Tag Archives: despair

As Man Now Is . . . God Once Was

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Deepak Chopra, in Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, states, “We are all Gods in embryo.” [The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, pg 98] This reminds me of a saying attributed to Lorenzo Snow, fifth President of the LDS Church, (1898-1901):  “As man now is, God once was.  As God now is, man may become.”

This morning I was listening to an essay on the 45th Verse of the Tao Te Ching by Wayne Dyer. A poem by Meister Eckhart was quoted on this “man-God” subject:  “Every object, every creature, every man, woman and child has a soul and it is the destiny of all, to see as God sees, to know as God knows, to feel as God feels, to Be as God Is.” (Change Your Thoughts Change Your Mind, pg 221).

Musing on this poem,  I was led to another piece of literature that I site in my book, Perfect Brightness of Hope, Appendix II, page  220 [Cedarfort, 2012 publication]. Though too lengthy to quote in this blog, Apostle Matthew Cowley, in one of his many speeches relating to AA and alcoholism,  references the Lorenzo Snow saying in conjunction with a man he heard testifying in an AA meeting.  (Yes, Apostle Cowley was a fan of, and occasionally present in AA Meetings.) Cowley describes the situation in the man’s own words: “Five years ago I was in the gutter, degenerate, demoralized, and had been drunk for ages. . . . wife and kids left me, lost my home and I was just turned loose and down in the gutter.” Then the man stated that AA had got a hold of him and that his life had changed dramatically.  He became active in his church, and eventually went to the LDS Temple and was sealed to his wife and children. Apostle Cowley quotes this man’s final words as he heard them in AA meeting that evening: “Fellows, from the gutter to the temple of God in six years. You are looking at a God. As God now is, many may become.”  [Matthew Cowley Speaks, 340-341]

For a few of Brother Cowley’s wonderful speeches given about AA and to “the AA” as he called it, refer to my appendices II, Understand the Less Fortunate, in Perfect Brightness of Hope, pages 219-228.

His Sad Eyes Blessed Me

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For a dozen years I was an LDS Home Teaching companion to a fellow who was mentally handicapped.  Harold was a wonderful man, full of childlike humility and love.  His large stature was balanced by an equally large, continuous and genuine smile.  His not always intelligible speech would always be clarified by his patient and repeated attempts to convey what he knew he was saying. But said in “Haroldspeak,” it would take more than a few attempts for me to understand. Harold passed away this past week. My wife and I, along with my little dog, Buddy Wu LI (He is a Schipperke, a Belgium barge dog), drove the 4 hours to St. George (Utah) to participate in and attend his funeral.  I was privileged to say a few words. With my guitar, I sang a slightly altered version of the Mormon Primary song, “I Am a Child of God.”  The funeral was not a sad affair, more a celebration of a special man. Indeed special: the first mentally handicapped boy in Utah (perhaps in the entire country) to earn the Eagle Scout Badge. Having a certain belief in Life after earthlife, I know I will one day reunite and celebrate with a now perfect, whole, and precious man.

But this blog was not intended to be about Harold.  It is intended to be about the homeless hitchhiker I encountered at the halfway point rest stop near Cove Fort, Utah. As I walked into the small convenience store that sponsored the rest stop, a man in his late twenties was sitting on a bench in front of the store.  His clothing was dirty and worn. Apparently all that he owned as he had the contents of a small backpack laid out on the bench beside him.  There was a piece of climbing rope, something I’m sure he had salvaged in his travels, a cell phone taken apart with the battery outside of it. Again something I’m thinking he picked up. Some soda crackers, and small pieces of cloth were about all I could notice as I walked past him. As I looked at his face, his nose had a large recent scab from a fight or a fall. But what affected me most was the sadness reflected in his eyes.  I recognized it. It was a sadness I had known earlier in my life. A hopelessness only those who have experienced could recognize. As I walked into the store, I felt haunted by those eyes. There was no anger in them, no hatred, no victim. Just a profound sadness.  I encounter homeless from time to time in the small city I live in. They seem to notice me as they usually ask if I have a “dollar” to  spare. It’s probably because I am usually wearing an “Affliction” shirt; or I just look like someone who understands Karma.  But this man’s hand was not out and no query was offered.  He seemed intent in examining the few possessions he owned.  As I entered the small store, a parable I had been pondering earlier in the week came to mind. The setting for this teaching of Jesus’ was in the now-cleansed temple on Tuesday of Passion Week (The week before Easter Sunday). It would be Gethsemane on Thursday and The Cross on Friday. It was a parable that Jesus must have given with great love and concern for those He would soon leave.  It ends with “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Having earned, through my alcoholism and addiction, membership in the “Least of These My Brethren,” club, daily encounters with this “social class” are more pronounced.  When I left the store, I had to get the man’s attention to hand him the few dollars change I had.  He immediately recognized me as the man who was “walking the little black dog and playing the guitar in the grassy area near the rest stop.” I had taken a moment to tune my guitar and practice the song I would sing at the funeral.   His intelligent response and keen attention was unexpected.  He said, “Do you have a leash for your dog?” I replied in the negative as I never put Buddy on a leash. He is more than obedient to my every command and request. The fellow reached into his bag and pulled out a quality retractable dog leash and offered it to me with the explanation that he had picked it up when someone had left it at an earlier rest stop. He had kept it thinking maybe he would encounter a stray dog in his travels.  He offered it to me. I mumbled something about Karma and went back into the store for a bag of chips.  I had to leave quickly. He would have noticed the tears in my eyes.  I really wanted to just hug him and tell him that in Surrender to God he would be protected and things would be OK.  With my purchase, I obtained some cash威而鋼
 and, upon leaving the store, handed the man enough money to help him a little on his way.   As I walked back to my car, I felt an almost overpowering love for this, just moments before, stranger.  His parting gentle  “Bless you” echoed through my mind as I drove away. I am sure I will never forget his sad eyes. Truly–he had blessed me; and, surely–He had blessed me!

Hitting Bottom

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In my last BLOG, I provided the story of Bill W’s surrender and the spiritual experience that began his lifelong quest to help other alcoholics. The following BLOG, quoted from pages 135-137 of PBH, describes my “hitting bottom.” Prior to this experience, I had been trying unsuccessfully to get sober for ten years. As my alcoholism progressed, I often stayed at alcohol treatment facilities hoping to find help for my addiction.  The following entry begins with an account of my next to last visit at a treatment center and ends with my final surrender:

Remaining at this facility for a week, I began to feel alive again. The staff had been extraordinary in their encouragement. Leaving treatment “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” I felt a renewed commitment to my wife, to the clinic, and to myself that I would never, ever drink again. My wife told me that, promise or no promise, she would no longer stand by and watch me die. But this time, I was confident.  I was convinced I had reached the lowest bend of the alcoholic pipeline and was heading up the recovery side.

I was wrong. “Never, ever” is too long a time for an alcoholic to commit to. Two months later, I checked back into the same treatment facility.  I was crushed. I was certain there would be no more chances with my wife. I knew there shouldn’t be. The fact that I had let her down was威而鋼
 one thing, but there was more. The National Guard had relieved me from duty—permanently! Then, following a medical exam at the treatment center for a painful hip, I was informed that, at the young age of forty, I had degenerative arthritis. If I wanted to continue walking, I would need a total hip replacement! “You have to hit your bottom,” the Old-Timers say. Like the funny little fellow with the big ears at the Alcohol Recovery Center had advised me many years earlier, “You have to be willing to crawl through cut glass to get sober!” Well, shattered glass was all around. I had hit bottom directly in the middle of it.

I knew I had. I hit my bottom like a concrete block plunging through a twelve-story building, shattering glass as it went. When I hit, I didn’t even bounce—I just crunched into a lifeless heap. More than a degenerative hip joint, I was a degenerative disease—degenerative addiction, degenerative marriage, degenerative soul. Depression rolled over me like the waves of a dark, stormy ocean. Heavy and suffocating, my condition was more than I could bear. I had no more tries left in me. I despaired. I prayed. My prayers were unlike any I had ever uttered. I didn’t ask for anything. Not to stay sober. Not to have my job back. Not for my wife to stay. Not to feel peace. Not to remove my pain. Not for anything! I was conquered. All I could do was mutter words about my total nothingness and cry out for help.

As my prayers continued, something about the way I viewed life began to change. It was not as if I had been struck with sudden brilliance. I was not filled with the burnings of truth or peace. I realized it was futile to say, “This time I’m going to stay sober,” or “I promise . . .” It was just the opposite. Alcohol had won. I was broken. I knew I couldn’t stay sober—no matter what. As this realization settled upon me, for the first time in my life, I honestly and completely admitted my powerlessness and gave my life totally over to a power greater than myself. With childlike demeanor, I humbly asked for God’s protection, direction and care. As a hopeless beggar, I surrendered all of me into the waiting arms of my Heavenly Father. “Do with me what you will. I can do nothing.”

 I began to feel tiny stirrings within me—a feeling of warmth, barely detectable, as if a tiny penlight had turned on in my bosom. A powerful key turned. Somehow, I knew in my heart that it could be over. I stood at that point I had heard described in hundreds of AA meetings—the testimony of myriad alcoholics who had hit bottom and had found the only way up: “Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.” (From Chapter Five of Alcoholic’s Anonymous).  I knew I didn’t possess the ability to manage all of my life. I couldn’t even manage a small piece of it. I suddenly understood that if I could just focus my energy on today, turning the guilt of yesterday and the fear of tomorrow over to God, then this terrible ordeal could be over. Like finding and putting in place a long lost, last piece of a puzzle, the picture became clear. I understood what to do. My life could be pieced back together—I simply needed to do it in humility and surrender—and one moment at a time!

Surrender is not “Giving Up,” It IS “Giving Over!”

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In war, an army surrenders when the enemy has sufficiently “beaten” the army into “submission.” In this case, surrender is defeat. To the alcoholic or addict, the enemy is the poison to which he or she is addicted.  Eventually-and unfailingly, the enemy wins. The paradox: In this defeat comes victory. We addicts come to understand that it isn’t “willpower” that gets us permanently sober. Just the opposite: It is total and complete surrender to a Power Greater Than Ourselves. Surrender is not “giving up!” It is “giving over!”

A powerful example of this concept can be found in my book’s first appendices: “AA: A Brief History”. I relate the co-founder of AA, Bill W’s, surrender story. This experience occurred after many years of uncontrolled drinking. A fellow “sober” alcoholic had testified to him of the power of God: (This experience can be found in the AA Big Book: Alcoholics Anonymous, published by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc, 1976, Pages 7-13.)

“The frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum They did not need to tell me. I knew, and almost welcomed the idea.”

“But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known. Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not: There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute; and this was none at all.”

“That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than I was. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.”

“At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens. There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under his care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself was nothing;that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.”

In a later record, Bill described more intimately the spiritual experience that occurred during his last stay in the hospital:

“My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. For the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, ‘If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything.’  Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind, not of air but of spirit, was blowing. And then it (the idea) burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, ‘So this is the God of the preachers’.” [As Bill Sees It. 1967. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. pg. 2] Note: Bill stayed sober from this experience in 1937 until his death in 1971

In my next BLOG, I will relate my surrender story. Stay tuned:)

 

 

His Holiness, The Dalai Lama on “The Root of This Civilization”

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I was recently re-reading Essential Teachings: His Holiness The Dalai Lama, (North Atlantic Books, 1995) when I came across this quote.  I was taken a back by the awesome power and simple truth of his observation: (Bold and Italics added by Phil)

Look around us at this world that we call “civilized” and that for more than 2000 years has searched to obtain happiness and avoid suffering by false means: trickery, corruption, hate, abuse of power, and exploitation of others. We have searched only for individual and material happiness, opposing people against each other, one race against another, social systems against others.  This has led to a time of fear, of suffering, murder, and famine . . . It is because each person has looked only for his own profit without fear of oppressing others for selfish goals, and this sad and pitiful world is the result. The root of this civilization is rotten, the world suffers, and if it continues in this way, it will suffer more and more.” (pg. xii)

His Holiness offers the cure–and he does so with so much love and conviction!  Can we not practice and train ourselves daily to comply?

“Training our minds, renouncing excess, and living in harmony with others and with ourselves will assure us happiness, even if our daily life is ordinary. And if we should encounter adversity, others will help us because we have been good and kind. We must not forget that even in the most perverted and cruel human being, as long as he is human, a small grain of love and compassion exists that will make him, one day, a Buddah.” (ibid, pgs 6-7)

Observe everything – judge nothing. I offer this teaching with the deepest of love and gratitude to each of you.

Namaste, Phil

Living @5: A Spiritual Course in Thought & Time

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In the near future I will begin a series of BLOGS on my Lifeskills course, “Living @5: A Spiritual Course in Thought and Time.”  I created this course to teach concepts for healthy living to inm犀利士
ates at a local county jail. I have been teaching this daily (well most days)  for over 5 years.  The skills taught are so badly needed in today’s environment.  As I recently read in a comment by the Dalai Lama: “The roots of our society are rotten.” (Essential Teachings of the Dalai Lama -Introduction and on back cover).  My “Living @5 Tree” addresses the rotten roots. More – much more- to come.

Prisoners & Perfect Brightness of Hope

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I recently sent a copy of my new book to a good friend who is serving time in a Utah prison. In a letter to his mom, dated Jan 27, 2012, he mentioned the following:
     “I think I mentioned [in an earlier letter] the (LDS) Branch President’s plan to order 15 copies of Phil’s new book, “Perfect Brightness of Hope,” and his intention to give them to friends and some of the inmates here.  Well, he did so and I’m happy [and not a bit surprised :)] to say that Phil’s life and story have impacted our little community in wonderful ways.  Our Institute class Wednesday night was devoted to the subjects of hope and commitment and Phil’s book was at the center of discussion.  You [Phil] are an inspiration my friend, and your book is a Godsend reborn.  God Bless you for your tireless service.”  Josh

Intended Audience for “Perfect Brightness of Hope” (Segment 1)

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On a hot Sunday morning in July, 1980, following a week of heavy binge drinking and in great despair and hopelessness, I walked mile after mile through neighborhoods in the small Mormon community where I lived. As I walked, I observed many families leaving their homes to attend church. Even though I was filled with remorse and sorrow, I could still feel the goodness of these families. I realized that they had no idea of the sorrowful man who walked, with heavy burden, on the sidewalks of their neighborhoods. On that morning there arose within me a powerful conviction to someday write of my experiences as a Mormon alcoholic. (See page 85 of Perfect Brightness of Hope).

Contrary to the popular notion about my story, the intended audience for my “someday book” that morning was not the alcoholic or addict. It was just the opposite. The powerful desire I felt that morning was to someday help the “good person” —those with no clue about the plight of the alcoholic—to better understand this deadly disease and the plight of those who have it. I was filled with compassion towards the good people I saw that morning.  I felt that if I could someday increase their understanding of me as an addict/alcoholic, I would also increase their compassion toward me, and others like me.  (To be cont.)