| Fearless Relationships |
An Interview with Karen Casey by Rita Gallagher Rosenberg Karen Casey is the author of perhaps the most popular daily meditation book of all time, the phenomenally successful Each Day a New Beginning, with more than three million copies sold around the world, as well as nine other books about recovery, change, and growth, including The Promise of a New Day and Daily Meditations for Practicing the Course (all published by the Hazelden Foundation). Casey has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota and is a former teacher and publishing executive. Her new book, Fearless Relationships, presents a gathering of what she calls "simple rules for life-long contentment" in any sort of relationship, whether with a spouse, a partner, a parent, a friend, or a child. I was fortunate to speak with her recently about her work, including her latest book. Tell me about this new book. Karen Casey: Fearless Relationships feels like the book I have been moving toward, preparing myself to write, for many years. Throughout my 27 years in recovery, I have been seeking a more peace-filled path. And I have come to know that there really is no mystery to finding it and then living it if one has the willingness necessary, the willingness to put aside the demands of the ego for the softer suggestions of one's Higher Power. That the book describes 33 simple rules makes it very accessible. Taking just one "rule" for a day and honestly committing oneself to applying it in every situation will change a person's experience in noticeable, and perhaps profound, ways. Knowing that we are not powerless over how today and tomorrow can look and be experienced thrills me. It's a good book, by the way. It really helped me. Casey: I'm really glad, because my writing is almost a mysterious process, even to me. I don't set out with an outline. I don't use an outline. I just sit down and let the spirit within me kind of carry me along. So I'm never certain what I'm going to say before I say it. So I'm always a bit surprised myself. And that's how it was from the very first. That's how Each Day a New Beginning started out. At that time in my own recovery, there was nothing for women. And I was having such a hard time with my own spiritual connection, I'd go to meetings and everybody else seemed to have this real wonderful relationship with her higher power, and I was caught in a whole lot of fear a whole lot of the time. I'd go to meetings and it seemed like everybody else was feeling a little bit more secure than I seemed to be feeling, and even though I believed in my head that there was this higher power that was in my life, and I knew that I wouldn't have survived many of my experiences to even walk into the rooms of AA, had there not been a higher power present, I still did not have that inner gut feeling. What I discovered was that when I would sit down and write, and journal my own feelings, it felt like everything was OK. And so Each Day a New Beginning didn't start out at all to be a book for other women, but a way to bring comfort to myself. Which is in the same vein as Conversations with God, except you were way ahead of the game. Casey: It was like I never even gave a thought to what was really happening. I wasn't sure where those inner thoughts were coming from. I just knew that they seemed to be there. I must say that applying your "peace" rule has really helped me this past week. And then I "got negative" and thought, is it peace at any cost? Casey: I really feel that we are constantly given the opportunity to make choices about how we want to feel, how we want to think, and how we want to behave. It's not that it's maybe peace at any cost, but for me, I've given up that absolute incessant need to be right. I used to think that if I wasn't right, then it somehow was a reflection of poor self-esteem. Yes, or your inner core, somehow. Casey: What I really decided, in fact, is that it's really just much more comfortable to not be so tense, to just say, does it really matter? And choose to have more peaceful feelings instead. I had to learn that I prefer to feel peaceful. Feeling angry used to make me feel alive. Casey: I think that probably everybody who will read this particular article will be able to relate to that, because I do believe that every one of us grew up having those feelings. And we had those feelings way into early recovery, partly because we had stopped so many of our feelings for so long. Then when we began to feel angry, just having a feeling felt so good! Ultimately, it was not something that served us well over a long period of time. I don't ever believe that we should stuff our feelings, and we don't have to act in a negative way on those feelings. That's something that it takes us all a while to learn. I don't want to imply that we should deny that we have any particular feelings. Instead, we can make a healthier choice about how to express that feeling or not express that feeling. We have many options besides just expressing the anger. What about the desire for revenge? Casey: I'm not sure how and when we ever learn this, but it's like I often hear my husband say, "We could never finally get even." Because no matter what we do, if we feel like we have to get revenge, then the other person will feel like they have to get revenge, too, and so it constantly keeps going back and forth. Finally, one person has to step away from the table and say, "I'm not going to go there any more." Yes, and that's not wimping out. Casey: It's not wimping out. In fact, I think it takes more strength to say I'm going to be kinder to myself than that. Because it's never kind to me when I choose to just react in a mean, nasty way. It's not only hurtful to the other person, but it's hurtful to me. So many of us are afraid of money issues. Let's say you're negotiating for money or a contract or something like that at work and you don't get what you want -- that type of practical thing. What can we do? Casey: There are a couple of things that come to my mind. One of them is that every person we meet is a learning partner. If you are in a situation like that, and you're discussing money, just trust that there is a reason for the two of you to have come together, to have had this conversation. That doesn't mean that it's going to end the way you want it to, but it does mean that it is practice that you have needed to have, have needed to be able to express yourself in a situation like that. I think that lots of times we end up running away from situations that make us afraid, and then they will simply resurface. Work and love, like Freud said, are the two key things we're so afraid of, because they are the most important things to us. Is your husband happy you're living by these new rules? Casey: I think he's very happy that the 33 rules explained in the book guide my life. He believes in their validity and applicability as much as I do. I was surprised to read that you believe in spirit guides. Do you have a name for your spirit guide. Casey: No, I really don't. I don't have any names, but I do believe that, particularly for me, if I get quiet and I open myself up to an opportunity to write whatever those thoughts are, that's when it's easiest for me. It's not that I don't maybe hear the spirit guide, but it seems that that gets translated more easily in the process of writing. Just sitting and hearing it. But I also believe that our spirit guides are alive and well in those people we are in constant contact with. Other people? Casey: We really do hear what we need to hear from one another. We do have the opportunity to learn what we need to learn from one another. It's always a two-way street. Those people who come into our lives have not come into our lives accidentally. I think that there is something so helpful about maintaining that belief in a spiritual guide, and spending a lot of time in conversation with others who are walking a similar path. What we find ourselves doing is sharing with somebody else who is looking for guidance. Number one, the guidance is coming to us from our own inner guide. Number two, it is guidance that we need to be reminded of. Do you think we decide who we're coming in with before we're born? It's amazing that you, Echo Bodine and Melody Beattie became famous writers. Casey: I am stunned, in a way, that Echo, Melody and I all shared a time and place together in Minneapolis so many years ago. I am certain that this is no coincidence. I certainly didn't expect that our lives would evolve as they have, but neither am I really surprised by it. That we were friends who became writers, sharing messages of hope for others, means to me, that we were privileged to share with others the wisdom we had gleaned from all the women and men we encountered along the way. Do you think that it's easier to walk a spiritual path if you have enough money to live on? Casey: You know, I don't think that there is any validity in that. I think that having a spiritual program, or working a spiritual program, is much more related to willingness to have faith, willingness to believe that the journey we're on is carrying us to where we need to go next. Security is never in money. Security is always in our willingness to trust that there is this greater presence that's available to us, to give us comfort and security. How did you come to believe in spirit guides? Casey: Well, I guess the thing that happened for me -- even early in my recovery -- was an awareness that there were so many times prior to my walking into the twelve-step rooms that I was on a path of absolute total annihilation. But somehow I didn't die. It was hindsight that made me believe initially that there really was something else going on. And then, too, I had some significant experiences that I knew were way beyond myself -- it wasn't anything that was coming from me. One time in particular, I was in recovery and I was in the Ph.D. program at the University of Minnesota in American Studies. I had written my dissertation and passed it on to all of my committee members, and they all reported back within a month or so, and they approved it, but there was one whom I didn't hear from, and I kept calling him, and I kept saying, "You know, I need to hear from you." He always would say, "I'll be done soon, I'll be done soon." Finally I just pinned him down and said, "My orals have already been set up and I really need to find out if you're going to approve this." So I went into his office and sat down, and the first thing out of his mouth was, "This has to be totally rewritten." And I just sat there, and my heart just pounded. We were talking about 300+ pages of a dissertation, and I just looked at him and I said, "I don't get it. Everybody else has approved it. What do you mean, it has to be completely rewritten?" And he said, "Well! I mean, there are just problems all over the place!" My mind just kind of went blank, and I said, "Well, can we just please go through all of your concerns and talk about those concerns?" And we spent the next three hours in his office doing that. And Rita, I do not know where my answers came from...I didn't even understand the questions! But I DO know where the answers came from. It was as though I was moved to a whole new sphere of existence -- I simply had answers for everything he asked. At the end of three hours, he said, "Hey! This is perfect! I love it! This is great!" And he approved it right then and there on the spot. There was some fearlessness operating there. Casey: It was a total surrender -- a total surrender to that higher power. I knew that I did not have the answers. You talked in your book about the "deliciousness and intoxication" of surrender -- just what an overeater or alcoholic is looking for. Casey: It is so amazing. One of the rules in the book is "to surrender is to know peace." If we surrender, we can allow that peace, that peace of a higher presence, to simply take us where we need to go next. We all simply do want to feel elevated -- to feel elevated from whatever the turmoil is. And I do think that the elevation comes in simply letting go. For more information on Karen Casey and upcoming events, go to www.hazeldenbookplace.org and click on Authors. Rita Gallagher Rosenberg can be contacted at (612) 338-8904. Copyright © 2003 Rita Gallagher Rosenberg |
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