My Journey In Life, Part Ii, Ad A Spiritual Undertaking
As a General step regarding Alzheimer's by MikeD
MY JOURNEY IN LIFE
I was raised a Catholic. Educated in a wonderful belief system that Catholicism is. I continued to immerse myself in the study of it. My studies led me to Judaism which I embraced in mid-life.
When confronted with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continuing with my penchant to study, I tried to understand the consequences of my having this disease. This guided me to the study of Buddhism. Embracing the mind set and the practices of the Way of Buddhism I was enabled to deal with my diagnosis in a far better way. I am not a religious Buddhist although I do follow the Way. As such I remain a Jew.
This Part II of this four part series of essays about Spiritual Undertaking deals in an abbreviated way to the application of what I have learned to dealing with my diagnosis of AD.
Transformation has been a continuous and unfolding process with me since discovering the spiritual/existential program in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) first encountered by me 34 years ago. At the age of 38, my life in ruins, I turned to AA as a means of stopping my use and abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs which I was unable to myself. I was totally out of control and slipping fast. Entry into AA, adopting the 12 step program of it, turning my life and my will over to my higher power, quitting my use and abuse as a result delivered me into a totally new and different life.
The delivery amounted to a transformation. It happened by reason of my utilizing the spiritual side of the program of AA in all of my life’s encounters since that time.
The spiritual/existential part of AA is this: You are directed in the AA program to “Turn your life and your will over to the care of your Higher Power!” You do this when you cannot quit using and abusing alcohol/drugs by your own exercise of will power. You do it out of desperation having no place else to turn. You do it; it does it; abstinence occurs! For me it was the first time ever. I could not do it; my Higher Power did it for me. Wow!
Was that an epiphany! I was touched by something outside of myself, transcendent to me, that when sought was willing and able to do for me. Something was added to me, not mine initially, making me better as a result.
After the initial event of obtaining abstinence I kept applying the formula with every troubling event encountered by me. It worked each time “I put it on the table” as I called it. I called it that because at the start I initiated the formula by raising the troubling issue at an AA meeting and asking the group for help.
I was mystified by the efficacy of the formula. It worked each time I used it. Always for the better as a result! The aphorism of AA “Let go Let God” started to have meaning.
Was this a mystical experience, a miracle, a gift of grace, or all those other definitions religion likes to apply to it? It went deeper than that.
As time went on I realized I lived according to a plan. Not my plan, I would never have chosen the painful experiences with which I was continually confronted. It was a plan nonetheless, each event of it sequencing to the next event.
From where did it come, who designed it? I do not have a clue.
It is like the tangled tapestry as it appears on the back side of the loom. While being woven on a loom, on its back side the tapestry is just a tangle of dangling threads. When turned over it shows the tapestry as it really is. On this side of the loom you see a detailed and beautiful picture not the tangle of the other side.
After years, with retrospective hindsight I could see a tapestry comprising my life as it emerged from the entire tangle my life seemed to be as I was experiencing each event.
The tapestry showed me my life was managed by a plan. A plan I could never have chosen. It is also one that I can never reject now as I see the gifts it has produced for me.
It is the experience of my plan, the pain, the difficulties, the successes I secured as a result and the peace and serenity it offers me now as I realize it and appreciate it that I see what has been a continuing transformation unfolding since my first step into AA.
What is it about? I of course cannot tell you. I saw some answers in Chardin and Tilich, Christian Philosophers. I found more in Heschel and Buber, Jewish Philosophers. I found it in particular in Buber’s “I & Thou” The transcendent encounter with “Thou” offers credence to the possibility produced in the transformation."
I finally found the most extensive answer and the simplest in the teachings of Buddhism. AA is Buddhism Applied to Living. On finally studying Buddhism more than 30 years after my recovery from alcoholism I found the why for what happened and progressed in me.
I stepped beyond the material consequence and found my overall consciousness waiting to be worked with and worked for bettering my lot. Love, compassion, meditation, egolessness, accepting the illusion of our lives; it is in the concepts suggested by the foregoing words that I found the starting key. Humbly and respectfully utilizing these keys, working with our involvement in this giant algorithm that is this illusion of what we believe to be our life, that is where the answer for the purpose of this life is found.
Alcoholism has been the watershed of my life. Everything that occurred before my recovery was leading to my AA experience. Everything that followed that initial exposure to AA has been a building block to the transformation that has occurred within me as a result.
This describes the training wheels I acquired in AA and applied to the rest of my life. I call these training wheels “Acceptance”. Accepting what is and working with that rather than trying to deal with what I would rather it be. This has brought me untold peace.
I could never have chosen to be the miserable drunk I was. I could never have chosen to be a recovered “Alky” the rest of my life. The circumstances of alcoholism forced me to change course in the life I had lived to the time of my recovery. The change was not something I willingly chose. It was nonetheless something over which I had no choice.
The results were formidable, and they continued. They continued right down to my being diagnosed with AD.
Given that diagnosis I saw but two alternatives from which to choose.
The first choice: Suffer it and all its consequences. Ask “why me, haven’t I had enough?” and lament it from thereon in.
The second choice: Accept it; acknowledge there is nothing I can do about it. In that I can then look for some good because of it.
It is the second choice I have made. If writing this, my personal experience of these events, if it can be of some good for you or anyone else who might read this, then my having AD is purposeful and fulfilling for me.
That is the Buddhism I see and incorporate into my life. It is the exercise of love and compassion for the suffering of others, the desire to relieve that suffering, that is my gift in life, my source of satisfaction. It is directing my attention away from me to the needs of others. It is my spiritual goal.
I was educated Christian, in Catholic Schools, four years with the Benedictines in College. After AA and spiritual awakening I searched for more. I found spiritual fulfillment in Reform Judaism. My favorite field of study is comparative religion. It was in the pursuit of this I read Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation” a treatise about the Axial Age named such by Karl Jaspers. From this I read Armstrong’s “Life of Buddha.”
Reading of Buddha and about Buddhism has been a further transformational development for me. It names and codifies the experience of AA applied to all of life. As such I remain grounded in Christianity, affiliated with Judaism, enamored by Buddhism, now able to call myself a JewBu!
Mike Donohue
My Blog: AGING IN PLACE http://im-mike.blogspot.com/
I was raised a Catholic. Educated in a wonderful belief system that Catholicism is. I continued to immerse myself in the study of it. My studies led me to Judaism which I embraced in mid-life.
When confronted with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continuing with my penchant to study, I tried to understand the consequences of my having this disease. This guided me to the study of Buddhism. Embracing the mind set and the practices of the Way of Buddhism I was enabled to deal with my diagnosis in a far better way. I am not a religious Buddhist although I do follow the Way. As such I remain a Jew.
This Part II of this four part series of essays about Spiritual Undertaking deals in an abbreviated way to the application of what I have learned to dealing with my diagnosis of AD.
Transformation has been a continuous and unfolding process with me since discovering the spiritual/existential program in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) first encountered by me 34 years ago. At the age of 38, my life in ruins, I turned to AA as a means of stopping my use and abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs which I was unable to myself. I was totally out of control and slipping fast. Entry into AA, adopting the 12 step program of it, turning my life and my will over to my higher power, quitting my use and abuse as a result delivered me into a totally new and different life.
The delivery amounted to a transformation. It happened by reason of my utilizing the spiritual side of the program of AA in all of my life’s encounters since that time.
The spiritual/existential part of AA is this: You are directed in the AA program to “Turn your life and your will over to the care of your Higher Power!” You do this when you cannot quit using and abusing alcohol/drugs by your own exercise of will power. You do it out of desperation having no place else to turn. You do it; it does it; abstinence occurs! For me it was the first time ever. I could not do it; my Higher Power did it for me. Wow!
Was that an epiphany! I was touched by something outside of myself, transcendent to me, that when sought was willing and able to do for me. Something was added to me, not mine initially, making me better as a result.
After the initial event of obtaining abstinence I kept applying the formula with every troubling event encountered by me. It worked each time “I put it on the table” as I called it. I called it that because at the start I initiated the formula by raising the troubling issue at an AA meeting and asking the group for help.
I was mystified by the efficacy of the formula. It worked each time I used it. Always for the better as a result! The aphorism of AA “Let go Let God” started to have meaning.
Was this a mystical experience, a miracle, a gift of grace, or all those other definitions religion likes to apply to it? It went deeper than that.
As time went on I realized I lived according to a plan. Not my plan, I would never have chosen the painful experiences with which I was continually confronted. It was a plan nonetheless, each event of it sequencing to the next event.
From where did it come, who designed it? I do not have a clue.
It is like the tangled tapestry as it appears on the back side of the loom. While being woven on a loom, on its back side the tapestry is just a tangle of dangling threads. When turned over it shows the tapestry as it really is. On this side of the loom you see a detailed and beautiful picture not the tangle of the other side.
After years, with retrospective hindsight I could see a tapestry comprising my life as it emerged from the entire tangle my life seemed to be as I was experiencing each event.
The tapestry showed me my life was managed by a plan. A plan I could never have chosen. It is also one that I can never reject now as I see the gifts it has produced for me.
It is the experience of my plan, the pain, the difficulties, the successes I secured as a result and the peace and serenity it offers me now as I realize it and appreciate it that I see what has been a continuing transformation unfolding since my first step into AA.
What is it about? I of course cannot tell you. I saw some answers in Chardin and Tilich, Christian Philosophers. I found more in Heschel and Buber, Jewish Philosophers. I found it in particular in Buber’s “I & Thou” The transcendent encounter with “Thou” offers credence to the possibility produced in the transformation."
I finally found the most extensive answer and the simplest in the teachings of Buddhism. AA is Buddhism Applied to Living. On finally studying Buddhism more than 30 years after my recovery from alcoholism I found the why for what happened and progressed in me.
I stepped beyond the material consequence and found my overall consciousness waiting to be worked with and worked for bettering my lot. Love, compassion, meditation, egolessness, accepting the illusion of our lives; it is in the concepts suggested by the foregoing words that I found the starting key. Humbly and respectfully utilizing these keys, working with our involvement in this giant algorithm that is this illusion of what we believe to be our life, that is where the answer for the purpose of this life is found.
Alcoholism has been the watershed of my life. Everything that occurred before my recovery was leading to my AA experience. Everything that followed that initial exposure to AA has been a building block to the transformation that has occurred within me as a result.
This describes the training wheels I acquired in AA and applied to the rest of my life. I call these training wheels “Acceptance”. Accepting what is and working with that rather than trying to deal with what I would rather it be. This has brought me untold peace.
I could never have chosen to be the miserable drunk I was. I could never have chosen to be a recovered “Alky” the rest of my life. The circumstances of alcoholism forced me to change course in the life I had lived to the time of my recovery. The change was not something I willingly chose. It was nonetheless something over which I had no choice.
The results were formidable, and they continued. They continued right down to my being diagnosed with AD.
Given that diagnosis I saw but two alternatives from which to choose.
The first choice: Suffer it and all its consequences. Ask “why me, haven’t I had enough?” and lament it from thereon in.
The second choice: Accept it; acknowledge there is nothing I can do about it. In that I can then look for some good because of it.
It is the second choice I have made. If writing this, my personal experience of these events, if it can be of some good for you or anyone else who might read this, then my having AD is purposeful and fulfilling for me.
That is the Buddhism I see and incorporate into my life. It is the exercise of love and compassion for the suffering of others, the desire to relieve that suffering, that is my gift in life, my source of satisfaction. It is directing my attention away from me to the needs of others. It is my spiritual goal.
I was educated Christian, in Catholic Schools, four years with the Benedictines in College. After AA and spiritual awakening I searched for more. I found spiritual fulfillment in Reform Judaism. My favorite field of study is comparative religion. It was in the pursuit of this I read Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation” a treatise about the Axial Age named such by Karl Jaspers. From this I read Armstrong’s “Life of Buddha.”
Reading of Buddha and about Buddhism has been a further transformational development for me. It names and codifies the experience of AA applied to all of life. As such I remain grounded in Christianity, affiliated with Judaism, enamored by Buddhism, now able to call myself a JewBu!
Mike Donohue
My Blog: AGING IN PLACE http://im-mike.blogspot.com/
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