Got some mail from my Mom the other day. She lives in L.A....my old
town. I was born in L.A. and lived there 35 years before moving. In her
mail she sent a xerox of a house ad for a 500 square foot one bedroom
flat roof termite eaten stucco shack on her street that is going for
$499,000.00 When I was a boy this house sold for just over $11,000. The
investment potential of L.A. real estate is not the focus of this mail.
Finding inner peace with our living conditions is the focus. Here is an
old post on this subject. This post contrasts my old lifestyle in terms
of financial affordability as well as quality of life between my old
home in Los Angeles to my current one in the Ohio Valley.


Believe it or not...where we live has great impact on our prorgam

written for a 12 step group




A fellow once asked on a list for advice on how to become happy and
content while he lived in a small apartment located in the center of
congested, stressful and unhealthy city. He wanted to divorce himself
from the notion that happiness should coincide with his living
conditions. I agreed with him that we can work on being happy and
content wherever we live irrespective of our surroundings. But I also
had to say that our surroundings can and do have an impact on us and we
are not machines that can turn off stress and problems that stem from
our unhealthy living conditions and be immune to it all. Yes, we can
work on being at peace even if someone is constantly stabbing a knife
in our side, but such a practice takes all our energy. This is why many
a contemplative become a "renunciate" and live like monks or nuns. They
'try' to remove much of life's worldly irritants and distractions to
focus on the spiritual path, so yes our surroundings and lifestyle can
matter to living a serene life. Although some renunciates find that
this life is not all it is cracked up to be and they still must deal
with 'personalities'' unless they become a hermit.

If the person that sent in this question of "finding contentment where
we are at" was living in a healthier and less stressful part of town
and had basic living conditions, then if their lack of happiness was
based on living in a mansion or driving a Bentley, they haven't a leg
to stand on as for not being content. For when our basic needs are met
- what is our excuse for not being content? Are we stuck in a confused
state of mixing up or wants with our necessities to live? If so, there
is no ending to our desires unless we put an end to them ourselves - no
one else can do this for us. Living on basis of such unsatisfied
desires is crippling to the addict. Here is what AA's 12 & 12 page 76
says about this topic - "The chief activator of our defects has been a
self-centered fear-primarily that we would lose something we already
possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a
basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual
disturbance and frustrations Therefore, no peace was to be had unless
we could find a means of reducing these demands."

Happiness is such an illusive state of being in life because; "it is
usually dependent upon our outer circumstances of our life being in
accord with the fulfillment of our inner desires" as written by a
famous Buddhist practitioner who failed to heed his own advice and was
found dead from drugs. The basic necessities of living to Thoreau were
food, shelter, fuel and clothes and this presupposes we have the money
to pay for such things. In these days I might add transportation is a
necessity for some. But if these basics are met there is usually little
else standing in our way to happiness and contentment. Some with much
less than these basics are content - so what is our excuse? Greed is
never satisfied by attainment. Once attained, the desire for more is
just raised to a higher level. This is how it worked with me. I always
attained my material goals and never came to a place of contentment but
always raised the bar for my supposed level of happiness. I was the
only person that one day could realize and say, "Yes, I have enough and
can be content and happy right now." If we base our happiness on what
others have we will never run out of "wants" as long as our inner self
worth is based on the externals of other people. I don't think this
fellow that posed this question was asking for anything outrageous, so
sometimes we have justification in our lack on contentment especially
when it is a lack of contentment due to our surroundings that are
destroying our health and our peace.

The answer to finding peace in the present moment is through change or
acceptance. Within this practice, 'generally' work to change first and
accept later. As I said above, "we can work on being at peace even if
someone is constantly stabbing a knife in our side, but such a practice
takes all our energy." So, if the solution to our problem would be to
move away from the reach of it, we can affect a change on our dilemma
by our actions. Either way, the problem can be solved by changing what
needs to be changed or gratefully accepting that no change can come
about. From 1990 to 2001 I lived in a welfare area. During most of that
decade I had no peace. I was full of resentments, greed and envy. One
year prior to my moving to this welfare neighborhood my financial
situation was altogether different. Between my families finances and my
own personal finances I had access to almost a half million dollars in
cash. But, through my eight addictions I ended up squandering most of
this money. After doing 9 years of working meditation on the life I had
created for myself and my family, one day it all came together for me
as to what had gone wrong and what needed to be done to rectify my
life. As I was up a ladder putting some ceiling molding in place
suddenly it hit me like the proverbial light bulb going off in my head.
I had finally learned to practice grateful acceptance and be content
where I was at and I set out to repair and restructure my life and make
amends to my family the best I could. I came down from the ladder,
immediately quit that job and never went back to it. The day of
enlightenment had come for me, but not without much pain on my part.
As the saying goes, "You cannot polish a diamond without friction."

I had finally found peace right now and in my present state of being
irrespective of the fact that I was living in an area offering little
peace and had little hopes for moving to better surroundings since I
had squandered so much money. But, I accepted this was the path I had
chosen and I would go on from here and be content wherever I lived. I
didn't put a hold on my peace, postponing it to sometime in the future,
but started to enjoy contentment right then. Little did I know that in
a few short years I would be where I live now, a very peace promoting
environment and living in a very nice house. (I don't know if it is too
peace promoting for the neighbors when I run my motocross bike around
the house a few times when I get the urge!) Such dramatic change in
ones living conditions doesn't happen like this for everyone. All we
can do is to be Honest, Open and Willing to change but practice
grateful acceptance for living the best we can where we are at by being
mindful of our gratitude for our present state of being. Yes, gratitude
is very important for being content. As Thoreau wrote: "I am grateful
for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising
how content one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of
existence." When we can wake up each morning in this state of gratitude
- just for being alive - and not have to put any conditions on our
gratitude we have arrived.

If you are stuck with living in an expensive, stressful and unhealthy
city and all you an afford is basic and low level, cramped
accommodations, then this is something that cannot be changed and must
be worked on being "accepted" as the serenity prayer states. But, such
a person should also be on guard and do the footwork to reduce stress
and problems at every turn since their living conditions dishes out so
much stress to them for free. They would be well advised not to create
more stress and problems for themselves to heap onto the pile. But,
isn't this how the average addict is? They seem to work overtime to
develop more drama on a seemingly endless basis instead of
restructuring their life in a direction of peaceful and serene living
and less drama. (If you missed my 6 page post called Putting Peace
First and want a copy write me.) We can always get a quick snapshot of
how our addiction work is going by asking the question: "Is our
addiction increasing, decreasing or frozen?" The first step for many an
addict is to freeze their addiction - for at least if it stays frozen
it wont get any worse. Then they can work on reducing it once it is
frozen and know that they never have to go back to the lows they once
hit - if they work a good recovery program. The first thing I had to
learn was the benefits of decreasing problems in my life. Once I
realized this I got a taste for the new life and changed direction
completely from how I used to live. This is enlightenment for the
addict...when they see the new path clearly. But for many a person they
do not get to see the path until they cover the entire distance of the
road they must travel. It seems "normal" people, do not need to test
boundaries of excess to find the truth. They must have a natural
ability to live balanced and know such things without developing great
pain to learn the lesson. For others including myself, they must take
the "road of excess and pain" to discover truth as William Blake wrote;
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

I'd suggest a person stuck in a stressful environment get into
Voluntary Simplicity in addition to their recovery and spiritual
programs as a further help with avoiding new stress and problems. No, a
geographic wont fix someone that has not fixed themselves from the
inside out, as Thoreau wrote in Walden, "I say beware of all
enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of
clothes." But the wrong living conditions can end up undermining the
best recovery program if the person is not careful. If a person
realizes that their surroundings whether it be work, living conditions,
a relationship or things are not conducive to living a healthy and
peaceful life, then they can work in the direction of change. But,
acceptance and releasing our work of change to a God or Higher Power as
to the outcome must be paramount or no peace is to be had. Personally,
I had to learn to balance this question of being content where I was
at. I came to realize that I could not put my happiness and contentment
in persons, places or things but also had to understand that persons,
places or things can destroy my peace and undermine my recovery efforts
as well. Over the last year I was offered appearances on a couple of TV
shows as a discussion guest on the subject of addictions. One show was
in NYC and both required flying to another city for two days which the
TV shows would have paid for as well as my accommodations. I told both
of them the same thing, if you want to interview me come to my house
and interview me here. The reason I refused them was not out of
arrogance or bloated self importance or even due to a busy schedule. I
refused because it just wasn't worth disrupting my peace to do what
they asked - I put my peace first. They declined to come to me and I
declined to go to them and that was how it ended up.

I lived in L.A. for 35 years and in 1989 decided to move to the Ohio
Valley due to the excuses of stress and greed. The stress of living in
L.A. should be obvious to those that have visited there. The greed part
of my move was due to my dissatisfaction at having to live in a
smallish, but nice 1000 Sq.Ft. home instead of being able to afford
living in what I thought was the minimum requirements for a house that
I deserved and could possibly be content with - a 20 room mansion.
Initially I failed at both quests from my geographic as I had not "made
new my insides before trying to make new my outsides" to paraphrase
Thoreau. Only after a complete restructuring of my life from the inside
out did I become successful in my quests. We did eventually end up
with a much nicer house than we could have afforded in L.A. - but if
you told me back then I would be moving across the country and
satisfied in this house I would have scoffed at the idea. No, only the
biggest of mansions would show others how important I am and this 2500
Sq.Ft. house I live in now just wouldn't due. Many of us seem to fall
into his trap. We keep all our self worth outside of us locked up in
the bank. If by chance we lose it - we lose everything worth living for
and sometimes such a person kills themselves over a loss since there is
nothing worth living for within them...It was all located someplace
outside of them. We were able to buy a small mini mansion in the 1990,
but it turned out to be an unbalanced lifestyle and unhealthy place to
live and we had to let it go. If you can afford to live the high life
then fine if this is what you want and if not, trying to do it on a
"forced basis" only yields pain. As an old Chinese saying states: "A
whale out of water is soon overrun by ants." When we live an out of
balance life beyond our comfortable means we too get overrun with our
addictions. No matter how rich you get, remember you can only live so
cushy of a life and still maintain your health. You cannot pay your
butler to sweat and do your exercise for you or to eat healthy foods
for you - we are all equal in this respect both rich or poor.

Without good recovery our visions become hallucinations and many of my
visions turned into real nightmares. This is the main determining
factor as to the outcome of the famous "geographic" that stand in the
way of the supposed happiness of many an addict. Does the addicts have
the clarity and quality of good recovery in ALL areas of addiction to
see the move clearly enough to judge chances of a good outcome
correctly? Horace saw this same folly in men back in ancient Rome;
"Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt--You can run away as
far as you like but you'll never get away from yourself." When we start
from the inside out to recreate ourselves into successfully recovered
individuals we have a good chance at success with decision making
whether it be moving our home or many of the other areas of living
requiring judgments and decisions. But without recovery, our visions
can become nightmares. Eventually I saw the problems I had created as
well as the solution, so we started our life anew in the spring of
1999. We took substantial losses on our earlier real estate mistakes
and compulsive spending binges and we bought our current house in
November of 2001 for $190,000. This decision to start over was a tough
decision in itself since we were in our late 40's and could have bought
two of these houses for all cash back in 1989. But, we had to humble
ourselves, get a loan and could only afford a moderate down payment due
to my earlier mistakes at managing the familles finances.

Before accepting my new way of life I had to hit bottom and though it
took 9 years of hell, the bottom eventually arrived. Without hitting
bottom I did not have the willingness to change directions to
restructure my life. When a person hits bottom it is easier to use the
momentum of the "bounce" off the bottom to help one in seeing a new way
in another direction. The addict can then see the benefits this new
direction in life can yield, and this can be helpful as a source of
continued energy to help one to keep going down the right path. This
source of energy gave me the stamina to keep working for 8 long years
that it took to get 98% decluttered from my starting point when
entering Clutterers Anonymous in 1996. Developing a good "Vipassana"
practice of seeing things clearly was also very important to me. This
insight meditation practice that stems from Buddhism deals with seeing
things clearly in terms of impermanence, suffering and non-self. Seeing
things for what they are helps prevent further uprising of new passions
from ignorance. If you have trouble seeing things for what they are,
make use of your sponsor, spiritual advisor, the list, the meeting or
specialized groups such as PRG's to help you. We cannot be experts at
everything.

The area we live in is very nice and bordered by OH, WV, PA and KY.
Nothing flashy like L.A. or NY, but a very relaxing area with clean
air, low traffic and stress and much wildlife such as deer, squirrels,
wild turkeys and honking geese. I enjoy relaxing on my hammock
listening to owls hoot and woodpeckers rat-a-tat-tat as I rock back and
forth. Lots to do here if your into nature - fishing, hunting, hiking,
water and snow sports, etc. I live with doctors, lawyers, successful
business people in a really nice area of town. The driving is generally
uncongested and low key but occasionally you get the hot head driver
just like anyplace else - but back in L.A., the peaceful driver was the
exception and the hot head honker was the rule. Many a time as soon as
the traffic light would change he or she was on the horn with one hand
as the other hand was used for the cell phone or the Latte' and even
with both hands tied up they would manage to get the middle finger
waving at you as they passed by. I live within my means quite
comfortably now. But, living within my means was always an option
irrespective of where I lived. The choice was always mine, I just
refused to do it. We have been paying down our house note and owe
about $59,000 which is very affordable and do not have to debt to live.
Various views of my house can be seen at my website. I am not bragging
to you to impress you, but have gone in detail to make this point clear
- if my current house was transplanted to my old town of L.A. with the
same type of neighborhood, same size lot, it would sell for a couple
million dollars.

If I took the proceeds from the sale of our house and decided to buy a
house in L.A., I could possibly buy a small house in Watts or Compton
and then only if I worked hard at it. We could probably afford to rent
a 2 bedroom apartment in a poor area of town, but that is it. I
couldn't have the lifestyle I enjoy today. Now the Ohio Valley and L.A.
are quite different, They both have their pros and cons, but it is good
to be aware of this difference in living standards and not blame
yourself if you choose to live in a tough area like L.A., NY, Tokyo or
similar high expense cities and have trouble making ends meet. If you
choose to live in such cities, then accept you will not have a high
living standard unless you make tons of money and are an exceptional
earner. Me, I am not an exceptional earner and accept this. I once read
how people living in Santa Barbara find their joy in *just* being able
to live there and do not get much joy from their homes, where a million
dollars buys you next to nothing and the "nice" homes are only for the
very wealthy. (A million dollars is just not what it used to be!) So,
if you choose to live in a tough city and have trouble affording it
find your joy with *just* being able to live there. Since I found
peace while living at my lower levels I was able to carry my peace with
me when I had the opportunity to move to a higher level of living. The
ability to carry your serenity within you whether up or down the ladder
of life is a very important quality to develop if you want to base your
happiness and contentment on a firm foundation.

If I moved back to L.A. and tried to reproduce my life through "forcing
things" I would surely run into debt and eventually lose it all anyway
since my lifestyle would be artificial and not sustainable. If I didn't
have this theory of "accepting and living within my comfortable earning
ability" on my side, I would call myself a failure and an underearner
for not earning the many hundreds of thousand of dollars needed to
reproduce and maintain the lifestyle I am enjoying today. Would it do
any good to beat myself for not being able to slam dunk a basket ball
if I was only 5 feet tall or beat myself for being brown instead of
yellow? Instead, I learned to live within my comfortable means and
accept I only can earn so much abstinently, soberly and solvently and I
make every effort to live very comfortably within my income and within
my recovery program limits. One should not beat oneself for not being
able to live comfortably in every environment under the sun. If we had
no limits we wound not be addicts, or even humans we would be gods. We
all have limits, we all come under natural law and are bound by certain
capabilities. And the successful person is one that accepts these
limits and works to live comfortably within them and does not get
confused by enslaving themselves to "others" limits. Money is stored
energy. It is good to have money, just not good to sell your soul to
get it. The deal with addicts is balancing the ability to earn money
with our recovery program demands. Many addicts forget this balancing
act and put the recovery programs needs last. I hear this from the so
called 'unederearners' sect of Debtors Anonymous sometimes. Yes, there
are real persons with real underearning issues, but not all of these
person calling themselves unederearners fit this description.

Whatever it is - we must balance our comfortable earning abilities with
our programs needs otherwise our addictions will have the final say.
Some addicts may have luck with staying clean in one area, but due to
living wrong they substitute another addictive area to replace the
first one. For some addicts this change in living might mean scaling
back from a large house to small one. Others go from a 2 bedroom
apartment to single apartment and others to a rooming house. Some
addicts may have to scale back little and just needed the tool of
clarity to straighten them out. Personally, I was in the scale back
category and moved cities and also had to go from 2 houses to 1 house
to balance my comfortable earning potential with my living conditions.
I also had to scale back in many other areas as well. There is no
shame in living within your abilities, only shame in destroying your
life and others lives by living outside your means. For misers and
paupers (paupers that can afford it) this direction may be opposite to
the debtor and they might have to expand their living conditions. We
should not seek the highest or lowest life but the rightest life for
each of us. Within this quest for "rightness" also comes the
affordability question. There are many areas to balance when we seek
the best solution to our needs. We would be living a "forced" life
otherwise if we paid no attention to our abilities in life. As addicts
we have to put special attention to not living beyond our comfortable
recovery program's means. Underearning is not the issue as mistakenly
thought of by some debtors. What is your UN-drugged and UN-addicted
earning potential? That is the real question. Not what does our ego
demand? That should be the last question on our list. What our program
demands for the UN-addicted life must be on top of this list. Once we
determine our UN-addicted earning potential then decisions can be made
rationally. We can see where we put our priorities from evaluating this
question. Are we ego based in our living decisions each day or are we
recovery based?


Take Care,





V (Male)


For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive
spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write:
vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not
the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.