Oh, yeah, do I love me some magical thinking.  I’m over the edge in zero time, once I put on my lucky hat watchin the game.  Or when I know if the next car down the street is red, I’m buyin a winning lotto ticket.  My grip on reality is subject to slippage.  I gotta be on guard.

Most of us heard those stories about the swamis and gurus of India or someplace who could lie on a bed of nails or walk on hot coals or levitate.  Those guys never showed up in our neighborhood, but it didn’t stop people from talking about it like they’d seen it. 

The American version was more like, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  My pop loved to say it was “mind over matter.”

Not for me.  I couldn’t hold a match til it burned out.  I couldn’t even hold a job before I burned out.  Nah.  No will and no way.  That mind over matter thing mighta been metaphysical, but it was a rock-solid disagreement I had with my old man about how the world worked.  All downhill after that.

Years go by.  My life becomes proof I got no clue how the world works, but the more it does, the more I hunker down and hold to my “cherished beliefs.”  The tighter I hold, the more I crush.  It’s all a travesty of what any father would want for his kid.

I get lucky enough to end up in recovery, instead of my grave.  More years go by.  My old man is lucky enough to see some of the travesty wear off before he dies.  One day, that old wrong gets righted.

They say there’s nothin can be done about the past, that’s another way the world works, and that’s easy to see.  Bein in recovery, though, really got me to wondering about a lotta the stuff I’d been so sure about.  Some kinda magic seemed to be goin on.  Maybe not hot-coal, cobra-kissing stuff, but somethin I’d never seen, before.

I’m in this meetin one day, and some guy says the line, “It’s mind over matter.”

In a heartbeat, my pulse is up, face flushed, fist clenched—it all comes back in a second.  All the wrong-headed hurt and stupid that’s been just waitin to get me back—here it finally comes.  The guy waits just that second or two that I’m about to jump outta my chair and skin, then says: “Yeah.  If y’don’t mind, it don’t matter.”

What?

“If you don’t mind, it don’t matter?”

Holy crap!  The rain stops.  The clouds part.  The center of the Universe appears.

Are you kiddin me?  Why didn’t they say that in the first place?  Of course, they did, but I couldn’t hear it.  I was busy with the swamis and snakes.

If I had any doubts about the ability of the Program to change any part of my life—present, future, OR past—those doubts just parted with the clouds.

THEE most amazing part of the life-changing information that I got from bein in the Program with other people, was the way it was delivered.  Maybe it was some smart-ass-backwards way, but it was funny.  How could the secret of the Universe be told as a joke?  Didn’t it hafta be robes-and-incense serious?  Mumble-mumble-chant?  How could it be a punchline?

My sponsor says this quote to me one day: “God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”

Wow.  I heard life was a joke, but it never seemed funny—til I heard the recovery people tell it!