Cool Water: Alcoholism, Mindfulness, and Ordinary Recovery

This posting contains notes taken from the below listed book. This book has provided me with many tools neccesary to overcome fears and be the person my Higher Power wants me to be:

Cool Water: Alcoholism, Mindfulness, and Ordinary Recovery
By William Alexander

>To be mindful is to be fully in the present moment.
> Mindfulness, then, is a tool of Ordinary Recovery; it is the one way to engage the reality of recovery from alcoholism in the midst of cultural chaos.
>In a wonderful and paradoxical way, the gift of addiction is the possibility to walk the path of freedom from addiction. If I were not an addict, I could not be free.
>Both Zen Buddhism and twelve step programs insist on ego reduction as vital to sanity and awakening.
> As active alcoholics we suffer alone in a savage state of denial and rage. As recovering alcoholics we still suffer, just as everyone does, but we do so in the company of other alcoholics and thus participate in a mutual antidote to suffering. The fact of compassion is realized.
>The first step of AA – “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable” – is an awakening to the reality of suffering and to it’s causes.
> To be mindful is to have the heart/mind fully focused on the present moment.
> “All of us,” my teacher says, “are perfect and complete, exactly as we are, lacking nothing.”
> When we are mindful, we are showing up for our lives.
> I am not the problem. The problem is in me, it is not me. But just as the problem is not me, it is also not, not me. It contains me.

> The 12 steps have an astuteness that makes it perilous to ignore them. There is a purity in the ideas of cleaning house, paying attention to the mind, and helping others that has made AA the most successful abstinence program ever. How, then, are you supposed to proceed, believing that the 12 steps contain the promise of freedom, but without the anchor of a belief in a God who’s running the show, a benevolent God of rules and Judgments?
>The short form of my understanding is that God’s will is unknowable and it is the desire to do that will that is, itself, the totality of our achievement. As a Buddhist, I believe that through practice of the eight fold path, I am practicing God’s will. I aspire daily to practice intelligently, with honesty, openness, and willingness, I aspire to be kind. I fail more often than I succeed. I hope, nonetheless, never to lose the aspiration.
>Some Prayers From this book:

Waking Up:
Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live each moment fully and to look at all beings with the eyes of compassion.

Turning on The Water:
Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the Earth. Miraculously, water comes to us, and sustains all life.

Washing My Hands:
Water flows over these hands. May I use them skillfully to preserve our precious planet.

Brushing My Teeth:
Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth, I vow to speak purely and lovingly. When my mouth is fragrant with right speech, a flower blooms in the garden of my heart.

Hearing The Bell:
Listen, listen this wonderful sound brings me back to my true self.

~ When I am moved to complain about others, I vow with all beings to remember that Karma is endless and it’s loving that leads to love.
~When the children get cranky and whiny, I vow with all beings to stop what I am doing and cuddle and show them I know times are tough.
~ When the dentist takes up his drill, I vow with all beings, to welcome the pain and discomfort as doors to a steady mind.
~ In a paranoid cycle of thoughts, I vow with all beings to enjoy a cold glass of water and to step out and look at the sky.
~ When I reach for the keys to my car, I vow with all beings, to consider alternative transport: feet, or a bike, or the bus.
~ Watching gardeners label their plants, I vow with all beings to practice horticulture and let plants identify me.

> Your suffering is mine. My suffering is yours.
> “I have a disease that keeps telling me I don’t have a disease.” Addiction clouds the imaginations looking glass and unfeeling ourselves, we see the hangman’s smile but never feel the rope.