Casey - 20 Things I Know for Sure: Principles for Cultivating a Peaceful Life

Praise for 20 Things I Know for Sure

20 Things I Know for Sure is pure food for the soul. Well-earned life experience fills the pages of this book of wisdom. It's a genuine treasure.

Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit

Here is a book that will lift your Spirit and bring you closer to the Self you were meant to be. In these pages, Karen Casey reminds us of the simple truths that can bring us to an ever greater peace of mind.

Jon Mundy, PhD, executive director of All Faith's
Seminary, New York City, and author of
A Course in Mysticism and Miracles

True to form, Karen Casey's latest book is gentle, honest, instructive, and inspiring. Reading it feels like sitting with her over a cup of tea, absorbing the wisdom drawn from her life experience. I marvel at Karen's ability to convey its truths with her own blend of spiritual understanding and common sense. We would all do well to adopt her 20 Things as tenets in our own livesthe down-to-earth wisdom and kindness they hold are guaranteed to make every day better.

Debra Landwehr Engle, author of The Only Little Prayer You
Need, Let Your Spirit Guides Speak, and Be the Light that You Are

Reading the words of Karen Casey is like having a chat with a wise friend. She has lived and practiced everything she writes, so the insights she shares are real and relatable. She walks her talk and that makes her rare and relevant.

Beverly Hutchinson McNeff, founder and president of the
Miracle Distribution Center, Anaheim, California

This edition first published in 2019 by Conari Press, an imprint of
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:
65 Parker Street, Suite 7
Newburyport, MA 01950
www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2019 by Karen Casey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-744-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Kathryn Sky-Peck

Cover image: Tea cup, c.1880, English School, (19th century) /

The Geffrye Museum of the Home, London, UK / Bridgeman Images

Interior by Deborah Dutton

Typeset in Weiss and Frutiger

Printed in Canada
MAR
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I want to dedicate this book to my husband, Joe, who has been my constant companion for more than four decades. Our sometimes bumpy road has been made smoother by our willingness to listen and be helpful to one another when either one of us is struggling. I am convinced that we are very intentional partners on this journey.

I also want to dedicate this book to all my fellow travelers in 12-Step rooms. Opening our hearts to one another has made it possible for each one of us to stay on the path to more peaceful lives. I am so grateful for every voice that has reached my ears.

This book is the culmination of more than forty-three years in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon, and an equal number of years in search of a connected, peaceful way to live. It represents many years of recommitments to living just this one day, this one moment, just this one breath at a time. And I am still on the search, as a matter of fact.

I frequently wonder whether I would have tried to change the trajectory of my life if I had known where I was heading as a result of the decisions I was making as a young girldecisions I continued to make long into adulthood. My choices were often extremely riskysome would even say dangerous. Living on the edge appealed to me. A treasured friend in the rooms often said: If we aren't living on the edge, we are taking up too much space. That always made me laugh and it was simply too true for me.

On most days, I believe pretty emphatically that where I have traveled was exactly where I was meant to travel. And yet, I'm seduced by the question: What if I had not... ? Then I pass through any number of scenarios I might have sidestepped.

For instance, what if I had not mixed that coke with whiskey at age thirteen? Or given up my virginity at seventeen? What if I had not married my first husband? After all, I had near-daily data from the first date on that he got sloppy drunk every time he got near alcohol. But by then, I also drank too much. I watched him humiliate my family and himself on dozens of occasions. I could have walked away. Perhaps I should have walked away. But a glue held us together. Perhaps the same glue that holds any of us fast to the journey that is calling to us from the day we are born, even when that journey is fraught with pain, uncertainty, and danger. It's a glue we don't understand, but can't get free of.

Carolyn Myss, a spiritual intuitive I had the pleasure of hearing speak many years ago and whom I refer to in the following pages, says in her seminal book Sacred Contracts that we have all made agreementscontracts with each and every soul we meet on our journeyprior to arriving here, in this life. These contracts tie us to a single lesson or set of lessons we agreed to learn and, even more importantperhapsthat we agreed to teach one another.

I like this explanation for how we ended up where we find ourselves in any moment that engages our attention. Take, for instance, this very moment, the moment in which you and I have actually crossed paths. We made an agreement. Long ago. I'm quite sure of it. And I'm comforted by it.

Myss' theory has taken the anguish out of all that has happened in my own life. All of itthe good and the harrowing. Moreover, it has taken the angst out of what I anticipate may be just around the corner. For there will be more lessons to be learned today, and around every next corner as well. We can put that thought in the bank and consider it the promise of this life.

In this book, I trace how the power of hindsight, coupled with maturity and recovery from addiction, has changed the way I feel about numerous significant signposts along this path that has been minesignposts that I have come to believe are the things I know for sure.

Life's meaning has changed for me. Quite significantly. What I experience now is dramatically different from how I experienced life as a child, as a young girl, and as a young adult woman. And the changes in my understanding of so many experiences over the last forty years utterly astound me. But I have distilled from my myriad experiences truths that simply claim me, calm me, and empower me. Truths that point my way forward every day. Truths I have felt compelled to share in numerous books over the last thirty-five years.

The individuals we encounter in life and all the accompanying lessons we learn have not come unbidden. Nary a single person is an accidental visitor on our paths. Discovering how specific experiences and key moments have contributed to what I now embrace as life's ever-evolving meaning thrills me.

Many of these experiences and key ideas will appear and reappear as you move through the chapters in this book. That's quite intentional. Certain ideas impacted my life so profoundly that I believe them worth repeating. In fact, my inner voice wouldn't allow me to mention them only once.