A Season of Reconnection

Woke up early this morning to no electricity in the Pueblo. We are easing into the shift from dry season, November to June, to the rainy season, June to November. With the light showers that fell last night the world outside took on a fresh presence this morning. I've always loved the transitions from dry to wet, summer to fall, winter to spring. 

During the 70's I lived in southwestern Colorado and worked for an outfitter part time taking people on horseback pack trips and fishing trips in the Rockies. When winter came with it's great white blanket, I was always amazed how my own back yard would transform into another world. The same area I knew so well all summer was something else beneath the blanket of snow and the stillness of the Mountain winter nights. What I thought I knew so well was actually something else with a simple change of seasons. 

Today, I'm 52 years on Earth. The "me" that inhabits this body has lived many seasons and over the last few years has come fully awake to the magic and mystery of life's continuous transformation. The first 40 years I lived trying to find a comfortable spot to settle in and live happily ever after. Then I got to be such a mess that I was told I needed Rehab to get me on the right track. It took a couple months' consideration and I chose to go check myself into treatment. I really was tired of the way I felt being me, it really was that simple. 

In treatment I was offered lots of information about what I was, and what I suffered from, and what I had to do to be ok. Over time, I kept doing another piece of the "what I was told" and that piece was, to take what fits and leave the rest. I left more than I took, needless to say. 

As my life began to slowly but surely, shift to a new season, I became aware of a voice inside me that was not a voice of fear or Resistance or know-it-all or any of those too familiar voices that had ruled my mind and most of my life. This voice was something else. As I began to listen and sometimes follow this voice, I realized the voice knew me better than I knew myself. When I'd go with the voice, my life moved into a sweeter place, not always immediately, but always as a result of my listening and going with the feeling and guidance of that voice. 

That voice told me to listen to the woman who became my second wife and still does by the way. That voice whispered that if I'd take the chance and go on a journey to Mexico in 2002, (a journey I was on the fence about) that I'd find something I'd been missing. So I went and found Teotihuacan and my doorway to our Divinity. As I've lived with this voice as my guide, the voice has morphed into a feeling as well as a voice. 

Over the years aspects of myself have awakened that, for the first 40 years I'd lost all connection to. I'd lived a whole lifetime disconnected from at least half of my gifts as a human. Why all that happened is not very important now, so I'll just say that disconnection was an inheritance that nobody realized was being passed from generation to generation. I had simply inherited my share. 

Living my reconnection is what is important now and that has brought me full circle from believing and living with the belief that I could only be good enough if and when I lived up to all the expectations of the world. This old belief system was a powerful aspect of a lot of the recovery world that I was participating in as well. I was only as successful as I was compliant with the rules. I hated that. It was so easy for me to feel like a piece of crap and I wanted so badly to feel like I was just ok. 

Sounds like that should have been easy but it wasn't. As I learned to listen to my voice of guidance and feel my way through decisions, I came to realize that the being, "me,"  underneath all the knowing and thinking and story telling, was connected to something much sweeter and more loving and more honest than any of the little "me's" I had played out in the world for so long. Behind all the everything I thought I knew, and everything that was this world to me, there was/is a presence that needs nothing to be at peace. That presence is in me and I know today that presence is the "me" that I disconnected from so long ago in my trying to be good enough. My greatest recovery has been recovering my awareness. Without that I'd still be living for trying to be good enough. 

As I work in the Recovery business I often find myself seeing this work as a doorway for people to wake up to their greatest gifts as humans rather than a desperate attempt to get "it" right. Getting "it" right is that trying to be good enough all over again. The truth is we were never not good enough so chasing "it" will never get us back to what we've disconnected ourselves from. 

I have absolute faith in our wholeness and in the unique gifts that life bestows on each of us and for me this work of Recovery is all about our individual and collective awakening to those gifts and the magical ways that the truth of who and what we really are will be revealed to us. There is no fear in reconnecting to the truth of what we really are, there is only freedom and the courage to live from that place of divinity. This is not a journey just for those who go to rehab or need a program to support their changes, this is the way of the awakening of the Humanity and this is the opportunity for that awakening to be a season of grace and beauty to this world of ours. Vaya con Dios, Peace Be With You, Lee

Between The Worlds

It's Saturday Morning...There's a storm brewing out over the ocean, gray sky, wind chop on the water. I hear the kids playing in the living room and I'm sitting here looking at the screen wondering what's next.

For the last 10 years I've lived in varying degrees of proximity to the recovery world and the whole business scene of recovery. I remember when I went to Twelve Step meetings a lot, the first 5 or 6 years, that there was a reference to recovery not being a religion or even like a religion. A lot of people seemed to get some relief from that idea.

Now after 10 years of being in and around the whole scene I gotta say there's way more similarity between recovery and religion than first meets the eye. They are both organized to be of support for people and both have become institutions that you'd better know the rules both spoken and especially unspoken or you'll be a fringe member at best. What I see is that we, people, have used both as a parking lot for our personal responsibilities. If I join your church then your version of God will be on my side or even my Saviour, but of course the deal is completely conditional on my agreeing with the official version of who and what you say God is etc...In the recovery biz there's the same conditional, meet the panel of judges, criteria if you want to be a full fledged member of the not church. In both cases I'm supposed to go along because that will keep me safe from...me, I guess.

Living afraid of me was a big part of my problem though. I am me and that's all I am so how might I learn to trust me, I am. So, the idea that we have to be all in or all out, that we are either for something or we have to be against it, is another aspect of the same way of thinking that feeds so many of our problems today, both personal and global.

There is a space between these worlds of demanding that I participate on their terms or I can't play at all, and making everything that I don't like wrong. There is a space between feeling and my reactions, between my thoughts and my opinions, between the light and the dark, good and bad, right and wrong, up and down........There is a space between.....everything.

If I give my faith to the church or recovery or anything else, that still does not make the church or recovery responsible for the life I live or the space I'm in with my life. If I'm not comfortable where I'm at, then I leave or at least turn to myself for the why am I not comfortable here. The not comfortable is in Me not in the place I'm at.

Recently living here in Mexico, my wife and I had as profound an experience of something that sets me totally off on attack mode as I can get. This involved kids at my daughter’s school that were acting out symptoms of being physically or even sexually abused. When we spoke out about the situation there was a reaction that, first ,we must be wrong because the topic is too creepy to deal with, then it was openly discussed with the teachers and some of the parents and there was, as I'd expect, an amazing range of responses, from the behavior of the children was normal, to there's something really not okay here, to, but this is "our" little ex-patriot community and we're all friends so we don't want anyone to get upset....What the fuck, these are 5 year old kids and the situation was not good. Well, my wife and I decided to take our daughter out of the school and cut loose from the group of people who were more invested in their Something Else's than in the children's well being.

Now the point is that we both found ourselves feeling creepy toward the whole scene in our little Pueblo. The creepy was a feeling we had in us about the situation, that feeling was not something the village was doing to us, in fact there were only 6 or 8 people involved in the mess at school. We could pack and leave and never see that we were living our own reaction or we can stay put and sort this out.

The truth was, that what was happening was the truth, and we were outside the set of agreements that the people involved at the school, parents and teachers, had been operating from, so our interjections created an issue that they didn't really want to deal with. As it turned out, several people admitted that they knew something was not okay but hadn't known how to address it. We became the bearers of bad news for the adults and good news for the children. Now it's our, my wife and me, our opportunity to allow that space between the worlds to show us how we can stay true to our integrity and not let our reactions make the next choice for us.

We both Love so much of our world here in Mexico and we are not from here, so when we get uncomfortable we are learning to really rely on our self and each other in a whole new way. All the while we are both clear that we are first responsible for our self then our children and then each other. We are living between the worlds of home U.S.A. and choice Sayulita, Mexico just as we live between the worlds of separate, individual and married, together, parents. There is a space between the two and in that space is who we really are, where we really are, living life, the best we have to offer, one day at a time.