Jim Dollar writes....

(The Pastor of Presbyterian Church of the Covenant)

07/02/04

Carol Steger pointed out that when AA says "Acceptance is the solution to all of my problems today," they mean "Accepting that What IS is, is the solution to all of my problems today." We have to start somewhere. Starting with What IS-this is it, this is how things are, this is what can be done about it, and that's that-is the foundation for living our lives as well as they can be lived. When we deny the fundamental truth: What IS is, and refuse to "face the music," we step into an unreal world of our own making, wrap the fantasies about us, and tell ourselves whatever we want to hear to get through the day-and make things worse by pretending that things are not what they are.

What IS? That's the question. What ARE we dealing with? What exactly DO we face, and how exactly does our behavior contribute to that? What are WE doing to create, sustain, maintain, produce, cultivate, encourage the problems that are waiting for us when we wake up? What could we do to reduce, diminish, restrict, restrain, remove those problems? How does what we tell ourselves about our problems-how we think about our problems-contribute to our problems and keep them neatly in place?

Awareness opens doors we don't know are there. People with problems they cannot begin to manage are overlooking doors that are "right in front of them." They operate under assumptions they never think to test. They are consumed by fear, or by certainty, they never question, examine, face. They cannot look at the things that keep their problems in place. But, they are never more than a realization or two away from "a new lease on life." Yet, they have so much invested in their old way of thinking about their lives that they will probably never open themselves to the necessary revisions, and step through the door into the world of redrawn conclusions, where all things are new, or, at least, where everything is transformed, if unchanged.

Awareness transforms! It's the only thing that does. That could be a bumper sticker. Yet, the barriers to awareness are everywhere. We seem to be much more comfortable questioning nothing, assuming everything, living lives we think will save us, while giving ourselves double doses of toxic poisoning every day. Because. What? Because it's so hard to change? Because we are afraid changing anything will require us to change everything, and we don't want things to be that different, only better? Because it's so hard to say, "Wait a minute! This isn't working!"? Because we don't know what we would do instead? Because we don't have anyone to talk with about these things?

Well, there are books to read. Aaron Beck, Murray Bowman, Albert Ellis, Martin Seligman, Edwin Friedman, Wendell Johnson, Robert Johnson, Rachel Remen, Harriet Lerner, M.C. Richards, to mention a few, offer instruction and direction to those who can receive instruction and direction. We don't have to sit sogging, or slosh around, in our own construction of reality when reconstruction is only a perspective shift away. Awareness is life. The doors are "right there." But, it takes being fed up to find them. It takes having enough to be able to see.