Friday, May 18, 2007

My Mornings

7:21am
I was a monk for several years. During that time in my life mornings were rejuvenative and precious. I would consistently wake up very early and spend hours in meditation, reading spiritual subject matter, and spending time with others for the sole purpose of glorifying God. This was hours of my life—everyday. Whatever else happened on a particular day, at least I had a productive morning. I had those intense hours of deep spiritual nourishment as a foundation that I could build on.

I bring this up as a contrast to my present life. There are certainly days when I have spiritually productive mornings. I sometimes even go for stretches of weeks or more where I get into a groove and consistently, day after day, get up and start on the right track. I spend time meditating, worshiping, and journaling. Sometimes yoga is part of those mornings too. When I have, whether it’s for a single day or for weeks at a time, I never regret that time spent. I can’t remember a time looking back thinking, “I sure wish I wouldn’t have done my meditation this morning.” Quite the opposite. I’m always glad I’ve put in the time to be reflective, contemplative, and done my best to connect spiritually.

But alas and alack, I’m struggling these days. For years now I have used mornings to act out. Not all the time, certainly, but enough so that mornings are high-risk time for me, a trigger. It’s a time when a craving hits, when my mind is used to getting a fix and it wants another. Rationality goes out the window here. It’s not about intelligence or a lack thereof. It’s not that I don’t understand that acting out isn’t good for me. It’s not that I don’t get it, that if I start down that road I’ll easily spend hours consumed, enveloped in the bubble of addiction, wrapped up in sexual fantasy. All that, I can comprehend. If you asked me to explain the negative consequences of acting out, even on a morning when I was determined to do so, I could make quite a comprehensive list for you. No problem. But by the time I’ve gotten to that point, the point where it’s in my head that I want to act out, I need to act out—it’s just really too late.

Are there measures in my life I can take to stop from acting out? Are there choices I can make that are healthy and that will go a long way to protect me from acting out? Can I fashion my life so that I largely reduce the possibility or desire to act out? Yes, yes, and yes. But if I’ve failed to make good choices, if I’ve failed to put the proper safeguards in place, if I haven’t been conscious of how I control my environment, at some point it all becomes too little, too late.

It’s like this: I’m taking a trip in a few weeks. I could really go wherever I want. I’ve got the time and the means (well, to a degree). But the closer I get to actually making the trip the harder it is to back out and change my plans. At a certain point it is in fact nearly impossible to change those plans.

While I’m researching and thinking about the trip, it’s easy to go this place or that. I just have to make up my mind. But then, I make some hotel reservations and buy a plane ticket. The hotel reservations are usually no big deal, easy to cancel as long as you meet whatever window they’ve set up. The plane tickets, however, not quite as easy usually. Right?, at a minimum you usually can only use the fare as credit toward another destination and there’s often a change fee that accompanies that. Even just to change your flight by a few hours can often set you back 50 or 100 bucks. Somewhat difficult, but still possible. Until you get on the plane. Once you’re there, in your seat, you’re gonna have a hard time convincing the friendly airline folks that you need to get off the flight. Still, they might let you off and hurriedly remove your luggage from the cargo bay (carefully inspecting it, no doubt). But once they shut that door, you’re on your way to your destination.

I could on explaining how say, if you have a layover, you could still buy a new ticket and go somewhere else or decide to stay in the city of your layover (again with a panicky air crew removing your luggage) but it would be expensive and you’d have to go through the trouble of new hotel and car rental reservations (we didn’t talk about car rental before…hmm). But I think you get the point. It’s like that with addiction too. Once an addict has made certain choices, he gets to a point of no return. That’s why his choices are so important.

I know for me I’m often unwilling to make those choices. I don’t want to be restricted. I want to be in control of everything I do, everything in my world. The great irony is, of course, that I can’t control much of anything least of which, my addiction. If I surrender a little bit of control at the outset I get a great bit of freedom in return—freedom from a destructive behavior that controls my life. If I refuse to give up that bit of control and freedom at the outset, I lose any of it and cave to that negative force surrendering to its control.

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