by Natti Ronel
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Let’s take another moment of silence. … In this moment of silence, we can do a little exercise in self-awareness -- and ask ourselves what we need to abstain from in order to create a program for change in our lives. Sometimes the answer arises immediately. There are times when the answer is the thing we’re afraid of, like giving up coffee in the morning; to some people the very idea is anathema, even though there can be a good life after coffee. Sometimes abstinence will be expressed in something that we need to do, although we have managed to avoid it up to now, such as visiting a certain person. Anyway, we shall seek, and we’ll be creative. The thing from which we wish to abstain can be something less dramatic than vomiting or violence, something which is almost normal, but which has become compulsive in our lives or is leading towards undesirable outcomes, something that we want to change. While we are still inside the silence, having decided on the behavior from which it would be worthwhile abstaining, let’s imagine how this abstinence will work, or what advantages will come to us when we do without the thing from which we are abstaining. Let’s take the time. Now we’ll make a small decision, that this week we’ll exercise abstinence from the behavior that we have chosen. Without asking questions or trying to understand, at the end of each day we’ll ask ourselves if we have exercised abstinence today and when, and if we haven’t succeeded in this, when? We’ll record the answer in a journal and keep an eye on our progress. This is the way to work with every abstinence that we decide on -- checking at the end of the day and maintaining a record. We can also describe the process on a daily basis to somebody whom we trust, which is very desirable. Good luck.
TOOL 2
Just for Today
The present is a gateway and we can change its direction; through it the future flows and turns into the past.
Let’s put down for a moment everything that we have in our hands, sit down calmly and take a brief moment of silence. We simply leave for a moment everything we came here with. … Thank you.
Allow me to share a few words about silence, with which we open every meeting or part of a meeting, as they do in meetings of AA and the other twelve-step fellowships. What happens when we take a moment of silence? At first, we’re still occupied with the business of arrival, hands holding on to something, the seating not yet arranged, still talking and thinking about things belonging to the world outside this room and what is happening there. As the silence progresses, the conscious noise that we brought in with us can fade and subside, if we allow it to do so. Silence creates for us a separation between what was and what is yet to be, and it focuses us on the present moment. Silence is also a good opportunity to leave everything aside, relax within ourselves or within the present, rid ourselves of preconceptions, and simply be here, in the silence. One of the objectives is that the silence will permeate us, entering the consciousness and the heart, allowing us to experience the pleasure of delving deeper into the silence. The creation of silence benefits us in almost every respect. Often it is more beneficial than speech or analysis of the situation because of the deepening experience in it, of inner stillness.
The experience of silence filtering in is characteristic of various spiritual traditions in which people meet and perform their rituals in silence. This used to be the custom in meetings of the DAT spiritual school and Shlomo Kalo writes about silence and stillness in many of his books. In Zen monasteries, the shared exercises and almost all procedures are conducted in full and deep silence. The Vipassana method suggests whole days of silence and in the Psalms (65:1) it is written: “To you God, in Zion, silence gives praise.” It seems that in almost all the spiritual traditions, one of the key practices is the use of silence, sometimes in groups and at other times in isolation.
Sometimes we may feel that silence is tense. The experience of tense silence, the antithesis of inner stillness, happens sometimes in meetings of a group-dynamic, or in certain methods of therapy, in which the accumulated tension in the silence is supposed to put pressure on patients to open up and speak. Since such silence roars like thunder without words; the stress that it creates reinforces the inner noise with social or psychological noise without voice and words.
In the Graceway, directed towards “the spirit of a loving God,” there is no intention of creating stress or using stressful silence as a manipulative ploy to induce people, under the pressure of stress, to talk about something they hadn’t planned. On the contrary, our intention is to learn how to recognize the silence, internalize it, and use it to deepen the stillness within us, in the hope that if there is stress, it will gradually subside in the silence, to be replaced in us by something else, something happy, gentle, and loving, which the silence allows it to be. When we learn to be with the inner silence, it can continue even when we are in conversation or active in the world. The silence radiates from inside into the conversation and the activity, as we can feel in places where we encounter a spiritual exercise that deepens the silence.
The gate of the present leading to the future
Let’s imagine a big, gigantic gate, open wide. We take a closer look at it. It seems there is a lot of movement in there, but only in one direction. When we pay more attention to the details, we see how all the events of our lives are entering the gate and moving on. On the gate, there is an inscription in big and clear letters: Gate of the Present. In front of the gate is the land of the future, and behind it is the land of the past. The gate is the brief moment that separates them, the moment of the present. We are located in this gate. Always. We are this gate, the way to the events of our lives, always.
Events of the future, both those that are far away from the gate and those that are right beside it and any moment now they will pass through, are still out of our reach. It is not in our power to create anything new in the land of the future, to stop the traffic, to change or cancel anything. What appears there is the product of various causes that are outside us. The speed of the movement of events before they enter the gate is also beyond our control. In the land of the future, there are many possibilities for different events, perhaps an infinite number. Only a small proportion will pass through the gate of the present.
In the land of the past, events are also beyond our control, those that are still so close to us we can smell them and feel their movement, and those that are so distant they have almost disappeared in the vortex of time. They are also outside our ability to influence them, to bring them back “for another round,” to change or cancel them as if they had never passed through the gate. What is in the past, stays in the past. We can influence only those events which are actually inside the gate, and even here, our influence is limited. It appears to us that everything is fixed and we don’t have many options to choose. Perhaps no options at all, since the future hasn’t happened yet and the past is no longer with us. A grim kind of determinism, we might say.
Well, almost. Because in spite of all this, permission is granted. It turns out that we have an astonishing ability to change, to choose and influence something that is essential in all the traffic that I’ve described, of events passing through the gate of the present. We can change the direction of the gate, its angle in relation to the earth and the sky, and even the width of its aperture. The possible change to the configuration of the gate, which happens in the present moment only, certainly influences what and how much will go through the gate. Different angles of the gate in relation to the ground and the sky are also directed towards different events -- the terrestrial closer to the ground and the spiritual closer to the sky. Additionally, we can at one moment reduce the aperture so that undesirable influences won’t get through, or we can widen it at another moment to allow in an abundance of desirable influences. Instead of grim determinism, there is great freedom of choice.
Focusing on the possible
One of our traps in every change is thought that runs ahead into the unseen future with the question, “What’s going to happen?” or �
��How will we cope?” How will we succeed in keeping to the abstinences, what will life be like without the thing that we desire most, but is harmful and really should be given up, and how can we start to act despite old habits? Fear of the future, constituting a barrier to change, is a very effective method to prevent us from changing ourselves. Therefore, the tool, “Just for Today” is one of the most basic tools used by AA and other similar organizations, and it has helped millions of addicts to recover and to cope with thoughts of the future, which paralyze and obstruct the process of change.
“Just for Today” suggests to us that we should focus our attention on a short span of time in which we can make decisions. For example, we can abstain from a certain thing just for today, or abstain from thinking about what may happen in the future, even the future as close as tomorrow, and focus our consciousness on an effort to maintain the change for today. Tomorrow -- we shall repeat a similar focus of thought, and progress from day to day. In general, thinking about change for the whole of life can be intimidating. Changing our whole life seems like a heavy burden, and when this is considered, the will to start the process disappears. But one day -- just for today -- already sounds different, it sounds entirely possible. Here is a fine example: David came to a first meeting in the late morning and said he had a drug problem, addiction to marijuana. We spoke about total abstinence. He admitted sincerely that he didn’t think he could give it up entirely. I asked him if he could abstain for one day. He still thought he wasn’t capable. But he also said that he hadn’t smoked yet that morning -- which was unusual for him -- because he wanted to arrive at our meeting in a rational and lucid state. We talked about the simple fact that he’d already gone nearly half a day without smoking. He agreed, and the realization cheered him up. I asked if he could keep it going for another half-day, until the evening. Half a day now seemed possible. We arranged to talk in the evening. In the evening, it was possible to declare a “clean” day. It was a surprise to him; he was sure that he wouldn’t succeed, and the small change began to build a good foundation for substantial change.
“Just for Today” is an effective tool and is not an elegant way of deceiving ourselves. It is the way to focus our attention on the possible and the relevant and under no circumstances to foster the self-delusion that we can make the change just for today and then tomorrow go back to our old habits. We focus our attention and our efforts on the present, what is happening now, instead of giving way to fear and anxiety over the future, which may not happen at all. We take on a big task of change and break it down into smaller units of change, units of time during which we are capable of sustaining change. Units of change can be one day, or less, an hour even, to maintain a certain change for an hour. Deciding on and keeping to a change in a small unit of time is easier than proclaiming a change from now and forever. From one unit of time to another, from day to day, we grow into the change and experience ourselves differently. Just for today, the change becomes possible.
“Just for Today” can also be understood in another sense: breaking the task down into units of change which are manageable and aren’t necessarily units of time, and focusing on each of them separately. Dismantling the task into do-able units makes it possible to create a hierarchy -- what is important to us to do just for today, and what can we cope with as time goes on, so as not to waste the limited strength at our disposal. Total abstinence, for example, is a task that should ideally be prolonged, but it isn’t certain that the same applies to all tasks of change. For example, if someone is in dependent relationships with his mother and with his wife, we would suggest that he change his relationship with one of the two, with his wife, let’s say. This will be the “Just for Today” change. Changing the relationship with the mother will come later.
“Just for Today” suggests that we dismantle any task that seems too big or impossible into manageable units, small units of time and small task-units. By means of dismantling and focusing, we can confront ourselves, with our weaknesses and vulnerable points, and not let them manage us.
“Just for Today” offers us the chance to take a modest look at ourselves. When people embark on the way of change, they sometimes feel the temptation to come out with impressive and extravagant declarations, something like, “Never again will I…” But we have no control over the future and things happen in life either in accordance with our plans or in opposition to them. The “Just for Today” principle brings us back to modest reality. Instead of the grandiose thought that we can change everything all at once, “Just for Today” offers us the opportunity for sober recognition that our powers are limited and we should utilize them with understanding and focus on an appropriate unit of change. In general, change in a certain unit creates relief and promotes progress.
In the step-program there is a relevant saying: “progress, not perfection,” based on a quote from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (p. 60): “We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” It expresses awareness of our human limitations; it’s a modest appraisal which accepts us as we are, not perfect. It means accepting our imperfections at a given moment and in general. But in the same breath, we emphasize progress, even if it’s very small, because it’s a move in the right direction. The fantasy of attaining perfection makes us balk at modest progress -- in practice doing nothing, and then there’s no progress at all. We can analyze ourselves and see how at certain moments we’re not prepared to compromise on less than everything. If doing everything is impossible -- then we choose to do nothing. There is pride, but there’s also the possibility of despair. The saying, in the spirit of “Just for Today,” suggests something practical -- gradual progress at a pace with which we can cope. We place emphasis on progress, and we leave perfection to a preserved aspiration in the heart, nothing more than that. Emphasizing progress obliges us to give up the fantasy of perfection and of getting everything at once, but every process of change involves the giving up of one fantasy or another, large or small.
It can be seen that “Just for Today” makes every abstinence that we’ve mentioned possible. With its help, there is an improved prospect of abstaining from something that draws us and changing something in ourselves. Every new day that comes also opens the door to new conditions, and “Just for Today” reminds us not to get hung up on the old, letting the new arise and giving us the chance to be open to it.
From the point of view of implementation, “Just for Today” suggests something more to us -- that our work on ourselves, which is continuous, should be assessed by us in day-to-day segments. In several spiritual traditions, the practice is to conduct self-analysis on a daily basis. “Just for Today” is a tool that directs us towards self-assessment day by day, analyzing our situation and examining the change. After we’ve decided on a change, it’s recommended at the end of the day to assess what has happened in that day -- have we stood by the change? Or not stood by it? What got in the way, and what helped? A penetrating self-analysis that happens every day, just for today.
I started this segment with a description of the gate of the present, where we can change the configuration, the angle and the aperture. “Just for Today” is the tool that focuses us on the gate of the present, helping us to internalize the responsibility that we have for the present, but with intentions tending towards the future. The other tools help us to adapt the gate in accordance with the way we want to live our lives, for example, to direct it towards Grace. “Just for Today” recognizes the future and prepares for it, while focusing on what can be done by means of change in the present.
Very often, we find ourselves engrossed in the past, feeling disappointment or regret, with thoughts of missed opportunities, or even craving for the past that is no more, and clinging to it. When we are engrossed in the past, for a moment we are not living the present, and thus we neglect the gate for a moment. Clinging to the past does, indeed, offer a little respite from the struggle, but this is liable to be a trap, liable to turn i
nto a compulsive retreat from the present into the past, whether it existed or not. We are prone to finding ourselves returning again and again to memories of a certain past, trying to relive or repair something that’s no longer there, and to perpetuate feelings associated with the past that has gone. “Just for Today” rescues us from escape into the past by focusing on simple activity in the present.
To the same extent, we are also sometimes “stuck” in the future at the expense of the present, for example, when we are afraid of or anxious about something that is liable to happen, or we are looking forward to something that we want to happen, or we are fixated on negative expectations. If pre-occupation with the future isn’t compulsive, it will pass soon enough. But when we are fixated on the future in a compulsive manner, we sacrifice the present for the sake of a future that may never happen. For example, someone who refrains from a particular action out of fear, is at present a victim of fear for the future that might not come. “Just for Today” takes us back to ourselves and releases us from the fixation. With the help of “Abstinence,” we can choose a small activity for the present. One thing leads to another and just for today we feel somewhat liberated. The integration of “Just for Today” into our internal thoughts helps us to find an answer in moments of weakness or temptation. Focusing on “Just for Today” paves a way for us to a future that will be closer to what we want it to be.
