I am not sure what is holding up my writing but my intuition tells me that I am working at a level that is deeper than I can express in words.  I am having to grapple with my faith and with my relationship to God and also my relationship to the other people in my life who have a variety of relationships to God.  It started with the Eckhardt Tolle reading and has continued now for several weeks.  It should be easy enough to integrate what Tolle is saying but that is not really the problem the problem is my continuing ambivalence about the existence of God.

But if a person such as myself is part of a relay race for which there are an infinite number of runners and the baton carries the message of God then it really does not matter whether I can see the finish line.  I am but one of the runners.  It is not my place to question what is in the baton or what the race is all about but it is my place to run and carry the message as fast as I can.  That being the case I should not continue to dillydally about with questions about God's existence.

Yesterday was a very special day for me.  On the way to the church I kept thinking that that I use people.  But when I got there those folks help me a great deal in getting of that thought.  So we move on and we decided to have another session on the 15th which is Sunday at 3 PM in trying to get a compliment of at least 12 folks so that we can do the double circle.   meanwhile I am still stuck with my writing but  that will clear up.  I am spending a lot of time  listening to Eckart Tolle but it helps me come down and helps me not worry so much.  I have to look at that as being healthier than many other things that I can do distract myself from worry.  So I will continue in my immersion into the Catholic church activities including rosary in five days a week and mass five days a week with two days a week of AA meetings and one Protestant service on Sunday with the Rev. Hardesty and his spouse Karen at the little Presbyterian Church in Alachua.  I love those folks.

  the past week has been interesting because I am moving in a more spiritual direction and as Steve said some time ago that I was cramming for finals.  There is no doubt that trying to reach beneath my ego.  I have been listening to the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it has and a greater effect on me than last year and the year before.  More and more committed to search for nonverbal communication.  I am searching for some of the problems in ego through my experience in AA and now more recently in my church.  I plan on going to a three-day retreat to Conyers Georgia in the hope of finding more about what is inside of me it is worth saving and what is inside of me that I need to blow away before my goodbyes.

I made a commitment to Fr Jeff that I would offer my services as a coach for those suffering mental health problems and particularly problems with addiction.  He accepted my offer and so I move ahead.

I will continue to seek participants for the supportive person group process workshop and to the list of issues under investigation the phenomenon described in the book Blink called adaptive unconscious.  He describes in a more vernacular fashion the power to think without thinking.  This is the interaction that I hope to demonstrate within the two persons within the group setting were in support of each other.

addendum

There will be a meeting of SPGP on March 1st Sunday at 3 PM. Both Karen and Gary believe we should have at least one more meeting because to them at least it went well last time. I am willing to be embarrassed if this is a stale message. I very much believe in what I am doing.
What this group may do for you:

1. help go beneath your ego to a richer level of interaction with people
2. Find that there is non verbal presence in this group but you have to be "in it" to feel it.
3. find that you can not only be supportive without a lot of words but you can experience support from another person in a new and refreshing way.
4. develop the experience of having someone "at your back"
5. realize that this group does not require a professional of any kind
6. I hope that you experience the Balance that this method offers.

to name a few things............but approaching 82 I am pumped up but hopefully it is not my ego doing the pumping.

Although I have been reading Eckhart Tolle for several years some things are just drifting into my awareness.  Although the supportive person group process is designed to attenuate or dampen the effective the individuals ego and group, I did not really appreciate the implications that Tolle makes in the Power of Now until very recently.

    Based on Gary and Karen's recommendation I am going ahead with another session at the Alachua Presbyterian Church on March 1 at 3 PM. on reflection I do believe that the supportive person group process is a good thing to promote.  For one thing it should be free and should be able to function without any professional leadership.

        This is what I have and this is what I fear. I fear that God will forsake me because of my fear. God is real but fear is continually shoving him/her aside. Hence the daily meetings as I quietly listen; but the noise in my head is loud but not clear. At times the honesty of others in the room peeks through and I am relieved but only momentarily.  Then I turn and read what is being said on the various websites and realize that few hit the nail and much of the rhetoric is hollow. The room that I go to will be filled with honesty as the others arrive.

I am an alcoholic but at a deeper level I am a fearaholic.

     I become disoriented when struck by fear and like a drowning man pull my rescuers in with me. Alcohol and other liniments are not the cause of my problem. I run in fear like the primitive humans did before the dawn of what we now call civilization. When in fear I become less of a man and more like the primitive beast of my ancestors. Can I find within myself a way to face the fear and make the next right move? So far I reach out to others who might have the answer to my built in primitive terror. They are kind as always.  They seem so wise and I feel my foolishness and slip away again into the haze of my private reality. Can I possibly find a shield against fear?

I have been fretting for several weeks over the issue of guilt and shame. I thought I understood this split somehow my guilt has gotten all tangled in the drawers of my shame. I have been getting some help from some of my friends as well as reading Ernest Kurtz small book called SHAME AND GUILT and I feel a bit better.