It's More about the Shame

It's 3 a.m. at the railroad tracks in Palo Alto, California. I'm a security guard responsible for insuring no one stands on the tracks to commit suicide. (the wave of suicides of Dunn High School students)

An African American homeless woman walks on the sidewalk where I sit, and we start to talk. Suddenly, she said "You are so full of shame." Never have forgotten that night. How could she tell? How could she know what even I didn't know? How could my denied sense of shame be so blatant that she could feel it herself? 

As I write, like a flood, personal memories encompass me of shameful acts which thanks be to God did not then nor do they now define who I am. Thanks be to God for the SPAA (Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) member who reminded me of that during one of our ZOOM meetings. What I am is ...  a child of God. 

For me, shame is mostly about sexual shame. That pernicious influence upon me, like ink spilled onto white paper, is that sex is sinful, even my parents' married sex which inaugurated my life meant that I'm an incarnation of sin and shame.

I have felt and at times still do feel shame at the incontrovertible fact that I do not have the will power to keep myself from looking at pornography and masturbating. Shame because I am powerless to keep myself from objectifying women as sexual gadgets. Shame because my proclivity is to seek comfort by sexual fantasizing. 

But my shame materializes into various other forms. Shame at being single for a decade. Shame at permitting fear to direct my behavior. Examples include shying away from sharing my faith, failures to finish a task once started,  ignoring the voice of my conscience, and acting at the behest of my emotions. 

What is the primary solvent to the pigmentation of my shame? 

Experience teaches me that the most effective healing ingredient subsides in sharing the shame with others, aka, other SPAA members. They understand. They have felt the same. And the sharing itself dissipates the secrecy in which the shame festers. 

More solutions.

The intensive cultivation of my relationship with my Higher Power, Jesus Christ. Why? Because prayer (Step 11) engages me in the changes God is bringing about inside me; those changes nourish my character towards factors that dispel shame. Self respect. Caring love of myself. Courage to defend my boundaries. Acts of compassion kindled out of reflective consideration as to how to best employ. 12 Step work, consistent and thorough. 

SPAA has an approved document on shame which is read from time to time at meetings. Shame at times becomes the topic upon which to share. It is said among us SPAA members that shame is as problematic for us as is resentment for members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Why so vital for us, for me to apply its treatments. 

Two Promises Proved to be True

The Promises, as referred to in the AA book, in my experience, have never been broken promises. 

However, patience, while working the Twelve Steps, was essential to obtain the promises. They didn't  come true overnight. But after more than a year in the AA program, some promises did come true in the form of a pink cloud---a splendid beauty of a recognition of God's love accessed through the step work itself. 

What a price I paid in struggle to be entirely honest about my character defects---my false ego fighting to maintain its sway. Simple but not easy? An apt AA saying aptly put.

That first pink cloud passed, as all clouds do, yet it put an indelible impression upon me. Where there was despair hope had blossomed forth in a tulip called a Faith that Works---a believing that stilled the agitations of doubt. Misgivings disappeared to be supplanted by confidence in my Higher Power, Jesus Christ.

                                                                

I will write now about two ways in which the Promises have come true for me. 

First, my self-conscious fear to speak in meetings has entirely dissipated. I extemporaneously share openly and honestly in meetings with twenty people participating. I speak from my heart while pondering the most apt words to express myself. Before, I cringed at the very thought of sharing. My blood raced and my heart pumped so much so that I shared  only at meetings sparsely attended. I feared bored or objecting looks on faces. "Fear of people will disappear" is one promise The Promises guarantee. Now, after about thirty years in recovery, that promise has come true for me.

The second promise that came true branches off "fear of people will disappear."

Before, I would slip unwittingly into "catching the eyes" of men. I feared in a homophobic way. Gay men would hit on me and I had no consciousness of why. I plagued myself with doubts about my sexual orientation. 

Now those symptoms have almost all completely disappeared. I no longer fear doing nor do I "catch the eyes of men." Although in the past homophobic, now good friends of mine live out of the proverbial closet and some  in married relationships with their partners.

Although in the past I have had same sex encounters, I now realize I am predominately heterosexual. I didn't get any "conversion" therapy that brought about this change. The change took place from working the 12 Steps of the Big Book of Alcoholocs Anonymous, particularly inside the SPAA program.

Thus, that is the second of one of many, many other promises that have come true for me. 

Step Six Oughts and Thoughts

I felt this Step was gonna be a hop skip and a jump Step, a little Step, a relatively unimportant Step in the greater scheme of recovery. Feeling wise. 

I've found each Step of the Twelve Steps fitted neatly one atop the prior in the right place at the right time for me the addict person working those Steps in order to recover---each served as preparation for the next. 

Step Six:

"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

I will write about the way taking Step Six best ought to be taken and the way I did it in actuality. 

The former fist: Entirely, that's the main word, the hinge word. All the way ready, completely ready, no holds barred ready and ready in the entirety of readiness. 

Conceptualize getting ready for a formal dinner; You're the man getting ready to go on a dinner date during which you plan to ask her the woman you love to marry you. You shave the entirety of the scrub off your face, you trim your nails, you shower for an hour then on goes a dash of Aqua Velva. You dress in a stylish tuxedo. 

You're making yourself entirely ready!

Switch now to how might preparing to take Step Six ought to be.

Pray daily a half hour for a week. Fast one day, bread and water only. Double down on reading the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Meditate on what entirely ready means. Do a work of mercy and almsgiving. 

I didn't do this, but if I had I would have been  much more entirely ready for my encounter with my Higher Power, the Christ, in Step Six. The man had entirely prepared himself for his marriage proposal.

The Six Step Stepper was "entirely ready to ask God to remove all these defects of character."

Now onto the actual experience of my taking Step Six. Preparation? I don't recall much about preparation. However, I believe I did prepare because I am and was back then a seriously intent person when it comes to recovery, especially recovery from my addiction to sex and pornography. 

I took the Sixth Step in concert with my sponsors in AA, OA and SPAA. Each time when taking that Step was sacred and imbued with reverence. I recall that. At no time did I ever take Step Six lightly. 

Thank you for reading this. 

My next blog post will be about how repeatedly working the Twelve Steps has made so many of The Promises come true for me.  

The Judgement Blog

The font of this post emerges from my readings of the book "Constantine's Sword, The Church and the Jews, A History." by James Carroll. 

As such, Christians and Jews, I judge them as I do myself, who being both Christian by selection and Jew by blood, claim entitlement to do so.

To a higher standard towards those Chosen, as opposed to the lesser standard I use to judge the heathen. These pagans sin unwittingly as by their un-born again nature they miss the mark by the spiritually blind and deaf being of nature itself. 

But as the religious Jew lives and breathes by adherence to the Law, and lives by its Talmudic interpretations, yet confused, yet transgressing that same, to him, to myself, I judge condemned to helpless need of a Messiah.

As the Christian Churches claims salvation through this same Messiah, yet still occurred millennia of pograms up until occurred the Nazi Holocaust besmirches the gospel books themselves. The Jews killed Jesus, are Gentiles not inculcated of this "fact" in the bones and veins of Western Civilization? 

As this book contends, a thick rope of connection does exist between the way the Gospels are read and interpreted and have been, and still are, and the Final Solution. Yet, I, as a Roman Catholic, my soul breathes on the words in the Jewish Scriptures, the Psalms, Samuel, the stories of Jacob and Ruth. 

Dear Reader, in the tone of my writing, do you sense compassion? Can I manufacture this compassion, No!

My family's unhidden Jew, Papa, refused more of the Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane painting to hang over his bed in his room. Loud the cries of anguish as his Catholic daughter lunged to force back the painting of a depiction of anguish itself. 

It is my judgement against both the selves of my Jew blood and Christian Catholic election ---that harsh and unyeilding judgement---the defect of my character, the handmaiden of the pride sin I fear unforgivable. 

But, I am not the Judge. 

My portrayal of myself as judge upon people, upon those I have loved and admired, the enactment in practice of this lie as me a legititmate judge has wreaked devastation upon fields of rich personal relations. 

But also, the practice of the Ninth Step in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous has repaired and restored most of these stricken relations to health.

Acceptance

Written in my emergency write out journal some four hours ago.

I accept I am single and I accept that my single status is only going to change by a miracle.

Even though I do believe in miracles, as my recovering from my assortment of addictions so attests, miracles are extremely rare. I am 99 and 9/10 percent likely to remain single for the remainder of my life.

I accept these odds as part of the way life is for me and thus decide not to give a hoot about it. As I am a believer in Christ Jesus, I will carry this most heavy cross as did He carry His.  

I also know I will choose to continue to torment myself about sex, love and marriage, etc, and my single status. I know I will never have peace about it as well. I accept this self tortured me that I am as well. 

As a result, I now choose to cease any and all further searching to find a woman with whom to have a committed romantic relationship. 

Postscript: After having written the above, the accepting, I find a peace within myself about my single status that is even now running deep within  my soul. 

In Accordance with the Taking of Step Five

My last SPAA recovery themed post wrote about taking AA Big Book Steps One, Two, Three and Four. This post delves into experience taking the supremely confessional and purgative Step Five. (SPAA stands for Sex and Porn Addicts Anonymous) 

I consider it a sacred step; its process breathes with lungs of prayer and connection with God and man. After Step Five, I had no more hidden secrets, none in my awareness, and this released an enormous burden of weight I didn't realize I had been shouldering until after having taken the step. 

Step Four's fact-finding mission of self-discovery revealed the faults of my character which I had hidden from myself. I had been too often reacting to faults in others, faults inside me which I had projected onto them--- an escape hatch out of avoiding responsibility for fixing my own self. Step Four opened the curtain. It allowed sunlight to shine upon what darkness had previously hidden. 

When I took Step Five, I admitted to this newly discovered knowledge, to myself, to another person, my sponsor, and to my conception of a Higher Power. The result transformed me, I believe mostly because of the admission to my sponsor. Why is that? Yes, to myself, great, to God, great, wonderfully needfully great, yet...to someone who could rat me out? Reflect upon the trust I needed to have in that person. This IS God becoming human. 

And that's the sense of relief that occurred in me. A lightness. A sense of freedom. The sense of the cleansing of the soul never before experienced. For the taker of the step, the final stage of the Step Five process is.....to be alone with God in reflection. In my process, I prayed my heart out with prayers of thanksgiving for the tool of Step Five. I was like in the bosom of gratitude, in the hands of a Lord and God whose love for me is without measure.

El Viaje, por Emily Gelvez

 

Gracias Emily por tu obra al este blog. Emily es una immigrante desde Venezuela ahora viviendo en Ecuador. Pero el viaje de ella a Ecuador no solo era una transicion a un pais extranjero. Era una transicion del alma de ella, del espiritu de ella y el corazon de ella.

Nadie te dice por cuánto tiempo será, y nadie te dice que será tan difícil exponerte a un nuevo mundo, dónde eres vulnerable para todo. Caminas confundido entre la gente esperando que alguien te diga que todo va a estar bien. 

Es una sensación de adrenalina, de ver lo desconocido para ti. Miles de preguntas pasan por tu cabeza y sin encontrar alguna respuesta, solo eres tú y tu maleta, que por cierto se vuelve tan pesada por todas esas espectativas, sueños, ideales que terminan convirtiéndose en miedo. 

Pero la vida es así te presenta momentos donde debes tomar decisiones, las personas te dicen "debes arriesgar si no nunca sabrás si lo puedes lograr o no", pero en el fondo saben que será difícil. Pero aún así decidí hacer mi maleta y enfrentarme a lo desconocido. 

Al salir de esa terminal respire aire fresco, en el viaje me sentía que no podía respirar y no era por la altura o el clima, pero ustedes ya saben tenía un nudo en la garganta por todas aquellas cosas que había dejado, familia y amigos y quizás algunos lugares que siempre frecuentaba, pero me dije en voz alta, es momento de avanzar...