Living Life One Day at'a Time

On an addictions recovery list they were having a discussion of the recovery tool of living your life ODAT. (One Day at'a Time) I have tendency to living in the past and the future a lot. When we do this we are robbing ourselves of our life. For the present moment IS our only life to be lived. I heard this way of living described in very down to earth terms at a meeting one time. A fellow said "he kept one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow and he is pissing all over today." Pissing today away? This is what happens when we don't practice a life that lives in the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us of the importance of being present. "The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." Certain recovery programs use tools that plan for the future and help us repair the past. Making amends, doing written inventory and the like can bring us peace with the past so we may release it. Using prudent financial planning through budgeting and maintaining financial cushions can help with known and unknown future expenses. But these tools and practices are peace promoting in nature and in general, when done according to proper form do not destroy out peace. Once the sick addicts takes control - that is when peace can evaporate. This peace awareness is what separates living in the future or the past from planning responsibly for the future and learning lessons from the past. It all balances on whether our work in this area is destroying our peace or promoting it? I discussed developing a recovery program based on peace awareness in my earlier post "Putting Peace First"

Sometimes I get mail from addicts that are feeling bad for daydreaming. Others write me telling me crazy thoughts pop up now and again in their heads. Do we daydream to excess in a way that is causing us problems? Thoughts come and go in a persons mind, but it is what a person does with these thoughts that count. Our mind does not work in a vacuum and is not a machine. Some of us would like to make it a machine, but alas a constantly busy mind cannot heal itself. To clean up our minds and clear out some of the pain of the past and the apprehension of the future, try relaxing your brain with meditation on nothingness. Give your brain a treat and let it "Not Think" for once. Work in a direction to empty your mind while sitting in peace and calmness. When a thought pops up in your head, accept the thought and go back to practicing emptiness of the mind. Concentrate on your breathing, then after a time you will forget even that. Some practitioners call it blue sky meditation. Whatever the name, work to make your mind a clean slate once or twice each day. Some persons I talk with say they have no time to sit for 15 minutes to meditate. Too busy to live right? Besides checking out the voluntary simplicity or simple living movents, you can look for new found time within your excessively busy life this very moment. Stop looking for an excuse to quit - look for an excuse to continue. I would sometimes meditate in my car at half time during a college basketball game when I was too busy during the day. Other times I calmed my brain in the car while waiting to pick up a family member or waiting in a doctors office. We can even practice moving meditation while walking or jogging.

My Buddhist practice also helps me to remember to practice mindfulness of the present moment. With being an ADD and an addict, it is a a constant battle for me to be mindful of the present moment. even with simple things such as eating. I have to make a conscious effort to be mindful of each bite of food I am eating as my normal way is to put in a second bite before I've finished the first - sensation addiction. If this was not bad enough, I sometimes worry over the last bite of food when a dish is particularly stimulating to my taste buds. I seem to have trouble enjoying it because I am worried about it ending while it is happening. I used to do the same when I was getting a massage. I could not enjoy the present - was too caught up in the future or the past to be present. I try to be there with each bite of food chewing it well for if not, I can eat a meal and not even remember it as my mind was someplace else. When the body and mind become as one we are back in the present moniment.

On page 108 of "50 Ways to Simplify Your Life" the author talks about living mindfully writing: "Mindfulness is a great simplifying tool, because it is an antidote to doing too much." The book also gives the following example from the "The Miracle of Mindfulness"..."If while washing dishes we think only of the tea that awaits us...then we are not 'washing the dishes.' If we can't wash the dishes, chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either." How many times have we read a page and not know what we have just read? Forget where we are driving to and have to retrace our route? Find ourselves confused talking to someone on the phone after we realize we have no idea whose number we have just dialed? How can we start to be mindful instead of mindless? Awareness of our thoughts is the first step, taking action to live mindfully is the second step. We also need to stop putting ourselves on auto pilot. Mindfulness will come easier with daily practice. A good way to practice mindfulness is to concentrate on your breathing and to pay attentions to distracting thoughts as they fall away and disappear. Bringing my thoughts back to the present moment helps me with remember one day at a time and one moment at a time - the present moment. If you make it a point to wake up with recovery, eat lunch with recovery and to go to bed with recovery you can change your life for the better. But don't forget to always match the foot work with the mouth work in order to benefit.

Thoreau on the present moment: "In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment and to toe that line."

Emerson on living in the present: "The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose, perfect in every moment of its existence. In the unburst bud it has a full life. In the bloomed flower it has no more; in the leafless root it has no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, exactly the same in every moment. But man postpones or remembers. He doesn't live in the present; he looks back and regrets the past or, blind to the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He can't be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, beyond time."

Being distracted from the present moment was what I used my addictions for, as distractions from living life and dealing with problems and as artificial ways to relieve pain. Isn't it much easier to fantasize about something else than stay in the hear and now? I try and catch myself when I practice this escapism and work to bring my thoughts back to the present. Whenever the fantasy starts I check to see what I am escaping from? Why do I fixate on something else instead of where I'm at? The Bible tells us in Matthew 6:34 "Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." I found that I was able to practice ODAT in a more meaningful and natural way once I started to repair the wreckage of the past as well as change my present way of living into a healthy one. Until I changed direction with my life, the wreckage of the past was also the wreckage of the present, just as the wreckage of the future was going to be shortly. Wrong living in the present caused problems in the future that had to be answered for and eventually these 'pre-planned' future problems ripened to become present problems. James Allen writes about this in "As a Man Thinketh"..."Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results. Bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world, and work with it. But few understand it in the mental and moral world."

My out of balance and sick life was constantly being fueled by my various addictions in a vain attempt to pacify me from the pain. The sickness was growing and not declining. As the sickness grew, so did my thoughts of the mandatory consequences of my actions. In short, this did not support a program of ODAT, it chipped away at any hopes of being at peace with today, as my past was always dogging me as well as the future prices I had to pay for living wrong. The ancient Greeks knew when 'passion' rules the mind that the only job left for 'reason' is that of the subservient task of finding cleaver ways to satisfy the out of control passions. When our minds are occupied with too much wreckage of the past, too many future worries, too many problems and complexities of the present then there is little room left in it for reasoning. Thich Nhat Hanh says that the Buddha is pictured sitting on a lotus flower as the lotus is a symbol of peace and serenity. Whereas many of us sit on burning coals as we have too many problems and projects robbing us of peace. This is why addicts are notoriously bad decision makers...too much wreckage of the past, too much out of balance living, too many out of control passions, too many feared future consequences, too much hiding and lying, too much stealing as well as stealing peace from others...nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles.

The first step in the right direction for me was to freeze the sickness, this gave me relief that things would not get worse and would at least stay the same or get better. The next step was to work on a diminution of the sickness and then keep on working in this 'right' direction until I was at peace. The Buddha reminds us of the importance of working right: "The stages of the Noble Path are: Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Behavior, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration." From years of practicing various addictions I had dug a deep hole for myself and my family. The bigger mess I made, the more stress I created for myself and the more depression and hopelessness arose from my wrong lifestyle. Once I started to restructure my life in the direction of recovery, the benefits started showing up at my door. One thing was certain, I could not keep my old sick life and get better as well. Something had to go - so the sickness left and a new life entered. As we empty a vessel, it makes room for something else to enter it. As we empty ourselves of sickness, we make room for recovery to fill the emptiness. But restructuring one's life takes time. People do not like to wait. Instead of looking for results in an instant, look towards the direction you are heading in. I heard a story one time in a Yoga lecture that illustrates this point. "Range is of the ego - Form is of the soul." The only thing we need to be concerned with is how is our form when it comes to our recovery work?

An area of mind health and clear thinking that is often overlooked is that of living on a diet of artificial foods. Most people cannot think straight if they feed a brain a diet of highly processed, salty, unnatural, chemical laden junk foods. In addition, their physical health will suffer ills from an unhealthy diet that will drain them of even more brain power. I discussed this topic previously in my post "The King and Queen of Good Health." Once I cleaned up my mind through changing my diet to a natural and healthy one and stopped abusing substances I could think clearly and could work properly on cleaning up the wreckage of the past and making amends. Until that time I was in a mental haze. This restructuring of my life also paid dividends by cutting out most of my future worries, from living wrong. As I coupled this work of repairing the past through making amends and worked turning my will and my life, including my future over to a higher power, I found my decision making abilities had improved 80% to 90%. Whereas in my prior life, I was wrong with my decisions 80% to 90% of the time I was now right 80% to 90% of the time through a successful restructuring of my mind and life.

R. B. Gregg writes about 'physiological hygiene' in his treatise "The Value Of Voluntary Simplicity"..."Voluntary simplicity...it may be regarded as a mode of psychological hygiene. Just as eating too much is harmful to the body, even though the quality of all the food eaten is excellent, so it seems that there may be a limit to the number of things or the amount of property which a person may own and yet keep himself psychologically healthy" I go into much detail about this subject in an earlier post, "Everything You Own Take a Little Piece ~ Peace of You." The practice of living one day at a time, one moment at a time is facilitated if we live a natural and real life that is comfortable for us to live and we do not kill ourselves trying to live a life that is forced and unobtainable unless we resort to artificial, non sustainable, drugged-up means. I discussed these concepts in two earlier posts: "The Concept of Forcing Things" and "Living You Life By The Numbers"

Without a higher power to release ones life to, then we alone must take responsibility for how our life turns out. If you are an atheist and believe you are the center of the universe and there is no higher power to answer to, then you had better be loving how your life turned out as you can turn to no one 'other' than yourself. I tell such self sufficient people to adopt nature as a higher power. For even the most hardened and defiant atheist must admit they are not more powerful than nature. I discussed this topic extensively in an earlier post "I am having trouble with steps 2 and 3 ~ The HP question." Yes, adopting a HP or Higher Power takes us out of the drivers seat and allows us to live in the present and release the past and future to this higher power. Doing the 'right' footwork and releasing the results to a higher power is the essence of living ODAT.


Good Luck,