Monday 26 January 2015

An Experience of the Desert of Aloneness

          I will once again make reference to "The Twelve Steps" of spiritual recovery because it was a powerful experience for me at a time when I was trying to deal with the effects of living with another person's alcoholism. It could have been any trauma I suspect, but mine was my obsession with another person's debilitating addiction. Although, in the beginning, my practical work followed the prescribed order of the "Twelve Steps", I see in hindsight that the process was far more complicated than it first appeared. Thus it was only through a thorough, in depth, working of the 4th. and 5th. Steps, (quoted in my previous post, "An Experience of Inner Baptism") that I began to understand the significance of the Steps 2 and 3. Let me quote them here:

Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

          Immediately, the focus of my life, my sense of spirituality, was moved from my ego-self to what has been called my Higher Self. I had no real understanding of what this Power was, except that some people called it God, as they understood that word. I never did understand the word in any way that I could bring to consciousness. I only knew that I had experienced something, some persuasive force, that remains present today. That has always been enough for me because under its influence I have successfully reached the stage I am at today. Without it, I seemed to be sliding into an abyss of irrationality, illogic and a total loss of reason.
          To recognise an experience of something more worthy than my controlling ego was not enough. These Steps are part of a very practical programme of inner work, and I needed to make some kind of commitment. Let me put it another way if you will: I felt that I needed to respond to something occurring inside me, and that response, call it enlightened self-interest if you wish, was to "let go" of my desire and practice of trying to control both my inner world and my outer environment. I must say that at the time, my motives for making such a choice were perhaps less noble or "spiritual" than they might have appeared to be. In reality, I just wanted something/someone else to carry my burden for a while, until I could gather enough strength and will to carry on as before. Somewhere along the way I learned the futility of that goal; that I had discovered something, some purpose, to which I could offer my allegiance.
          Yet it was after the experience of the later Steps 4 and 5, that I began to experience something arising from the depths of the earlier two Steps. From being buoyed up by the joy of self-discovery, I was plunged into the depths of doubt and uncertainty. Had I really made the right choice? Was I being 'conned' by force of circumstances? I needed to get my intellect working on a problem that in reality didn't exist.
          There began a period of investigation, with all its doubts and second thoughts, not to mention the attendant temptations to let my ego once more take control. In the silence of my rooms, I came face to face with my doubts, my decisions, and even my honesty or perhaps lack of. I was alone, seemingly far away from others who might have boosted my strength and given me support (but not necessarily so). Such help was available, but not twenty-four hours a day, not seven days a week. That was in part my choice. That companionship of others was not what I needed. I needed to be alone, for it was in that desert of lost-ness, of total aloneness that I needed to take my stand. It was not too difficult a stand to make, but neither was it easy. I stood at the brink and became intensely aware of the reality of my own lacking of significant control, lacking of absolute certainty.
          I needed to understand in a new way the significance of the earlier steps I had taken, that I was required to find a point of balance where I did not veer towards ego-negativity, nor fix my eyes so exclusively on the positives of a Higher Self that I forgot the presence of the negatives. Balance was the key, a balance that also refused identification with either extreme. The paradox was that in taking that line I became closer to my positives, my Higher Self anyway. A deep change of my inner life was under way, that kind of change that was out of my control, that was the consequence of right choices being made. That is not to say that I always enjoyed and practised total detachment about my state. There were times when I was very far from that I fear. It was only that by struggling with my self/ego was I able eventually to see that a profound process was inevitably unfolding. Inevitable? Yes, because it happened without my conscious decision to effect that process. It happened, and continues to do so - when I remember to stop interfering - under the aegis of something much wiser than me.

10 comments:

  1. You have had quite a journey and thankfully found that wisdom you were searching for, Tom.

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    1. Marja-Leena, thank you. And the best part is that the journey continues.

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  2. Hi Tom
    I can relate to that experience, or at least I think I can, in what I perceive to be in a much more modest way. For it seems to me you also touch on the question of free will; where we conceivably can embrace fate, but are able to exercise our freedom to find a way forward as is intended. If I can put it this way, as in my experience, of the great comforter and refuge, who shines that light ahead. But not to the extent of a blind choice, but rather to realise a straighter pathway, so that in time we can look back and realise many of the fears or regrets have now dissipated. Thanks for sharing your journey.
    Best wishes

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    1. Hi Lindsay; I feel that any in-depth response to your comment would set me off on a very long treatise on doubt, uncertainty, temptation, want and painful rejection, whilst all the time, as you indicate, being required to exercise free will. I recall that around that time I futilely prayed to have free will taken away from me because I was deeply afraid of making wrong choices. I knew, and still know, the depths to which I had sunk by the arrogant use of free will, and didn't want ever to go there again. (The second verse of the hymn, "Lead, kindly Light..." still has great emotional impact on me.) Yet the really frightening aspect of that experience was that even knowing my then recent past, nevertheless I was powerfully tempted to throw in my lot with my ego, to identify with its desires. It was what I had become accustomed to over too many years. My meeting face-to-face with something of the nature of God within me was still too recent. I had not yet become "accustomed".

      I must stop here, before I launch out onto a mini-post. I will only add that somehow I managed to resist the temptation to slip back. But it would be wrong to assume that because I once overcame, the battle was won forever, that I was going always thereafter to be free from temptation dressed up in alluring, "spiritual" garments.

      Thank you for your comment and its subsequent re-awakening of those things which I must never forget.

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  3. One of the most challenging aspects of meditation is our inherent tendency to tell ourselves stories. We become prisoners of our own stories and we forget we are telling them ourselves. If we're very lucky sometimes the storytelling abates for a while and, briefly free of logic and the larger reality we share, we may reach a place where we can examine our stories from the outside.

    I have no idea where this dream of life may lead, but I do know that deep inside there's a certainty of home where love is all encompassing.

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    1. Susan; Exactly! And we can get so caught up in our stories, our travelogues, that we forget why we tell those stories. To share our experiences is legitimate; to use stories for escapism, the furtherance of denial, spiritual sleep or excuse-making is never so.

      When I read your final sentence I felt moved by a sense of 'knowingness', a recognition of the ultimate truth of what you say. And I thank you for that, as I have course to thank you for so much.

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  4. Tom, it's brave of you to go over that period of time in which you experienced such desperation but also enlightenment. It's a kind of clearing the decks and will surely help in moving on towards new horizons and new experiences.

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    1. Thank you Natalie. This kind of clearing of the decks process to which you refer is, I think, beginning to clarify the way forward. And, yes, there is still much to be experienced.

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  5. The theme of finding balance is one that is so important to me. There have been times when I was feeling overwhelmed by the emotional content of needs that affected me like a drug. Your I felt that I needed to respond to something occurring inside me, and that response, call it enlightened self-interest if you wish, was to "let go" of my desire and practice of trying to control both my inner world and my outer environment. is so familiar.
    There is a tremendous power in knowing that by letting go, being prepared but not necessarily proactive, my self-interest is better served than it could possibly be any other way.

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    1. Hullo Halle; Good to hear from you. It is such a pity that we seem to spend so much time struggling to maintain a completely anti-gravity position when often all we need to do is drop a few inches into rest, and let the world do its own thing. Thus all too often we assume responsibility for a world that is out of sync, but neglect our own well-being without which we cannot help the world anyway.

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