In the ten years I have really been a committed practitioner of the dharma. I say it like this because most of my life I have been a Pseudo follower of the dharma but never really wanted to give up any of my shiny Samsaric Distractions drugs, sex, and alcohol you name it I liked it and wanted to keep it. So ten years ago I was at the end of my rope. I had truly hit bottom my life looked very close to a demilitarize zone and there was a lot of suffering. I had a moment of clarity where I saw things as they really where and I decide to make a change. I got sober.
Sobriety presented me with a new challenge I had to come to believe that there was something out there greater than me then I had to allow this conception of a higher power to guide my life. This was no small feat but with the help of guys who had done it before me and step work this came. At first I used my mother’s conception of a higher power as it was what I was raised with. Then it started to evolve into what it is today.
One of the things I had to do was pray and meditate. I remember the first Time I meditated I sat for about 3 mins it seemed like a life time my head was so loud it scared me and I was crawling out of my own skin. I decided then that prayer was enough and I needed not look to meditation too much. My karma had other ideas. The damage I had done to my brain through years of abuse had caused me to have clinical anxiety. That is I would have crippling anxiety attacks, to the point of complete disassociation and being in full flight or fight mode for no reason. This would happen three to four times a week and would last up to two hours. Sometimes a slow build all day then bang full blown attack sometimes just out of nowhere boom cold, sweat dry throat, fear and knowing I was going to die fearing it to my core. Making up all kinds of stories and reasons why this was going to happen. I would often fixate on death dying, what happens after, will it hurt, you name it. Anything that was completely out of my control and needed a level of acceptance, a level of acceptance I did not at the time have.
I went a doctor and he suggested I take a benzodiazepine this solution was completely unacceptable to me. I knew me far to well and I knew if I started taking a pill to cure my problems and change my perception it would only be a matter of time before I was drinking and using drugs again. He offered me the prescription and I told him no thanks. It was a hard decision to make the attacks seemed like they were destroying my life. I despaired about it for a while but came to the resolve that crippling anxiety attacks four times a week was still better than the horror and pain my life was before I got sober. I was not about to jeopardize my sobriety for any amount of “easy road”.
On one such occasion I was walking to my apartment and it hit me out of nowhere it was one of the strongest attacks I have had even to this day. The terror that filled me was unbearable I thought my heart was going to explode. My mind ran rampant with thoughts of death and dying and I knew this was it. I did the only thing I could think of in the moment. I had presence of mind enough to know that if I did not die here, this was going to end. So I sat down, closed my eyes, started to breath, and counted my breath it was a technique my friend Fa Jun had talked about at a coffee shop years before. As I sat there counting my breath the story in my head slowed and I started to notice that the attack albeit was not gone but somehow more manageable. Now I was just dealing with what was, my heart was racing, I was in a cold sweat, and I felt as if my throat was in the desert. However the story I was creating about all this physical phenomena was gone and that took most of the power away. I got up and looked at my watch it had only taken ten minutes to halt the attack to a point where I could walk and manage my life. By the time I made it to my apartment about five minutes later it was over and gone like a dream.
It was then I realized the immense benefit of meditation in my life. I started a daily meditation practice as best I could. I would close my eyes and count my breath in the morning sun while I filled the pools at the apartment complex I worked at. If I had an anxiety attack I would go sit down and meditate. This went on for many years prayer and meditation had become a cornerstone of my life. After three years I rarely had an attack and if I did it was easily managed once I identified it I knew what to do.
At three years sober I was able to locate my daughter and moved to Washington to be closer to her. This in itself is a whole story I will write about later. Once I moved to Washington I had left my entire support group in AA all the guys I had gotten sober with All the people that knew me I left it all to come out to Washington and be a dad.
Now at the time I had no worries about this because I knew all I had to do was go to meetings out here and find a new support group. No problem right? Well funny thing about attachment and the mind it seemed to me like they just did not do AA right out here. The meetings to me where horrid no one wanted to talk to me or even seemed to care one way or the other if I was new and needing a support group. I would share I am new and have expectations that someone would invite me to at least fellowship after the meeting and no one did. Looking back now I realize that I forget I am a six foot four two hundred and twenty pound man with a bald head and covered in tattoos. I am not the most approachable if you don’t know me. Plus with the problems I was having at home with my girlfriend at the time, that had moved from California to wa with me. I was finding it increasingly harder to go to the same meeting with any type of frequency to actually have people get to know me. So I did what any good Alcoholic does I copped resentment and stopped going to meetings for almost a year.
I still continued to pray and meditate, I still continued to read out of my book but this was not enough. I eventually got so miserable I started begrudgingly going back to meetings. It was not the same I did not like it but I got a sponsor and worked my steps again but something was missing. After about A year I was still miserable and unfulfilled I was doing everything I knew how to do and nothing was working. I knew drinking would not solve anything but I did not know what else would. I was once again at a spiritual bottom this time in sobriety. I was scared and in a lot of pain but this time I could not think of a way out.
One day I got a call from a friend and he told me a spiritual teacher I had great respect for was going to be in town doing a day long and a dharma talk and I should go. So I did I went to the Dharma talk and listened to Noah Levine speak of the Dharma and of a way out of suffering. It was all stuff I had heard before I knew of the four noble truths, I knew of the eightfold path I read a lot about the dharma and studied a lot in my search for a stronger meditation practice. This time however it really clicked and for the second time in my life I knew what I had to do. Bill Wilson stated in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that if we did not continue to expand our spiritual practice we would drink. That’s what I had forgot to do expand my spiritual practice
The next day I sat with Noah at a daylong in Seattle it was painful to sit that long but I did it. We would sit thirty minutes and walk thirty minutes. Somewhere in all of this I had a huge revelation a feeling of this is what I need to do washed over me. Almost as if I had remembered what I was supposed to do with my life. It all seemed so natural and easy even the pain was just that, pain. It was what it was. Nothing was wrong it just was. In my life, in my practice, in AA, in my relationship, it was not wrong it just was. I had been labeling everything good bad or indifferent so long I was once again making a prison for myself with my own interoperations of event that where just happening.
After that day I threw myself in to spiritual practice with great zeal and somewhat of reckless abandon. I joined a weekly meditation group in Tacoma and did everything I could to help and make sure it stayed alive. I started meditating and going to a WAT that was out here I even started going to more meetings and actually bringing something to them instead of taking or having expectations of what I thought the meeting should be doing for me.
For the most part my life improved greatly. Internally I was feeling better I was growing spiritually and beginning to understand my purpose here in samsara. However my partner she was not feeling the spiritual wave. I tried everything I could to integrate her with my spiritual practice offered to bring her to the WAT to the Sakya an AA meeting anything I tried to get her to meditate with me, to no avail however. This simply was not her path and she did not like the idea of it taking my time from her. she already had to share my time with my daughter , work and AA this seemed to be the last straw and she would not have it.
Over the next two years my spiritual practice grew and my relationship declined very badly. Instead of dealing with this fact I chose to just do more spiritual practice in hopes it would work out. Eventually our fights got so out of control. I felt I needed to seek outside help and went back to a therapist for help with my anger and inability to deal with this side of things in an adult loving and compassionate manner. It seemed I could be kind loving and compassionate to all others in my life except for this woman who had been there for me so many times before.
I learned a lot from my Dr. Most of all I learned that sometimes things are not broken there just over and there is nothing you can do to fix them just accept it and move on. I eventually got enough courage up to end the relationship it was a rocky, bumpy, painful and awkward journey to say the least but it had to be done and I learned a lot about myself and my habitual habits along the way.
Through all of this my practice and reliance on the Dharma has grown.
I Know now. I never saw it before, but I see it now. The fact is I am very much like her,( we react the same way to stress.) I have a peculiar insight into her mind. It only makes sense that our relationship for many years was one of adversity. I never gave her a chance really ,never tried to see things from her perspective. The pain and hurt from her actions were too close too new, even though it had been 20 years. Pain demands to be felt and seems to compound until it is. When not given the space and time for expression it festers, like a septic infection of the soul.
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.
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.