Week 5

I've completed 5 weeks of confinement due to foot surgery. These weekends, I've spent more time in spiritual study instead of doing miles outside. This weekend, I was partly reading "Glittering Vices", going to AA meetings, and studying A Course in Miracles.

Fighting giants. The Israelites didn't want to leave the desert and fight the giants in order to enter the promised land (Numbers and Deuteronomy). What giants do I not want to fight, hence staying in a desert. AA meetings have giants at the door. Each and every meeting is an ego battle. I have 28 years of sobriety. Why should I go to meetings? Because AA is a spiritual fellowship and a spiritual program of action for a spiritual malady. That I don't want to go to the fellowship is evidence that I still have the malady.

Silence is not enough. For my ego at least.

Trappings. Trappings are for the ego. If I have trappings, I am somebody. But if I refuse to look special or live in a special place or drive a special car, my ego hates it. Monastic life has trappings. Runners have trappings (those belt buckles we get to 100 miles). Buddhist monks. Lately, it seems like my spiritual life is nothing. I've not had any big moments of clarity or enlightenment. This doesn't mean God went away. It means the ego got nothing. But it led me to realize, what if I hadn't read books about other people's enlightenment experiences? Would I realize there is nothing wrong with this particular moment?

"Lay aside the body and quietly transcend...look you not back...." (ACIM 21.VI.9). Life in the monastery is over and in the past. Running is over and in the past. Quietly transcend.

Spirit soaring. I lay on the floor with one bad leg doing leg lifts. Not exactly as romantic as running 100 miles or climbing a mountain. But my spirit soared.

Accessibility: This week I was at the Hilton in College Station. Since most of the floors have a padded carpet, it was very difficult to get around on wheels. It was like pushing through sand or mud all day. And while they did have a chair lift to get to one of the meeting rooms, it was slightly broken. I got through the broken part and used it once. But later, when I had to go back to that room, I drove my car around to the back of the hotel and went in that way. Then a buffet lunch was provided. I had to ask a colleague to carry my plate since I couldn't hold it in one hand and also push through the carpet. I think I was the only "handicapped" person at the conference.