Once, Jesus came to Jerusalem. And there was then a bathing place there. And men said of this bathing place, that an angel came down into it, and through this the water in the bath would begin to move, and (s)he who first plunged into the water after it was moved got well from whatever (s)he was ailing. And sheds were made around the bath, and under these sheds sick ones lay, waiting for the water to be moved, in order to plunge into it. And a man was there who had been infirm thirty-eight years. Jesus asked who he was. And the man told how he had been ailing so long and was still waiting to get into the bath first, upon the waters being moved, in order to be healed; but for these thirty-eight years he had been unable to get in first, others always getting into the bath before him. And Jesus saw that he was old and said to him: `Do you wish to get well?´ He said: `I wish to, but I have no one to carry me into the water on time. Some one will always get into the water before me.´ And Jesus said to him: `Awake, take up your bed and walk´. And the sick man took up his bed and walked.
Leo Tolstoy, `The Gospel In Brief´, pp 90-91
One half of my mind is selling bullshit and the other half is buying.
Anonymous, heard at an AA meeting
There is a big difference between wanting to get sober and wanting to want to get sober.
Ron E
Circumstances recently contrived to place me among a certain sub-culture which would have appeared native to me in decades previous; the stoner, beach bum, rainbow family dropouts who populate the most rural areas of many of the islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
The weather is as hot as the topography is arid, resulting in an atmosphere characterised by searing midday heat, dust, and salt. Only the continuous sound of waves breaking back and forth and the sweet music of the bell-laden sheep punctuate the spacious silence which governs the broad countryside. Heaven on Earth, you could say…
Yet, when the subculture tribe meets each day under the pines by the shore, the joints circulate early, and the stoner smiles flicker on the drawn faces of those who would claim eternal youth. Herds of little kids run naked in the dunes, kids who by day are raised by the village and return each night to their nuclear pods. Guitars are plucked and songs sung in an array of Romance languages, suggestive of harmony, peace, and love.
My irritation became palpable on the third day. Not in judgement, for this was my life for many years, in its own north European version. I could see myself in those young and not-so-young troubadours, chain-smoking putrid shag, slowly emptying bottles of mediocre beer, exchanging exotic travelling experiences, deep philosophical critiques of today’s sorry world, and endless trivia.
As if out of nowhere, the stories from the gospel came to mind. They first registered with me in the earliest phase of junior school, where the nuns read us stories from the life of Christ, suitably fashioned for digestion by embryonic minds. These stories fascinated me and resonated with something deep within. The woman who touched the hem of Christ’s robe, Lazarus awakened from the dead, and the story quoted above, of the man who waited thirty-eight years at the side of the pool in the hope of finding the healing he so desperately yearned.
Perhaps there was already a foreboding of how my story was about to unfold. For it is a story of getting lost in the wilderness and, having reached a state of utter hopelessness, experiencing the miracle of atonement (at-one-ment), and recovery.
The thirty-eight years presumably refer to the mid-life point, where we wake up one day in the realisation that we have probably now already lived half of the days given us. In my case it was in the forty-third year. The years from late adolescence to this point had been characterised by establishing my place in the world while bucking the system, and the daily consumption of alcohol and weed in what I now recognise was a well-intentioned pain-avoidance strategy. These are the ingredients of what would today be described as the life of a highly functioning alcoholic; never lost a job through drink, never in jail, and never committed to the psychiatric asylum, preferring instead to take charge of my own self-medication for as long as possible. Having fallen prey to the illusion that I had no choice in the matter (my definition of addiction), my journey had become rudderless, my state joyless, and my situation hopeless.
The end came, as it always must. The `solution´ to my emotional pain and spiritual thirst ceased to function as such and became yet one more problem on top of the pile of those which had accumulated, unattended, since childhood.
Eckhart Tolle asks which voice it is that one morning cries out: `I can’t go on living like this!´ A wonderful question. This voice, more primal than egoic, piped up in the period of my greatest desperation. For, like the man at the pool, there was a deep yearning for peace of mind despite all the insanity and dysfunction in my life. By means of denial and self-delusion, it had been successfully supressed for almost three decades, yet never extinguished. Its day had now come.
Asking for help, I found a new tribe. A tribe of people who had been through hell and, by the grace of the Great Spirit, (often in the form of practical, judgement-free assistance of those further ahead of me on the road of recovery) had found a way out. Not just that; these peaceful warriors intuitively knew that to maintain and cultivate this new freedom from bondage, it was necessary to actively help others who also needed a solution. `In order to keep it, you have to give it away!´ is the maxim that governs our lives.
I left the beach for the local café ten miles away, the only place far and wide where internet access was available. Within an hour I was among my tribe, in the Zoom room of an AA meeting; a Santa Fe Valley Group, based in California. As the shares poured forth, my body and mind began to relax, and a deep sense of gratitude welled up from within. The shift in my mood was immediate, moving from `What am I doing here?´ to `This is my tribe´.
The gist of the share at that meeting was an entreaty to come to these meetings, to engage in the community, in the spirit of giving. Not to come to get something, but rather to bring to the table our spirit, our experience, our strength, and our hope. It was incumbent upon those longest on the journey to bring the most.
No sitting on laurels. No smug complacency. Simply a vibrant recognition that we could never have been relieved of the bondage of addiction without the altruistic loving-kindness of our `elders´ and that the only way for this river to continue its multi-generational course was for us to now step up in the same spirit, in all our affairs.
Once the meeting was over, I took up my bed and walked – like the man who had waited so long at the side of the pool, – back into the interconnected world of the collective unconscious, where opportunities for giving abound.
