Category Archives: Recovery

Death clears all scoreboards

  By liam | July 7, 2015 - 10:47 am | Recovery
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Death clears all scoreboards. In the light of never seeing someone again, or feeling them, most things we keep score about seem very small and insignificant. It’s hard to see when you are in it, and they are alive. The hurts and expectations of change are all there, and strong brimming and bubbling right at the surface of our awareness. If they would just do this, or say that. Why can’t they just….

Truth is most people don’t change. Not the way we feel they should. It’s the expectation of change that causes pain and lack of healing. I refused to deal with and accept my own pain around the situation until they did, what I felt they should. My dear old friend hindsight pays me a visit once more. For when I look back I can see now that it really is all small shit. The hurts and pains that I have carried with me where just that; carried by me. I lacked acceptance and in that I lacked forgiveness.

There is no time to lose, in this world time is a cruel and fickle mistress and she will not stop. Lessons learned over and over are painful and pointent of my refusal to heal old wounds. There is no one who can do it but me. Time to walk once again.

Lean Into Your Rough Edges

  By liam | November 18, 2013 - 2:15 pm | Anger, Motivation, Recovery
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Lean into your rough edges. That has stuck with me lately, it’s kind of been a ‘theme’ if you will. In the time I have been walking my path I have had plenty of opportunities to lean into my edges; many “Buddhas in disguise” moments and many opportunities for practice. However, there have been a few rather large moments in my practice that have really encouraged me to continue on, moments where it has seemed almost effortless. Moments in my life that point to the truth that the Dharma is working and I am ripening, just as the sutas say.

One of these moments was about three years into my practice. I had gotten a call from my mother and she explained that my cousin David’s wife Debbie had passed from a brain hemorrhage (she was only in her mid 40’s), and that David was quite understandably destroyed.

Now to truly understand the story you will have to know the history behind David and I. David was one of my abusers when I was growing up, and I had a deep and undying hatred for this man for many years. This hatred extended towards Debbie as well, as she had also been one of my abusers. Lucky for me, through the process of the twelve steps and my daily Dharma practice I was able to forgive them. Although I had forgiven them, the well spring of love and well wishing was not there for them in my heart – and understandably so.

So my mother telling me this news about Debbie, and David’s obvious suffering over it had a very unexpected effect on me. My reaction surprised me as much as I think it surprised my mother, because she knew the feelings I had towards the two of them. The first words out of my mouth were “Is he ok? Is there anything I can do for him?”. The feeling of empathetic sadness for this man washed over me and I felt nothing but love and compassion for him in that moment. I truly meant what had just come out of my mouth. This healing of the heart was effortless, I had only to meditate and try to follow the dharma as best I could and naturally it was this that came about.

Another one of these times happened ten years into my practice. I had just recently moved back to the Coachella Valley (where I had grown up) to take a job that was more in line with my spiritual goals. I went to one of the Insight Community of the Desert‘s weekly meetings and dharma talk. Larry Yang was speaking and it was a good meditation session. During the dharma talk, I thought “hey, i might know someone here“, scanned the crowd, and there I saw a man who I could just barely recognize as my ex father-in-law Jim.

Getting married very young and having a child at the age of seventeen was not one of the best life choices I have ever made, and I am sure this choice did not make my wife at the time’s parents happy either. Jim was always polite to me in a cold and curt manner but he did try and help me and Anne out when we were kids.

Jim is a Buddhist, and one of the ones that made a bit of a difference in my life although not through his actions but his examples. He held a weekly sangha meeting at his house and I remember a few times hearing them chant. Something in the sounds of the chanting deeply resonated in me. I was drawn to dharma in all its forms all my life. I remember asking Jim about Buddhism and he responded by handing me a Tao Te Ching. I have that book to this day. However, it explained nothing about Buddhism. Looking back and knowing Jim the way I did, it makes perfect sense why he handed me this book when I asked about Buddhism. I don’t think I would have wasted the time explaining it to me back then either, knowing that my mind state was nowhere close to where it needed to be in order to understand the concepts of the Dharma. Giving me a book to read that was very eastern philosophical and kind of esoteric (for a seventeen year old kid who was raised in the desert and sheltered from any sort of culture such as this) was a good way to put me on a path of some sort without actually having to put the time and energy into something he felt was a lost cause.

After the ugly separation of me and my wife and some very (what I felt at the time) unskillful and hurtful actions on Jim and Sandy’s (Anne’s mother) part, I was embittered with the family. Nine years later Anne and I were in court for custody and visitation of my daughter, and Jim wrote very scathing letters to the courts as to why my character was of poor quality and why I should not be allowed to see my daughter or be in her life. This left me feeling very angry and somewhat hurt.
Knowing that resentment like this can eat away my core and even kill me. I spent a full year doing metta and forgiveness practices with Jim and Sandy as the focus. After the year passed I had fully put down the resentment and gone on with my life.

So after seven years there sits Jim and his husband Jim across from me at this dharma function in Palm Springs and all I could feel for this man when I searched my feelings was love, compassion, and, gratitude for what he had done for me when I was younger. All this with no effort on my part and no reasoning, just pure responsive metta and mudita from my heart space. The feeling was amazing and encouraging, and it is times like these that I know that all I have to do is keep walking, and I know that if I put in the work, anger, greed, and delusion will naturally fall away.

Better Understanding of a Higher Power

  By liam | February 26, 2013 - 10:55 pm | Dharma, Higher Power, Recovery
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I was recently asked how I have integrated my Buddhism with an idea of a higher power. The question was hard for me to answer. I have an idea of how this works in my life, a sort of abstract feeling of how it all goes together and it works well for me. However, I could not explain it.

Having an engineering background, I am of a firm belief that if you cannot fully explain and teach something in terms others can easily understand, then you do not have a full understanding of it yourself. This has sat with me the last few days.

When I first started this path I’m on, things were so different. I was new in recovery, scared, and had no real idea of what a higher power was, or what it was to me. I had my mother’s god, the one taught to me when growing up; he was loving and caring, but a bit vengeful when the rules were not followed and there was lots of hellfire and brimstone. Having broken so many of those rules, I had very little hope this god would help me. Lucky for me, this was wrong.

As my practice in meditation and the Dharma grew stronger, I started hearing more and more about this concept of being born with Buddha nature. That is, I am and always have been complete and have all I need inside. I just have to do the work to clear away the delusion and obscurations of that true nature. This however left me with a quandary: how am I supposed to look to myself in this path, when I was taught in order to stay sober I had to look to a higher power outside of myself?

This sat heavy with me for a long while. I spoke with others in sangha about this question, and was told to sit in meditation with it and the answer would come. The more I sat with the question, the more I realized the idea of separateness from a higher power is a delusion of the dualistic mind. There is no self! My answer was in the concept of Not-Self. If there is no separation of my mind, or the guru’s mind, or the mind of enlightened ones – or even the mind of all the Buddhas who have come before – then there is no separation of me from my higher power. There is no separation between me and you, just clouded perception; only an incorrect view.

This frozen view of self, this idea of a separate ego, it’s as if my mind is an iceberg floating in the ocean. Separate but the same. One day, one lifetime, I will have purified my view enough that this iceberg will melt and merge back into the sea. The sea was a part of me the whole time, only held separate through a frozen view. The true nature of the mind will be revealed to me; no more separation, no more frozen view.

Knowing this has allowed me to have an even greater communion with my higher power. I have a clearer path to understand what my higher power’s will for me is on a daily basis. I no longer feel the need to name or make separate my higher power, for it is in everything and everyone. I stopped looking for where it is, because nowadays I can no longer find where it is not. From the person going slow in the fast lane, to H.E. Garchen Rinpoche. All precious teachers, all ways, my higher power is speaking to me, teaching me, showing me its will for me on a daily, hourly, and minutely basis.

Should I forget, should I lose skillful view, I have only to stop, close my eyes, and count my breath. When I come back to the present moment, there is my higher power waiting patiently and lovingly for me to return. It never leaves, because it’s never gone. It is in everything and everyone including me. I have only to stop, be mindful and skillful in this moment for my view to adjust and my will to align with the will of the Dharma. That is, for me, to be of maximum service to all sentient beings.

Freedom If you want it

  By liam | February 1, 2013 - 1:28 am | Recovery
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Growing up the way I did left me angry and bitter at the whole world around me. The survival skills I had adopted not only kept people who would hurt me away. They also cut off any help that would come my way. It was constantly not what I felt I needed or wanted. I always ended up trying to depend on them too much or demanding total control.

Time and time again I would smack people’s hands away. Eventually people stopped trying to help. That only fueled me more. ” How dare they not help me! Cant they see I am in pain ? Why won’t you help me ? ” It was a constant game of screaming ” Everyone just leave me alone!!” Anyone? Hello ?” A constant cycle of me pushing people away and then blaming them for leaving. It was a lonely miserable existence but one of my own making. Sure I did not get the ball rolling that was my early experiences in life’s job. However I am the one who chose to keep it rolling. Time and time again I would Alienate all who cared all who wanted to help.

The cycle was a deep rooted one and took many years for me to break. First I had to look at these situations and see where my part in them was. No matter what the situation was. Whether I felt I had a right to be angry or not. Whether it really was something shitty that happened. I had to look at all the incidents that I was reliving daily. The ones that where rotting me out from the inside. I had to find my part where I might be to blame and see how I could have done this better. In the incidents where I found no real wrong on my part I had to find forgiveness for their part. In fact in all incidents in my life I had to find forgiveness. It was the only way I found to true freedom from the past.

Finding this forgiveness was not easy in many of these situations. I found it easier if I was able to put myself in their shoes see it from there point of view. Then I could have empathy and compassion, For most of the time my abusers lived through the exact pain I did and once again it was that pain that allowed me to identify, care for and come to love my abusers . Some of them only enough to see what pain had done to them. In others it allowed me to love them with all my heart and soul again whether I allowed them back in my life or not. It was my love for them that freed me from my suffering .

My chains have always been of my own making no matter the cause. Experience gives me the raw material and I have the choice to either build chains and a cage over my heart or to use this material to build a stairway to freedom. To use the pain to block out all things that would help me leaving me isolated and alone or take that pain and use it as a spring board for growth.

We are all entrusted with a certain amount of pain in our lives it is unavoidable. Some more than others. I believe the point to all this pain is to be the touchstone of growth. To give us something to make us uncomfortable. I have found for me at least that I do not just decide to change things it takes a certain amount of pain to motivate me. To move me enough to realize something has to change. As I get stronger in my practice I am able to see the need for change with less and less suffering. I am becoming more sensitive to the things on my life that are ear marks for change. For this I am grateful. It no longer takes a building falling on me for me to realize its time to change now it only takes a house. One day I hope for a small shed or fence. We shall see.

My life with Ani Difranco

  By liam | February 1, 2013 - 1:20 am | Recovery
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Let me start out this by saying. I have always listened to Ani Difranco. Growing up in the area I did every ooh rah chick I knew listened to Ani as some kind of Affirmation of being a strong women. Me being a man, I did feel a little odd listening to Ani and enjoying it as much as I did. No big deal however I was ok with this.

It was not until the end of a particularly rough five year relationship with a girl. A relationship that had been rough due to my own actions and inability to change them at the time. See I had this habit of putting anything and everything in my body and treating everybody and anybody who gave a shit about me like dog shit. Ya weird habit I know. After five years of this you can see why she would want to move on to someone who actually treated her like a human being. Much less someone who was actually nice to her and knew how to express love. So there I was alone again and feeling oh so sorry for poor little ole me. Some where in all this I had missed where I was wrong. Some where in all this I had missed my own actions.

Now this girl who left loved Ani Difranco to a Crazy degree. Used to have discussions with me on how Ani had Changed her life and made her see things in a different way. So in the midst of all this feeling sorry for my self and drinking a shit load I was reorganizing my cd’s and came across the ani block of things. I found little plastic castles and put it in.

The first song is As is. I remember just sitting and really listening to the lyrics for the first time. It was an odd juxtapose for me sitting there listening to that song. Normally when you listen to
“break up “ sad music you are the singer at least that’s how it works for me. I identify with what the singer is saying belting out righteous lyrics, Declaring my indignation and hurt, but oh how I will survive and be stronger in the long run. However this was not what was happening at this point. It was if Ani was singing about me and suddenly it dawned on me I was an asshole. In that moment I was hearing the other persons side of things. For the first time in my life I realized that other people mattered too. “Just give up and admit your an asshole. “ That lyric stuck in my head. Could it be that easy just admit I was wrong ?

Through out that night I listened to every Ani album I had. Every song about Failed relations and lost love forced me to think more and more where I had been at fault in the past .Every lyric of how hard she tried to save something that was unsolvable cut me deep and forced me into further introspection.
I could finally see that as humans all we really want to be is happy. I saw that we are deserving of that happiness. I finally saw that I could not achieve my happiness at the expense of others. All simple things that had eluded me over the years. I was inundated with all the shit I had pulled in the past and had no where to put it all.

That one night changed my life forever. You see, because the universe has a sense of humor for sure. The next night I ended up in An alcoholics anonymous meeting with a friend. I was there to support him He felt a bit nervous going there alone. It was a book study and we all got to read. When It came time for me to read I started right where the person before me left off and I read out loud. “ After a few years with an alcoholic a wife gets worn out, resentful and uncommunicative. How could she be anything else.” and there again Ani was there pointing out her side of things and I listened. It was in that moment I realized What I needed to do but with out the ground work that was laid the night before I probably would have never been receptive enough to realize what was being said to me. Through the words of Bill Wilson and the first one hundred drunks. In the book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Fast forward 8 years and life is great I am better and always trying to change and grow for the better. Funny how it all start from one long night of introspection. Just me and Ani. Her pointing it out and me acknowledging it and wanting it to change.