Spiritual Loneliness

Most of us have seen movies or television depictions of addicts in drug withdrawal.  One of the most moving performances that I recall was that of Diana Ross in the 1972 movie, "Lady Sings the Blues," which portrays the struggle that jazz icon Billie Holiday had with heroin.  Ross made her audience feel Holiday's pain. (I still think she deserved the Academy Award for the performance.)

As I've been withdrawing from work addiction, I too have been adjusting to physical changes.  While I have been working fewer hours and having more fun, I do find that I am often very tired, and I've been sleeping...a lot.

Work addiction triggers other addictions, and it ends up that one of the most destructive is adrenaline addiction.  Adrenaline is a powerful hormone, which nature gave us for emergencies--when we needed to pull out the stops and do something extraordinary.  The classic example is the mom which finds it within herself to lift a car when her child is trapped beneath it.  Adrenaline is supposed to help us do something extraordinary in unusual circumstances.

However, increasingly, adrenaline is being used just to get through our normal daily schedules, where multi-tasking and long hours have become the order of the day.  We, myself included, have often used it to keep us focused on what is in front of us in that moment...and the next...and the next.

I am sure that, rarely having needed the addictive hormone in the last month, I should expect some withdrawal symptoms.  Most troubling to me is how detached that I must have become to my body's physical needs.  Somehow the adrenaline has allowed me to push down my exhaustion so I didn't notice it until I was out from under the destructive influence of the hormone's destructive power when it is used habitually to just get through life.

More important than the physical withdrawal is the spiritual loneliness that I've been feeling.  Back in the day when I lived a normal, relaxed life, I meditated daily, and I prayed off and on all day. Dancing gave me a physical creative outlet almost daily.

My writing kept me in touch with my soul and how I connected with all of human kind through my soul.  Although I've had more time recently, I haven't written much in this blog for these weeks.  I have almost never, even as a child, sat down to write and not had words flow through me.

But, they just haven't been flowing.  I would sit and stare at the computer screen, and nothing would come.  Or a thought would come, and it would be gone as fast as it came because I'd be so physically tired from the adrenaline withdrawal.  Only this week have I been able to sit and get my words again.

Almost always in my life, I've been able to push through what was in front of me and get done what needed to get done.  I've thought that a good thing.  Determination and perseverance of qualities valued in our culture.  Now I am not sure that the ability to push through whatever is in front of me is a good thing, certainly not for me.  I've used those qualities instead of establishing priorities and setting boundaries.  I've tried to prove I could do it all, without ever asking myself "What is the value of doing it all?"  And even, "Is that value something that is meaningful to me?"

I've written a lot about intention, and I've even written about buying into our culture's expectations to the exclusion of our personal spiritual intentions.  And without adrenaline masking what was happening, I can see how I've been seduced by the cultural norms.  Now, stripped of the adrenaline, relaxed, and much more conscious, I feel spiritual loneliness.  I am aware that I've lost important pieces of myself along the way, and I haven't really known exactly how to begin reclaiming them.

As I write, deep within me is a muffled chuckle: "You had to come to this," it says.  On New Year's Eve 1997, I finished my first draft of a manuscript for the book Choice Point.  I worked on it for another couple of years after that, polishing it.  About 50 people read it and thought it was an important work.  I was never able to find a publisher for it.  In the craziness of the last 15 years, Choice Point has gathered dust on a shelf, becoming badly dated.

The book is about choosing your soul's intention for its life, rather than buying into expectations of the popular culture around us.  I believe the principles are solid, but when I wrote it in the 1990s, I was in my relaxed period, and I couldn't really understand, or maybe remember, what it was like to make those hard choices.  I hadn't made them for a very long time.  In the frenetic years, I couldn't write about them, because I wasn't conscious enough.  Now, in my spiritual loneliness, I see the potential to bring life to the manuscript with full consciousness of the spiritual sacrifices that we often make, without even being aware we are making them.  That is the knowing of the muffled, "You had to come to this."

My experience reflects this truth: when I am writing a book, I need to live it before it can be birthed into the world.  So it was with Leading from the Heart, subtitled "choosing courage over fear."  I repeatedly had to reach deep within myself to find the courage of my heart.  As I was birthing The Alchemy of Fear, I had to face some of my deepest fears.  I am not surprised then that the Universe has provided me with this opportunity to step into my spiritual loneliness and find the truth of Choice Point.

Doing Unimportant Things

Over three days, I've been sharing three major take-aways that I've had from reading the children's book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (Random House Children's Books.)   First, I explored becoming a Miracle Maker, and I challenged all of my readers to go make a miracle.  Yesterday, I learned to notice what is often missed.  Now, I will look at doing unimportant things.  Today's lesson is particularly stinging for me.  It is one that I am certain I am better at than I was 20 years ago, but I mastery is a long way off.  On his quest, our young protagonist Milo is challenged to only do unimportant things.  Here is the conversation in which he asks why he should only do unimportant things.

"But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo.  The answer: "Think of all the trouble it saves...If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult.  You just won't have the time.  For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and...you'd never know how much time you were wasting." 

What I "really should be doing" is writing more--writing this blog more regularly again, finishing the memoir I started during the winter, and placing The Game Called Life on Amazon as an ebook, a process begun last fall.  What else I should be doing is exercising more.  Why don't I what's important to me?  My answer is always that I don't have time.  More truthfully, the answer might be I am doing unimportant things. I had almost two hours to watch a movie last night, and I've had time at least two nights in the last 10 to watch mindless (truly mindless) television.  Those are unimportant things.

But, the answer to the "Why don't I?" question isn't as straight-forward as it may seem.  I work long hours, and I come home so brain-dead that making dinner, making lunch and coffee for the next day, and falling on the couch to watch something mindless are the extent to which my brain will function.  That, however, is an easy-out, and it begs the more probing question, "Why do I work so many hours?"

I'd like to say that it is because I care about my customers, and I want to make sure they get the services they need in a timely manner.  That is absolutely true.  I'd like to say it is because my boss has no clue what she has assigned me, and it is way more than any human could handle in the 40 hours that I am supposed to work.  That is absolutely true.  Yet, while both are absolutely true, there is more to the story.

I am a recovering work addict.  Maybe back-sliding work addict is more accurate.  Like all addictions, once an addict, always an addict.  A person who isn't a work addict would have gone to my boss and put all the stuff on my plate in front of her, and then asked, "What don't you want me to do?"  I haven't because I am afraid the answer will (in other words) be, "Don't take care of the customers," and instead do some meaningless task that someone will never notice. 

Are the things that I do at work unimportant?  Some are.  Could I work smarter to eventually get ahead of the curve?  Certainly, but my bosses can't see the strategy beyond today's demands.  So in order to protect my important work, I do way too much. I work this way because I am a work addict.  While I have made progress over the years, I have a long way to go.  I totally own it.

(I gave up fall and spring housecleaning, a Midwestern practice where every inch of the house is cleaned within a few days twice each year, decades ago. You'll probably find the same dust bunnies under my bed that were there a year ago. I am now OK with friends visiting and seeing my almost-always-cluttered desk, which would have mortified me a few years ago.  I've learned to live with the cracking paint on my balcony instead of repainting it, so that I have time to sit and contemplate the forest a few feet further away.)

Approaching life so that the writing, which feeds my soul, and the exercise that physically reinvigorates me drop off my plate is ripping the soul from me.  Sacrificing these essential activities for lower priority activities just isn't working any more.  When I read Milo's question and his collaborator's answer over the weekend, it pierced me.  You will notice that I have written three nights in a row.  Yeah!! 

Tonight has been difficult.  I had to choose between exercise, writing, getting the fob which allows me to enter the building validated, and helping a neighbor during his vacation.  Exercise ate it tonight.  Tomorrow evening it will most likely be writing that will slip, but I will get exercise walking to my dance class and light exercise in the class.  I am making peace with that and even contemplating that I might write on my iPhone app on the train when I am coming home. 

What is really important about making these hard choices is that I am really making them. That is what living with intention is really about: making conscious choices, based on my important priorities.  I am not doing unimportant things like falling onto the couch to watch mindless TV.  I am looking at my priorities and choosing among them.  If I do this every day, who knows one day I might actually get that memoir done and The Game Called Life may soon be available for your Kindle.  Better yet, one day I might actually ask the boss to take something off my plate.