for my participation in the 2008 blogathon, a 24-hour marathon of blogging. please support the cause and donate – however much, however little – to the canadian mental health association (vancouver/burnaby branch). to donate, email me or use this URL: www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=d2252. you should be able to get there by clicking the link; if not, just copy and paste the link into your browser. it will take you to the appropriate location at canada helps.

thank you for visiting, reading, commenting and, if you can, donating!

(this post is part of the carnival of healing #154)

while the 12 steps were originally intended to help alcoholics and addicts, they have proven to be a fine blueprint for any kind of recovery.

that last step i discussed was step 4, which is designed to help people make an inventory of all the burdens of the past, as well as of all their assets they want to keep.

step 5 says, “admitted to god, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

once again, if you see the word “god” and freak out, please read on – it doesn’t have to be the god of your childhood or george bush’s god – the word “god” just stands for something good in your life. another word for “god” in 12-step programs is “higher power”.

if this higher power is the highest authority in one’s life – allah, for example, or buddha nature, or one’s internal value system, or simply that power that is greater/other than the little ego that has run the show unsuccessfully so far – then the relationship with that higher power is one of the most important relationships. in that case, after having done all the work of the inventory, why wouldn’t one immediately check this out with this higher power?

it goes on “… and to another human being”. “confessing” to another human being is immensely powerful; the catholics knew what they were doing. that’s also why therapy is so useful. research shows that people who carry too many deep, dark secrets are more accident prone and are generally less healthy. this is corroborated by research that indicates that high concentrations of bodily secretions of people who carry a lot of hate and unresolved anger can kill laboratory animals.

yet this step is not about confessing “sins”. it is the logical continuation of step 3 – “made the decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of god as we understood him” – a decision to trust the goodness in your life. if a person is willing to turn their whole life over to this goodness, then it surely makes sense to turn over a handful of mistakes, fears, worries and regrets, even though (and maybe exactly because) they may have been held in secret for a long time.

what about this “other human being?” this really can be a life-transforming step so it’s good to choose that person carefully. i suggest to a) choose a person who understands the process, preferably someone who has been through it more than once, b) someone you can trust in all the different ways you need to trust them, and c) an environment where the precious nature of such a step can be honoured.

at the beginning of sharing, it’s helpful if there is a negotation about what the other person will do. do you just want to recite your list, with the other person simply as a “loving witness”? what type of feedback, if any, do you want, and at what point? do you want to hear the other person’s experience, strength and hope regarding similar difficulties they had?

many 12-steppers believe that “it is only through the process of discussing our shortcomings out loud with an understanding person that we can finally begin to know ourselves and accept ourselves” (from overeaters anonymous).

the “out loud” is really important. “out loud” doesn’t necessarily mean literally – this step has been done successfully over the internet or the telephone – but it does mean that you need to get all that junk out of your head, outside of your head and heart. you know when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep and you toss and turn with a gazillion worries? it’s because it’s all stuck in there, rattling around, like a bird trapped in your living room, banging its little head against the window. your living room doesn’t need the bird, the bird doesn’t need your living room, let it out!

this is all useless baggage. how can we know ourselves if we’re almost unrecognizable under a mountain of stuff?

something really beautiful happens in this sharing. i like to think of it as the breaking of the bread in christianity or the sharing of the pipe in native traditions. the sharing goes deep inside of us.

what about the “discussion?” a loving witness may not do that much discussing; most of it may come from the person who is laying her burden down. maybe that’s what’s needed, or at least for some of the things that are brought up. some of our baggage feels pretty darn raw, it’s difficult enough to bare one’s soul – maybe it’s a little early to actually engage in a discussion about them. you may need to have space to simply speak your piece, without anyone else’s perspective added to it.

in many cases, though, a bit of discussion is a good idea. it can be illuminating when after a while of talking, the other person begins to see some angles of your burdens that you hadn’t seen before. sometimes they are quite surprising. it’s very similar to what often happens in therapy – indeed, the very reason why many people enjoy therapy. i remember i client who talked a lot about not being focused and ambitious enough at university; it turned out that he simply was not the university type and would be much better suited to more hands-on work. you see, the interesting thing is that in talking about all of these supposed “defects”, a picture slowly emerges – often quite a beautiful picture that simply had never been seen in such clarity before.

towards the end of discussing step 5, one of the 12-step books says, “from this point on, we begin to leave behind the character defects which have caused us so many problems in the past.”

what a beautiful promise! leave them all behind.

fear, shame, self-delusion, procrastination, self-centredness, resentment, gossip, closed-mindedness, destructive anger, neglectfulness … all these can be left behind. imagine opening your hands and letting go of them … and then moving on … with your feet fully, squarely planted on a new path.

dear higher powers:
thank you for another day of life.
help me to walk closely with you today.
work through me so that i may better help others.
help me when i am weak. help me to reach out to your unending strength.
help me to remain hopeful and inspired.
help me to be humble in dealing with my ferocious disease.
help me to remember where to turn for help.
help me to get over myself and reach out to others for help.
and help me to remember what a magnificent being i am, that each and every person is your child, worthy of the utmost respect, that i don’t own anybody, that nobody owes me anything and that i live in a caring, abundant world.
help me to create more harmony, peace, serenity, joy, security, and love.
help me to freely give all these things and find them in return.

(image by alicepopkorn) 

the 12 steps of liberation
1. the truth of suffering. we experienced the truth of our addictions – our lives were unmanageable suffering.
2. the truth of the origin of suffering. we admit that we craved for and grasped onto addictions as our refuge.
3. the truth of the end of suffering. we came to see that complete cessation of craving and clinging at addictions is necessary.
4. the truth of the path. we made a decision to follow the path of liberation and to take refuge in our wisdom, our truth, and our fellowship.
5. right view. we completely see our life as it is. our goodness is indestructible. we are willing to acknowledge and proclaim our truth to ourselves, another human being and the community.
6. right thought. we are mindful that we create the causes for suffering and liberation.
7. right speech. we purify, confess and ask for forgiveness straightforwardly and without judgment. we are willing to forgive others.
8. right action. we make a list of all persons we harm and are willing and able to actively make amends to them all, unless to do so would be harmful.
9. right livelihood. we simplify our lives, realizing we are all interconnected. we engage in active compassion. we select a vocation that supports our recovery.
10. right effort. we acknowledge mistakes and relapse as part of the path. we continue to practice these steps with joyful effort.
11. right mindfulness. through prayer, meditation and action we follow the path of truth, being mindful moment by moment.
12. right concentration. open to the spirit of awakening as a result of these steps, we will carry this message to all people suffering with addictions.

what do you think of this? i particularly liked, “our goodness is indestructible”.

(as coincidence would have it, below these steps i found a link to the australian buddhist recovery site, which i had already mentioned in a previous post. i like it when that happens. it all felt really nice and organic).

the purpose of these steps is to “clear the wreckage of our past”, as they say. they suggest to “make a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves” and then to “admit the nature of our wrongdoings.”

everyone has this kind of wreckage and sometimes that’s okay. but the sort of wreckage that wreaks havoc is the stuff that still stands in our way, making progress impossible or at least difficult or awkward.

often one piece of wreckage creates a new one, just as lies beget more lies. relationships with relatives are a good example of that. i knew one guy who, in drunken stupor, once wrote a very undiplomatic letter to an uncle. this brought a chill in their relationship, which prompted them to avoid each other, which prompted other people in the family to avoid each other, etc.

it snowballs. steps 4 and 5 stop that snowball.

“fearless” means that we look things straight in the eye. we don’t pretend that there’s no rotten broccoli under our emotional rug.

“searching” means that we don’t just deal with the obvious. we know that there’s stuff under that rug and we lift it up to see if there’s more than that stinking little broccoli tree. aha! a whole army of mental dust bunnies! (constant problems with time management?  procrastination?  negative thinking that just won’t go away?  a habit of making uninformed decisions?) no wonder that carpet is so slippery!

“moral.” moral is an old word – let’s not forget this stuff was written in the 30s. two synonyms for “moral” are “ethical” and “principled” – maybe they are a bit more useful nowadays. so in step 4 we pay particular attention to the ethics of our behaviour.

we compare our behaviour with our values, our standards – exactly what’s done in an inventory. because we have the value that we don’t want to offer inferior goods to our customers, i.e. the people in our lives, we look at our “shelves” and deal with all the dented cans and outdated goods on them.  and since we ourselves are important people in our lives, we also look at all the dented cans, ripped bags and dusty containers that we dislike.

hence, part of what we do in step 4 is to look at all the things we aren’t willing to tolerate anymore – a bad job, a relationship that’s long gone sour, or a habit that doesn’t serve us anymore.
the last thing about the inventory is obvious but often overlooked. an inventory is not just about the “bad stuff.” it’s just as much about what’s beautiful and smart, loving and funny about you.

sometimes people find it difficult to find those assets within themselves. if that’s you, one way of getting a bit of a handle on it is to do a formal asset inventory. if you’ve never done an inventory before, get in touch with me and i’ll show you how.

next time we’ll talk some more about step 5, about bringing this inventory to someone else to witness.

isabella mori
moritherapy
counselling in vancouver