Freedom

I had someone say to me the other day," you have a lot of freedom."

That is a big statement. It can involve many dimensions. I should have asked him what he meant by that. Was it related to money or my marriage? My ability, in his perception, that I could do whatever the hell I wanted?  It came after telling him I was going to an ashram to soak up the energy there for a few days. He seemed to think he knew what was going to happen there. I don't even know what's going to happen there- or  anywhere really.

I told him that my freedom was always non-negotiable. Doing what I needed to do as far as being an artist, human, seeker, and liver of life has never been up for debate. I've always taken what I needed and was always willing to suffer the consequences of that.  He really didn't know what to do with that. It always used to happen to me when I was trying to live up to someone else's morality or expectation of who I should be.

People can only see and perceive you from the hole that they find themselves in- the hole they have dug for themselves.  So being free is a very lonely pursuit. We are never seen fully. We are only seen through the prism of the others' imprisonment or freedom proportionally. We have to be ok with that as it's the only thing possible. Struggling to be seen is another form of imprisonment.

What makes this freedom not a selfish pursuit is our willingness to show up and do what's needed in the face of that and the world we are presented with....without being seen. Ironocally, there is no "what about me" in said freedom, as we cannot take credit for our own lives. Our freedom in the face of that is a choice. We have been dumped here to do what is needed for whatever reason--- To walk and experience this cosmic tightrope, strung together, with duty, love, pleasure, culture, pain, growth, sorrow, helplessness, sexuality, discipline, fear, devotion and the responsibility of joy. It's a highwire that is stretched and bound tightly by a cloud of duality that is our physical essence-our mother earth itself. It seems utterly impossible that we can step off the wire and at the exact same time hang on. That we can take for ourselves what we cannot imagine or expect of others or the world at large. Laid here balancing at the feet of the gods we are asked so subtly, somewhere within, to experience ourselves beyond the stretches of that rope and step off into the netless abyss below. Once we accept that call and actually do it, we will never walk the high wire the same again. It is impossible. The entire cosmos shifts. It's proportionate to our willingness to disappoint ourselves and others. It will seem funny to us why people don't actually own and take responsibility for their own freedom- why they don't live their lives to answer the call. The one who is doing the asking will never quite leave us alone until she has satisfied her longing. It is the longing of the cosmos itself-which is us.

Sitting here in the darkness of an October morning the edges of winter are starting to creep in. The first few flakes of snow sparkle and fall in the streetlight outside the window. We won't be here forever. Why don't we claim and embrace the touches of love, vulnerability and humanness required- the pleasures of freedom that are so graciously laid at our feet? It's not like we are going anywhere at all but back to the earth itself. Life is a temporary reprieve from what we don't know. We are it. What are we waiting for? Why do we deny ourselves the pleasures, openness, love, and attention of ourselves undone? Why do we deny ourselves the freedom so graciously given....  I am guilty.....it's the ultimate form of dishonesty really...it's there for the taking....go ahead....touch it.... leap.

Namaste

The Four Hour Lunch

The Four Hour Lunch

What's the color scheme of optimism for an aging former pile driving pirate? It would certainly be black, as well as Mediterranean blue, maybe with a farm fresh egg cracked on top and a summer tomato salad spiked with garlic and basil on the side . . . A living rainbow of elements for the pallet that is the world's breaking heart . . . split . . . cracked . . . turning . . . sprouting the transparent glow of painted birds oncoming in spring. 

For me, these colors can't be seen or heard fully when one is people pleasing or pile driving your way through life, or trying to take care of other people's emotions. For the uncompromising oversensitive eccentric this can be a tall order. In hindsight, I've missed so much in my pursuits. Through the veil of time we see the truth of life's colors revealed through our make-up of earth, fire, air, water and ether. Luckily, the older I get the less ambition, tolerance and energy I have. So, I can see and experience things with more clarity. Silence in relation to time is a great virtue, the need for it is proportional to one's age. I find myself alot these days feeling like Lao Tsu must have felt, with an urge to climb atop my water buffalo and ride the fuck out of town to do nothing but eat, breath, and enjoy the cosmos in its entirety.

I was in France recently, eating and working my way through the French countryside. It was a glorious reminder that some finer sensibilities remain. Like the food of spiritual India, there is a deeper purpose behind the relationship to food in France other than fuel and economy. The French commodity at its best is a reflection of life. The smell of fresh manure on the fields in spring is a great reminder. It's an effervescence that includes, if not contains, the practice of the circle itself.

I had a four hour lunch one Sunday with a friend. It was a seven course orgy of earthy delights in a place called La Petite Auberge by Marie and Oliver on the outskirts of the small town of Ernee. It was run by the cute couple. (he in the back cooking and...she running the show in the front.) It was like having lunch in their living room. I told my friend in the states about it and his response was, "Jesus why? What did you talk about for 4 hrs?” He said, the only thing he could talk about for four hours would be the things he was ashamed of. I nearly popped a stitch. In the sense of urgency that is the American fast food drive through, a cog gets thrown into the cosmic spiral that gums up the entire creative works and our relationship to it. We forget where we come from. In all that effort to get somewhere else quickly, we don’t really go anywhere at all. It's here that our relationship to the circle of life begins to get stuck and reflects our entire one dimensional neurotic culture. Food is spirituality. It’s a direct connection to the depth and experience of the divine order itself. We are what we eat. At the end of the fast food line when we ask ourselves the existential question . . .who am I? . . The only possible answer would be . . . “I am in a hurry.” The salt puck burger you horse down on the way to somewhere else locks you up on a whole other level.

Anyway, the meal started out with a couple of tasters including a seabound crab bite from Normandy in cream and a foie gras mousse. The mousse was one of the best things I ever put in my mouth. It was the jizz of the divine earth mother herself. It was beyond description really. (the enlivened sexual gland of the divine earth mother would be a raw briney Brittany oyster for sure but thats another story all together). If I had eaten this sensuous silky swirl of goose liver and cream when I was younger it wouldn't have tasted the same. The experience was like one of those living books that changes along with the depth of your experience. Next year I’m sure it will taste totally different, as the world will be different. I could have taken a bath in it.

Next came a slice of smoked salmon on a cauliflower puree with a bit of horseradish. In its simplicity, it expressed the blossoming of the physical world itself, presented from the warm hands of a clay bowl . . .earth...sea...smoke and air...The simple dish reflected  the entire journey of a blooming lotus flower in two slow bites.

Next came a plump Normandy scallop hidden under a cheese spiked tuille (cracker) with a confit of red onion on a bed of pureed parsnip. I can't tell you the landscape I was able to access here as different elements swirled on my tongue. All I can say is, in this part of France on a breezy day working at the edge of the forest, you sometimes get a whiff of the sea an hour away. Every so often a salty breeze comes in subtle waves over the fields and through the trees. This was that momentary experience presented on a plate.

White asparagus in foamy Normandy cream with dried ham and pea shoots came next.  Just close your eyes and repeat this out loud.

The next course was a nice chunk of sauteed pollock on a bed of steamed kohlrabi and cabbage puree topped with a bone broth infused with sorrel. We decided as we bathed in the earthliness of the cabbage underneath the thel classic flesh that our new culinary mantra would be "fuck kale" as there are so many varieties of succulent delicate digestible cabbages on the planet. Cabbage carries the same health benefits and twice the deliciousness as kale anyway, without the discomfort of trying to chew, digest and subsequently shit rope the next morning. So fuck kale - vive la revolution.

A plate of lamb came next, a delicate chop and a philo cigar stuffed with what must have been a bit of loin or lamb confit as it tasted completely different from the chop. It was served with small spring turnips, some kind of fumet and honey. As I closed my eyes and savored each delicious bite, I was able to experience an intricate sensory explanation of how earth inevitably becomes flesh. The symbiotic connection between flora and fauna was a spiritual experience equal to many hours chanting, meditating, and praying in ashrams around the globe. Maybe the awareness accessed through my practices was what enabled me to experience the plate of food this way. Maybe it was the other way around. What comes first, the chicken or the egg--the action of the prayer or the resulting experience?

Isn't the path the goal after all? Who knows?  Who the fuck cares? 

At this point in life just bring on dessert.

There were two desserts. First was a coconut cookie and pineapple cake with a caramelized pineapple and cardamom sorbet that was like a walk through a sweet tropical forest. This was followed by a chocolate Gateau with chocolate mousse and a minerally beetroot sorbet that somehow expressed the entire journey from root to fruit.

The entire meal was served in a relaxed, unpretentious fashion. Without the time it took we would not have been unable to see what they were actually doing here? In this time honored tradition they were provisioning us with a sensory experience of who we are and what we are made up of in the physical form. This is what makes good food coupled with time a spiritual experience. When it's presented in its pure form, unhurriedly, we get an experience of who we actually are.

This wasn’t pretentious Michelin star cooking though it was as elegant and refined as any of it. It was quite simply an expression of our true nature in all its beauty, contrast and splendor. 

In the end, my friend and I didn't have to talk about much for four hours. The food and the experience and the time it took said more than we ever could. It was more about the two of us sharing a conversation with the sun, sand and sky.  We experienced an intimate whisper from our essence through time-which is earth, air, fire, water and ether all wrapped up into one…. No doubt a timeless spiritual experience all unto itself.

ert.
There were two desserts. First was a coconut cookie and pineapple cake with a caramelized pineapple and cardamom sorbet that was like a walk through a sweet tropical forest. This was followed by a chocolate Gateau with chocolate mousse and a minerally beetroot sorbet that somehow expressed the entire journey from root to fruit.

The entire meal was served in a relaxed, unpretentious fashion. Without the time it took we would not have been unable to see what they were actually doing here? In this time honored tradition they were provisioning us with a sensory experience of who we are and what we are made up of in the physical form. This is what makes good food a spiritual experience. When it's presented in its pure form, unhurriedly, we get an experience of who we actually are.

This wasn’t pretentious Michelin star cooking though it was as elegant and refined as any of it. It was quite simply an expression of our true nature in all its beauty, contrast and splendor. 

In the end, my friend and I didn't have to talk about much for four hours. The food and the experience and the time it took said more than we ever could. It was more about the two of us sharing a conversation with the sun, sand and sky.  We experienced an intimate whisper from our essence through time-which is earth, air, fire, water and ether all wrapped up into one…. No doubt a timeless spiritual experience all unto itself.

The End of Romance and an Orgy of Cheese

Stuck in traffic on a 50 minute cab ride from Charles de Gaulle airport to Gare Montparnasse, I was suddenly aware of how I used to attach romance to almost everything. As the French cabbie weaved his way through the streets swearing to himself about the gridlock, there was the Eiffel tower sticking its little brown dickhead up through the pink light and the Champs-élysées strung out in all its perfection. There were the French lovers at the crosswalk gazing into each other's eyes in a quiet personal trance against the backdrop of sidewalk cafes. I could almost hear accordion music bouncing off the big stone wall in my head.  Memories and ideas started bubbling up as a familiar ode in colored light. It was all still there where I’d left it but it was different somehow. The romance of writers, poets, painters, markets, and stone bridges that once flashed as big ideas presented themselves more like scruffy french hookers under dim street lights on the Rue St. Denis. I was older maybe and a little well worn. Besides, I had to couler un bronze. In my longing for the salle de bain, the bane of Henry Miller and the grandiose yearnings of youth were gone. 

Luckily, I know myself a little better these days. I know that wherever I go, for the first two days I want to move there. I could be anywhere. It doesn't matter where it is. I want to pack it all in and set up shop. My head can romanticize the city dump. It can romanticize almost anything-and not in a good way. In my youth, it was wino homeless poets, hitchhiking to work, big adventure, lovers, freedom, food, sex, spirituality, victory gardens, and money- basicaly anywhere but here. I hung myself out to dry constantly chasing an illusion in my head. I almost died on several occasions. I call it my magnifying magazine mind. It's the blessing and the curse of the artist who subconsciously collects the energy and imaging of the outside world and spits it back out as art. This fantasyland can create great art but also a constant state of delusion. Most of the spiritual giants and great artists I revered weren't mamby pamby idealist dreamers anyway. They were tough, hard working people grounded in the reality of the moment, more than likely with spade in hand. This is what a well worn life teaches you on the back end. These realizations sneak in through the back door of you serendipitously, whether you like it or not, if you just take the time to sit still for half a minute.  And then you wake up to find yourself strung out in a different dimension. Reality shifts on you before you even know what's happening. Then one day you find yourself driving through the streets of Paris-but in a different way altogether.

My first realization of this change came when I was stuck in Singapore a few years back. I'd hung myself out to dry on an ill fated attempt at India. ( I won't go into the gory details). I walked the hot humid streets for three days in a bit of a panic, past random modern buddhist temples , Marina Bay Sands, food stalls with families sucking chili crab, strip malls, commerce and buzzing traffic . I had the realization that most people in passing were not that different from people anywhere else half a world away. They were just trying to make ends meet, make it to the hardware store so they could fix the crapper or to the mechanic so they didn't have to take an uber to work. As I walked those streets my grandiose ideal system ground to a sweaty halt. It did me more good than two weeks in that ashram in India for sure. I realized that in all my subtle romantic notions, travels and befuddlments that there was a part of me that was missing my own fucking life.

I met my friend in Paris and we had a coffee in the station amongst the traveling hoards. She looked tired and wrung out. We rode the train out west through the French countryside yacking incessantly like old friends do. She had built a life in France that was falling apart and I came to help her out a bit. I spent three weeks busting my ass, weeding gardens, mowing lawns, trimming hedges and feeding chickens and alpacas. I worked at a little run down chateau mowing the lawn and painting ceilings to give her some relief from the predicament she’d found herself in. (very romantic) It didn't really make a dent in her overwhelming life load. What It provided, in the end, was a little space and perspective for the both of us. I wasn't interested in seeing the sites. I was interested in something a little deeper. As a result, I was able to taste the effervescence of French country life in a different way.

One day I stood up from a pile of alpaca shit I was shoveling and realized I could be almost anywhere. It actually reminded me of Ohio. A place I was eager to escape at all cost as a young man. The only way you would have known I was in France would have been to open up the Fridge and take a whiff, have some cheese and crackers, rabbit terrine, or take a run down to the Super U grocery store and walk the isles to bathe in the glory of the food and oogle at the prices of the Châteauneuf du Pape. Even then, all those little old French ladies picking through the produce weren’t on their way to somewhere else. They were just living their own lives. Or then again maybe not…maybe in the back of their little Breton buttered heads they were bored with all this and were dreaming of tromping off to Disneyland for a ménage à trois with Mickey and Mini…What do I know?  Humans and their longings are the most fascinating thing. 

All this is a sign to me that my spiritual path has worked--as it led to a great disappointment. Continued spiritual practice magically separates you from your head and plops your right into the reality of your predicament. Wherever you go -there you are. It's really the most profoundly interesting form of travel one could imagine and at the same time routine. You can't find this kind of shit in the shiney pages of Conde Nast Traveler. Still I can catch myself going there- to the great idea- to a glossy scenario wrapped in a bigger shinier rainbow life that has nothing to do with reality.  These days, I try to play the tape forward to the point where the honeymoon in my head is actually over. I go to that moment about three weeks in, when I'm rifling through reading materials looking for something in English in someone else's house, or to that hotel room on a moonlit Italian Piazza and I say to myself, “What?  Spaghetti for dinner again? Jesus fucking Christ! Why can’t I get one of those burritos with black beans, guacamole and chilis--yeah that would do me right.”  At that point I know I’ve done it again. I screwed the pooch on the gifts laid before me and it's time to go home. Where is home you might ask?--It's the joy of right here, right now. 

All that being said, once the dream is done one can taste the world in a different way. You can read books or poetry you once read and something deeper magically appears. Sensuality takes on a different hue on the other side of a romantic vacation. Take for example French Cheese. In between our back breaking work on the farm, in passing, we bathed in an orgy of cheese for a week. We devoured mass quantities of Comte’, French Bleu, local Emmental, chevre, and a soft cheese coated in ash called Morbier that comes from the method of preserving the milk curds by covering it with a layer of ash. The cheese coated with the ash neutralizes the acidity during ripening. The ash used is totally edible. I can only imagine the iron age dumbass who fatefully dropped that chunk of cheese in the fire the first time. I'm sure he reached down to pluck the cheese from the ashes mumbling something like “5 second rule” only to discover that in a week or so, the cheese was actually better. We ate a slice of a nutty mountain cheese spiked with black truffle in the market that you would sell your first born for. It was like an orgasmic symphony in your mouth. But at 50 euros a kilo we had to settle for the memory of just one slice. ( I've already started to romanticize it) There was also a chunk of what must have been a spring Tomme we bought that tasted on the back end like a bit of the barnyard. It left you with the feeling that a few wet sheep were dancing on the back of your tongue. Fall Tomme would have tasted totally different. There was the Brie, a Camembert from right up the road in Normandy and sheeps cheese from the pyrenees all consumed randomly everyday in passing with lunch or as a pre-dinner spelunk through the local cheese cave. It was simply mana to a working man's soul.

We all know the French have nary a rock and roll bone in their DNA. I've only met one. An aging ex-french paratrooper named Jacquenod who had parachuted into Algeiers in the 50’s turned music booking agent. He loved John Lee Hooker and wore snakeskin boots. He’d show up for a late breakfast every morning with two young women on his arm, order a coffee and a red wine at ten AM, roll his eyes, and announce to us like Pepe’ Le Pew that the young lasses were killing him. But what the French lack in rock and roll passion they make up for in other meticulous perfections.  Cheese would be one of them.

In three weeks I worked myself to exhaustion. On the long journey home there wasn't much to ooh and aah about but the stress of travel, train transfers, covid testing, long layovers, and traffic. Like any good love affair it ended all jizzed out staring at the ceiling. I think great food is probably the greatest art form. The end result is shit. Which turns back into life again. Like true love you can’t possess it or attach to it. You are it. You can’t hang it on the wall. It's only a whistle stop of momentary sweetness in a great circle of life. A nice beautiful boffing that holds the orgasm of impermanence flopping like a fish in its mouth. It's here and then gone. Life tastes better ground with reality--- like a great big biscuit slathered in Breton butter spiked with a grain of salt going down-- past the honeymoon in my head--- laying itself like a fresh egg right here, right now --in the orgy at the end of romance.

Bon Appétit mon ami----Fin

Yard Bird

FerFukSake  #1

Yard Bird

 I still wake up at 5 am and sit here in the dark with Reg the wonder dog drinking coffee. Every so often it seems like Wyoming creeps down over the mountain passes as we've had a week of crazy 50 mile an hour winds pummeling us from the north. The trees tumble back and forth in an ache for summer monsoons and calmer days. I've been spending some time working on the house but I find myself not wanting to do too much. It's a fine house and we don't need much. We've never needed much. This has been our saving grace. Just making a few updates will go well with a little effort and the resulting aching back.

 Life seems fairly boring these days but we are lucky in our abundance. Gone are the years of ambition and conquest. I should receive the new poetry book I wrote in the mail on Monday. We shall see how it turned out. For what it's worth, I think it's my best one to date. A new record is finished and getting released in Europe through my Dutch distributor. But ten new songs on the state of my evolution and the world's existential affairs is all very uneventful anymore really. As I age, I continue to find my musings and creative endeavors revealed in a much smaller scope, though they are quite necessary for perspective.   

 What's more eventful is a good night's sleep, a fine meal, the occasional erection that starts in the heart ( rather than in the flesh) and the realization that one is loved and cared for by those magical beings dropped in one's lap by the gods and grace. . . Also. . .The realization that I cannot do physical work like I used to, massive inflation, the stock market tumbling and the invasion of Californians and Martians creating traffic jams in our once quiet little town. Also, the realization that the transfer of energy created by the act of writing somehow unclogs some invisible catch in the hemispheres below skin and bone-making one feel strangely whole. This act enables me to walk down the street in a different way, despite my constant denial of its great importance. Writing is an act of self love and self care I can scarcely do without. If I take the time to write a little, it reminds me of the amazing life I get to live in the shadow of my terrible disease of forgetting. It's like a tightrope walk at the moment's edge. Damned be to what I ever thought I wanted out of this life, as nothing I ever planned amounted to a hill of beans anyway We are not in control of much of anything really and the more deeply we wrap that realization around our quiet desperation the better. It's all about what we do in the meantime.

 So last night I roasted a chicken. I thought I overdid it when I looked at the thermometer and it registered 170 instead of 165. In a panic I quickly popped it out of the oven and let it rest for the required 20 minutes. I then discovered a little pink in the juices and thought, “Shit, I undercooked it.” Was the thermometer in the wrong place? Were the poultry Gods not aligned?

With roast chicken one never knows.  

 It's so hard to get a chicken done perfectly. The breast meat cooks before the thigh and leg and the question of what temperature should one cook it at is always a dilemma. I did it at 425 degrees the whole way for a two and a half pound fryer and trussed the bird with some string I found in the garage next to the weed whacker. Anyway, it actually turned out perfect. The trick I feel is the slab of butter underneath the breast skin that keeps the breast meat moist and tender. I slathered the bird underneath the skin as well with olive olive oil and my homemade herbs de provence from the summer garden. I stuffed half a lemon and some garlic in the cavity and threw some carrots and an onion in the pan to roast alongside the bird. As I sliced through the crispy skin and tasted the breast, it had a hint of the lemon swimming in the tears of the roasted flesh. My fears of undercooking evaporated. The bird was perfect. I made a Cabernet pan gravy that offered the perfect amount of acid to offset the savory goodness of the chicken fat and mashed potatoes we prepared. I thought about popping a bottle of Cote d Rhone but in my better judgment I chose a good night's sleep over that sensual pleasure of the french countryside. A piece of chocolate with salted Caramel would have to do for dessert instead. Sweet dreams are better preferred.

 Just taking the time to write this all down can somehow transform me from a curmudgeonly ungrounded beast to grateful saint. I can’t explain how that works. But all I know from experience is that..

It's the act that makes the difference --not the difference that makes the act. That's always a good thing to remember when pondering the desperation of days and roasting yard bird.

Bon appetito and te amo mon ami

FIN

The Underbelly

i woke up with an immense clarity this morning at 4 am
immersed
in the underbelly of some beast that
had been exposed
as a state of being

maybe it was god
cause i asked her to help me last night
The voice this morning whispered....
"What have you been doing?"
and i knew what she meant

I've been exhausted and rung out
from tromping dead paths
once abandoned
and picked up again and again
as last resort
as a last ditch effort at controlling my worthiness
like a pair of old worn out shoes
or a warm well of old lovers
entwined
writhing in the summer lofts of my mind
comforting 
but separate
devoid
of this underbelly itself
somehow
that only lies in the grace of a stillness
at the end of the worn out road
overgrown
and overun
by life itself
holding 
a great imperfection.
which is 
perfection itself

unfortunatly
only in my exhaustion
does this place ever reveal itself
clear and clean
as water
below
flowing
still
in my 
FORGET-FULL-NESS

i was half awake
still dreaming
and i could no longer feel
the struggle
the folly
of hurt
and
longing
anymore
i lay there
beyond the voice
of time
of a consciousness wasted
on trying
instead of being
and living
which is really loving 
in disguise

there
my choice was made for me
it wasnt seperate
i was it
this underbelly
its nothing i could ever earn
or accomplish 
its given
as a gift
decorated
and wrapped in the bow
of my loss......
burned clean
by the fire of my struggle
against it

its been illusive
as of late
because
ive tried to conjur it up
but it can only be given
never made
i cant even surrender to it
i must be surrendered
into it

and this morning
it was given

Ballad of a reluctant Yogi-Part 4

I went back to my practices and committed wholeheartedly. I went deeper. And as grace would have it, the advanced program that I had run away from some years back was scheduled again about the time my 90 days was up. The program offered an experience that enabled a person to experience themselves beyond the wall of the physical self—beyond what we have accumulated in this life. Something told me I had to go. So, I got on a plane, and a bus, and scooted up the hill to the ashram. As soon as I entered the ground, my ego knew something was up. The fear was immense. But maybe I was open enough. Maybe the soil was ripe for expansion. As soon as I walked into the mediation hall, the bottom dropped out for me. I didn’t have a concept of what was “me” and what was not “me” anymore. I entered a completely new dimension of myself. When I accessed this space, there was an explosion of joy and bliss. I didn’t even have to finish the process. It hit me as soon as I walked into the energy charged environment. I was blown wide open.

Coming down the hill into town after the program, I was ecstatic. I took a walk in a park, and with my mind, I had to consciously bring myself back into the form of my own body by defining myself as independent and separate. I would come up to a tree, look at it, and say to myself, “Ok, this is me,” and then touch the tree and say, “This is the tree.” I had to consciously define myself as a separate entity. This went on for a few hours. I visited my family and was overjoyed to see them. I was exploding with energy. When I came home to Colorado, it continued. There was an inner pathway to an energy that I had never experienced before. I could ride my bike for thirty miles at a click and never be tired. I had connected to a dimension of myself that was profound, energy charged, and free of my conditioned thinking and responses. Over the next few weeks, I began to notice the change that had occurred within me. My PTSD was gone. My system had completely reset. I never again woke up in a nauseous state of dread, separation, and fear as I approached the day. A tremendous amount of useless information had been instantly downloaded from my mind, leaving me with a new dimension of intelligence that was beyond accumulated thought and learning. There was a sense of ease and freedom that I had lacked all through my recovery process. I had found the freedom that had been promised in the rooms of AA and ACOA that had never been granted me.

Has my journey continued? YES. I’ve still had to work and recognize my old, subconscious, learned patterns. I’ve come to see that I tend to use the old survival tools that I have been given to incorporate, function, and survive in the world. But the PTSD and trauma response has been removed. I still have to live and be a part of the physical world, but if I maintain my connection and practice, I’m able to have one foot in the dimension of myself beyond what we refer to as name and form. That dimension is always available to me if I continue to evolve and practice. I still experience fear, but it's normal to circumstances. It's not an inherent, forever on alert fear which crippled me in the past. As I have proceeded in the world of recovery and trauma informed care, I really don’t hear anyone talking about this kind of experience. Can we manufacture this kind of experience for all who suffer this ailment of trauma and addictive conditioning? I have not encountered anyone that has revealed this type of experience to me. So, I have looked back on my 17 years of recovery and yoga practice to try and identify some key factors in relationship to what, why, and how it happened. What happened in relation to my experience as a recovering addict, ACOA, trauma survivor, and human being? Yes... human being. What enabled me to experience myself in such a way that my system remembered who it was beyond my conditioned responses to life? What did I recover and why? It's taken some time to identify and pinpoint it in relation to recovery and spiritual lore. I hear a lot of talk in recovery circles about people living with trauma response, but no one really talks about transcending it. But it happened to me... Why?

I never wanted any of this recovery and spiritual nonsense—I was suspicious and reluctant the entire way—but it happened anyway. What follows is a somewhat academic approach to a system of spiritual technology and self-inquiry that gives us an experiential possibility of transcendence. This transcendence is what is referred to as samadhi, self-realization, Christ consciousness, buddha nature, or the access to the dimension of ourselves that lies beyond name and form—beyond what we have accumulated as body, mind, emotion, and experience. I feel it’s the secret of recovery. It’s a combination of contemporary recovery tools and the 5,000-year-old science of experiential spiritual practice, that when incorporated together, expedites the process of recovery and spiritual transcendence. The process is tailored to unclog the pathways of energy in relation to our physical, emotional, and energy bodies, giving us the possibility to experience ourselves in a new dimension of grace. I’m not a yogi in the traditional sense. “ I am.” I’m no different than you. Anonymous through and through. I don’t sit on a pillow in Yogic garb, dispensing philosophy from a cave or temple. I'm not repeating quotations or philosophy out of books beyond my own experience. All the philosophy everyone is quoting doesn’t create an experience. The experience created the philosophy. What is your experience up until this point? Ask yourself.

Really, I’d rather write poetry or songs than to write this book. I’d rather sit at the corner café, musing with the fluttering of birds and passersby, contemplating the push and pull of the sun and moon. I’d rather be eating or fishing. But the result of this process was so profound for me that I feel it's my duty to pass it on, so you might have the possibility of staring into the abyss of a bliss and happiness so deep that it changes the reality of your existence and the world. Grace is always a factor. No one can be successful without grace. It's impossible. I’m living proof. It’s a fact. I didn’t choose this path …. It chose me. It showed up. My imperfect family showed up. Spiritual abuse showed up. The drunkenness showed up. The misery showed up. Shame showed up. Failure showed up. Sorrow showed up. Then sobriety showed up—in spite of myself, and who I thought I was. The terror showed up. The freaking Indian Yogi Guy showed up. It all just showed up. I’m so lucky. The universe conspires always to reveal to us just what needs to be revealed. It’s the definition of perfection, really. We just have to listen. Did I try at every turn to run screaming from the burning building and back to the known and my old self? Yes. I don’t know what kept me crawling back and moving forward. It was probably a deep-seated voice beyond the subconscious that was strong enough to outweigh the fear—the The Secret of Recovery 15 fear that deep down I knew was just a wall blocking me from something greater. To the union that I begin and end with . A place I like to call “Home”. I’ve laid it out because…if you are meant to…you will find it too.

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Success

Success is not success without a willingness to fail. How does success look in this program? For me it was accessing a dimension of myself where i was separate from my past conditioning. That meant not waking up in a ball of fear every morning that was debilitating. I had to have tools and people to help me not succumb the the paralysis it created. I had to separate from my thoughts so I could experience the distinction between who I was and my protection mechanisms.

For everyone the path is different. The one thing that is not different is our approach and the spirit in which we approach our recovery.

WHERE WE BEGIN AND END

We begin where we are, accept ourselves where we are, and how we are, and whatever happens … happens. If we think we know where we are going, we are selling ourselves way short. By thinking we know where we are going, we create a barrier that prevents us from accessing the miracle of the unknown. The Secret of Recovery is a science. In our recovery practices, we perform action. Every action has a reaction. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a law of science that what we resist persists. So, we start our action where we are with no desired destination in mind. We just do. We get rid of our foresight. We do and observe. This requires an openness and a willingness to let action take us wherever it wants us to go. We trust. We get out of the driver’s seat. We do without knowing where it will take us. Only then can transformation happen. We will repeat this affirmation …

Ballad of a Reluctant Yogi-part 3

All this happened within a week. There were participants that had shared about an advanced program that they had taken. When they shared about it, they could not contain themselves. They fell apart with joy and tears. This scared me even more. The only thing scarier than our self-imposed, comfortable prison is the raw joy of experiencing a piece of unbounded freedom. It seems every time the ego butts up against the possibility of its own demise, it spits out its own form of squid ink called fear. That fear blots out the sky and disorients. It clouds the path one must take for one's own good. It’s a tremendous hurdle. For trauma people, it's even worse. The transcendent experience to overcome and reset the conditioned trauma response is almost a traumatic experience in itself. Asking a trauma person to do what is needed to realize himself beyond his or her protection mechanisms is like asking him to go insane.

That’s what it felt like anyway. But that's what is actually needed. I left that week overjoyed and committed. I started doing kriya yoga practices. Things started to move within. But what I thought was going to be a peaceful process was instead tumultuous. The practices started to open me up. Shit was moving and coming up. What was coming up wasn’t so pretty. The self-inquiry element in my AA program gave me something to do with it that was concrete. Slowly, the practices loosened, brought The Secret of Recovery 9 up, and revealed my interior life. My motivations, fears, regrets, loss, shame, guilt, and dishonesty were all revealed and came up for me to deal with. My distorted, protected, and comically put together self started to become unglued, and then I worked it out through the process of the program steps. This took time. Everyone is different. For me, the next few years was a back and forth dance on a train I was unable to get off of. Every time I had tried to exit stage right, the doors would slam shut. And I would find myself crawling back with the realization that there was no other option but to move forward. I did the back and forth dance that grace required for me to transcend my own trauma response. Most of the dance was not pretty. I did my best. I thought AA and therapy would help fix it and restore me to sanity. Although it helped to know where my trauma responses came from, it did not ultimately carry me all the way across the stream. Self-knowledge availed me nothing when it came to trauma. I was trapped in a never-ending cycle of a conditioned response that I had no control over. I could not solve the problem with my knowledge or willpower. I went in and out of my practices and tried to move forward. I’d drop them and start them again.

The inner fear was overwhelming at times, but I carried on. I never let the fear get the best of me. I plowed through it, but I was not free. I’d wake up terrified in the mornings. I’d throw up in trash cans before performances. I’d throw up dealing with my son. The whole public-school system was a huge trigger. I went back to a counselor. She identified the abuse and flaws in my upbringing and then offered me a book on Jesus. I did EMDR. I redoubled my efforts in the program. I tried the advanced program with the little, Indian man, and I was so terrified that I left. I did another yoga program. I would re-up my practices and then quit them altogether. Back and forth I went. Mind you, I never wanted any of this shit—it just happened. I crawled back into AA thinking I was the problem, only to become more depressed. The AA crowd would just look at me like I was doing something wrong. An AA guy’s biggest fear is that the program is not going to work. He hangs on to the program like it’s life or death because it is. But I re-committed myself. I did more inventories, looked at myself and my reactions to things. But my identification as a 100% be all, end all, selfish addict didn’t add up. I was trapped in a bubble that I couldn't explain. I rolled out of bed every morning feeling sick to my stomach and dragging myself through each day. For almost ten years, I did this in recovery. For ten years, the freedom they promised eluded me.

Then the wheels came off, and I crawled into ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and found out the root of my PTSD and trauma. I did the work. I accumulated an immense amount of knowledge about my predicament. But in the end, self-knowledge still availed me nothing. I was trapped in a conditional response, as a result of my story, that I had no control over. Finally, I had had enough. I was at the end of my rope. In the first yoga sutra, it says simply, “And Now Yoga.” Why? Because we have tried everything else. I had done the yoga kriya practices I had been taught, but I had never done them completely to open and make them a part of my system. If we start a somatic or yoga practice, we must do it once a day for ninety days, or twice a day for 48 days, for it to become a permanent part of our system. What we are doing is balancing our system and paving new energy pathways to access deeper states of consciousness. This breaks down the walls of our cellular protection mechanisms. If we fail to do this, energy just takes the path it once took. It always takes the path of least resistance and goes right back where it came from into the old riverbed in our bodies. In hindsight, I did it all half-assed. I was undisciplined. I always took the easier, softer way. I wasn’t all in. But at this point, I committed myself to a daily Kriya that opened and balanced the system. (Yoga kriya is a combination of asana, pranayama, chanting, and meditation. It takes about 25 minutes to do.) I did not want to do it. But I found myself doing it anyway.

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Ballad of a Reluctant Yogi -part 2

Up to that point, I had tried and experimented lightly with different forms of spirituality in the past. I stole the teachings of Buddha from a Japan-town hotel in San Francisco. I skimmed it a bit. I tried meditating with a candle. I read the Dharma Bums again. I said Hail Mary’s when I heard an ambulance. When I got sober, I was so desperate, I even went back to Catholic mass. I was fine until I got to the professions of faith. I had that same feeling of inner knowing that I had had when I was six. It stuck in my throat. I fought my middle finger. So, in a purple flash of Lenten guilt, I left. After four years, I was still basically lost in a dark night of the soul, so to speak. I was willing. I tried to pray, but later I came to find out I was conditionally incapable of receiving. My trauma protection mechanisms had become too strong. I didn’t know how to pray, as well. I only knew how to beg. My inner soil wasn’t mixed right energetically to receive. I was closed off in an unconditional traumatic protection response that I had no control over. I was stuck in an energy vortex that was constantly folding back on itself and keeping me stuck.

But that night, as the moonlight shone down, and little Jimmy Dickens faded out with a twang, I must admit, in hindsight, there, in that moment, that I asked the universe for something. In that place, under that moonlight, a call went out, and it was heard through some kind of quantum vortex. That request was received somewhere, somehow out in the energy field of the cosmos. Even now, it brings tears to recall it. But at the time, I thought nothing of it. I looked at my watch, cranked up the car, hit the headlights, and weaved my way down the road to the meeting. As I walked into the meeting, a buddy of mine came up to me straight away and said, “Dude, I gotta talk to you. I met this guy, and he is amazing. You have to check him out. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced.” I paid him no mind and said, “Whatever, man. I gotta get a cuppa joe,” and pushed my way past him toward the pot of shitty AA coffee. I knew I had time for one more cig before the meeting started. If I timed it right, I could take my seat just as they were finishing the annoying AA preamble. But my buddy wouldn’t give up. He followed me outside and kept yakking incessantly about some little, Indian guy that did amazing things. I got my coffee and headed outside with him following me all the way. I lit my smoke and felt that awful vapor hit my lungs. My friend continued by saying that this guy was giving a talk and that I had to come with him.

I hemmed and hawed and said, “Man, I’m really not into it. I have a very busy schedule. Ya know?” Trying to be a rock star took a lot of time. On top of that, I had a two year old, I was working a job, I was broke, I wasn’t feeling very well these days, it had rained that day, the moon was in the second house, I was out of smokes, my family needed me, I needed to get laid, I already had a service commitment, it was daylight savings time—you know, anything—but that. But he persisted until he found my weak spot. And as we all know, Grace always finds the weak spot. He said if I went, he would buy me dinner. I lit up, and I swung around. “Steak?” I said. “Whatever you want,” he said. I said, “You are on,” and we set the date.

A few days later, my buddy picked me up on a dark, rainy night, and we went for steak. He went on and on about how amazing this little, Indian guy was. I tried to change the subject, as really, all I was interested in was the steak and hanging out with another sober guy in the program, but he wouldn’t shut up about it. He was profoundly affected by the guy. I tried yucking it up, yakking about the program, and recounting all my personal recovery woes, but nothing worked. We cleaned our plates and headed down the road to the Unity Church. I was thinking to myself that it would be good to get this over with. My head was full of the week ahead and all the shit I had to do to propel myself into greatness. Walking in, I got the same terrible feeling I always got when I walked into a church. But the crowd was thick and that soon faded. There was some light Indian music playing. The air smelled sweet. It was a fragrance I had not smelled before. I asked a volunteer what incense they were burning. He said they weren’t burning any. There was a chair covered in white cloth with fresh flowers around it. We took our seats. Then a presence The Secret of Recovery 7 seemed to overtake me that was a part of the fragrance itself. Next thing I knew, this little, Indian man was walking down the aisle. People were bowing to him and obviously ecstatic to see him. The whole energy in the room seemed to shift, and as he took his seat, I felt something inside of me shift as well. What proceeded to happen over the next hour, as he quietly spoke and took questions, I cannot really explain. But to put it simply, when the man opened his mouth and started to speak, it was like I had been waiting to hear what he had to say my entire life. I’d never seen or heard anyone speak, laugh, and expound that way. He was an explosion. It was like he was speaking from another dimension entirely—a human dimension.

I was well read. I could explain, pontificate, and process things intellectually. I prided myself on it. But this was beyond that. He glowed in a way I’d never seen a person glow before. His skin was electric. He was ageless. Although he was spotted with gray hair, I would have not been able to even approximate his age. He resonated from the inside out. People were caught in his spellbinding energy and presence. He answered questions with a deep knowing and sense of humor without an ounce of reservation or pause. The whole room would respond with laughter and joy at his responses. He spoke on a wide variety of subjects and took idiotic questions with the most awe-inspiring grace, humility, and humor. I have never seen, heard, or experienced anything or anyone like it—then or since. In his presence, my cynicism faded, and something clicked deep within that I really couldn’t put my finger on. I looked at my friend, and he was smiling ear to ear. He said, “Ya see? I told you.” He was right. I had to admit it... It was amazing. The short of it was that they offered a yoga program that started the next week. I signed up. I went and spent a week with the man. He taught me things and practices which I did over the next ten years that set me on a path that would completely rewire and change me from the inside out. It was beyond knowing. He did things that I could not explain. He moved the energy in the room. He moved the energy inside of me. He would open us up and start singing, and the whole room would start weeping. I would go home at night, and I couldn’t sleep because energy was billowing up my spine. He had a way of opening us up that I could not put together with my own mind. It was beyond the comprehension of my little mind to understand it…yet I could not deny that something was happening. There was a deep fear that bubbled up as well, and I fought the urge to run away from it. In hindsight, I realize that my ego knew the jig was up. When the ego senses this, it responds fiercely.

Ballad of a Reluctant Yogi-part 1

The darkness flashed as I pulled the car up to a stop underneath the rusty trestle. I could see a yellow moon poking its head up over the tree line to the north. I rolled down the window of the 66 Pontiac, and it got stuck as usual. Reaching up with my left hand to hold the glass in place, I cranked the window down with my right. I had a few minutes to spare before hitting my AA meeting on the west side of town. My old car smelled like my grandfather’s car used to smell. All that was missing was the beat to shit dashboard Mary that used to hang on for dear life in his old jalopy. The air was thick. It was summer, and the night was filled with the heat and hum of cicadas in the Hackberry trees. It was the year of the thirteen year cicada, and every so often, one of the monstrous creatures would fly into the side of the car with a thud. The last four years had been a wild ride. I’d been sober for that amount of time, and I was somewhat grateful.

Sitting there, I had the overwhelming realization that I had never really wanted this life of recovery and sobriety. It had just happened. I had to admit that I missed the old days. The booze had quit working, 1 and what was left was all the stuff I used to drink away. It ran deep. I had been able to stay clean going to meetings. I had been wading through the work in AA and found it to be profound. I generally wasn’t hating everyone and everything so much anymore. That was good. I seemed to be growing in ways that I could not really comprehend. I did what they told me to do, and I was able to stop drinking. This enabled me to move forward. But sitting here on my way to yet another meeting, something still felt strangely amiss. I could feel it. Mind you, I never really asked for or wanted any of this... It just happened. It had been a rough few years. Though I had been off the booze for that amount of time, some things had not gotten better. In some respects, they had gotten worse. Not on the outside but on the inside. I had spent the first year just hanging on, trying to push away the fear that seemed to bubble out of every pore.

The second year had been better, as I had started doing the steps, but the rancor and disdain of the AA world had still permeated my being. I couldn’t stand the fact that I had to be there. But there had been nowhere else to go. It had been the last stop on the penance train for all my sins, I had thought. I constantly had the feeling that I was dying, that I was a corpse strolling toward the end of my life with a black leather jacket hanging off my bones. I was un-gratefully dead. I’d go to see my doctor and tell him how I felt. “I’m dying, you see,” I'd say. “I feel terrible. You gotta check me out.” The staff would go about running the usual barrage of tests, poking and prodding, and then come back in awe of how great my blood work looked or how tremendous my lung capacity was. I would look at them and say, “That's all fine and good, but you don’t understand. I’m dying.” They would tell me to check back in six months if I didn’t feel any better. I would amble out the 2 door and drive down the road, bemused and full of a fear so deep that it infected everything I did.

The third year had been somewhat better. I was working the steps and getting to know folks in recovery. I had an amazing sponsor who dropped a dime on me and tried to help. He would recognize my predicament of general hate, misery, and dishonesty with myself and make me do more work. The only reason I did the work was that I didn't have any other option. At one point, he told me that I had to go tell my AA home group how much I actually hated them all. These things brought great relief and uproarious laughter for me and the group, as we were all able to identify ourselves and the interior shit show most of us were experiencing more precisely. That identification was useful at first, though after a while, it ran its course. The fact was, after four years, I was still wracked with a sense of fear, self-protection, and self-loathing that was ingrained in my cellular being. This was after doing the steps and coming around a bit. I had started to notice that my sponsor suffered from the same thing as well. He still seemed to be just hanging on for dear life at times, and he was upwards of ten years sober. “Don’t leave before the miracle happens,” he’d say. But it was obvious that the miracle of freedom hadn’t happened yet for him either. I prayed like a beggar, by default, reluctantly, and separate from a wholeness that had eluded me my whole life. To be honest, up to that point of 40 years old, I’d never felt comfortable in my own skin. I had been constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was like some kind of middle-aged Wile E. Coyote, waiting in a barren desert for an anvil to fall from the sky and crush him with a POOF. I thought that I was flawed, a bad person, and terminally viewed myself as less than, though all the while, trying to cover it up with a mask of my will and ego (an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, as they say). This was not my fault. Another year went by. I was sober. I’d felt somewhat better. I could hold a job and be good to my family. I did the AA “moral” self -inquiry work, but there was still something missing. I still wore a black leather jacket in the summer. I still had delusions of grandeur. I still lived a life of quiet desperation.

So, it was here that I found myself this night, twiddling the knobs on the AM radio. Little Jimmy Dickens came on with a quiet tune that flowed out into the sticky night to meld with the cicada hum. “Life turned her that way.” (I didn’t get the connection at the time, but in hindsight, I see there are no mistakes in this life.)

If she seems cold and bitter Then I beg of you Just stop and consider

All she's gone through

Don't be quick to condemn her For things she might say

Just remember

Life turned her that way

No don't blame her

Life turned her that way

As the tune twanged in the twilight, I pulled a rumpled soft pack of Marlboro lights out of my back pocket and straightened a smoke. As the tobacco crackled in the firelight, a little voice whispered into my being.

The voice said, “My man, if you don’t go deeper spiritually, you are not going to make it.”

I took a long pull, and I heard it again.

“My man, if you don’t go deeper spiritually, you are not going to make it.”

They say, in the program, if we fail to continually expand our spiritual life, we are doomed to failure in recovery. They said that the spiritual life was not a theory, that we had to live it. Being a recovering Catholic, as well as an alcoholic and self-deprecating egomaniac, this was a tall order. My experience up to that point, in relationship to God, was one of abuse, guilt, shame, toil, and joyless consternation. There wasn’t a lot of freedom there. Just seeing the word God on the wall in the rooms of AA made me want to vomit. I would shake with resistance. I loathed the whole concept of abuse and shame I had been given as a child. In fact, I’d become a living reaction to it. I hated those fuckers. I could still feel the cracks on the back of the head I had gotten from my father if I didn’t kneel right in church. Sexless nuns had been teaching us about sex, shame, and morality and whacking my knuckles with rulers. Sad, old, moral men had bemoaned “the word of God” throughout my youth, like it was something separate from us—something we had to live up to. I saw more joy in people walking out of a restaurant or bar than I had walking out of a church. My parents had shoved an orthodoxical interpretation of God down my throat on a daily basis. It had created an oppositionaly defiant disorder effect of resistance in me that had been fierce. Who wouldn't recoil at being treated this way? I would actually hurt myself to prove them wrong. It fucked me up. Something in their moral little world of perfection just hadn’t added up, and I had known it from deep within. I had known it when I was 6. When I would question it, I would just get shamed. I had felt my family love had been contingent on my being someone I wasn’t. It had felt like some kind of sick trade off. It changed my relationship with telling my own truth, that was for sure. This really is the root of emotional trauma and spiritual abuse. I had felt that I had been rejected by my parents, so therefore, unacceptable to God. It is one way that the separation of self occurs.

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Jeff Finlin on The Secret of Recovery

Hello, everybody, this is Franklin Taggart. And today I'm really excited to be interviewing my friend, Jeff, Finlin. Jeff is a person that I've known for several years now. And I'm really excited to be talking today about his latest book, The secret to recovery. And, Jeff, welcome to this interview. And thanks for the reason for it. I'm really excited to talk about your book today.

Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

Q: First of all, how long have you been in recovery? personally?

Oh, I've been kicking around about 22 years now and it's been quite a journey.

Q: In your book, you tell the story of finding a yogi who helped you to kind of take your recovery to the next level, we're going to get into much more detail about that. But I want to just kind of set the stage a little bit to find out, what was your recovery experience, like before you met him?

Ah, it was good. You know, it was kind of a, you know, walking, walking on the edge of a cliff, I really knew that, you know, I went to AA and - because that was really the last house on the block. I didn't know where else to go.

I was, you know, I couldn't stop drinking, and I was filled with fear. This fear bubbled up inside of me that I knew wasn't normal. My father had went to, through AA and so he kind of got me on that path. A little bit. And, and it was good being a part of a group of people, and a fellowship, just going into that field of energy, I feel for those three or four years prior to meeting, my Yogi guy, enabled me to stay sober, you know, I could quit before that, but I couldn't stay quit. And I started working the step process. But honestly, I really didn't get any emotional relief for a couple of years, maybe two and a half years, it got worse for me, not better.

I was able to stay sober and I started that process of those steps in what turned out to be kind of the wrong spirit of embracing those steps. But it was it was a start anyway you know.

Q: When you say the wrong spirit, what do you mean by that?

Well, you know, we have to love ourselves unconditionally. We have to accept ourselves unconditionally, good, bad, right or wrong, evil, we have to accept what we've done, and who we are, before really any of that step work worked for me on any level.

And, you know, I was, I was terminally wracked with self loathing and guilt and shame. And I thought, you know, this program could propel me somewhere, somewhere else into a new state of reality. But I had to accept myself 100% first, who I am, I always say you have to love the horse thief, you know, before anything can happen for you, you really have to have 100% acceptance of where you are, or you just set up the opposite. You circle around in a field of opposites.

So that's what I really didn't get it first, you know, I thought I was a bad person. I thought it was morally bankrupt. I thought, you know, there was something terribly wrong with me that I did something wrong, that it was my fault, all these things and, and it really, it really kept me from moving forward in the proper fashion. 

Q: What did it take for you to get to that place of self acceptance

For about 10 or 15 years. You know, it really, you know, it really, it was really it was a long process for me. It took it took getting on the path, and the path really revealed where I needed to go. And my pain and confusion was my touchstone to my progress. And over time I was able to see a certain element of myself that prevented my own growth.

Q: You've come to a place in your own understanding where you connect a lot of your addiction to trauma, can you tell us a little bit about how that has come into your awareness and, and how you've addressed that?

Well, um, that came into awareness, you know, I was doing, I was being a good a person, I was showing up, I was doing everything that they told me I needed to do. I was serving serving, I was doing the inventories over and over again. And at some point, at about 12 years sober, the wheels just came off, none of that worked anymore. And I realized I was really incapable of receiving love, you know, my conditioning and my upbringing, built certain walls of protection inside of me to where I was unable to receive from the outside, receive love from the outside. And all this was really subconscious.

And I went to my, my best friend and my, my, a guy in Nashville, and I said, you know, the wheels are just coming off, nothing's working anymore. And I told him a little bit about how I grew up. And he said, Well, you're, you're two years earlier than me. So I had, I had the same kind of upbringing, and he introduced me to adult children of alcoholics. And that was a, that was a big gateway into, you know, some self knowledge about why I felt the way I felt why I approached every facet of my life a certain way.

So, that was a beginning for me. But that took a long time, you know, before I got there. Yeah. I mean, somebody asked me about, you know, I did an interview not too long ago, and the guy was talking about trauma. I was like, was there any talk about trauma back when you got sober? It wasn't, there was none. And so, um, I couldn't have discovered these things about myself, even if I wanted to, because it because there's a certain evolution that's happening within the recovery and spiritual world that is revealing this to us. So I couldn't have I couldn't have had that realization, even if I tried, you know, back in the late 90s, when I got sober.

Q: So you'd reached a point where, through the 12 step program, and through some of the other supports that you had taken on that we're kind of in the traditional addictions, path and recovery path. At some point, you became aware of Yogi and you were compelled to attend a program. Can you tell us a little bit about what what precipitated that?

Well, it was very, it was very grace driven. It's like when the when the students ready the teacher showed up, and that was, and, and that was it for me Come 140% or whatever. Because I was as reluctant, as is the next guy. You know, I was this old black leather, cigarette smoking, cynical, you know, guy and I hated all that stuff. I hated all that spiritual people, and bla bla bla bla, and, and, and a friend of mine dragged me to to see this man, and I didn't really even want to be there. You know, he offered to buy me dinner. If I went with him, and I was like, Okay, well, we'll go eat steak. And he's like, sure, whatever you want, you know. And he drove me to see this man and I walked into the, to this church and he was just giving a talk and this little Indian guy walked in and when he walked down the middle of the church, the entire energy changed in the room. Yeah.

And he opened his mouth. And he started talking. And it was like, I'd been waiting to hear what he had to say my entire life. It was just, you know, I had to admit that I was wrong, you know that, that something was going on here. And then I signed up for a program and spent a week with him. And he did things that I could not explain, you know, he moved the energy in me move the energy in the room.

And when I after that week I was hooked. It was like something this thing came into my life that seemed like a doorway for me. And it was just given to me really, by, by grace on a on a big level, you know? 

Q: Now in the, in the subsequent time, you were given a practice that is covered in detail in the book. But can you tell us a little bit about the practice itself, and some of the some of the things that you saw as a result of the practice happened in your life?

This guy is a Kriya guy. So we, you know, it's defined as yoga, but we didn't do any asanas. Yeah, everything was done with the breath and what and what the practice does, it opens and balances our system, you know, our physical system is made up of polarities of opposites. And what we're trying to do is experience ourselves beyond the physical. So in our trauma is lodged in ourselves, our experiences lodged in ourselves. So what these practices were just simple Kriyas, and they, they balance and open the system, and then push energy up the middle, the middle channel of the body, and you start to be able to experience yourself in a different way as a result. And you can do all this with your breath. It's, it's very, it's a very simple process, but you have to be consistent about it.

And through that process, the trauma and the reaction to the conditioning that was lodged in my body, started to release itself and come up. And that's how those processes work. It's, it's basically what they call somatics, you know, somatic therapy, you release the energy in the cells, and it opens up and starts to come up, and you're able to experience yourself in a different dimension beyond the physical. 

Q: Now, that's not always a particularly easy or clean experience, is it? 

No, and it was very tumultuous for me, you know, like, they talk about, you know, oh, well, I started doing yoga and meditation, because they told me, it would make me peaceful. And, and at first, that was the last thing that it did, you know, all my bullshit started coming up and revealing itself to me, and it really wasn't pretty, you know, it was, it wasn't pretty for, for quite some time. I mean, we all come to the table with our own path where with our own unique past and our own unique sense of circumstances and conditioning, and so it's going to be different for everybody.

And, but initially, it wasn't, it wasn't very pretty, but through the through the A and the 12 steps through those inventory processes, I actually had somebody something to do with it, somebody to talk to about it, a program to write it down and release that energy and get rid of it. So that's what really what I've tried to incorporate in, in, in my deal or my program is the is the mix of those two, because what I never got an A was the practice element. And what I never got in the practice element, or in the Buddhist Sangha, or the yoga studio, was what I got in a. So the two of them went interpreted in the right in the correct manner in relationship to self love. They they were really profound for me. Yeah.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about one of the things that you've said in the way that you described the latest book that you've written, The Secret of Recovery you've said, so much as that what recovery requires is a spiritual awakening. How did this particular set of experiences lead to your own awakening?

Well, that that's the whole point of spiritual practice, you know, and I think I've defined what that is in the book, and it just gets so clouded over. And, you know, so what is it where we're trucking, you know,

in yoga, there's five levels of being for our physical, they're the result of our conditioning, food, body, mental body, energy, body, and intellectual body. And then there's one part of us that's non physical, called Ananda or the bliss body. And really, what we're trying to recover is that dimension of ourselves, before we accumulated, whatever it is we accumulated. And once we touch that dimension of ourselves, it changes the relationship with everything we've accumulated. So as soon as I touched that dimension of myself, I was no longer a victim of my story, I was no longer a victim of food, I was no longer a victim of what I thought there was a, I could see, I could see all that stuff clearly. And I knew who I really was. 

And that's what we're trying to recover. And I don't think that's said enough in, in recovery world. It's like, No, we want a good job. We want a happy family, we wanna, you know, we want a psychological experience, or we want a medical experience, what actually is a spiritual experience? And how does it relate to recovery? Because that's, that's the one thing I bought into when I first got sober. You know, it's like, what's required is a spiritual experience. And what does that mean? You know,

Q: In the book, you you go into much more detail about the practices. What I'd like to talk about is how did how did this particular book come about? I know that you had written a book a few years ago called Recovery Yoga, that's actually a daily kind of a daily, it's almost like a devotional where you would go in and you would have a daily reading and something to kind of set your day up for, for good things. But in this particular book, you ended up with a much more personal story in it, can you talk a little bit about how you came to the point where you knew you had to write it?

Well, I thought, I really knew that I had to share it, you know, I thought it was like my duty to really share it because I had an experience in an ashram. I had that, that awakening experience, and all my trauma response disappeared. Yeah. And, and, you know, at first it was, it took me a while to figure out what happened because it was so profound.

And, and then, after a while, I really started, I didn't need the process. I didn't need the path anymore. Because I'd already walked through that doorway, right, and I started to forget it, you know, I started to really forget what what it is that I did, in order to actually get up to that point to make myself available or open enough to actually have that experience.

So I kind of got scared, I was like, I need to write all this down, you know, for other people. Um, and really, it's...upon doing that, I realized, wow, this has been the entire focus and trajectory of my whole life for the past 22 years. It's what all my songwriting and music work is about, it was about documenting certain stages on that path. And I really became just incredibly grateful, and in the realization that, Oh, this is kind of what my purpose has been for the past 22 years.

And I felt it just it it's important to document it and, and let people know that this is possible. Because we, in the trauma world, we're talking a lot about, you know, trauma informed care how to live with your trauma, not how to, you know, not how to trigger your trauma and all this stuff, but nobody's really talking about like, wow, it's it's completely possible to walk out through a doorway, a free man. Yeah. And that's what happened to me, you know.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about at after the fact now that you see this, this book as something that is a gift for other people in recovery, but it's not necessarily for people who are just starting out in recovery, it's like, the people who are doing the 9090 meetings in 90 days phase probably aren't ready for this book quite yet. Tell us a little bit about who it really is perfect for?

Well, I think it's perfect for that one a deep, and it's perfect for people that you know, are through the detox stage, they're, they're ready to make a commitment to their recovery. It's not really for people in treatment centers, though, though, they could all there's, there's never a perfect time to start on this kind of path. You know, they do teach yoga and in, in treatment centers, but generally, treatment centers are trying to just get people in a very short period of time stepping in the right direction, you know, and get them detox. I don't even know if that's possible. And in to completely detox and 28 days, yeah, I look back, it probably took me eight or nine months to completely detox, you know, and, or longer, I don't know. Um, so if people that are out of treatment, and want to really start working on a process that, you know, can set can set you on a path to freedom, and it and people that are ready, really to make a commitment to spiritual life.

Q: If a person was to pick up the book today, and start reading it now and start to really apply the practices that you've that you've included in the book what would they be able to anticipate in terms of the impact of those practices on their lives over the longer period of time? Not necessarily the, the more immediate timeframe, but over the longer period of time, as they incorporate these practices into their lives? What different kinds of impact would they be able to expect?

Well, that's, that's a problem. Because I, you know, I, I lit, there's one section in the book, I repeat three times. And it basically is if you think you know, where you're going, you're selling yourself way short, if you have any expectation about where this process is going to take you. You almost throw a monkey wrench into the process, you know, it all starts with not knowing. And, you know, if I set myself up for Oh, this is gonna get me a house and a wife and a job and I'm gonna be happy, it's like, you know, you're selling yourself way short, because I have no idea what's going to happen when I start these process, this process,

I really have to be kind of at the end of my rope, and in some ways, and be willing to just get on the magic carpet and see wherever it goes. And it goes different places for different people, you know, so I'd be, I think I'd be remiss in in answering your question, like, as as to letting know people what to expect? Yes, you really don't. And everybody comes to the table with a different set of a different makeup and a different story and a different experience. So when you start opening the system, it's going to be different for everybody. Yeah. 

Q: Now, one of the things that you also offer, in addition to the book you very often will offer classes and things like that. So what we want to make sure of is that people know first of all, where they can get the book. Where would you send them first to pick up a copy of the book?

Just go to Amazon, or my website, www.jefffinlin,com and there's a link there to Amazon. Yeah, it's and you can get it most anywhere in the world. The Amazon's just easiest, you know, I know they're the evil Big brother to some people. But it's just, it's easy, and it's, it's cost effective, and they'll drop it right at your door. Yeah.

Q: And how would you encourage people to get in touch with you

Just through my website, or, you know, you can always email me at jfinlin@yahoo.com.

I offer free consultations to people, you can always call me up, we'll talk about where you're at what you want to do. And, and then I offer a program to take you through this process that we could talk about.

Q: In your own experience to finish things up with, I'd like to, to hear from you as far as what's the what's the greatest miracle that you consider that you've experienced in your own recovery?

Well, there's lots of them, you know, it's, it's very emotional. You know, I mean, I think about, I was talking to somebody yesterday about when I went in, first went into the recovery rooms, and how angry and full of hate I was, and, you know, just for all those people in there, I didn't want to be there, you know, my, actually, my first sponsor may may go into my home group and tell everybody how much I hated them. You know?

And, and the guy was telling that to he was, he's not in recovery. So he was like, Whoa, man, you know, and, but when I did that, and I just laid it on him all, you know, I told him, You know, I slung it heavy and hard. And they just laughed at me. They laughed, they laughed at me, you know, and they were like, welcome, welcome. You're one of us, you know.

And there was, there was some people in that in this is one example, there's some people in, in my home group, there's this one guy, that every time he would go to share, he was the guy that sat in the same chair and collected all the, the pamphlets in the end, he had this giant rubber band wrapped around all this literature and stuff. And every time he would go to speak, and I would just go, Oh, God, I just want to run away. But over time, I started to laugh at him. And I started to like him. And then next thing, I knew I was helping him move out of his house. And he had to have a leg amputated, and he was in this nursing home and, and he wasn't doing well, and I would I bake him a pie and take in food. And, and I thought about how much I hated this man, you know, back in the day, what happened to me, what what happened to me, in between that time, where I would show up and take him food, turn on his TV and sit with him and laugh with him is like, that's, that's a miracle right there. And Hi, you know, I cannot really understand how or why that happened. But it was, it was completely amazing to me. And I always go back that to that. And remember that as like an example of the possibility of grace and recovery and how this great change of spirit is possible within us if we just show up and, and get the hell over ourselves, you know, so that that's a good one right there.

Q: I think that's a great place to end and I appreciate you just being so open with your own story and really, really grateful also for your book, because I feel like that it's gonna be something that makes a huge difference for a lot of people. So I'll remind people that the name of the book is the secret to recovery by Jeff Finlin. You can find more about Jeff at www.jefffinlin.com you should be able to see it there on the screen. And I would encourage you to check that out right now. So thanks. Thanks again, Jeff, for being a part of this today. 

Thanks. 

Q: My pleasure.

Yoga and Trauma

Trauma is not a psychological issue it is a physiological issue. We can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it. The mind cannot overcome the response and conditioning it created by itself. It’s impossible. It's an existential problem. So we have to experience ourselves beyond the mind that created the condition. Only then can we understand. We understand by experiencing ourselves beyond the mind. Then we transcend.

When we say trauma is a physiological issue we mean that our experience has accumulated and set up shop in our bodies. It’s lodged itself in the cells of our bodies and minds to protect us from ever experiencing the traumatic event again. We are hot-wired by our experience. Our experience has embedded itself in our cells. The ultimate result is a presence that is not presence at all but a reaction to past stimuli and experience.

In some circles they say our issues are in our tissues.  This is true with trauma. Our issues have actually become a part of our physical person-hood. For people that have experienced trauma it becomes extreme. I used to work in addiction treatment centers and I could tell the trauma people just by the way they stood in the corner or walked across the floor. They held themselves in such a way that the trauma revealed itself in their physical presence. They were stuck in a bubble of response which prevented them from experiencing the beauty and wholeness of the moment.

So if our trauma and past experience has wired our minds and bodies to be in a certain state. How do we transcend that state? 

Trauma therapists the world over are splitting us into many parts. They have folks negotiating and journal with the inner child, angry adolescents, the conscious adult and so on. This just further splits us into parts that keep us divided, distracted, and in our heads.  The problem is that there is only one of us here in the present moment. We don't need to split ourselves further into psychosomatic parts. The psychosomatic parts are the wall itself that the trauma has created. We need to jump this wall so as to experience ourselves in the dimension beyond the parts. This is what’s required for recovery. The parts are just behavioral and emotional responses based on our experience. Which is our trauma. Our trauma's job is to split us into parts to protect us. 

Our job as trauma survivors is to experience the wholeness of our being in the present moment. How do we jump our current wiring, accumulated muck and reaction to our past so we can experience the wholeness of ourselves in the present moment? For trauma folks this moment is not safe.  But this is the job of the trauma survivor. Once we experience ourselves in a complete and utter state of wholeness in the present moment we can clearly see what is true and what is not. And the truth is what sets us free.

So how do we go about this process of experiencing our wholeness?

Yoga Means Union or to Yoke. . . or to Become One With Something. The word “yoga” essentially means, “that which brings you to reality or truth.” Literally, it means “union.” Union means it brings you to the ultimate reality. —Sadhguru 

What we are doing in the yogic process is breaking open our protection mechanisms in a very subtle and beautiful way, so as to experience a dimension of ourselves we have forgotten.  The dimension of ourselves is beyond our trauma response. That dimension is our wholeness...not our parts.  In our program we incorporate practices that enable people to have the potential to open and balance the physiological system in a certain way -so as to experience themselves beyond their current makeup and system. This is beyond the division that the trauma experience itself has created.

Trauma is like the social media of the psychological world. It divides, separates and identifies us so as to protect us from future trauma.  What we don’t want to do is reinforce or re- emphasize that division. We’ve already spent most of our lives living, processing and making decisions in the world through this division. So much so that we don't know who we are anymore. We are just a reaction based on what happened to us in the past. I can journal with my scared inner child all day...But am I my inner child or am I the person that stands before you right now? Am I responsible as the person who stands before you right now or am I responsible as the person I was when I was a child? That person that used to be doesn't even exist anymore. Why am I still carrying him around and letting him make my decisions for me? Why am I reinforcing him by having conversations and journaling with him? Why?... because I’ve forgotten my inherent wholeness.

The yogic process we teach has the ability to crack open the fallacy of our parts so we can experience ourselves in wholeness. The process involves simple breath work and movements that take about 20-25 minutes per day mixed with a self inquiry process that deals with the energy and emotional bodies These are easy and simple to master. Over time we start to see our parts fall away. A new dimension of ourselves is revealed beyond the trauma response. This is our inherent wholeness.

The tools we employ open the energy in the cells and start to release the accumulated trauma self- which is a false self.  When we start to experience ourselves beyond the accumulated self we start to have what is defined as a spiritual experience. We start to realize ourselves beyond what has happened to us. A new self is revealed. This self has been there all along but we could not see it. It was blocked by our trauma response. This is what we are trying to recover. This is what is required to recover.

Jeff Finlins new Book-”The Secret of Recovery-and enlightened guide to transcending the pitfalls of trauma, addiction, co-depedence and life in general is now available on amazon”

click link here:

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Recovery-ENLIGHTENED-TRANSCENDING-CODEPENDENCY/dp/B08DSVHQRF

How do we start this recovery dance

So you find yourself here at the beginning. 

What is required? 

What is the first step? 

What can you expect in this recovery process?

Well my first job as a teacher is to put you at ease. The hurdles you have to jump are not that big of a deal. The spiritual process can be a tumultuous one but it's all going to be ok.  It's a  grand adventure. My job is to go through the process with you and let you know where the ground is.  I can do that by sharing my own experience and holding your heart along the way. It's not going to be easy at times and it's going to require a commitment and a devotion to the process.  This process will align your energies in such a way so you can experience life to its fullest. We want as much ease and comfort as is possible. This process has to be a priority in your life. Why? Because every outside situation in our lives is the result of who we are at this moment on the inside. The whole goal of any recovery or spiritual process is to align you with the forces and the flow of the cosmos, so we can experience life to its fullest. So that's what we are going to do.

How do we do that?

We do this by getting rid of all the things that get in the way of that. A great yogi once told me that the recovery I sought was already inside of me. My job was to remove all the muck and conditioning that I’d accumulated so I could experience it directly.  My job in recovery is not to accumulate more information, it's to empty the vessel. It's to lighten the load. Self knowledge we found out avails us nothing anyway. In this process we are going to incorporate and do things that eventually lighten our load so we can walk around happy, joyous and free. That is the promise. This takes a willingness to discover something new.

So the first step is to admit we do not know. We also have to admit that we don’t know where this process is going to take us. Then the next step is we have to get on the train of action and ride. This will enable us to have a new experience of ourselves. The vehicle we ride is simply  a self-inquiry process  mixed with a somatic practices that open and balance our system. This is our discipline. Most people think freedom is doing whatever the hell you want. But freedom is about discipline. This enables us to experience a new dimension of ourselves. 

A second very important element that is required is radical acceptance of who we are and the predicament we find ourselves in. We may have done terrible things, we may have found ourselves in all kinds of sordid places. We might not feel very good about ourselves. But we have to accept where we are as part of our path. We cant be taking these actions of recovery and spirituality to deliver us from all our evils. We have to start where we are with a clean slate. This can be difficult. Most of us crawled into recovery in a really bad place. But we still have to accept and love ourselves for who we are right now. We go from there.

We start with a program of action that embraces our everyday activities and then investigate how we respond to this thing called life

Our ultimate goal is to realize ourselves as a piece of life.

So put your mind at ease and we will go on a great adventure.

The adventure is recovery

Interpreting and intertwining an expanded spiritual practice with an updated version of the 12 step program for Recovery?

Our issues lay in our tissues

In order to go beyond our conditioned selves to find the dimension of ourselves that “is recovery” we have to go through the body. Our whole existence here in the physical world is an accumulation. What we have gathered as mind, body, experiences, and energy system make up our physical being in the physical world. There is a part of us that lies beyond all this that we generally have forgotten. This dimension of ourselves is what we are trying to recover. This dimension of ourselves is recovery itself. How do we go about opening ourselves up to experiencing this dimension for ourselves that is recovery?

Spiritual practice

First of all we learn and practice a specific kind of somatic therapy that balances, opens and releases what we’ve accumulated throughout our journey through life. This involves doing a specific simple kriya practice daily that starts to release what we’ve accumulated on a cellular level. Our issues, conditioning and trauma always get embedded in our tissues and stay buried there until we do something to open the system so they can start to be released. This is the first step.

The second part of the process is self inquiry

What are the things we look at in the self inquiry process and why?

The seven residual emotions and their shadow sides

Attachment/Freedom

Illusion/Insight

Lies/Truth 

Grief/Love

Shame/Willpower

Guilt/Pleasure

Fear/Survival

There are seven things that align with the seven energy centers in the body. The emotional body is intertwined with the energy body. So, we are looking at these seven things, or stages, in the inventory/self inquiry process. In AA and other traditional 12 step programs, they only deal with two—anger and fear. I’ve found that this is grossly insufficient, especially when being brought up in a guilt and shame-based environment. So, we have to take this process further. How we respond to the world in order to survive is a result of what we have learned or accumulated. In recovery, just to survive is never enough, as we already have come to the realization that our lives are not 100% manageable anyway. We have to go deeper than survival in order to recover. The residual emotions that are accumulated and expressed through our learned and conditioned experiences affect how we respond to the world. Each emotional response clogs up our energy channels in the body. When the energy is constricted and clogged, it keeps us from experiencing the deeper levels of consciousness required for our growth and recovery. The seven emotions and their residual shadow sides are what we have to look at. They line up with the energy system in the body. We are all one inclusive energy but fail to experience this directly as a result of logic, the learned, and our self-protection and preservation mechanisms. 

The Energy Body and Emotional Body Intertwined 

When we continually respond to life and our relationship to life through the filter of the residual emotions, we never receive the gift and freedom of the other side. This self-inquiry process is about realization. The realization of who we are so as to bring balance to our existence through alignment. We must bring balance and awakening to ourselves before we can bring balance and awakening to the outside world. Even so, we will never completely balance the outside world. There are too many other forces at play. The only thing we have power over is transforming our inner world. Our inner life defines and creates our outer world, so we take a look at our inner world and how it was created and, in turn, how it creates our outer reality up to this point. We have to see how we respond to life from our accumulated self and how it affects our energy flow. The whole process of physical practice and self inquiry is about this.

Our energy system is like a creek. The water flows through a creek much like the energy flows through our bodies. If you look at a creek bed, there are pools where the water swirls around and gets trapped by sediment that is accumulated through the environment. These pools are like the chakras in our own energy body. There are seven main energy pools in the energy body. When life gets messy, things fall into the creek bed and clog it up. This blocks the energy flow. The sediment that is accumulated and keeps the water from flowing to its optimum potential is residual accumulated emotions, responses, survival skills, losses, failures, successes...and on and on. If we open the paths between the pools, the energy flows to its optimum level. 

So the work we do is on our relationship to:

Fear-Guilt-Shame-Loss-Lies-Illusion and Attachment 

so as to experience 

Survival-Pleasure-Willpower-Love-Truth-Insight and Freedom 

in a more complete, balanced and profound way.

The second part of the process is self inquiry

The second part of the process is self inquiry

The are the things we look at in the self inquiry process and why?

The second part of the process is self inquiry

Bocephitas

Im so happy that Anti Heroine chic published this funny little essay I wrote on emotional support...I hope you all enjoy—-Jeff

I was in the airport recently and a waifish looking millennial was walking gingerly toward concourse B. She had a dog with her and I struck up a conversation about the pooch. She was obviously not blind. I asked her what the dog’s name was. She said, Jako and then said, He’s my emotional support animal. I said, “What is an emotional support animal? She said she had a lot of anxiety in her life and her animal was an emotional support for her. They allowed her to take the animal almost anywhere so she could be emotionally supported. I asked her if this was a “thing”? She said yes, that lots of her friends with anxiety had emotional support animals to help them navigate the pitfalls of this emotionally challenging environment we live in today.
 
I walked away a bit flabbergasted. I grew up in the seventies. If I needed emotional support, or even gave a hint of it, I might have been beaten beyond recognition. I wouldn’t have been beaten at home but certainly shamed. They would say something like “Who the hell do you think you are the queen of Sheba? And then made fun of my general lack of character and weakness. They would have laughed me out of the living room. In some ways that reaction was a good thing. In some ways it was bad. The bad part was that we eventually wore black leather and became drunk and disgusting. The good part was that, we eventually, learned that emotions were limited and not permanent. You realized you could live through almost anything.
 
Back in those days, if you really had issues, they would put you on lithium. There was no in between. Schizophrenia was schizophrenia back then. There was no mild bipolar shit. If you were mildly bipolar it just meant you were an artist or a musician, painter or poet. You felt more deeply and were a little kooky. There was no diagnosis for that. You didn’t get a dog to go with that everywhere you went. If you had good parents, they accepted that in you. If you had bad parents, they tried to get you to be something else.  Most had bad parents. Now they want to medicate you if you get a little blue when it rains. They medicate little children because they don’t act like well-adjusted adults. They put children on trial as adults. Well, they are not adults. They are children. And if you treat them like adults when they are children, then part of them will still remain a child as an adult. It’s kind of a crazy paradoxical thing.
 
Now, if you have trouble holding a job or can’t pass algebra two, they give you a psychological diagnosis. Who the fuck can pass algebra 2? No one I know? Certainly not me then or now. Cell phones and social media don’t help. None of our kids these days are grounded in the earth. So, they are wracked with anxiety.
 
There is no in between anymore. Only black and white. You are either in or out- on the bus or off the bus. But an emotional support animal? Seems to me these are the folks the dinosaurs would have eaten. At some point in the 50’s we toughened the hell up and the dinosaurs went extinct. Right? Either that or they drank themselves to death because they didn’t have emotional support animals.
 
Survival is still a part of the picture. In places where survival is imminent people have to get their shit together. That’s why I like going to Wyoming in the summers to visit my people there. Up there, survival lives a little closer to the bone. There’s not much work, its 20 below in the winter and the wind is howling at 50 miles an hour. You have to figure it out quickly up there or you’ll starve or freeze to death. There’s no fat on the land to hustle for. I always notice people are a little more emotionally stable in these environments. They are more direct and resourceful. They are little more awake. They have to know about a lot of things in order to survive-like being handy with a hammer, a saw, an ax or money. There’s less class hierarchy up there. A plumber is just as valuable as a doctor. Sometimes more so. There’s not as much time to dilly dally around emotionally. Even the artists I know up there are tough, direct working people. Emotions really don’t serve survival very well.
 
I broached this emotional support subject with my best friend. He’s a Montana cat. He grew up in the desolate shit show of a dysfunctional family in the wilds of nowhere. He once got in a drunken fistfight with Evel Knievel in his underwear. I’ll say no more. That’s the kind of guy he was. Now he is a sensitive loving man.
 
My friend was a bit flabbergasted about the emotional support critter as well. I said, “if we would have had emotional support animals back in the day, in light of all the abuse, shame and drunkenness of our youth, what would this creature look like? What would it encompass?”
We went straight in.
 
We decided our emotional support animal would have been an angry, ex circus chimp named Bocephus. He would probably sport a backwards baseball hat and chain smoke Pall Malls. He would probably be prone to grabbing people inappropriately and throwing his feces at you through the bars of his shattered soul- just for a good laugh. He would probably do backwards flips for more cigarettes, beer or bananas and flip you off at any sign of emotional vulnerability. He would touch himself inappropriately in public and bullfighting would be his favorite sport. I found his long-lost brother in Mexico this week (in the picture above). His Mexican counterpart would be named Bocephitas.
 
Of course, all this emotional bankruptcy comes from having to walk around with a starving heart. Sometimes there is nowhere to turn to feed a starving heart in this world. Especially in America. We are living in dark times. But what I’ve found is the heart flowers in the soul beyond emotion. You just have to sit in said emotion, without resistance and support, till the grief of it all exhausts itself as a solution. It’s the only way to transcend it. It’s the only way to see emotion for what it is. “Ya got to sit in the ugly spot and not resist it”,  as my beautiful Montana buddy always says.
 
There, Bocephus and his ugly Mexican brother Bocephitas die a strung-out lonely death. Out of their decaying corpses sprouts the flower of love incarnate…Love supreme…Suprema amor.
 
I love u all

​

Born in Cleveland Ohio, Songwriter and writer Jeff Finlin was born the grandson of Irish railroad workers (who seemed to be in the habit of leaping from trains.) Having released 12 records to critical acclaim around the world. His Song “Sugar Blue” was featured in The Cameron Crowe classic film-----“Elizabethtown.”

The Chicago Sun Times writes of Jeff Finlin--- “Finlin writes with the minimalist grit of Sam Shepard and Raymond Carver. Tune in for an elusive magic.”
​
Jeff has written two books of poetry and prose and a book on yoga and recovery.  His latest book is The Secret of Recovery. He has written extensively for the East Nashville Magazine and been published nationally in American Songwriter, Elephant Journal, Huffington Post as well as the  other online rags. Visit him at https://www.jefffinlin.com/

Trauma, Yoga and Spiritual Recovery

Listen to the enlightening Podcast. Jeff talks with Dr. Craig Heacock about Trauma, Yoga and the profound possibilities of spiritual recovery.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trauma-yoga-and-spiritual-recovery/id1469826718?i=1000489783248

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1rs42DSDYOhNiICHArT4cy?si=HyXWsv9hTUy8THv_VI7bjw

The 5 levels of being—part 2

THE ENERGY BODY—

PRANAMAYA KOSHA

Pranamaya means composed of prana or energy—the vital principle, the force that vitalizes and holds together the body and the mind. It's invisible and can only be measured through physical response. It pervades our whole organism; it's one physical manifestation is the breath. As long as this vital principle (the breath) exists in the organisms, life continues. This layer has a power all its own. It connects and holds our physical form together. Let's go back to the exercise where we hold our breath to try and kill ourselves. The breath connects our physical being to the forces that lay in and outside the body. This is why the breath is used in so many ways to help us realize the connection between the physical and non-physical part of ourselves. We need the breath and exchange of the breath to maintain our physical existence. Once the breath stops, the physical body just falls away. It cannot be maintained. The breath is impermanent. When we identify ourselves in this layer, we say— I am the breath.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DSVHQRF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

The Five layers of being part 1

In Yogic lore, there is something called the Koshas that identify the five levels, layers, or sheaths that make up a human being. The layers are: The Food Body (Annamaya Kosha) 41 The Energy Body (Pranamaya Kosha) The Emotional Body (Manomaya Kosha) The Intellectual Body (Vijnanamaya Kosha) The Bliss Body (Anandamaya Kosha) Let's take a look at how we experience ourselves in relation to the five levels of being that make up our existence as humans.

THE FOOD BODY—ANNAMAYA KOSHA

The Food Body is what we refer to as our Earth element. It’s the part of ourselves that is made up of Earth. When we are conceived in the womb, the physical aspect of us is just a tiny cell. The Earth feeds our physical being, and it grows. We are fed through our mothers in the womb and our cell multiplies. We become bigger in size and form. When we are born, we eat food that comes from the sun, and we grow in physical form. Our bodies change and form as a result of what we eat. The food body is the sheath or layer of ourselves that is made up of food. This is the sheath of the physical self, named from the fact that it is nourished by food. Living through this layer, humans identify themselves with a mass of skin, flesh, fat, and bones. The body is an accumulation of the physical world. When we identify ourselves with this kosha, we say—I am the body. This dimension of ourselves is accumulated and impermanent.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DSVHQRF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i3

Our Bottom

Our Bottom

The beauty of our bottom is that we have been surrendered. Surrender is not something we do. It’s something that naturally happens when we are not. Our bottom shows us this in clarity and color. The moment of our bottom is an enlightened moment. In a flash, we realize we have exhausted the possibility of the ego and intellect (the conscious mind) to solve our core problem. Exhausting the possibility of the conscious mind we are naturally surrendered. Only then, do we have complete and unfettered access to the subconscious mind.

There our journey begins.

Shameless

I cannot see myself by myself—

So I share myself shamelessly—

I act shamelessly—

so in turn-

I can

be not ashamed

from the Secret Of Recovery—Jeff Finlin