The Slow and Faltering Path to Meditation – Kay

This story has been recorded at an Addictive Eaters Anonymous meeting in New Zealand. You can email us at contact at aeanz.org It is the first Friday of the month, so we have a speaker. Please sit and welcome Kay. I'm Kay and I'm an addictive eater. It's good to be here. I thought I would try tonight to talk a little bit about my very slow and faltering sort of path to meditation, which definitely wasn't what I came in these rooms for. I wasn't interested in a higher power I certainly wasn't interested in trying to live a spiritual way of life I actually came here because I wanted to lose weight that was what I saw as the problem I did hear other people talking about a higher power I didn't see the steps on the wall but I didn't think, I thought thank goodness that didn't apply to me and I picked out the bits of the programme that you know I thought were okay and but I did keep coming to meetings that was one thing I did which was good and I got worse for me. I wasn't beaten when I came through the doors but the food was a great persuader and more eating was what it took and seeing the actual problem. I hadn't even identified that I had an obsession with food because I'd had that all my life. I didn't know what it was like to not have it, so I didn'T know what IT was like for ordinary people. And by that time I had lost weight and I still wanted to kill myself. So I could see it wasn't actually the weight and I got to a point where I just couldn't go on. and it was like it talks about in the book about not being able to go on with the food or without it and I actually thought I was without it and I couldn't go on but I know today I was actually still eating. So I did the right thing again I went to the members that were in recovery and was completely honest with them for the first time in my life and tucked in behind, basically followed their direction and example. And eventually I too started to get well. I didn't really understand the steps, I must say. I needed a lot of help from my sponsor in making my way through the steps. I was very busy. Very busy. I went to a lot of meetings and, you know, I actually had a lot work if you like to do on the steps in terms of inventory, clearing away the wreckage of my past and you know making amends you know that kept me very busy. Step 11, cutting through them all pretty quickly there, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. I did not understand. I didn't have a great understanding of many of the steps, but I was praying a lot. As per the big book, going through how it says to do it there, and I was spending a lot of time on my knees, more and more time on mine knees, but really just going through the motions, it really was going through the motions. Meditation, hmm didn't really understand that you know I gave it a little go I knew it was trying to you know focus on your breathing you know shutting out those other, you know the thinking but I couldn't do it. Tried now and again you know just too hard and I thought oh well that's you know obviously something that I'm not going to be able to do, it's good that people can. And as time went on there started to be more people in recovery, more people came through the doors more people started to get well and the meetings I was going to say became a bit more spiritual I suppose but there was more talk it was more talk in the meetings about you know the program of recovery third step 11th step 12 steps in a spiritual awakening and I I would, after those meetings, I would be very, very down on myself. Very down, you know, okay, you're hopeless, you'RE useless. And I've got my As Bill Sees It here to read something out because on page 264 of As Bill See's It, there's a little bit from a grapevine. and I used to read, as Bill says, every day one page a day. So about once a year I would read this page and it says the step that keeps us growing. Sometimes when friends tell us how well we are doing we know better inside. We know we aren't doing well enough. We still can't handle life as life is. There must be a serious flaw somewhere in our spiritual practice and development. What then is it? The chances are better than even that we shall locate our trouble in our misunderstanding or neglect of AA's step 11, prayer, meditation and the guidance of God. The other steps can keep most of us sober and somehow functioning but step 11 can keep us growing if we try hard and work at it continually. And every time I read that, I would think that is me. That is me and I would give meditation a little burst again after reading that for a while and then my thinking would come in and I'd think oh I can't do this and you know so it just carried on and for you know a considerable period of time and I'm talking years and while this you know discomfort with the meetings was happening I began, I can't actually remember the beginning of it but I was getting migraines and I do think there were you know more than one reason for them more than One Reason but when I got felt one coming on because you can feel them coming on I would immediately think, oh my God, a migraine. Oh no. How long is this one going to last? I can't have any more time off work. Oh dear, I've already had how many, oh, how many have I had, you know, so on and on and off. Poor migraine never had a chance. You know, before I knew it, you know, I was bedridden and I would be bedridden for days sometimes, with this head that would not shut up. And this went on for quite a while, quite a While. And I was starting to get more and more despairing about them. And I felt that I'd got to a point at one time where I just, sort of a similar kind of point where I got to with my eating. I sort of felt I couldn't go on, you know, what was I going to do? And you know of course I would just have to go on but it just felt all pretty hopeless and at that time, you now I'm also an alcoholic and I attend Alcoholics Anonymous and in AA And an AA meeting was starting, a meditation meeting was starting on a Saturday morning. And I started going to it. And it involved a tape where we would listen to a tape. Well, we still do. I still go to their meeting. We listened to a type for half an hour. And then there's half an of sharing. So for half and hour, you know, I had to sit there with my Well, I chose to have my eyes closed. With my eyes closed and to try and meditate. And yeah, I was pretty hopeless. But the one thing I could do was keep my eyes shut. I could keep myself physically still, sitting in a chair, and keep my eye shut. So that was kind of the things. and the clock used to drive me mad every time after the meeting I thought I was going to have to speak to my sponsor about that clock but the thing that I did that I'd never done before that the meeting enabled me to do was I persevered and I had never done that before And I started talking to my sponsor about meditating. And, you know, she said something to me like, every time you pause and, you Know, breathe, think of your higher power or whatever the word she used, you're meditating. And I thought, oh, really? Oh, wow. and then oh I'm meditating, I'm meditating so I became in my own mind I became an AEA member that was now meditating whereas for all those years I had thought of myself as an AEI member that couldn't meditate and wasn't meditating and I was worried about that I was afraid about that because it's you know in the 12 steps and I need to work the 12 steps to get well and I wasn't working an important part of them but I thought I couldn't so in my mind I went over into a new category I went into the category of being able to meditate however you know however not very well it was so So I found that very encouraging, very encouraging. And the very, very surprising thing was I started to feel a little bit different. Very, very hard to put my finger on. I didn't know what it was. But this is in my daily life. in my daily life I felt a bit of a different feeling and like I felt it hugely and I didn't know what it was and it was I mean I'm still yeah it was a feeling of well-being sort of sort of regardless of what was going on each day, I had that feeling. I sort of had a feeling that it was okay, even though this was going on, it was OK. And that was very, very surprising and unexpected, very unexpected. I mean, I didn't really go into meditation or start going to that meeting with any expectations whatsoever. ever, certainly none about the migraine. That was just purely coincidental but that has been another bonus. Time was going on and you know I was waiting, waiting for a migraine because previously I didn't have to wait all that long. One was just around the corner and you You know, time was passing. Time was passing and I hadn't had a migraine. And it was an absolute miracle. And, you know, I didn't know. Could this be something to do with the meditating? It seemed a heck of a jolly coincidence. But, you Know, the timing was from the time that I started going to this meeting. and I mean that was a while ago now, I don't know if anyone here knows how long that meditation meeting's been going but a few years and you know I haven't had anything like a migraine that I had prior to that meeting starting and you know that is absolutely you know miraculous so um and you know unexpected so um since that time i have persevered and the meeting helps me with that a lot you know going once a week uh you know meditating with other people at the moment we're actually online but whether it's online or face-to-face you know it's that you know being with the group and for some reason that helps me to persevere at home you know I think if something happened with the meeting does the meditating at home drop off it's just the sort of person I am and so I have persevered at home and I have started reading a spiritual book which is something new for me and I have listened to the odd podcast I prefer the reading for me because I like the quiet I just don't get too much quiet and I really really like the quiet and so I would prefer to read and in recent times very like very very recent times I one day I got home from work and instead of meditating and then having a wee read I had the wee read first and and then you know the meditation and And for me it is much better, much better that way around and I hadn't realised because I come in from work, I'm still sort of partly at work, the day I'm with the day. If I can do my wee reading and just get into the sort of thinking that I'm wanting, leave work thinking behind and then, you know, do the meditation, then yeah it's just for me that's just better. So that's sort of bringing you up with you know, current practice. But for me, yeah, it's good. It's really, really good. And I have had the odd time, I mentioned it to a teacher at my work a couple of days ago, whose wife is really, very struggling. She's got a business and really, ready struggling with the COVID and, mentally and I talked to him about meditation and I've talked to a few other people and it's quite bizarre to hear myself talking who is this person that's saying these things because it's so different for me, very very different and as I say not what I came in here for But, you know, it's part of giving away what I've been given. You know, It's helped. Like, it really, really helped. And, you now, if it can be helpful to someone else, well, all then good, you kno. I mean, at one time, I would have felt embarrassed to, you known, have said that to someone outside the programme. Fine, people in the programme, no problem. Outside the programme I would not have done that. but I have received a lot of help and we'll just carry on with the persevering which is what made the difference for me and I found out that this going off my thoughts going off after a minute and then going off into my own thoughts that's all part of it that happens to everyone it's not just me that is what happens with everyone and for all those years I thought I couldn't do it because my mind would go here, there and everywhere. That's normal that's normal if I'd talked with someone about it exactly like my eating if I talked to another addictive eater I would have found out there are other people like me instead of just keeping these things inside so I know at this meeting we like to have a joke so I'll finish off with a meditation joke and it's very short did you hear about the spiritual man who refused an injection before his root canal his goal was to transcend dental medication Thank you.