John Du Cane

John Du Cane

Opportunity Cost

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“There is an opportunity cost for everything we do. This is why we must have the awareness to ensure that what we are pursuing is really what we value, because the pursuit leaves countless lost opportunities in its wake. We choose one experience at the sacrifice of all other experiences”—Chris Matakas

What do you want? The potato or the stack of quarters? Everything we choose comes at a cost. Choose one thing and we have lost the opportunity for another. We give up one value to obtain another. Such is the transactional life—we are the spoon, balanced on the calculator, weighing our options.

Opportunity cost

Now, in those bad old using days, our spoon was teetering all over the place. We really had only the one opportunity we wished to pursue—and that was the opportunity to get smashed, blitzed, stoned, obliterated, numbed, whacked out or jacked up. Pursuing the addiction-fulfillment opportunity to the max meant a massive opportunity cost in unattended relationships, broken commitments, erratic work habits, financial debt and a host of other life-deficiencies.

We paid an opportunity cost too with our health as we burned the candle at both ends and drained our energy reserves. In other words, we valued the altered state above all else—and paid an increasingly steep opportunity cost to support that primary value.

In recovery, we learned to recover our values balance. We became more delicate and more aware about the values we pursued. In fact, these new values and this new sense of balance became essential to our ongoing serenity. We paused more and became more considerate in our choices. We became more attentive to how our decisions affected not only our own opportunity cost but the opportunity cost of others. We no longer saw ourselves as terminally unique. We were connected to a fellowship of support. We listened to our shifts in balance and made the necessary course corrections to stay on track.

The more we work recovery skills of this kind, the more they work for us. For it to work, we work it.

Today, let’s reflect for a moment on how well our value-choices are supporting our balanced recovery. Are we making any choices that may be costing us a finer, safer opportunity of another kind?

To emphasize this contemplation on a physical level, let’s do this simple but often surprisingly challenging movement:

Begin by standing with your feet about six inches apart. Now, raise the right leg, bent at the knee, to about hip height. Bring your arms out to the sides, until they are fully extended at shoulder height. Close your eyes. Breathe gently and hold this position as you count to 60. Open your eyes and bring your right leg down. Repeat with your left leg. If you find it challenging to balance on one leg with your eyes closed and think you might even fall over, rest one hand on the back of a chair. The more you practice the better your balance will become.

I am happy to be choosing values that better support my serenity and which enhance my sense of safety.

Cellular Cravings

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“You don’t want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren’t positive, you’re negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you’ve got a shortage somewhere”—D. H. Lawrence

Do we have a shortage somewhere? A shortage that is creating an insatiable craving for more and more and more and more? Are we yearning for some ineffably deep connection that will finally make us whole? Are we pacing the streets of hope, umbilical cord in hand, looking for a place to plug it in? Such a condition is common to most mankind, but is particularly prevalent in those of us with a propensity to addiction.

In our using days, our cells were afire in a frenzy of unabated craving. Thousands upon thousands of starving creatures teamed within us, it seemed, with an insatiable appetite for the sweet succor of an endorphin hit. And more distressing yet, the more we fed the ravenous crowds of creatures, the more they multiplied within us—until a veritable army of desperados was set to storm the gates.

Cravings

As we moved into recovery, the debris of the creature wars lay all about us. We, the stunned survivors, could only shake our heads at the severed limbs, the smashed heads, the broken bones, the screams and cries of agony. Fortunately we were now connected to a fellowship that could help us gently and slowly pick up the pieces, clean up the battlefield and start our healing journey.

And also fortunately, help is at hand to start handling our cellular cravings so we can be less easily tipped into a risky neediness. Consistent meditation and movement can initiate a cascade of healing hormones within our bodies. As we regain the capacity to care and love, that care and love given and received initiates further benign cascades. Now the creatures are being fed with foods that don’t inflame them and stress them out. The creatures feel comforted—and at least to some extent—satisfied. We can relax into our beings and live in the moment more easily…

Today, let’s consider recommitting to activities that can have a healing impact on our creatures’ appetite. Let’s look at least one activity, in particular, that we could incorporate into our daily health regimen. And by “health regimen” we are naturally referring to the whole spectrum: body, mind and spirit…

Here’s one possible activity to consider:

Stand with your heels together, feet angled out at 45 degrees, knees slightly bent. Hold the hands at groin level just off the body, palms facing up, in a cup-like position. Inhale as you slowly raise your palms to upper chest level, exhale as you lower your hands back to your starting position.

Further enhance the movement of breath and energy by placing your attention initially at the base of your spine, then running it up to the top of your head on the inhale. On the exhale, run your attention down the front of your body to just below your navel. Do 10 or more repetitions.

I enjoy the feeling of tranquility that comes from calming down my creatures.

Beauty Is An Attitude

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“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”—Confucius

Every moment we have a choice: create beauty in the world—or besmirch it with ugliness. We can paint things any way we want to—but this can be a tough realization for many of us to buy into. Taking one hundred percent responsibility for our actions and perceptions takes a steady and determined hand. We falter easily enough, in the face of the blizzards of perceived “ugliness” that seem to blow and howl against us with startling intensity and consistency.

Beauty

We can speak beauty. We can perceive beauty. We can manufacture beauty. We can attract beauty. We can share beauty. We can ask for beauty. We can have an attitude of beauty. Or not. The irony of our addiction was that our addiction had its origins so much in the yearning for beauty—through ecstatic experiences, transcendent bliss or a kind of frenzied elation. Over time though, as our addiction grew, the quest for beauty devolved into a desperate attempt to maintain even a semblance of sanity. We were seriously out of control—and beauty quickly got tossed into the backseat as we white-knuckled down the freeway.

In recovery, we learned to restore our sense of the beautiful. To restore it within ourselves, to see it in others. We became less likely to chase beauty down, to try grab it and force it. We kiss beauty as it flies past—without attempting to arrest it and jail it. We found that the less we cursed and swore at life, the more life would respond with a smile.

Today, let’s contemplate a person or situation that we currently recoil from. Can there be a way we can transform the perceived ugliness into something of beauty? Even for a few transformative moments?

Let’s practice this attitude of beauty with this simple process:

Sit quietly. Contemplate the object of your distaste. Put your right hand over your heart area. Inhale and draw this perception into your heart area, softening it and lightening it with a sense of appreciation as you do so. Exhale and send the perception back out—hopefully at least somewhat transformed. Repeat this process about twelve times, or until you feel complete. Watch as the object of your distaste gradually loses its power over you…

I set sail on the high seas of beauty—and my heart opens.

The Strength of the Gentle

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“Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”—Saint Francis de Sales

Life was hard when we were using. Part of why it was hard was the roughness with which we approached almost everything we did. We were rough to others and got roughness back in spades. When gentleness was all we needed, we would shove and bang and bluster and grab. We had little subtlety or delicacy to us. We would muscle our way through situations with scant regard for diplomacy, grace or sensitivity. And, if we ever were gentle, it was usually a phony ploy to soften up our mark before we made our score.

Part of inching into recovery was the revelation that we could often achieve more by a gentle, courteous MO, than we ever managed to pull off in our using days. Harshness, abrasiveness and passive-aggressive posturing surrendered to friendliness, care and supportiveness. And we discovered, to our delight, that such gentleness was reciprocated. Gentleness would shower upon us, just we gave to the world in a gentle manner.

Also to our delight, we discovered that to be gentle did not mean to be weak. Far from it. The more gentle we allowed ourselves to be, the stronger our energy, the stronger our spirit.

Today, let’s reflect on a person with whom we have been less than gentle in the past. Can we now see it in our hearts to make the change—and be gentle where once we were rough?

In the practice of quiet breath, the spirit of the gentle grows—and the blossom opens to the butterfly. We give naturally, we take naturally.

Gentle Butterfly

For today, we will sit and simply count our breaths. Let’s focus on our nostrils as we inhale gently and exhale gently without effort. Just be aware of the breath. A good way to enhance this practice is to count the exhalations as they pass out through your nostrils. Count ten breaths, then begin a new cycle of ten. Do as many cycles as feels wonderful to do.

I embrace the spirit of the gentle—and I feel the quiet strength.

Integrity Lost and Found

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“With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.”—Zig Ziglar

We patted our pockets. We patted them again. We got worried. We turned our pockets inside out. Nope, not a single dime of integrity to be found. We were integrity-bankrupt. Skint, not only in that department, but in the related department of honor. For how can honor survive when integrity has fled the house? For, through the weaseling and the machinations and the skullduggery of our chemical abuse, we had bartered away our higher selves in favor of the low life.

When we entered recovery, we took inventory and were certainly dismayed when we reviewed the status of our integrity and our sense of honor. And it was not as if we could borrow a bunch of integrity to display in pretense, while we labored to accumulate our own for real. We discovered that we had to build our integrity back up using this initially painful formula: make a promise based on our new values—and keep it. Repeat and grow. As we keep our value-based promises, the world recognizes those promises kept—and rewards us slowly with trust and respect.

Lost and Found

Today, let’s reflect on a worthwhile promise we are ready to make and keep. It doesn’t have to be large to be worthwhile, right? In keeping with our gentle program of renewal, we take on what we can manage to take on without counterproductive stress.

It takes guts, often, to tread the path of integrity and honor. But that path leads to a nobility of being we may have lost when we were in the throes of our addiction.

Speaking of guts, then, let’s do a simple but powerful exercise to tone the stomach area. One caveat: if you ate a large meal recently, you may want to wait a while to perform this most excellent move:

Stand with the legs in a hip-width stance. Bend at the knees, so the thighs are at about a forty-five degree angle. Lean your torso forwards, also at approximately a forty-five degree angle. Support your position by placing your palms on your thighs. Take a very deep inhale then exhale with vigor. Hold your breath out while you start to pump your stomach in and out, in and out. Suck your stomach back toward your spine, creating a cave where once there was a mound. Release and repeat, release and repeat.

You may find this very wonderful exercise tough to perform at first. Please do persist! It will be so worth it. We promise! Ten reps is good, twenty reps is better. Consider doing another set or two, if you are up for it.

It’s a relief and a pleasure to enjoys the fruits of making and keeping a worthwhile promise.