The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 39

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 39 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

In Greek mythology, the heiros gamos is a holy ritual, a sacred marriage of a god and goddess, or of an archetypal masculine and feminine, that results in a perfect union of certain key elements of the human experience. It appears in many other systems – mythological, spiritual and psychological – in the same context, a glorified union of the key elements of both genders of humanity.

It occurs to me, though, that we might see just such a phenomenon in the evolution of our own individual selves in the recovery process from addictions.

In broad psychoanalytic terms, the two key elements of the human psyche could be seen as the ego, the conscious element of ourselves – how and what we see of ourselves – and the self – that part of us that is who we truly are, at the core of our beings. The ego is what is crafted from the earliest times, formed by how we fit into the world in which we are raised.  In time it may be cloaked by a certain persona that we want (or are taught) the world to see. This may or may not be akin to our authentic selves. The self, on the other hand, is who and what we are at the core, from our earliest consciousness, regardless of how we were raised, or what happened to us over our lives.  It is the self that will ultimately define us.

For those of us inflicted with the diseases of alcoholism or addiction, our egos became the ruling elements of our psyche. Maybe we strove to achieve, working hard against all odds, and built a view of ourselves that was at best majestic, at worst massively grandiose. This view fed our alcoholism, both to elevate its absurdity as well as to medicate the hidden anxiety that it created.  When it got to be too painful to perpetuate, we crashed, monumentally. We hit that point at which there had to be another way to live in the world or the grim reaper of death would become our only companion in a descent to oblivion.

The journey to recovery thus begun also became a slow and developing process to rewire our own brains.  For this alcoholic, it signaled a journey of discovery to find myself, the core of who and what I am. The last stages of this journey, for me, is becoming a heiros gamos, a marriage of my ego and my self. The ego is still important to me, to us; it is the warrior part of us, that part infused with a healthy narcissism, enabling me/us to face the world without a debilitating fear that needs medication.  But the self, that core of who and what we are, must come forward, must rise up in stature to form a true union of equals with our ego.

The union thus created by my own heiros gamos, this spectacular sensation of finally feeling, fully and completely, who and what I am and what I can be, is a gift of grace of unimaginable magnitude.  More on this in a later note….

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 38

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 38 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

In Herman Melville’s classic, Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab was near mortally wounded by a powerful albino sperm whale named Moby Dick.  He became obsessed with the need to kill Moby Dick and, in a subsequent whaling voyage aboard the whale ship Pequod, he hijacks the vessel and crew and sets out on this murderous quest.  The whale is too powerful, however, and, in the end, the whale destroys the Pequod killing Ahab and all the ship’s hands in the process, all the men except Ishmael, one of the seamen who is also the narrator of the book.

In the description of Ahab’s obsession with Moby Dick early in the book, Ishmael (Melville) describes it as follows: “The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. [….] All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”

In our days steeped in alcohol and drugs, we may have experienced serious incidents of trauma, not unlike Ahab’s initial encounter with Moby Dick, situations which became monstrous resentments, resentments which we medicated ad nauseam with alcohol and drugs. When we got sober, these “demonisms of life” didn’t go away; we just lost the mechanisms to medicate the feelings. We soon learned that dealing with these situations and events, these deep seated resentments, without the medicating effects of alcohol and drugs required a new set of tools and a connection to a power greater than ourselves. Meetings, reading the literature, rigorously working the Steps with a sponsor, and staying close to multiple friends in the Fellowship became a daily process to handle the issues that arise from those feelings and resentments that continually show up in different forms in our daily lives.

The power of these recurring resentments can become debilitating at times, but we learn to deal with them. For, to give them power, to allow them to control us as his hatred of Moby Dick controlled Ahab, would be to insure our ultimate demise in much the same way, and perhaps as ultimately dramatic, as was Ahab’s.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 37

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 37 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

Odyssey SuitorsThe story of Homer’s Odyssey, to which we keep returning as a classic Hero’s Journey, ends with Odysseus finally back in Ithaca reunited with his family.  He has traveled all over the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas in a ten year quest to get here, suffering all kinds of ills, some incredibly gruesome, but many of his own making.  His long journey to get home has caused many to believe that he is dead and, as a result, his Kingdom on Ithaca has been overrun by young men seeking to convince his wife, Penelope, to recognize that as fact and marry one of them, so that he could become King.

These men, called the Suitors in the Story, occupy a significant part of the Tale.  Their activities in Odysseus’ Palace over the last year of the Story, begin to turn ugly as they abuse the hospitality of Penelope and engage in long bouts of consumptive behavior with food, wine and the handmaidens of the Palace.  Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, in the final elements of the Story, leads him to plan and then execute a complete slaughter of these Suitors to regain his rightful place as King.

The place of these Suitors has always intrigued me. What might they symbolize, mythologically, in the Story? It seems that they represent much of what was unacceptable in the ethos of ancient Greece of the time.  They lacked a fundamental sense of right behavior, abusing the hospitality of Penelope and her household, consuming her goods and possessions beyond any sense of decorum, and abusing the members of her household ad infinitum. They were just really bad actors, maybe not unlike all of us as we acted out in the heights of our disease.

I have come to believe that, to get sober, something inside of us has to die, at least metaphorically speaking.  Some element of our addictive selves must come to a decisive end, for us to gain Sobriety and maintain a sober state in our ongoing life. So maybe this is what we can capture from this part of the Odyssey, the need for Odysseus to engage in a brutal battle with all the elements of the wicked side of his Kingdom is mirroring what we must do in our pursuit of Sobriety.  It easily conveys to many of us the need to control, maybe destroy, through a rigorous working of the Steps, those parts of us that could re-ignite the worst elements of our disease.  Our future in the Sunlight of the Spirit only happens, and stays alive then, when the “suitors” in us are long since dead.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 36

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 36 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

Punxsutawney PhilIn 1993, comedian Bill Murray stared in a film called Groundhog Day. It is about a fictitious Pittsburgh TV weatherman, Phil Conners, who is sent to cover the events of Groundhog Day, Feb 2, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, northeast of Pittsburgh.  Punxsutawney is the actual site of an annual event where a real-live groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil either sees his shadow or doesn’t on that day, an event which signals the remaining duration of winter. Conners is a crass, self-absorbed, obnoxious character whom no one likes and who resents horribly that he has to perform such a mundane task as traveling to Punxsutawney and covering the Groundhog Day Festival.

In the process of performing his duties, he insults and abuses everyone and tries to flee the town as fast as he can after the Festival.  A snowstorm makes that impossible so he must stay over.  But he wakes up the next day to find that it is still Feb 2…and he proceeds to re-live that same day over and over and over…every day being Feb 2 with the same things happening, and  he, and only he, being conscious of the repetition.  As it sinks in what is happening, he realizes that there are no repercussions to whatever he does because all the tomorrows will never come. He can do whatever suits him, even things that would otherwise have severe consequences.  He seduces women, steals money, and disrupts the festival.  Despair sets in and he kills himself, over and over.  Each event in such behavior just keeps happening and he wakes up each day starting completely over.  In typical Bill Murray madcap fashion, it is also hilariously funny…but, for this alcoholic it also conjures up a life in the diseases of addiction, doing the same ugly things over and over fantasying that somehow there will be different outcomes.

Finally, the pathos of some of the things Conners experiences, the trauma he sees in some people’s lives and his inability to fix some fundamental wrongs, has a startling effect…he begins to change.  He uses the fact of his recurring Feb 2 to adopt a new view and an alternative pattern of behavior.  He begins to care and the profound changes in his attitude and behavior have some startling impacts on the community.  After a particularly poignant evening, he wakes up the next day and it is finally Feb 3.  He is overcome with joy.

For me this story conveys much of what we experience in our life in our diseases and our dramatic shift to sobriety.  Once we realize what is happening, once we accept the uselessness of our constant bad behavior, once we surrender to the presence of a higher power in our lives, things begin to change…and our future suddenly takes on a brightness that is profoundly joyful.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 35

Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 35 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

Don

In the early part of the 17th century, the Spanish author, Cervantes, penned his great story, Don Quixote. It is about a nobleman later in life who lapses into a series of fantasies about the days of knights, squires and the chivalrous behavior of noblemen to the people of the country. The Don is an elegant, athletic, if quite old, figure, who travels extensively dishing out a knightly view of the world. He is accompanied by a portly, lumpy squire named Sancho Panza, who dispenses wisdom in a wry, mostly low brow and satiric fashion. The story is long and detailed, and largely episodic, but it is wonderfully amusing.

One element that keeps repeating itself is the Don’s fascination with a peasant girl whom he christens Dulcinea and fantasizes that she is a wondrous princess with whom he must connect. Cervantes quotes the Don saying, “Her name is Dulcinea…her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and lady, and her beauty superhuman, since all the impossible and fanciful attributes of beauty which the poets apply to their ladies are verified in her.”

Through a number of episodes, the fantasy that is Dulcinea reappears and the Don is further smitten with her, but he never achieves his desired connection with this love of his life. The story ends with the Don failing to ever connect with his fantasy. For us alcoholics, Dulcinea is like that elusive forever-high that we pursue in our drinking. It is the fantasy that, with continued drinking beyond the initial high, we will attain a serenity that will last forever.

Those of us with lifetimes of dealing in the viselike grip of alcoholism and addiction know that many of us do not recover. Many prefer to stay and live in the fantastical world of the recurring alcoholic stupor. It is a world of tragedy and loss which many times ends quite catastrophically. Their pursuit of a “Dulcinea” is a hollow quest that only yields more and more tragedy, an ultimate descent into disaster.

Reading Don Quixote, seeing the energy of his quest and feeling the anxiety of his failure to achieve Dulcinea, rings true for this alcoholic. Dulcinea was, in reality, just a common peasant girl of no particular beauty. For us recovering alcoholics in sobriety, she can be seen in just such a real world view. For us, the achievement of a conquest over alcohol comes in seeing the world for what it really is, every day, and in accepting the world outside the fantasy of drink and drugs.

In time, ultimately, for those of us in recovery, that world without drink and drugs finally does take on a ravenous beauty…and it is one that ultimately overwhelms the fantasy of Dulcinea.

The Lifelong Quest For Sobriety…The Ultimate Hero’s Journey—Part 34

Stargate 1Guest Blogger and long-time Council friend, Bob W. presents Part 34 of a series dealing with Alcoholism and Addiction from a Mystical, Mythological Perspective, reflecting Bob’s scholarly work as a Ph.D. in mythological studies.

In 1994, the movie Stargate premiered.  It is the fictitious story about the discovery, in the Egyptian desert near Giza, of an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a portal, a wormhole, enabling super-fast travel to similar devices elsewhere in the Galaxy encompassing Earth, known as the Milky Way Galaxy. The device was the work of a very advanced, very ancient, pre-history culture facilitating instantaneous transportation to their settlements all over the Galaxy.  There was much conflict in the galactic time periods of this culture so that, sometime in the pre-history eras of Egypt, the device was buried by early Earth inhabitants to prohibit these advanced races from traveling back to Earth. This movie spawned a TV series that, with sequels, totaled over 350 episodes spread over 15 years to 2011, all about the travel through this portal of a special U.S. Air Force unit exploring various life activity all over the Galaxy.

In our current societies, we experience space and time as very limited, infinitesimal elements of the whole of the Universe, which is, in reality, billions of years old (and still expanding) and millions of light years wide (each such light year being a distance of approx 6 trillion miles). Our Galaxy is in excess of 100,000 light years wide and contains over 100 million stars similar to our Sun; it is estimated that there are over one trillion similar galaxies in the Universe. These dimensions are staggering, almost beyond our ability to comprehend their scope.

However, just as the Cosmos might be impossibly large for us to comprehend, almost the same can be said about the makeup of our own bodies, the incredible, almost infinite minuteness of the components of our own being. We are each billions and billions of atoms, molecules and cells, all woven together in incredibly complex patterns of interconnectivity.

The players in the Stargate series travel all over the Galaxy to explore different forms of life.  In reality much of the stories are artistic recreations of the many human stories of which we are all players, but the backdrop of these humongous dimensions of the Cosmos seem to enhance  their wonder, at least to me.

This is why I find the series of Stargate so fascinating. Each of us in Sobriety, committed Sobriety, find ourselves living in immediate societies where we are, or can become, true agents of change. It may all seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but, for each of us in Recovery, our own individual struggles are as gigantic, maybe even galactic, as the mythos in which Stargate is created.  That is no accident, in my mind. Each of our own Higher Powers, focused on each of us in our own individual journeys, while operating in this massive Cosmos, are effectively calling on each of us to bear witness to the wonder and potential of creation.