The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Four]

¡Hola! Everybody...

It’s that time of month once again!

Note: Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

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-=[ The Courage to Heal ]=-

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
-- Step Four

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.
-- C.G. Jung

So far, we have explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, no matter how much I denied it, I was in actuality powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem compelled me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Finally, Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in reality ways in which to sabotage myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power, however I chose defined it.

Yesiree, the “Great I Am” is a hard bitch to ride!

Step Four took me a awhile mostly because I didn’t want to do it. I was afraid. I mean I did a lot of fucked up shit in my life -- especially towards the end of my active addiction. I took a lot. I was a taker. I became the kind of person that would steal something from you and then helped you look for it. My thinking was so fucked up that I could rationalize stealing toys from underneath a Christmas tree. I used (and was used) by women. I kid around that I was a former pimp and technically, I was. But I was no pimp, believe me. I used to like to say that I was a “broker for sexual services.” As much as the word is used today, it’s nothing to be proud of. What I was -- I was an addict. Period.

Who the fuck wants to look at that shit?

But by the time I made it back I was determined to see this through. I was tired of suffering needlessly and I wanted to do everything I could to bring some sanity into my life. This step mentions two important principles in recovery. One is “fearless.” But what is fearlessness? Is fearlessness a simple absence of fear? I started to look at the issue of fearlessness and I came upon the concept that courage (perhaps another way of saying “fearlessness”) is not so much the absence of fear, but committing to act in spite of the fear. And that became the first motivator for my doing a thorough Fourth Step: committing to act though I was shitting in my pants. I had had plenty of experience of plowing ahead even though I was scared. I did it all the time.

The next concept was the issue of morality. this one was a little more tricky for me. I was tired of the ‘crime and punishment” approach to morality. Yeah, I was (and still am) a fuckin sinner, but I didn’t need the black/ white sinner/ saint duality bullshit in my life. Beating up on myself wasn’t really working and in fact actually enabled my addiction (why get better if I was worthless?). So, I began to explore the meaning of moral and from a non-religious perspective “moral” could be viewed as a way of thinking, or what some psychologists call moral reasoning. There are developmental stages in moral reasoning, form the lower levels operating from purely selfish, narcissistic, infantile yearnings (the “me” stage) where actions are predicated solely on selfish needs, to higher forms of moral reasoning in which ones sense of self expands to include ones family, community, and eventually extends to all sentient beings.

What I found was that in my addiction I operated mostly from a purely infantile, selfish level of moral reasoning and it was killing me and infecting everyone who ever made contact with me.

I stole, but I stole more than property. I stole affection and trust and used that to feed my addiction. Perhaps my story is extreme, but let me ask: how many of us have stolen affection? How many of us have manipulated and controlled in order to feel better about ourselves?

Luckily, I had some great people around me in my early recovery. They helped me recover in spite of myself, because I was one dense mothefucker. To me the idea of a moral inventory was both scary but also contradictory. However, after having taken those first three steps and applying them to the best of my ability, I also knew I was still feeling a lot of shame and guilt about my past. My actions had clearly not been moral by any measure. It came to me that I needed to look into the shadows and to uncover those deep dark secrets or risk losing my recovery. By the time I had one year clean, I knew I wanted freedom from addiction more than anything in my life.

I took the advice of my sponsor and decided to write out my inventory. I used several different Fourth Step guides and my inventory was extensive (me being the perfectionist I am). What I saw when I did my Fourth Step were behavior patterns.

All around. Everywhere.

For the first time I saw I repeatedly fell into the same patterns and this revelation was largely liberating.

The Fourth Step gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets. Some of you may have tried this with a therapist. I had also. However, what made this moral inventory different was the foundation of the first three steps paved the way for me to transcend my fear. I was on my way to living life based on love rather than an existence ruled by fear. What I saw underlying my habitual patterns was fear. Without the foundation of the first three steps, my moral inventory would’ve probably become another way to beat on myself, my shadow side eventually engulfing my efforts.

Because I was living the principle of the Third Step, I was able to turn over my fear and tendency to judge. I realized I was powerless to change my past, but that I was able to be accountable for now. Eventually, my Fourth Step gave me courage along with insight. And to a lesser degree, having faced myself with as much honesty as possible, I was able to lessen the fear and the shame. There were no more secrets, and more was being revealed.

The Fourth Step was a draining experience for me. Sometimes, when things seem their darkest, it’s difficult to see the positive in your life. It was difficult for me to acknowledge the positive in me. I lived as a phony, showing only the parts of myself that I thought were good. I lived between the secrets, the shame, exploitation, and abuse of my addiction and the good parts of my public persona. I felt like a phony about my public self because people did not know the real me. When I finally faced the addict in me, my addiction became my teacher and helped me uncover the goodness in me. I had to come to the realization that I was strong, enduring, clever, and willing to risk even in my addiction. All these were qualities the addict in me stole in order to pursue the illusion of being all-powerful

The addict in me was that same aspect of my personality that stole from me and then pretended it was helping me look for these qualities. I learned that all those good or skillful qualities were also a part of who I am and that they were available for me in my recovery.

My name is Eddie and I’m an addict in recovery...

What Really Matters, pt. II [Titi Fefi]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Today is a repost. I was thinking about her once and decided to keep her memory alive. Last night, she came to me in a dream...

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-=[ Gratitude ]=-

Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you soar in the air? You have done no better than a fly. Conquer your heart; then you may become somebody.

- Ansari of Heart

I will forever be indebted to my elders -- my predecessors. From the men, especially my father, I owe the gift of love for knowledge. It is fashionable, in our shallow, consumer-based society, to look down upon learned people, but I will be forever grateful to my father and the rest of my family for helping instill in me a thirst for knowledge. Philosopher means lover of knowledge. It was through the masculine aspect of my upbringing that I was given my mind, the ability to construct and deconstruct logic, the skill of asking questions, the knack for intellectual discovery -- these were all gifts. I am not saying these are essentially male traits. I do think that penetrating awareness is a masculine aspect (which we all possess).

For a long time I thought that it was through the mind that one evolved, but I was only half-right, there was something else I was missing. The other gift, bequeathed to me by the women-warriors in my life, was the gift of the open heart. It was through the feminine aspect of my upbringing that I learned that true liberation cannot happen until the mind and heart are integrated. In some Eastern cultures, there are no separate terms for the mind and the heart -- they are perceived as one and the same. It was mostly the women in my life, through the power of their example, who taught me genuine unconditional love. Many people speak of unconditional love, but few truly know jack shit about it. I am not saying that the domain of the heart is essentially female (it isn’t). I do think that the heart is part of the feminine aspect of our psyches.

I think a large part of social problems today stem from the deconstruction of the concept of the family. What social conservatives today call “family” is really a downsized version of what family has meant for thousands of years. The nuclear family -- the so-called basic family unit consisting of Mother/ Father/ Sister/ Brother -- is new. For most of our shared history, family included aunts, uncles, cousins, non biological (“adopted”) members of a larger social network, and sometimes even whole communities. It was within these extended family structures that one learned about unconditional love, community responsibility, and connectedness in ways that can never be possible within our downsized, alienated, and hectic times.

What are social networking sites but a modern attempt to reclaim the larger, more expansive meaning of family and community? It is as if we sense a loss of connection in our materially richer but increasingly insular, and sometimes desperate modern lives, and we reach out...

I was fortunate enough to be raised in a large, extended family. We were close because we had to be -- my parents and their siblings were first-generation Puerto Ricans thrust into a hostile society that neither cared for nor welcomed them. So we stuck together: most of us lived in the same building and/ or city block and my cousins and I were raised more as sisters and brothers rather than dispensable family members. I often joked that if a bombed were dropped on 704 E. 5th St., the Rosarios would have ceased to exist. Our extended family shared resources, pooled money, served as social safety nets for one another, and the responsibility of raising the children fell on everyone.

However, there was one woman who sacrificed the most. My paternal aunt, Josefa, or as we all affectionately called her “Titi Fefi.” She raised everyone’s children. All the adults would work, but Titi Fefi’s central role was to take care of the children, make sure they were dressed, prepare hot breakfasts and lunches, soothe scrapes, and mediate arguments. In effect, Titi Fefi was everyone’s surrogate mother -- she was a universal mother.

She never asked for anything in return and carried her burden mostly without complaint. I can honestly say that without her contributions, our family would have been hard put to survive. I could also say that most of our successes were partially (and often almost fully) connected to Tit Fefi’s sacrifices. As the children got older, she would eventually work as a washer-woman and her raw hands, the outer layer of her skin often stripped from over exposure to laundry chemicals, were often the reason why Junior could buy books for college, or I could have those shoes she wanted, or Jaimito got a Christmas gift. We sometimes never even knew it was Titi Fefi’s doing, I honestly believe Titi didn't see it as giving, her generosity of spirit came as natural as breathing. It was what was done, period.

Eventually, as is often the case with upward mobility, the family would disperse to different parts. First, it was my uncle, Jaime, who moved to a Jersey City house on earnings culled from years toiling at a factory job. Then my older cousin, Junior, would finish college (a first) and move his new family and mother, Titi Sylvia, to a small upstate community. Little by little, everyone left our Lower East Side enclave, eventually leaving Titi Fefi alone. Well, actually, my father and I lived with Titi Fefi, but most of the family moved on.

We were always close as a family and the holidays were often celebrated at Titi Fefi’s house because her love was such a magnet for good feeling. No matter how successful the rest of the family became, the older generation always made it clear that family came before individual success or material gain. They never forgot how important cohesion was for the family’s survival in those early days and they kept that message alive.

In time, the elders passed on, falling victim to old age and disease. As the younger generation moved farther away, the family reunions became less frequent. The children of the second generation didn’t grow up with the same values or with the experience of an extended family, and soon we all separated into little units, apart from one another. There were no more huge and festive family reunions, and Titi Fefi would now often spend the holidays alone (at the time, I was more interested in chasing insanity).

Eventually, I would leave too, traveling, my quest -- despoiling maidens, pillaging, and plundering my way through life. I was exploring the margins of sane living and I was usually in and out of her life, meaning Titi Fefi was mostly alone. Most of us, including myself forgot -- we forgot the raw hands, the sacrifices, and the unwavering love. Titi Fefi never had children of her own, but we were all her children.... somehow. Yet many of us forgot. Or maybe we didn’t forget, perhaps we were too busy, I don’t know. Life sometimes does that, you know, we forget about the important things. Sometimes we are so busy trying to make a living, we forget to live.

She never complained; never uttered words of regret. She did what she had to do, just like breathing, it was for her.

I am no angel in this drama. I used Titi Fefi’s kindness for my selfish needs and often exploited it. Titi Fefi’s home was my main base, the place I could always come to when I needed a place to live and her door was always open for me. I always had a key. And when I would appear out of nowhere, the only question asked when I entered through that door was if I was hungry. Eventually, my life would change and I would enter into a stable and loving relationship, but I would always visit Titi Fefi, at least once a week.

Oh, how her face would light up when I would come visit! I’m certain that even if I were a sexually motivated serial killer Titi Fefi would still love me just as much. That was who she was -- she was love incarnate, Everybody’s Mother.

By the time I divorced, Titi Fefi was in her late 80s and suffering from various infirmities, one of them being the onset of dementia. She had lost some cognitive functioning to the point that the family was concerned with her safety. I moved in with her, thinking it would help both of us.

Big mistake! LOL

For the last two years of her life, I lived with Titi Fefi and it wasn’t easy. It was almost like taking care of an unruly child. It sucked up my life and sometimes I was so resentful. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and accuse me of plotting to take over her apartment. Other times, she would become disoriented and ask me where she was. Still other times she would have long discussions with me thinking I was my deceased father (whom she raised as her own child). It wasn’t easy and I was losing heart.

There were good times too: her feigned outrage when I would ask her about her sex life, for example. She would laugh at that. And we would spend hours talking about our family history. Folks, if you have an elder in your life, take the time to ask them about your history. I guarantee you, it’s a whole lot better than any of those fuckin’ idiotic “reality” shows.

Then one day I found her crying. And she talked, and talked, and it was as if she was doubting the sacrifices -- if they had been worth it. No one remembered her, no one visited her, she said. And all my anger and resentment about taking care of her dissipated and I knew right then that if I were to have carried her on my back for the rest of her life, I still wouldn’t have repaid my debt to her. So we stayed together, Titi and I. One day, I went out and stayed out the entire night (it got so I didn't have a social life) and I got a phone call the next morning that Titi had fallen during the night. She spent the entire night on the floor until her home health aide arrived in the morning. I felt fucked up about that.

Eventually I would become resentful and angry with my family for abandoning her, so I had planned to make this speech at Titi’s burial. When I explained my idea, she asked me to promise her that I would not say anything negative. She made me promise that I wouldn’t start any shit at her burial. She taught me that day that for some people, that’s as it good as it gets and sometimes they suffer a great price for not being a little deeper. She taught me that you give because it is as natural as breathing, not because you’re doing something, or expecting something in return.

Not knowing what to do, but knowing that there was something important here, I asked her, “If there is message for the family that you have, what would it be? Because, like it or not, I’m going to say something when they bury your ass.” After crossing herself and admonishing me for speaking of such things, this is what she said:

“I want this to be my message to my family that I love so much: Tell them that family is the most important thing in life, that no matter what you become or what you do, it means nothing if you don’t have family. Tell them that.”

This was her message and her life's work and I give this message to you today because, while it might not be deep, or earth-shattering, and you might not even get it, it is the most important message you will ever hear and you will never understand it fully until you become that message.

Her last admonition to me was to leave her alone because she was tired and she didn’t want to answer my teasing questions (“Titi! Do you use condoms?!!” “Are you practicing safe sex?!!”). I was surprised that she refused to eat the pizza I had brought (her favorite treat). Sensing her tiredness, I kissed her cheek goodnight and she rolled over to go to sleep.

She smiled…

She passed away during the night and the next morning, when I went to wake her up, she had that same look on her face.

This is for all of us who have known, and will know, the pain of loss, and for those of us who have disconnected from our hearts. There are some today who may not have anyone, or whose family is far away or gone. There are many of us confused about this world gone slightly mad and deep inside perhaps we despair, uneasy smiles on our faces.

My aunt’s power of example was that the only sane response to such despair and uncertainty is to love -- to reach out and become engaged, enriching the lives of those around us in the process.

May you all find it in your hearts to give gratitude and cherish the gifts we are all given.

Though you may not know it, you are loved. You are loved for being who you are, right now this moment, and you will always be loved in that way.

Eddie

The Friday Sex Blog [The Erotic Impulse]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I’ve been neglecting my writing, but some new stuff is coming down the pike (watch out. LOL!)… If you can, please check out the homage to my uncle in my Subversify contribution this week (click here).

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-=[ The Erotic Impulse ]=-
Beneath my hands/ your small breasts/ are the upturned bellies/ of breathing fallen sparrows...

It’s the world of things and actions, appointments and careers, earning a living and cleaning the house, embarking on tightly scheduled vacations and going to the movies. It’s where we turn when we need to feel the ground under our feet. It’s what we think of when we think we feel the need to reaffirm that there is something basic and immutable, something solid and unchanging that can provide a primal sense of stability in a decidedly amorphous and ever-changing world.

This is what we call the real world.

We all need stability in one form or another: it’s a matter of emotional survival. We need a fundamental template with which to define an ordered, reasonably predictable world over a reality that is essentially defined by chaos. Without an organizing principle everything becomes random, meaningless, uncertain. In order to avoid this senselessness, this sense existential angst, we have been conditioned to turn to the world of reason, the world of conscious direction and illusory control. We call this, unequivocally, the real world, as if any other way of finding direction, setting our course, defining ourselves and the world around us were mere illusion.

What I have attempted with my Friday “Sex Blog” is to show that there is another world that lies beneath the rational world we acknowledge as real. It is a world of tremendous significance and power, no matter how much we try to discredit it as insignificant, delusional, sinful, or ephemeral. I will allow that we can think this “world within the world” into nonexistence; we can (and often do) rationalize it to the point it dissolves before analytical power of our minds. But even as we use the tyranny of thought to think it away, we continue to feel both its power and essential authenticity. We may not be able to see it, but we cannot stop sensing it. We may not be able to easily label or categorize it, but we remain aware that something is moving around down there, just underneath the surface, just before consciousness, something in the shadows just beyond the firelight, beyond the glare of the city lights. Perhaps some of us are attracted by what we sense out there/ down there, in there, seductive and elusive. Perhaps some of us are frightened by it. Perhaps both.

This world that we know exists, beyond the boundaries of science, the discursive mind, and reason, is what I address -- or try to address -- as the world of Eros. It is indeed a world of immense power and potential -- potential for a tremendous life, energy, and personal growth when it is engaged with clarity and awareness. Conversely, it also holds a potential for great danger, confusion, and harm when engaged carelessly and unconsciously.

As some of us already know, the erotic world is one we have been taught to disrespect and fear so thoroughly that many have lost all but the most elementary ability to honor, trust, or vividly experience its many manifestations. Exploring the colors, shapes, and contours of erotic reality -- who we are and who we want to become as erotic beings -- something that should be a natural, organic process of personal growth, is transformed by our sexually fearful (erotophobic) culture into a spiritually and emotionally confusing project. We by necessity become spiritual archeologists. We must dig through the imposed layers of sexual conditioning. Layers of fear, containment, control, and misunderstanding just to experience fully what was originally available to us naturally as breathing, to reclaim our rightful erotic impulse that is one of the most basic, life-affirming aspects of what it is to be human.

Hopefully, the essays, stories, personal statements, and poems of the Sex Blog will serve as an initial finger pointing at the moon; some insight, some new perspective to help unravel the erotic Gordian Knot we find all around us. Grappling with the wonders and mysteries of eros is one of the basic adventures of being alive. Eroticism is not something we will completely and totally understand or resolve in our lives. Rather it is the process by which we become more fully evolved as human beings.

Today we stand on the precipice of a realizing a new consciousness of Western erotic culture. A point in time when this whole aspect of life is being addressed and debated public as never before, probed and explored passionately with tremendous potential. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to submit that the issues around sex and eros are as fundamental as any other -- psychologically, culturally, socially, and even politically. We are at the edge of an evolutionary quantum leap and with every leap there is danger along with an emergence into a new consciousness. Much of the success of this leap will depend on whether we collectively choose to embrace Eros and all the possibility it represents, or regress once again into fearfully attempting banishing it to the shadows of our consciousness where it becomes warped beyond recognition and gains power over our actions.

Love,

Eddie

Evolution's End

¡Hola! Everybody...
Last Sunday morning I heard applause right outside my window. When I looked, I realized I had forgotten all about the NYC marathon and that its path passed right by my block. It was amazing how many New Yorkers were out there exhorting the runners: “You can do!” “You’re looking great!” Others staffed Gatorade/ water tables, and others held up signs inscribed with positive affirmations. Only in New York...

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-=[ Evolution’s End ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Bones reruns!

I also think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if they don’t watch TV that they’re immune to its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth: there’s a “cultural DNA” (memes) and unless you’ve been totally deprived you’re not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. From a biological perspective, our neurological systems are like feedback loops and we are shaped by our relationships in ways we have yet to fully explore. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy.

I mean, we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or whatever, but we’re not, we’re just like the next person in many respects, just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I’m not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. You consume to a disproportionate level compared to other people in the world. For example, we rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense.

We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of an onslaught of messages (approximately 80,000 a day) that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It’s not a matter whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have bought into these messages.

Please don’t intellectualize/ rationalize this fact thereby forcing me to cram it down your throat, ok?

I don’t think the Television Machine is necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It’s when we become passive observers that it becomes an issue and that’s the aim of marketing -- to make us passive consumers. It’s good for the economy.

When my son was young, I would use TV to mine learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from peer pressure to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. LOL

Watching TV, for my son became an opportunity to learn cultural studies and critical theory, except he didn’t know it. The commercials for drugs were the best. You know those commercials where there’s some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers (Claritin, maybe)? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there’s like a ten-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?!!

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was necessary to be an active observer. I was teaching him how to form the correct questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way were able to inoculate ourselves (to a degree!) from the mindless push to consume.

I dunno, maybe it’s the Tantric influence of which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what it’s all about. Isn’t waking up evolution’s end?

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Sex, Spirituality, Ego ]

¡Hola! Evertbody…
I don’t know about where you live, but here, at the Center of the Known Universe, it’s been hawt! Don’t get me wrong, I love heatwaves, love the beach, the humidity – the full catastrophe of summer in the Big City.

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-=[ Sex, Your Higher Power & Ego ]=-

We moan, we grin, and we roll apart
for some small talk
after our little piece of dying.

It is a feeble reach
for the rational,
some tiny piece of evidence
that proves we are

still alive,

once again in possession of our

separate selves,
once again intact.

-- Edward-Yemíl Rosario ©

Your Higher Power, however (or if) you conceptualize it, is love.

When we are relating to the things and people around us with care, compassion, and consideration, we naturally radiate that love and joy. When we are not handling things in that manner, our spiritual life -- our consciousness of the ever present energy of the Universal Principle -- will be blocked by our apathy. In the interest of honesty I will say that there are times when I do not embody such caring, but I am trying.

To go off tangent for a moment, I know of at least one woman who probably doesn’t like me too much these days and most likely would rather not hear from me… ever. I said at least one, but there are most likely more. The irony is this: until we can undo the karmic entanglement we have created, we will be forever linked. The relevant point being that if you want to be rid of me, then you’ll have to love me first. LOL

I laugh, but I’m serious -- but I digress…

By not caring or being inconsiderate, we create an environment equal to that of a psychological pig sty. In that sty of negativity, not caring often means casting judgments on others. Anyone who’s ever been in a committed relationship will agree that this can be clearly evident as an expression we have taken to bed.

Part of intimacy in bed, aside from the obvious, is sleeping together, something both men and women often take for granted. In actuality, sleeping together is a profoundly intimate, trusting experience, although we have all at one time or another abused that intimate comfort.

How many times have you been in bed, irate because you knew the person next to you was “wrong” but wouldn’t admit it? What did that get you except righteous indignation, as you maintained this intimacy with a bad taste in your mouth, or a tense stomach? The fact is you could have bypassed that righteous indignation.

Perhaps your response might be: “I tried. I mean, if s/he would only admit s/he was wrong, everything would be fine.” To that, I will only say that I’m not talking about trying in that way. That’s just exacerbating the conflict.

Or, another response you might have is, “If only he’d stop being such an arrogant asshole, I might let him in.” To that I would say that’s not “in”; that’s merely allowing your lover out of the judgment jail you put him in the first place.

There are other ways, if you’re willing to put down the defense.

When you’re lying there with your lover in bed, you might instead opt to give them a light massage and as you’re doing that saying something along the lines of, “I don’t like being separate from you. I don’t care anymore about right and wrong. All I know is I want to be with you and to care for you, and for you to forgive me.”

Your response to this might be to object, to say that why you should be the one to forgive if you were the wronged or injured party. Another person might say, “Give Eddie a massage?!! After what that psycho muthafucka said to me?” My response to you and to that form of thinking is that the best thing you can probably do is send the ego packing. To paraphrase a wise person, people say, “I want to love.” I say, drop the ego (I), do away with the desire (want), and what are you left with?

I will say this: be careful about sticking to your guns because you might then find yourself locked into playing the role of gunslinger for the rest of your life. And believe me, once you get with the way of the gun, there will always be another relationship around the corner for you to gun down or to gun you down at the not-so-OK Corral.

I’m just sayin’

If you desire to be with someone in warm, loving, caring, caressing support, I suggest you step out of ego-centered world of the Mini Me, and opt instead for that tender moment.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Guilt Trip]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Today is the Gay Pride Parade here in the Center of the Known Universe. Let me reiterate here once again and express my support to my GLBT brothers and sisters. To my inbred, repressed brethren who are against gay marriage? Well… I would submit that if you’re against gay marriage, the simple thing to do is not marry one…

SMDH

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-=[ Guilt ]=-
Love and guilt cannot coexist,
and to accept one is to deny the other.
-- A Course in Miracles

Feeling guilty is just another way to rationalize behavior that defeats your happiness. Feeling guilty is an indulgence – a selfish and twisted way for you to continue beating yourself into the insanity of committing the same actions and expecting different results.

I once offered forgiveness to an individual who had wronged me and her initial response was to tell me how it cut her to the heart. She went on how nice I was (I’m not), blah blah blah. Her eventual response was silence. Years later, I ran into her by chance on the street and she began to cry. She told me that she had just come from her therapist and that she had been talking about me – about how she squandered what could’ve been something special and beautiful. How she always pushed what was good and decent away. She was so beside herself, all I could do was give her a hug and assure her everything would be all right.

I have a funny feeling I’ve become the subject of too many therapeutic sessions. For the record, I don’t want to be anyone’s therapist. All I want is for you to wrap your legs around my waist in lustful entanglement. *grin*

The sacred offering of forgiveness is not about allowing someone to take advantage of you. Few people know that forgiveness -- true forgiveness -- must be first cultivated internally before it could be given away. Once you forgive yourself, you come to the full realization that there is no “other” to forgive. Ironically, forgiveness is probably one of the most selfish of acts.

If you commit a wrong against me, my interest is in helping you grow out of that mode of living. Most people would rather continue to feel guilty than to actually grow. True growth is the process of becoming willing to have defects of character removed. It’s not even about having them removed! It’s about becoming willing to have defects of character removed. When you become willing, you shed the guilt and start doing the work. Lying, cheating, dishonesty, the whole cast of character defects -- become fodder for your growth:

Yes, I lied to you, this was why, and I want to stop. And I because I love you, I want to work with you so that we can become truly intimate and loving.

When you feel guilt, you’re in the grips of your ego. Guilt isn’t about someone else, it is about you because only your ego can experience guilt. Guilt will always disrupt your growth, will always sabotage you, and will always compel you to make the same mistakes.

You will be treated like shit, because guilt demands that you should be treated like shit. You will meet assholes who will defile you because your guilt demands it.

The end of your guilt will never come as long as you buy into the notion that there is a reason for it. For you to be released from guilt you must first learn that guilt is insanity; it always is and always has been and will always be. Guilt has neither reason nor rhyme.

And here’s why:

Guilt asks only for punishment and punish you will be – always. You will be punished and be lost in the world of illusions and shadows. The Ex wants to be punished. She doesn’t understand kindness. She’s not too different from many women and men I know. Be nice to them and they will run away. But if you want them to call you, or to fuck them, treat them like shit and they will be clamoring for more punishment.

I can’t do that – I’ve never been able to do that – to manipulate fear and guilt for sexual gratification. It isn’t worth my peace of mind. Like other women I know, the Ex replays the scene: she disappears for a little while, suffers some more, and then somewhere in her mind, she remembers the light and calls me. She suffers a lot. As do many of us... Maybe one day she will come to the realization that she does not have to suffer needlessly. I do not know. All I can do is keep an open heart.

A mind without guilt cannot suffer. Your freedom -- indeed, your very salvation -- depends on your escape from the self-made prison of guilt.

Love,

Eddie

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Five]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

* * *

-=[ The Heart of Kindness ]=-

Step Five: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

* * *

Recap time!

First, we explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, in fact, I was powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem pushed me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in actuality ways of sabotaging myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power however I defined it. Lastly, the Fourth Step (click here) gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets.

I raised a Roman Catholic and I can still remember the ritual Saturday confessionals. We would tease our friends and cousins if they took too long in the confessional because we all knew that meant there was a lot of sinning goin’ on. LOL Still, the feeling of catharsis that always accompanied a confession was always refreshing. Always, the priest listened quietly and no matter what you said or admitted to, it was taken in stride, with no judgment. The message, at least for me anyway, is that no one is ever truly beyond redemption.

As much as I dreaded the Fourth Step, the Fifth Step was the scariest for me. Shame was acting as an obstacle against my journey to freedom. In Step five, we are asked to bare our soul to our Higher Power (as we define it), ourselves, and another human being. Reveal all, put it all out there, and take the risk of coming face to face with our shadow and dragging it out into the open.

Secrets and shame are two of the hallmarks of the disease of addiction. Many of us come from families in which addiction was a way of life. Throughout our developmental years and beyond, many of us feared outsiders would see us and our “horrible” families truthfully, so we developed coping skills that developed into strategies of denial. Step Five, people, was my first taste of true freedom. And recovery isn’t about putting down a drug or a drink -- recovery is about freedom from active addiction.

Period.

Still, I couldn’t possibly share my most shameful secrets with another human being, I thought to myself. Surely, no one has ever done the despicable things I had done. I was stuck at Step Five for sure. Eventually I came to learn an important truth, and I feel this applies to anyone, not just addicts. When we try to carry the load alone, we suffer needlessly. And in an unconscious manner, in seeking relief from that load, sometimes we will accuse even our loved ones and friends of the very character defects we are desperately attempting to conceal. Psychological relief never comes from confessing the “sins” of other people. Everybody has to come to terms with their own.

The practice of confessing, admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to another person is not new; it’s an ancient spiritual practice, in fact. And religion is by no means the sole advocate for this principle, contemporary Western psychology has long ago acknowledged the value the profound need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of their personality flaws.

After much thought, I decided to share my Fifth Step with a Jesuit priest who was a recovering addict himself. This priest, who I will call Eddie, was one of the kindest persons I have ever met. And he was far from the stereotypical clergyman. He sometimes cussed, for example, and he smoked cigarettes. Most of all, like many truly spiritual people I have met, he had a great, evolved sense of humor.

As I began sharing my Fifth Step with father Eddie, he just listened. He was present, listening to everything and I felt there was no judgment. In fact, he kept nodding as I read off my list and sometimes sharing that he had committed some of the same acts himself. At other times, we would laugh together at some of the things on my list. Eventually, I was able to share fully, without holding back, ad all the fear and shame seemed as if it were being washed away. I felt accepted and unburdened. Most of all, I felt relieved of the “burden of self.”

The first great insight during the sharing of my Fifth Step was that I wasn’t as unique or terrible or horrible as I thought. Yes, I had committed many wrongs, but I wasn’t the only human being to commit those acts, and being held in the cradle of kindness -- in the heart of the heart of kindness -- I came to know my first taste of true freedom. The 12 Steps aren’t about formulating ideas about freedom, they compel us to act on the pract5ice of freedom. The 12 Steps are experiential exercises, action steps, toward personal and communal liberation.

Taking Step freed me from the chains of my shame and secrecy. I realized that I was a good person at heart and being freed from a repressive morality, I was able to become a moral agent in my life. Most of all, you have to understand, the Steps are about compassion, not punishment. The Steps can be the start of cultivating loving compassion toward ourselves. Personally, it was liberating to discover that my very vulnerability, that uncomfortable sensation of being exposed, is actually the bridge to deeper connections to myself and others. It’s called emotional safety, and what that means is dropping the shame and the sham and committing to being as translucent as possible. And now, all these years after my first Fifth Step, emotional safety and genuine intimacy is the norm among the circle of my dearest friends.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The Myth of Freedom]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I’m happy to say that while my back continues to plague me, treatment and some lifestyle changes have made it bearable. Sitting for extended periods is still a no-no, however. Thanks again to all who sent me good wishes and who expressed their concern.

* * *

The Myth of Freedom

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (1934 -)

I once became lost in a Connecticut national park many years ago. I was about 19-20 years-old, a busload of us city kids planned a trip, and we all trekked up to some park in Armpit, USA. I am a dyed-in-the-wool city boy. And when I say city, I mean city. Please, I’ve traveled around this country and some places that use the term “City” are laughable. Yes, I am a NYC snob: anything above 14^th street for me is Hicksville. Anyway, grew up in the city and the first time I saw a live pig, I thought it was a cow! When I thought of pigs, what came to mind was that pig Arnold from the 1960s TV sitcom, “Green Acres.”

Whatever… always the adventurous one, I convinced another poor soul to go “exploring” with me. We got lost for close to 48 hours. We kept walking in circles. There was this lake not too far from our campsite, you see, and me being the “Brainiac” of the two decided if we followed the lakeshore, we would eventually end up where we started. The thing is we kept walking in circles, not around the lake, but within a confined space. We realized this after hours of walking because we kept seeing a rock formation that looked eerily familiar. The reason for that was that it was the same rock formation! LMAO! By this time, it had gotten dark and there was a pronounced early October chill. to compound matters, my poor accomplice had inadvertently fallen into a cascade that hid a cave -- he was freezing, but we thought the cave was the best place to stay for the night.

We had nothing -- no matches, flashlight, compass, food -- nada. We had to stop because of that annoying tendency towards complete darkness in the country. I mean, you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. Sheeesh! To make matters worse, I swore I heard a wolf’s howl. I’m serious! Now, I don’t know if wolves actually exist in some Connecticut state park, but to this day, I swear I heard a howl! In addition, I didn’t make things better by voicing my conviction that the cave we had taken refuge in was some Grizzly bear’s home.

So there were, hungry, cold, scared, and lost.

Eventually, the next day we somehow found our way to a road, but they had a whole posse of people looking for us, which ruined the trip for everyone else. We walked down the road until we came upon some ranger in a car who then proceeded to ask us if we had seen two Puerto Rican kids walking around lost… DUH?!?! Hellloooo?!?! Fuckin’ hicks… LMAO!

Of course, being philosophically inclined, I found all sorts of metaphors and meanings behind our little adventure, while my companion, who was freezing to death, cursed me the whole time. Still, it fascinated me that left to our own devices, we kept walking around in circles. Shit, we tried to walk differently, making lefts, where we had previously made rights, and still we walked in circles. What does that say about our own habitual patterns, I asked my friend, as he conjured new swear words for my edification.

For the next fifteen years of my life, that incident was to become a metaphor for how I lived: doing what I wanted, how I wanted, when I wanted, and mistaking that for freedom. I think many people mistake “following their bliss” for freedom when in actuality walking around without an inner compass is the ultimate prison. It’s the ultimate prison because we can’t see the bars, for they exist in our minds. We’re all “doing time,” in some way or another.

True freedom, for me anyway, takes practice. Actually, it takes a set of practices that serve as a guideline and map to freedom. Walk around rudderless without direction long enough and you’ll find you’re creating the same mess repeatedly.

Habitual patterns mistaken as freedom

I like to say that I became free while I was incarcerated and this is very true. Many years after that incident in the woods, I found myself incarcerated at a maximum-security “facility.” LOL! I’m not proud of that, but I have to admit there’s some irony in this story -- at least for me there is, so I find some humor in all this now. It was early spring, my favorite time of the year, and I was in a prison yard staring at some mountains far off and feeling really depressed about being locked up.

Then it hit me... I was actually free! Just like that! I realized that though the state had my body, only I could give anyone permission to enslave my mind. It may not sound like a lot to you, but for me it was transformative experience. The fact that I could choose to be free no matter where I found myself blew me away.

Looking back, I understand now that it didn’t happen all at once, that my epiphany that day wasn’t something spontaneous. I understand now, my realization came about because of the work I had put in, but it hit me that day like a bolt of lightning in the middle of a completely dark country night: I was free. Free, right then, at that very moment.

It was amazing. I could choose to be free! OMG!!! This couldn’t be true. Nevertheless, I felt it in the very fiber of my being. This freedom was real, alive, a part of me, a part of my heritage as a human being. When I went back to my cell later that day, I shared my revelation with my neighbors and they all started laughing at me! LOL! They were -- like -- “Eddie, you in jail, bro.”

And they were correct, of course, I was incarcerated. However, my realization was that while I could be coerced into prison physically, only I could give someone else permission to incarcerate my heart and mind. What I saw clearly for the first time was that I was giving the prison authorities this permission to take my mind, to imprison my heart. From that day on, I became free and my life, even within the prison walls, changed dramatically. I no longer felt at the mercy of sadistic prison guards or all the other insanity that goes on in prison. From that day on, I was free, really free, and all my interactions reflected this realization of freedom. What happened was that people began responding to me differently: guards, who previously were able to press my buttons, didn’t know how to deal with the newer, free me, leaving them confused and anxious.

Other inmates would ask me why I “looked” different: was I exercising more, did I gain weight? Eventually, my freedom permeated my immediate surroundings and those in contact with me began doing their own inner work, in the process transforming our collective prison experience. The effect was so palpable that I was eventually transferred from that location because I was deemed too dangerous. But by then it was too late, even in solitary confinement, they couldn’t take my freedom away.

I became free that early Spring day and though there are times I choose to give up my freedom -- especially when I come into contact with people with hate in their hearts -- I have chosen freedom more often than not these all these many years later. My personal liberation, I have found, is not individual, dedicated solely to “me” (mini me?), but instead it comes with a responsibility and an awareness that it affects everything around me. That other prison we all share: the myth that we are separate from others has also dissolved and as a result your personal liberation is also important to me.

Ultimately, I have learned that my freedom demands I choose happiness. I never even knew I had that choice. It is my responsibility as a human being, actually, this choice. This is why I always say that everything we ever need for our happiness exists right here, right now, this very moment… this very life. This is true whether your prison is made of concrete and bars or psychic cockroaches.

May you all know true happiness… and freedom.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Surrender and Devotion]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I wrote this the last time I moved two years ago (LOL)… I am decorating and as soon as my back gets better, I’ll finish and take photos.

* * *

Surrender & Devotion

You all are probably sick and tired of my constant references to surrender. But you see: there’s no way around it: if you want to fuckin’ be happy for once in your fuckin’ life you first have to surrender and surrender completely. This is no the, “Well, I’ll surrender a little bit, Eddie, then later I’ll surrender sum more” surrender. No, that shit doesn’t get it. You’ve been doing that long enough and half-assed surrendering got you half-assed results.

No, I want nothing more than your total, unconditional, utter surrender. And I don’t want it for myself (though my world would be made better by your utter surrender), nor do I want you to surrender to me (though that would be nice).

I guess I should start at what I mean by surrender (there are two words in my title today, BTW… )

The word “surrender” gets a bad rap in our culture, with it’s almost obsessive and exclusive focus on the individual. Surrender is often interpreted as giving up, weakness, giving up, as in defeat. While I am referring somewhat to giving up, I use it in a different way. Surrendering to me means letting go of our resistance to and fear of the total openness of who we really are. Allow me to reiterate:

Surrender means opening up to the fact of the total openness of who you really are.

Yup. You are total open consciousness. You may not know it, but everything you need for your freedom exists within you right now, in this very life, this very moment. You just need to stop resisting that fact.

Surrendering to me means giving up that little mass of tensions you call your “self” – the story you created as a response for the need to feel real. All that bullshit: your horoscope, your Myers/ Briggs categorization, your social security number, your ID card – all that shit is bullshit. It’s your little personal soap opera. That is not who you are. That whole thing – that “personality” -- is a bundle of tension you chose to take on in order to separate yourself from everyone else’s personal soap operas. Feel it: it manifests itself as a contraction in your body.

You cannot be vulnerable nor can you surrender while clothed in your personal soap opera. You cannot love, nor know love, nor be loved while you’re all twisted like that.

Soften yourself, breathe – luxuriate in your free space…

Surrendering to me means to open with no boundaries. Shit, you cannot say, “I love you,” when in a state of surrender. There is no “I” -- no “Eddie” -- that loves you. There is only love. Quick! STFU! Think of someone you love totally without condition – a son or daughter, or a lover…

Feel that?

That is what you are. It’s palpable -- you can feel this thing that you are -- it’s always there even when you lose sight of it. That’s who and what you are.

Surrender to me means loving without limits. It means to break down your walls and to let down your guard so that your lover can feel your very core – genuine, naked, and unhidden, without defenses. Your belly becomes soft and your breath becomes full. You willingly open your body and heart to your lover. If you are hurt, you are hurt, but you remain open and full. You live your live as open like the sky, the ocean, the trees. Surrender to me is the gateway to the deepest possible way of knowing.

You might say you have opened like this and I will challenge you. You may have surrendered to someone or something but I have met very few people who have surrendered to the notion they are love. What I mean by surrendering is the practice (not the thought, or analysis) of surrendering -- not to your own fears, nor the demands of another -- but directly to love. If you tell me you have no resistance to any of this, then I’m going to call you on your bullshit because if you have ever tried surrendering in this way the first realization is that there is a huge resistance to it.

True surrender, in the manner in which I use the word, is not adapting yourself to please people. Nor is it even momentarily surrendering your emotional needs. These are all secondary needs and true surrender is about breaking through veil of these secondary needs and amplifying the primal core, and very human yearning to give and receive unlimited and unbound love.

And that my friends is devotion.

Love,

Eddie

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Four]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I forgot to include this as part of an April posting...

* * *

-=[ Uncovering the Patterns]=-

Step Four: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Note: Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

* * *

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.

-- C.G. Jung

So far, we have explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, in fact, I was powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem pushed me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Finally, Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in actuality ways in which to sabotage myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power however I defined it.

Yesiree, the “Great I Am” is a hard bitch to ride! LOL

Step Four took me a awhile mostly because I didn’t want to do it. I was afraid. I mean I did a lot of fucked up shit in my life -- especially towards the end of my active addiction. I took a lot. I was a taker. I became the kind of person that would steal something from you and then helped you look for it. My thinking was so fucked up that I could rationalize stealing toys from underneath a Christmas tree. I used (and was used) by women. I kid around that I was a former pimp and technically, I was. But I was no pimp, believe me. I used to like to say that I was a “broker for sexual services.” As much as the word is used today, it’s nothing to be proud of. What I was -- I was an addict. Period.

Who the fuck wants to look at that shit?

I stole, but I stole more than property. I stole affection and trust and used that to feed my addiction. Perhaps my story is extreme, but let me ask: how many of us have stolen affection? How many of us have manipulated and controlled in order to feel better about ourselves?

Luckily, I had some great people around me in my early recovery. Quite a few of them are no longer with us, and my post today is dedicated to them. They helped me recover in spite of myself, because I was (still am? LOL!), one dense ma’fucca. To me the idea of a moral inventory was both scary but also contradictory. However, after having taken those first three steps and applying them to the best of my ability, I also knew I was still feeling a lot of shame and guilt about my past. My actions had clearly not been moral by any measure. It came to me that I needed to look into the shadows and to uncover those deep dark secrets or risk losing my recovery. By the time I had one year clean, I knew I wanted freedom from addiction more than anything in my life.

I took the advice of my sponsor and decided to write out my inventory. I used several different 4th Step guides and my inventory was extensive (me being the perfectionist I am). What I saw when I did my 4th Step were behavior patterns. All around. Everywhere. For the first time I saw that I fell repeatedly into the same patterns and this revelation was largely liberating.

The 4th Step gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets. Some of you may have tried this with a therapist. I had also. However, what made this moral inventory different was the foundation of the first three steps because those steps became the foundation upon which I was able to vanquish fear. What I saw underlying my habitual patterns was fear. Without the foundation of the first three steps, my moral inventory would’ve been weak and my shadow side would’ve eventually engulfed my efforts.

Because I was living the principle of the Third Step, I was able to turn over my fear and tendency to judge. I realized I was powerless to change my past, but that I was able to be accountable for now. Eventually, my Fourth Step gave me courage along with insight. And to a lesser degree, having faced myself with as much honesty as possible, I was able to lessen the fear and the shame. There were no more secrets, and more was being revealed.

The 4th Step was a draining experience for me. Sometimes, when things seem their darkest, it’s difficult to see the positive in your life. It was difficult for me to acknowledge the positive in me. I lived as a phony, showing only the parts of myself that I thought were good. I lived between the secrets, the shame, exploitation, and abuse of my addiction and the good parts of my public persona. I felt like a phony about my public self because people did not know the real me. When I finally faced the addict in me, my addiction became my teacher and helped me uncover the goodness in me. I had to come to the realization that I was strong, enduring, clever, and willing to risk even in my addiction. All these were qualities the addict in me stole in order to become powerful

The addict in me was that same entity that stole from me and then pretended he was helping me look for these qualities. I learned that all those qualities were mine and that they were available for me in my recovery.

Love,

Eddie

Why Aren't You Outraged?

¡Hola! Everybody...
No foreplay today.

* * *

-=[ Moral Outrage ]=-

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered near her home. Her neighbors were fully aware of the struggle between Genovese and her attacker, which lasted nearly thirty minutes in length, yet were unresponsive (later research disclosed that the actual events of that night were misreported). The failure of the neighbors to come to her aid is now known as the bystander effect. It refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the numbers of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in crisis. When an emergency situation occurs, observers are more likely to take action if there are few or no other witnesses. It’s as if in a large crowd, everyone is expecting someone else to do something, so no one acts.

I’m no hero -- by no stretch of the imagination. In fact, I am as far removed from “hero” as is possible. I do have a problem, however. For the life of me, I cannot stay quiet in the face of injustice. If I see something that’s just plain wrong, I can’t let it go, I can’t stay quiet. I have to act. Throughout my life, I have paid a steep price for that character defect.

But, no, I am no hero...

For me, real heroes are spiritual warriors who are alive with moral outrage and who enter the gladiatorial arena to wrestle with the mystery of evil in its many different disguises. Fierce men and women, rich in wise judgment, who still have thunder and lightning in them. Not the middle-of-the-road fence sitters these people. Give me the “hot” Bill Moyers (or Rachel Maddow!) who takes chances, calls presidents liars, and breathes fire at secret wars and hidden government over any of the “cool” stenographers who report the news and lead discussions as long as the perspectives expressed won’t keep them from access to the very power they should be holding accountable.

One of the most troubling issues of today is the absence of moral outrage in the American public. The ongoing revelations of wars justified by fabricated lies, government-sanctioned torture on American soil and abroad, corporate malfeasance, arranged assassinations, the shredding of the Constitution, are greeted with an apathy that is utterly mind-numbing. It is as if the whole of the American populace is under the thrall of a collective bystander effect.

While we might have freedom of the (corporate-owned) press, I am continually astounded by how our media can report on the most egregious forms of political and corporate corruption but very little happens. We have a former vice president going on talk shows and bragging about how he ordered torture!

To be sure, the path of the warrior is full of conflict and contradictions. No individual with an awakened sense of moral reasoning can witness unnecessary suffering, disease, and injustice without feeling outraged and being compelled toward action. Desecration evokes a feeling from deep in the gut that forms into a judgment and grows into an impulse to act.

Godammit it, it’s wrong for governments to spend billions on weapons when tens of thousands are dying needlessly from disease and hunger!

Fuck! It’s wrong to pursue a demented progress at the cost of destroying our planet!

Godammit! It’s wrong to pass a law that criminalizes people of a certain skin color!

If our minds and hearts haven’t been anesthetized, we must be outraged by the injustices of the world and realize that if “you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” You have to have a mission in life, something sacred, larger than your petty needs. It is our responsibility to become protectors of this world, of the powerless, and healers of the broken.

These are challenging times for those aspiring to live with compassion and vigor. You have to gird your fucking loins and decide where to enter the struggle against unnecessary suffering, injustice, and poverty.

Suffering is a fact of the human condition. In the best of all possible worlds, there would still be disease, accident, tragedy, disappointment, loneliness, and death. And there is a certain form of wisdom required in order to accept the things we are powerless to change. But there is suffering and then there is what we add to it. There is another form of wisdom that allows us address the suffering that results from psychological, economic, and political structures that we can change. While I do not subscribe to violent “just wars,” there is a just war of the soul that is against unnecessary suffering, against the impulses of greed, the collective lack of empathy, against those systemic mechanisms that are clearly responsible for the desecration of the earth and the dehumanization of people.

But identifying the enemy is always a dangerous exercise. Self-righteousness can easily come to dominate our judgments. It’s easy to condemn pollution while we continue to use a gas-guzzler to go the corner store. In order to guard against self-righteousness, I have to remind myself constantly that I am part of the problem I am trying to solve. I embody many of the wrongs I must fight. For example, as a man, I have a tendency to view the world from a male-dominated perspective. As a straight man, I have to be vigilant of any bias I have regarding my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. The demons of greed, cruelty, and fear must be fought from within and without.

The collective bystander effect-- heart that has become hardened -- is both individual and systemic, both mine and my enemy’s. The moral outrage that sets me at odds with institutional embodiments of evil also sets me in conflict with my own greed and apathy. A person who does not know how to fight a just fight, first within and then with others, has no values worth defending, no ideals worth aspiring to, no awareness of the disease of which he might be healed.

And nobody -- at least nobody with some cojones -- worships the status quo.

We may not be heroes, but we all owe it to ourselves and to others to become warriors of the soul. And when we become warriors, we do so with the knowledge that the battle is never to be won intellectually or politically. There is no answer, no methodology, no way of understanding that eliminates the harm evil poses to the human spirit. We do not live in a world that satisfies our demand for moral explanations. But it also true that I, and few others, know what must be done, if not to reduce oppression, at least not add to it. Perhaps we cannot prevent being in a world where the rights of our fellow human beings aren’t violated. But we can reduce the number of those being violated and dehumanized.

If you’re not feeling outraged today, you have lost your very soul, or whatever it is that makes you human...

-- Eddie