The Gathering With Roger B.

#88 A Design for Living Part 2

• Roger B.

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 This part 2 of a series of 3 We are now in the phase of uncovering the Truth. What's in the way of me not being able to be the man or woman I want to be? This is a revelation and revolution,  it is the examination of our interior, what ideas,concepts,beliefs and messages have we absorbed and turned into the principles that direct our lives from the sub-conscious

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So we arrive at this point where it's time to try something different. And this when I look back, your prejudices, your biases, the blocks to your recovery are the gift. Because they're pointing you in the direction you need to go, even though it doesn't feel like it. Because the beast interprets that as agony and pain. Because it doesn't want you and I to change. Because if we change, it can't run our lives anymore. So there are some things. There are some different promises laid out in this thing. And I'm going to read a little bit. This is their solution. This freaked me out. It's on page 25. It's like way too early to tell me this. The great fact is just this, nothing less. We've had deep and effective spiritual experiences. And those experiences have revolutionized our whole attitude. That's your approach to life, toward our fellows, towards God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. Now, when I thought, when I first read this, I read his thoughts and lives, lives, I'm sorry, that our creator has entered my heart and lives and my life in a way. And it's and it lives in a way. So, and it says it just changed everything. He they use the male pronoun because their resources when they wrote the book was the King James Version of the Bible, Sermon on the Mount, and uh William James Variety of Religious Experiences, and then they ripped some stuff off the Akfa group. So that's why it's a male pronoun. If you're new and you don't like the male pronoun, change it. Because we're not going to change it. Just change it. It's okay. Because they've already told you God, he, him, if if you had a male figure in your life that was abusive to you, whether it's emotional, physical, sexual, and then you come here and say, well, God is your father. Uh, I've had one of those, thank you. I'll pass. So you have to find the challenges. I had to find something I'm willing to grow towards, and I can't get hung up on the pronouns. I've got to find, I've got to try and feel the message. And this power, he has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we can never do by ourselves. Okay. If you're seriously alcoholic, as we were, that is, if you're kind of pregnant, we believe there's no middle of the road solution. The middle of the road solution. That's the there's A and there's B. And I'm sure there's an A.5 and maybe a C, because I don't like just two options, grow or die. I don't like that. No middle of the road solution. We're in a position where life is becoming impossible, true or false. These are questions for me to ask for myself, and they're reflective questions. Is it, well, yeah. Yeah, it has become impossible. And if we passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, you've got two alternatives. One go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could, drink till you die. The other accepts spiritual help. Here's the separator. This we did, this being the steps. We did because we honestly wanted to, true or false? And the second point is a big separator. Willing to make the effort? Are you? Am I really willing? How willing am I? I'm willing enough to go to your stupid meetings and not drink. That's a starting point. It's not an ending point. Right? So there's the separator. Do you honestly want this thing? Well, I want something. I don't know if it's this thing, because I don't even know what this thing is. I saw the results in my dad, but I didn't know what he did to get it. I mean, I was exposed to this book and the steps and stuff, but they didn't make any sense to me because I didn't have the consciousness, could wrap myself around it and understand it, interpret it in a way that was constructive or worthwhile. So this is about the the second half of the first step. If you when you honestly want to, you can't you find you can't quit entirely? When drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. They're not going to tell me I'm alcoholic, because the book is their testimony. They want me to see if I can relate to it and decide for myself. It's a self-diagnostic text. Is this you or is this not? And what are they doing with us? They're telling us their stories. They're telling us what they found, what worked, they're telling us what didn't work. That's what we do. The power in this fellowship is the stories. We take turns. Testifying. This is what my experience is. This is what I was like, this is what happened, this is what I'm right now. Or I'm not buying this. You know, I think one of the things that saved my butt in early AA was I was very vocal about I'm not in this. I'm not doing what you guys are doing. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid, right? So you're probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. This is a big difference. The big difference between AA and therapy. Therapy deals with body-mind. AA deals with body-mind spirit. Threefold illness. My body is sick because I've been poisoning it and beating the hell out of it for 20 years. My mind is sick because I've totally warped it with this design I've had for living that's killing me. And pounding on anyone in my life that's near me. And then they would notice me and Sunday, you have a spiritual malady. Which is what? I've had the wrong gods. You know, I I I was a very loud atheist. And I work with a lot of guys that are atheists. And I said, uh, let's examine that idea. As an atheist, you say you don't believe there's a god. And I would purport I would offer this for you to consider. You do have gods. What are you gods? Money? Power? Security? Manipulation? Argumentation? Mad gods. You trusted those things. Ethyl alcohol. I said, I don't I don't have faith in anything. Bullshit. I had complete faith in ethyl alcohol. If I drink this, I'm gonna get where I need to go. That was the promise, wasn't it? And it worked until it didn't work. So this is our package. And it keeps asking me over and over here, if a mere code of morals or better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome your alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found such codes and philosophies, your design, your program for living did not save us no matter how much we tried. Is that my experience? Is that my experience? Everything I've tried hasn't worked. That's reinforcing the idea in the first step. Failure, self-reliance, right? We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. We could talk the talk. We just couldn't walk the walk. Because I'm powerless. Our human resource, conclusion, martial by the will, you're thinking, were not sufficient. They failed utterly, true or false. You see, it's all about turning the questions into me, my interior, and answering there, not answering from my head from some intellectual thing. Well, this is what Carl Jung said, this is what Jesus said, this is what Buddha said. No, no, no, what do you say? That's a different approach, isn't it? So they've got us here to the point. Lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. Is that true? They say it's obvious. But where are we going to find this power? That's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself, which will solve your problem. That's the main object of the book. It's a how to do it. It's a do-it-yourself manual. When we when they wrote this book, there were three meetings in the world. They wrote the book, they had a bunch of reasons. One of the reasons they wanted to get rich and start a chain of hospitals. That was one of the motives. But God had a different idea. And uh they wanted to see if they could transmit the message in print. Because there's a lot of people that can't be in New York and Akron and Cleveland. How are we going to reach them? So they put it here. And this ends up being the thing that I did. I had the book sponsor me. Not right away. Not right away. So I'm I'm entering in this new, the second phase of this thing, which there's there's a surrender in the first step, right? I surrender to the fact that I'm powerless and my life's unmanageable. But there's going to be more surrenders along the way. So I got this problem. I got this phenomenon. I'm not drinking, I'm not doing any drugs, and I don't even want to. And I don't know how that happened. I don't know how that came about. It's a mystery. It's a phenomenon. It's observable, but I can't tell you. It's the same thing Silkworth said to Bill. I don't know what's happened to you, but whatever it is, hang on to it. It's better than what you had. And I see this in people, but I don't get it. And I don't know how to make it happen for you. How do we make it happen? We identify. I tell you my story. You tell me your story. And some of you go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. When you're laughing, you're screwed. Because you identify. That's why you're laughing. You've been there. And it's important. Because now I know I'm not alone. And now this argument about my way not working, but maybe there's another way that will work. So it begins with the first step, but the next one is the big question. Are you willing to believe there's a power greater than you that could restore you to sanity, wholeness, restoration? No. I'm not. Well, then you get it. You know what you get? You get to suffer. Suffering is my lack of the ability to accept what the reality is. So I insist it should be different. I'm going to be the first guy to do this without a higher power. I'm going to start my own movement, I think. Yeah. Because they're lining up for what I have, you know. People were not coming up to me, going to me to help me. They were going, yeah. Well, the guys, the old guys, they'd be working with a new guy in the front of the room, and they'd the kid'd be arguing with them about something, and they'd go, they'd say, See that guy back there? And they point at me and say, Do you want to be like him? No. Okay. Come on. You know, I'm in the back with this, arms crossed about my chest with a look. I have a grenade and the pins out. Stay the hell away. And they did. And then I'm going, no one loves me. I'm so lonely. You know, it's insane. So I don't have an explanation for this. And I'm really, this is a big one. It doesn't say I have to believe in God. It says I have to be willing to believe that there's a power greater than me. But you all, we all have examples of power greater than us. They just weren't constructive, they were destructive. Belligerence, intolerance, closed-mindedness. Alcohol was a power greater than me. They need to be safe, right? All of that. So I was not real crazy about the AA idea. So I'll tell you how I backed into it, or how God backed me into it. I told you my dad was really active in AA, and he was, and I was so tired of being Don Sun I could fly. So I went up to the North Side in Minneapolis. They were all black beadies. And I was hanging out with those guys. And they had to accept me because it was AA. But they had debates about it. I don't know we want a white boy in here. But when I was younger and I was outside, I tan up really good. So they thought maybe I was an idiot or Mexican. So they decided they just called me the gray boy. And I got I got some early stuff there. Not, you know, I was not gung-ho, but I I was going to meetings, and the the motive was this. One, no one's looking for me here. I had the cops, the IRS, my ex-wife, the bikers, everyone was looking for me. No one's looking for me here. You don't even have to use your real name. Hint to the new guys. You can just tell them you're Ralph. Oh. Yeah. Work for him. So here's the life I created. Now I'm physically sober. And some of you will relate to this, some of you won't. But when I'm walking down the street talking to Andy, I can tell you how many people are sitting in parked cars. I can tell you how many people are in doorways, and I can tell you how many times that car has been around the block. Because if there's a knock on my door, I can't open it. Because it could be a shotgun blast. When I go grocery shopping in the middle of the night, in those days the rainbow was the only 24-hour one. I go there and I park my van under one of the big lights in the empty parking lot. And when I got out, I had a flashlight. I had to look for the wires. Because the guys they were looking for me weren't looking concerned about my spiritual condition. So go into a restaurant, go into a room, any room, the first thing you do is you check where the exits are. That's how I lived. And I went down Southside. I did some salvation time, I did some 2218. Because I figured no one knew me there and uh no one knew my dad there. Funny aside, they had a surprise party for me. I think I was 15 or 20 years sober. And all these people from all over were coming. And uh I was hearing things that we I lost the bet. No one thought you were gonna make it, you know, that kind of thing. And then the other one I was telling was where I was hiding in the meetings that oh no, people were calling your dad all the time. He knew exactly what you were doing and where you were. But he never said a word. He never said a word. I can't be that kind of dad. I gotta say a word. So I'm going to these meetings, and here's here comes another angel. This is all about the second surrender. So I grew up with this guy named Jimmy, who's a bass player. He was in a couple bands I had, and he's pretty mediocre bass player, but he he was a real gifted athlete. Pros were scouting him in hockey in tenth grade. And he drank himself out of that whole program. And uh he would call me and he'd go, Are you still sober? I go, Yeah. Will you help me? Jimmy, I'll help you. I love you, man. Where are you? Sometimes he was living in a tent, sometimes he was living in a bush, sometimes he was living in his car, sometimes he was living in a in a little apartment. But I'd go to wherever he was and I'd give him 60, 90 minutes of my incredible one-step program. And we'd hug and cry, I love you, man. I love you too. Now don't do that. Okay. And then three weeks, four weeks later, he'd call, Are you still sober? And I'm doing this over and over, and I'm getting a little frustrated that Jim's not bright enough to cop to my one-step program. I'm assuming he's got brain damage. And uh he did, by the way. So anyway, I'm hearing things in meetings that I don't know I'm hearing. Home group, sponsor, none of that had any poll. I heard something about something called inner group, where they have materials you can get, recovery materials you can get. So out of my mouth, Jim called me one time. Out of my mouth said, damn it, Jim, I know what you need. You need regular meetings. You're coming with me. I'm not going to regular meetings. I don't have a home group. I go to different meetings all the time because I didn't want anyone to get a bead on me. So I go get a meeting director. They were printed in those days, and I picked two meetings: Monday, Monday Big Book, Wednesday step, down at 2400 Blazedville. And I said, You're coming with me. And I bring him, because I have to bring him because he didn't have a car. And I'm bringing him there. What's my motive? I want one of you guys, the hand of AA, to reach out and take Jim off my hands. You know what? Not a not very spiritual guy, not very altruistic. No, I just want you to take this bum off my hands. So I gotta bring him to the meetings because he has no car. If he has no car and he doesn't go to the meeting, he's drunk. So I'm taking, he gets a 30-day, he hasn't had 30 days in years. Then he gets 60, then he gets 90, then he gets six months, and I'm getting a little irritated that none of you guys are picking him up. Well, they thought I was sponsoring him. So Jim gets a year, it's the AA miracle. Oh, is it? Those steps are not a miracle, they're a process. And if you adhere to the process, it's no different than a chemical formula, it's no different than a recipe. If you adhere to the process, you'll get the result. So Jim gets a year, and now it's oh God, the AA miracle, and everyone's clapping cakes, and here's another medal. And then it then it gets better. Uh, Jim gets a grant to go back to college. Everyone's gone, isn't this amazing? He couldn't even talk 10 months ago. No, he's going to college. Here's where it goes south. He majored in psychology. Not a good thing for a guy with a one-step program. And Jim got drunk. And I said goodbye to Jim in a nursing home. He died of cirrhosis. And I stayed in those two meetings for 15 years. That's how God works. Put the right people in the right place. I think I'm doing this. I think I know what's going on. That's the biggest lie I've ever told myself. I never know what's going on. I know the appearance of things, I know what it looks like to the mind. And the mind is based it on input from the five senses and our history. Then it whips up a story. The beast whips up a story. Right? And I go, that's that's the deal. No, it's not the deal. You have no idea what the damn deal is. And so I think I'm helping Jim. I didn't want to help Jim. I wanted to get him rid of him. And he ends up dying, and I end up staying. And those two guys walk me through that stuff. And 18 months sober, I put a gun in my mouth because the beast was working on me. And I'd done no step work. All I'm doing is sitting in the meetings. By the way, if you're just a meeting maker, you just go into meetings. It's like go down in the stadium and watch the Vikings and they're winning 42 to nothing and we're kicking each other. We're killing it, we're killing it. No, you're not. They are killing it. You are watching. That's what I was doing in AA. I'm I'm in recovery. No, you're not. You're in the fellowship. You're in a meeting of people in recovery, but you're watching. You're not doing anything. So with that background and all this, if you've done this, you know the longer you stay sober, clean, the more memories you get. The more stuff I start remembering, things I did to people, things that happened, and there none of them are good. None of them are good. So the beast and I are having a meeting. Do you ever have that happen? You wake up in the middle of the night and you're hearing these voices having a conversation about you. So we were having a meeting about AA and how it failed us. And uh the conclusion was we I think we've had enough of this. We tried AA and it didn't work. I've never tried AA. I went to meetings, but I didn't do the program. But I was convinced of the first step, which held me in a period of grace, safe and protected from that thing, the drinking, but nothing else. So the memories are killing me, and I'm full of regret, remorse, depression, shame, guilt, all that stuff. And so we're having a discussion. And it says, Well, we've been to A and that didn't work. Let's figure out how we're gonna get out of here. How am I gonna kill myself? Well, I'm thinking, well, I've heard people talk about opening the vein. And they say, go this way, destroy the artery. You go this way, they'll sew it up. So I'm imagining cutting my arteries open, and I've got a plan. I'm gonna put some plastic down in the bathroom. It'll be easy, easier for someone who finds me to clean up. And then I'm imagining the razor blade. This is this is alcoholism. And I'm thinking, that's probably gonna hurt. And then a voice says, Well, maybe a couple drinks. And then another voice says, You'll ruin your sobriety. Hello? I'm about to kill myself. Then I listened to a lot of tapes, a lot of people on tape. The spoken word has been a big deal for me, and partly from this service. But I heard a guy talking about hanging himself in the garage. This is a do-it-yourself suicide thing. And I if I had a shred of brain left, I would have said, if he's talking about killing himself, he probably didn't succeed. But I don't remember that part. I just remember do it yourself. This is how we do it. I went in the garage, I got on a chair, and I threw my belt over the rafter, tied the rafter, the belt around my neck, and I jumped. It was an elastic belt. This is how God met me. And I thought, pistol. Pistol. Kind of got my gun. It's a Walther PK-22. It's a little. It's a gun. But I put it in my mouth, and then the beast started talking to me. It's a mighty small caliber. Damn. I don't want to die with a question on my mind. And I'm looking at the gun, I'm thinking, it's a 22, but it's a long and it's a hollow point. It'll tumble. I'm I'm convinced this this has made me feel more secure about my suicide. So I put the gun back in the second time. I've been telling this story for over 40 years, and every time I get to this part, it just rips me up. Because I can taste the gun oil in my mouth when I'm telling you this. Put the gun back in the second time, and a memory came to me from the past. I went to high school with a kid named Patrick, 10th grade, he tried to blow his head off with a shotgun. Sitting on the bed in his underwear, he put the barrel in his mouth, and when he pushed the trigger with his big toe, he moved the stock and he blew an eye on the side of his face off and lived. And was in a psych unit for quite a while, and then he had about 18 reconstructive surgeries a couple years later. He hung himself for Christmas at his parents. And I thought, that'll be my luck. I'll pull the trigger, I'll wake up in the hospital, paralyzed from the cheekbones down, and Mel from the big book, meaning we'll be standing by the bed. Raj. You want to do the steps now? Blink once for yes, twice for no. This is not fun. I'm glad you think it's fun. It was not a good experience. I'm dying, and I'm dying, dying. So I put it in the third time, and and a voice came to me. It felt like a voice. If you put your hand over your ear and talk, you can hear. It's like there was a mouth right next to me, and it was a line right out of Bill's story. And the question was, are you even willing to believe in the possibility of what? That there is a power, that it could restore you. That was the question. Are you even willing to believe in the possibility? Not do you believe? Are you willing to believe? Second surrender. Yes. Yes came, and I don't know where it came from. It did not come from my brain. It did not come from my intellect. I'd say today it came from the divine living in me, the divine spark of the truth, right? But I said, yes, the gun came out, and you know, several days, not a long time, the suicide ideation went away. And now I have become agnostic. I'm so proud. I'm backing to me and go, I think I go to my mother, and I answered the question. I'm willing to believe in the possibility. Great. And they look at me and say, Well, you're willing to do some step work? I think so. I think so. Now, this is about 18 months in. And uh it's because I didn't do anything to address the past, to address my conscious condition. And so you're haunted by it. It just kills you because that's what it's trying to do. It's trying to kill you. And it's using ideas and images. So I'm not having a sponsor, I'm not having any of that. But I do say this I have this phenomenon. I have an experience. That desire to drink, the obsession to drink is gone. And my life still sucks. I've got more warrants. It's just, you know, but that's true. That's an experience I have, and it's true. And so just by saying I'm willing to believe in the possibility, now that phenomenon has become what I call the mystery. This is mysterious. There's no explanation for it, but it's a fact. It's my experience. So I go back and I take the book. And I say, this time I'm just going to go through it and I'm going to answer the questions to the best of my ability, and I'm going to take the actions that the book suggests I take. And then I'm going to have to find someone to do this fifth-step thing with. So I found a piece of, I just, this is all about grace. It's just this is the spirituality of imperfection. So I get to this point where I got to go talk to someone. I figure I got this big resentment about religion. I'll go to these monks down in Pryor Lake. I've heard a lot of guys go to these monks. So I go down there, not with a written inventory. I'm not putting anything in writing. I could go to jail. So I start telling this sad, sad story. And he's not very impressed. So I start making some stuff up. And when I exhaust my creativity, I go, I'm done. He said, good. Consider six and seven. And he sends me away. That pissed me off because I wanted, I'm thinking I'm going to gross this guy, but he's never going to hear anything like this. So I made another point with a different monk. And they did the same thing. I did some of my story, then I made some stuff up. Then I started telling them stuff I heard on your tapes. You know, and again, same thing, just almost look bored, which offends my creativity. And I said, Go consider six and seven. And I considered six and seven while I was standing up because six and seven made no sense to me either. So then I get to these amends. I start doing these amends. And now I'm to the daily living, the design for living, which is 10, 11, and 12. While you're doing those amends, clean up the past. Here's what I want to do on a daily basis. And I started doing that to the best of my ability. And I'm telling you, I didn't sense any big change. I didn't sense any change at all. But the change that happened was I'm in the meetings. Now I'm almost two years into this. No one's ever asked me, will you sponsor me? I mean, I want what you have. No one would say that. Could I have some of that? No. It's mine exclusively. It's copyrighted. No. So guys started to come up to me and they would say, Can I talk to you after the meeting? He said, Yep. And we'd sit down and he's he did what that guy did to me. He said, I suppose I should be honest with you. I said, Go ahead, try. And he said, Well, the first thing is I don't like you. And I looked at him and said, I don't like you either. What's the second thing? Because I don't have to like you. I have to love you. That's different. And so he said, I've been watching you. I'm on paper, and if I violate this probation, I'm gonna twin your bit and I can't. Can't go back to prison. I'll blow my brains out first. Will you help me? And I said, Well, yeah, this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take you through this book. And you're gonna answer every question. And the questions you don't want to answer or are negative, we're gonna talk about and discuss and play with until you can make an honest acquiescence to that request. And we'll do it as long as you're willing to do it. So then I say, here's my phone. Look at my phone. Don't delete anything, but you can look at every text, every picture, every email. And since I don't have a job, you can come watch me work, watch me do some stuff. And I got six computers here, and I you can look at all of them, but don't delete anything. And what am I telling him? What am I telling you right now? I don't have anything to hide. When I got here, I had everything to hide. When I walked in in 78, I would have traded places with anyone. I wouldn't trade places with anyone now to process. And so here comes the second surrender, acquiescing to this idea. Maybe I've been wrong. That's a new idea. Maybe I've been wrong. Damn. So here's God opening the mind and the heart. So I've acquiesced to this thing. I'm willing to believe in the possibility. I'm not saying what it is, what it looks like, or how it acts, but I'm willing to believe in the possibility that power exists. And what convinced me was your stories. Not all of them. Some of you were full of BS, but some of you really were having an experience, and you can feel the difference. You can feel the difference when there's someone reciting something or when they're telling you what's in their heart, what's in their experience. And uh that's how it started. That's how I knew I changed. I didn't change completely, but I changed enough that people had been watching me. I say this to all my sponsees: people are watching. People are watching, Andy and I talked about it, people are watching. His uncle was watching, and his uncle got sober because Andy got sober. And it goes on and on, right? There was a guy here, he can't be here this week. Um, last year, he's a doc from North Dakota. And he brought his nephew to the this thing last year, and he's he described him as sober curious. He wasn't buying anything, but he was sober curious. Well, he called me because he was coming this weekend and he couldn't because he got COVID. He said, I want you to tell you something. That boy I brought, I gave him a one-year medallion at his home group last month. That's what we're doing here. You don't know. You don't know the effect you're having, but I'll tell you, people are watching. People are watching, and we're the demonstration. And we're flawed. So Tom, sometimes the demonstration is kind of messy, right? So that's why we have amends. I say, sorry, my bad. You know, it's not the guy I want to be. And uh I might go into it more detail depending on the person. But so there's a second surrender going on. Here's the next one. I wonder what else I could be wrong about. That doesn't sound like a big idea to most people. That's a huge idea to someone who's got a shutdown mind and heart. So I'm having this experience. I become willing to believe in the possibility, and now a new possibility pops in. What else could I be wrong about? And the answer is everything. You are wrong about everything. It's not them, it's you. I'm writing the story. And the beast wants me to think that you're doing it to me. I'm doing it to me. And the beast doesn't want me to take that responsibility because if I do, I'll change. But if you're doing it to me, I gotta wait for you all to change. If I'm doing it to me, I can find a different way to not do it to me. With trial and error. I suffer when I cling to old ideas that don't serve me and don't serve the people around me. I suffer. It's my lack of acceptance, right? So I'm going to these meetings, Jim gets me to the meetings. Now the next thing that happens, I'm for the ump the ump time, these guys are having a third-step meeting, right? And they're talking about, you know, the room filling up with light and all that Bill's story basically. And not my experience. Not my experience. But what if what if that phenomenon could I give my will and my life to the mystery? Because there is a mystery, and I have an experience. Can you give your I can. I can now I can do a real third step that means something to me. I'm willing to turn my will and my life, my thinking and my actions, over to care of the mystery. Because it seems the mystery knows more about what's good for me than I do. That's all it was. It was sitting in a meeting going, I'm going for it. That was my third step. And that opened me up to the other steps. I gotta I gotta submit to this process of change. And if I don't submit to the process of change, not only will I not change, I will suffer. And you'll suffer if you're around me. I'll make sure of it. Because I like to share my misery. I like to find people that co-sign my misery, and we can sit around and bitch about everything that's not right in the world and never look at ourselves. That's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. So I get this process, and it's the discovery process two through seven. I discover in a real four step the manifestation of the problem, which is my mental illness, my soul sickness. Because when you, if you've done this and you're a good alcoholic, you had several pages in this fourth step. Lots of resentment, lots of fear, lots of sex conduct stuff that you don't want anyone to know about. And the thing that dawned on me was there's only one common denominator in all this stuff. It's me. It's me. I wonder if there's anything to that. I wonder if there's a message in there for me. Yeah, it's me. And it takes time, it's like turning a battleship around. It takes time to redirect your thinking. It takes time to be willing to take a new approach. You know, we have a word we use a lot, attitude. It means it means angle of approach. It's an aeronautical term. And if your attitude is negative, if your attitude is dark, if your attitude is based in victim victimization, you're going to get those results. There's the law of consciousness, the law of being, the law of the universe is you reap what you sow. And I had to do a lot of studying because I was unteachable by you. So I read a lot of books and about the major religions and some indigenous practices and stuff. And I found three universal themes that ran through all of it. Whether you're a Native American, a Baha'i, a Roman Catholic, a Buddhist, these three things. Treat people the way you want to be treated. The golden rule. God is unconditional love. And the only one is the law of karma. You reap what you sow. When you look at your behavior, I have an idea that presents a reaction. And that idea and that reaction create a consequence. It's not karma is not punishment, it's benign correction. All the karma is saying is you're off the page, you're off the beam, right? You read what you sow. Do I have any uh do I have any evidence of that? It's really hard because I gotta quit being a victim and start taking some responsibility for myself. And I start connecting some dots, you know. I did some right things for the wrong reason, and I still got good results. Think about getting Jim to the meeting. That was not altruism, that was self-centeredness. I want to get rid of the guy. Not knowing at all what was going on, there was another thing at play. And that thing was this power getting me to the people that could feed me, that could grow me, that could help me, that could save me, right? Who knew? Then, so I take all this cumulative crap that I don't have an interpretation of. When I'm looking at the evidence in my four step, I'm thinking guilt and shame. I can't believe now that I've actually excavated this thing, it's much worse than I thought it was gonna be. Then I got to talk to someone. And every one of these, every one of these steps, these incremental progressive ideas, the beast is always saying, Don't do it. This is too scary, this is gonna hurt, this is gonna be too hard. It's a damn lie. And I didn't know what the lie was until I finally did a fifth step. I sat down with this guy and I told him my stuff. I really told him my stuff. And I assumed that when we got done, he was gonna say something like, You know, this house we're in, my house? I don't ever want to see you here again. If I see you on my property, one of two things is gonna happen: a Louisville slugger or a police car. And that meeting we go to on Mondays, I don't ever want to see you there again. You hear me? That's what I thought was gonna happen. And then what happened was he started sharing some of his stuff with me. And after about three or four exchanges, I'm thinking, this guy's pretty sick. I wonder if I did the right thing. But the gift was this I'm not alone and I'm not the only one. And this guy is feeding me his story, and I know he gets it because he did things like I did, and he's not that guy anymore. Again, another lie broken down. I don't want to do this. This guy's gonna have leverage on me. He loved me. I had no idea that was gonna be the outcome. And then we got six and seven. Are you entirely ready? No. I'm not entirely ready. Well, here's the thought. Mine, not yours. I'm as ready as I can be in this moment, this place in time, with the experience I've accumulated, that's as ready as I'm gonna be. My experience is that God says that's okay. Because I'm as entirely ready as I can be. This is this was also why I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting drunk. I was seeing guys come into AA, they're all on fire for God and their new sponsor, Chuck, and and AA and all these damn steps, and in a month they were drunk, and I'm in the back when I knew it, he poser. Yeah. But I had no explanation for why I wasn't drunk. I'll tell you now, down the road, it was grace and mercy. I didn't get what I deserved, and I got more than I should have. And I think that's because this is just my interpretation. Those early years when I was belligerent and argumentative, and I was feeling I'm not buying your program and I'm not drinking your Kool-Aid, that was 100% honest. Now, in willingness, I might have been 10%, but I was 100% of the 10%. Do you get what I'm saying? I was all I could be and all I could do in that moment, and that's the grace and the mercy comes in and it just holds me until I can do more. And so I got this six and seventh thing, and I'm not entirely ready. I don't know if I'll ever be entirely ready, but I'm ready as I can be. So then what do you do? You ask for the removal. God remove everything in its way of my me having a relationship with you and these people around me. I don't know what's supposed to be removed. So I in my mind I'm thinking, well, I suppose I'll wake up tomorrow and be brand new. Yeah. All the defects are gone because I've gone through this process and it's really been hard. And I'm sure I'm going to be relieved of this burden. I was relieved of some of the burdens, and some of the burdens stay. So now I need to have an interpretation of that. And this leads you back to your concept in the third step. What is my concept of this power? What are the elements, the qualities of it? You know, growing up as a little boy, God was vengeful, God was pissed off, God was wrathful, God needed to be adored, worshipped. And if you didn't fill out the bill right, you could spend eternity in hellfire. I mean, hello, which is it? I heard God is love, and I heard this other God too, and I'm thinking, I can't go there. So here's the problem. I sobered up at 30 with an eight-year-old's concept of God. And that's why I thought I was an atheist. That's not the question. The question is, what would you give yourself to? Forget God. Let's just start with a principle. Could you give yourself to peace? I like that idea. Okay. So here's your little spot check inventory. Is what I'm thinking about to say or do promote peace or not? If the answer is a red light, no, it doesn't, don't do it. If it's yellow, maybe, maybe not. And if it's green, go for it. But you can do whatever you want, but you're not ever going to be able to escape the consequence of the choice. And that's the pitch, that's the justice in the universe. That's the law of consciousness. That's a reap what you sow. If you want different outcomes, you're going to have to do different things. I need to come from a different place. And I'm not ready for that. I'm doing it to the best of my ability, but it's not happening. So there's a thing that saved my saved my life, really. In six and seven, as you look back and read it carefully, there's a little question in there. Is there something you still cling to? Like an attachment? Clinging, attachment? I cling to being right. What are you clinging to? There is no God. What are you clinging to? And then it says, pray about it. Just pray about it. It doesn't say you cannot proceed. It just says identify what you're not willing to give to this process and pray about it. So it sounds like this. This is my attitude about money, God. And if you want me to have a different attitude, you can change my heart, but do it gently. Now I met the requirement. I've been honest with myself and with this idea of the creator. Oh, okay. So um then a bunch of stuff is gone and a bunch of stuff remains. So now I've got to interpret that. What does the beast say? The beast says the reason this isn't gone is because you're an SOB. You're going to hell anyway. You know? You're just faking it. This isn't real. Or maybe this is trying to show me something. This is this is I'm the student and life is my teacher. What is this trying to show me? What's it trying to teach me? This happens to us every day. We get in, we go into different circumstances and and different groups of people, and things happen. And we have to choose a response rather than react. When we react, it's always out of the beast. Because the reaction comes out of our history, it comes out of fear, and it comes out of shame, and it comes out of the idea, I gotta keep me safe. Not safe. That's why we be we're trying to become God reliant here. Not AA reliant or not sponsor reliant, but God reliant. That's a process. And as far as my eye can see, it never ends. There's always room for improvement. Yes, wifey? Susan will tell you how much improvement I need. And it'd be accurate. So I've uncovered this stuff. I'm starting to discover what the root cause of the problem is, and it's my thinking, it's my percent, it's the way I see the world, it's my philosophy. And the beast, ego, whatever you want to call it, the beast is always doing this compare, contrast, compare, contrast, and then on the other side, the amygdala, am I safe? What's the threat level here? This is this is the beginning of understanding that I'm not my thinking. We have five senses taste, smell, hearing, and sight. And that all comes into our brain through a thing called the amygdala, which is the fight, flight, or freeze. So it's discerning all this data that's coming in, and then the brain, the human mind takes it and decides what the threat level is. How safe are we? What do we need to do? Here's a plan. And that plan's coming out of fear, which is the future, and predicated in the past things that have happened to us. None of it's real. The past is dead. The future hasn't happened. This is the beast, the imaginarium. You know, when the beast is working, have you ever noticed it doesn't come up with any good scenarios? This is gonna work out so good. I'm so glad the sun's up today. I just feel the presence of my creator. No, you don't. I'm going, God, another day. The beast says, Are we gonna do this one more day? Can we do this one more day? Oh, we're looking at things that are coming, and we don't like any of these things. That attitude will kill me. So the way we work through it is we see it for what it is. It's a block to what? To the man or woman that I want to be. It's a block to my progress, it's a block to who I want to be, who I was created to be. Be the man, be the woman that you were created to be. There's a there's a uh the Sumerians and the keepers of the scrolls. I'll save that. Anyway. So I'm in this process. I'm not fighting the process, the beast is fighting the process, and so as you make some progress, you're six months, a year, two years, five years, and you're going, this is pretty good, and all of a sudden it feels like the wheels come off the wagon. That's not a punishment. It's time to go to the next level. That's all it's saying is you've used up what you've learned to the best of your ability so far. Now you need more experience. And you get more experience by going deeper. That is, deeper into my concepts and ideas, removing the unserviceable ideas and practicing some serviceable ideas with the higher self, lower self. So when I have a problem of fear, I don't work on the fear. What happens when you work on the fear? It amplifies, so you get another fear. I started with one fear, same with resentments. You do something to me, and I'm thinking, damn, you're gonna you should be dead by lunch. And then I remember 15 other things. And they're all in the past, they're all dead. The only thing that makes them alive is I bring him into the presence with my memory. The beast uses my memory to keep me trapped. So I've got to choose. When I have fear, I don't work on the fear, I work on some aspect of what I call my faith. I work on a different principle. Instead of fear and judgment, try tolerance, try patience, try kindness. That's all try. Because I'm powerless to change that fear. I'm not helpless to change it. But this is me participating in the process. I have to take the energy to switch it over. I'm being judgmental. Well, then practice being forgiving, practice being tolerant. You know, example um things that irritate you, like the way people drive. Like the way Yeah, he's going me too. It just tells me where I'm at emotionally, spiritually. I'm driving down the road, and and no one knows how to drive right. Right? They you have turn signals for a reason. And it it merge doesn't mean you drive to the end of the line and then just turn left. You know, match the speed, do something, you know. Who taught you to drive? And then you're in the line at the grocery store, and there's someone talking on their phone on speaker. And what the hell? Or the the person in front of you that's got a fistful of coupons. It's one of my favorite ones. I'm in line, I got like 10 things. And there's an elderly person in front of me in one of those electric carts, and she's trying to check out. She can't get her card, the reader. And then right when they get the uh the tally up, she goes, Oh, just a minute. And she pulls out a fistful of coupons. She says, What about this? And the teller looks like, that's expired. What about this? Oh, that's expired. We got like a hundred of these. And and the person behind me is going, and they're stomping their foot and everything. I'm looking, I'm just saying a prayer. I'm just blessing her. God bless you. Look at her. She's doing the best she can with the resources she has. So it changes my attitude. That's what I need. Because I can't change the reality, but I can change the way I see it. You're not an impediment, you're an opportunity for me to practice praying. Bless you, change me. This is a good prayer. Scary. Because I want it to be you. It's me, it's always me. So then we get done, and she's got, you know, 10 feet on the conveyor belt of stuff, and I'm my stuff's through in 10 seconds, and I'm working my way around her cart, and uh, I throw my stuff in the bag and I look at her and I say, Do you need some help? Would you like some help? Oh, that'd be nice. I mean, how's she gonna bag the stuff? She can't even get out of the cart. So I bag her stuff up, I put it in a little basket, and I said, Good. She said, Thank you so much. I said, not a problem. She said, Do you want some help out to the car? I said, How are you getting home? She said, Oh, I'm driving. And I said, Oh, you go first. You go first. This is a true story. So I take her out and I load her stuff in your car. And she says, Thank you, and I go, You're welcome, and she leaves. That didn't take a bunch of time out of my life, but it's another surrender to what is what is the circumstance calling? And how I react to it is what creates my emotional landscape, my quality of being. I'd be irritated. Why? Because it's not going my way. I had this realization with a buddy of mine who was complaining about a neighbor, and and I I had this realization a couple months before, and really what the beast is saying when I'm bitching about everything and telling everyone what they should be wearing and how they should look, it's really, why isn't everybody like me? Think about it. Why is anyone like me? And I don't think you're like me, so it irritates me. Because I'm not sure I like me, and I like some affirmation, whatever it is. It's just like, why is anyone like me? No one needs to be like you. Why are you like you? And you know it, because some days you get up and you have a great day. And this happened to me in my earliest survivor. I get up and have a great day, but I had no idea how it happened. Then I get another day and I have a horrible day, and then you know how that happened either. So this is about becoming consciously aware of what's going on in the human mind. And as you grow in that awareness, you hear that idea and you go, well, that's stupid. Well, who's the observer? It's got to be this thing they're calling your spirit or the divinity within you. There's something else observing the bad idea. There has to be, because the bad idea won't examine itself. It's saying this is reality. And I'm going, that's stupid. Who's that? Who's that? So I'm coming to the fact that I have a spirit, I have a uh a consciousness, I have an awareness, and I'm uh I'm working on growing that. So I've uncovered this thing. I'm in a path, I'm on a trajectory of growing. Not self-help, God help, higher power help, divine help, the creator's help, love's help, whatever you call it. It doesn't matter. Just pick something of a higher nature than your lower nature. Rather than fear, pick an aspect of faith. Rather than judgment, try some tolerance. See how it works. Try it more than once because it's gonna be resistant. So there's a for the uh agnostic. There's in our book, they talk about spiritual experience and awakening. They conflate the two, and they say experience awakening means the same thing to us. If you know Bill's story, he had this white light experience in the hospital. Powerful sense of God, clean wind blew through me, room filled up with light and all that. And uh he called Silkworth, and Silkworth said, I don't know what's happened to you, but hang on to it, it's better than what you had. And so Bill thought, Well, there you go. I have arrived. And on the next page, he's talking about being so depressed and full of resentment that he was thinking about killing himself. So he goes back to Silkworth and he says, I need to talk to someone. And they said, You can talk to someone on your old ward. Because the guys on your old ward are like you, they're terminal. There's nothing we can do for them. And Bill goes and talks to this guy. He didn't say the guy called me. He didn't say I was asked to come. He said, Can I talk to someone? And in talking to him, he purports he was amazingly lifted back up on his feet and put in the right direction. I'm paraphrasing, right? Because this is an aspect of Francis's prayer. In me sitting down talking to the new guy, you sitting down talking to the new woman, is a self-forgetting. I forget about what's going on in my life, and I'm just trying to help you. And now we're in the present moment, which is the only moment there really is, is this one, right now. Where one phone call, one diagnosis, one letter, one accident away from having a completely different life. So can I be present and suck as much of the goodness out of this experience as I can? So they wrote this spiritual experience appendix to explain what they meant. Because people were calling up, right in New York, saying, Well, we must be doing something wrong here because the the cell hasn't filled up with light, and we've been praying really hard. So they go on to say this is what they mean. Terms spiritual experience and awakening are used many times in this book. Experience awakening, too. Upon careful reading, shows that the personality change, there's three, sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism, has manifested itself as in many different forms. It's true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes or religious experiences must be in the nature of sudden, that's six, and spectacular upheavals, there's seven. Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous, is false. In the first few chapters, a number of sudden revolutionary changes, there seven, are described. Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover, they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming God consciousness, followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook. Wow pow. Instant redemption. Among our rapidly growing fellowship of these thousands of alcoholics, such transformations, there's eight, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James, varieties of religious experiences of one of their textbooks that they used, are the educational variety. My little ears picked up. Educational variety. Trial and error. That's me. That's me. And I went, oh. Why? Because they develop slowly over a period of time. That's my experience. So thank you. Quite often, friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he's himself. I had no friends. But those guys coming up to me, they're all felons. Felons are kind of my thing. Atheist felons. It's just my groove. Right. They finally realize that they've undergone a profound alteration. There's another one, nine, ten. And their reaction to life. The reaction comes from here. And life is just what's happening. And what you interpret it as being is your the appearance of it. But it might be something else. That couldn't be brought about by me alone. What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline. With few exceptions, our members find they've capped an unsuspected inner resource. Now we're getting there. Which they presently identify with their own conception of a power grid in themselves. The reason I feel bad about my past is because I have a conscience. And that conscience is the divine compass that resides in all of us. When you're doing stuff you shouldn't be doing, you always knew it. Because you go, I'm going for it. And there's a little voice that's I don't think so. Oh, I'm going for it. Watch me now. Because you can always override it. It's a choice. They think this awareness is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it God consciousness. Here's the promise. And I don't know why they didn't put it in the front. Most emphatically, we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing their problems, her problems, his problems, in the light of our experience can recover. If you can do what we did, and we wrote it in the book, exactly how to do it, you can have what we have. But then there's a caveat, there's a condition on the promise, provided you don't close your mind to all spiritual concepts. And I know that as an atheist, I have a closed mind to spiritual concepts. So I've got to at least become agnostic, which is just, I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't have the experience of it. But then it says a really important thing, the only thing that can defeat me is an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial. If your approach is belligerent, which definitionally is warlike, or denial, my closed mind and heart, you can't get this. So they just told me the secret to the whole damn deal. We find no one to have difficulty with the spirituality of the program. Willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery, but these are indispensable. Those three things, willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness, are qualities of the mind, informed by the heart. Where did the willingness come from? I don't know. I became more willing. At one time I said, well, the pain made me more willing. Okay. But they're saying they're indispensable, like oxygen is indispensable, sleep is indispensable, food is indispensable. And then they describe Roger. There's a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man or woman in everlasting ignorance. And that principle is contempt prior to investigation. I described that to you earlier. I didn't read the book, I read the contents, and I made a decision about it without any information. Just that's contempt prior to investigation. Or you can call it prejudice. That's why you're stuck. I don't have a way out of this. And so this is the this is the process of several other surrenders. Surrender to the power question in two, you make a decision in three. What is the decision? I'm going for it. That's the decision. I'm doing four through twelve. And when you get into it, you find out you're never done. Because when we get to the next section, the daily living, 10, 11, and 12, it says it continue for a lifetime. Huh. So you're stuck. This is going to be your design for living. And the foundation is one and two. Do I buy that I'm powerless? Do I buy that I'm powerless to manage my life? It's not that we can't manage our life. The question is, how satisfied are you with the outcome? Not very. Well, then perhaps you should try another approach. It's kind of if this then that. So as these ideas penetrate, to me, that's the action of the creator working through us. I meet guys, they share stories, and I relate. I don't know if you had this experience. I remember the first time I laughed in a meeting. Scared the hell out of me. Because it was a real laugh. It was like, it was one of those, yeah, right. No, it was like, and I was like, who's that? Who is that? And all the nodding and the laughing. You don't nod and laugh if you haven't had the experience. It's not gender related, it's spiritually related. Suffer. Suffer. Suffer for lack of a solution. And then we have this these experiences, people all around us that are saying, hey, it works for me. Hey, it worked for me. Hey, this is what I do. This is what I can I hear it. Not in the beginning. But slowly, the mind and the heart open. They both have to open. Because it's not about information, it's about application. And if I learn to apply it, my heart gets changed. I move. I'm not that guy anymore. Or I haven't been that guy for a while. And then he pops up again. Here's what about resentment. So I go through this process and I go through my amends and I think I've done everything. I've this is good. I've I've been thorough and I've been honest. So I'll use my parents as an example, and then three, four, five years after that amend, I'm with them, and something gets activated, an old memory, and the resentment's back. And I'm the beast is saying, see, you never changed. You're never gonna change. No, the other side of that is no, this is not that I didn't change. This is now I've expanded my consciousness and awareness enough that I can heal this at a deeper level because it came up again. This is what Thomas Keating calls emotional debris. It came up again because I drilled down, I took care of this business, and I got to another level. And that level, some garbage came up. It's a gift. It's a gift. Can I see it as a gift? What do you have for time? 107. Oh, you mean the like clock time? Yeah. 1115. No, I know that. I didn't know when I started, that's all. So there's lessons in it all. If I can look at this like it's a teaching, I'm in the world, this is life. But it doesn't have to define me. I there's a saying, I either define the moment or the moment defines me. And if I don't have any solution but fear, anger, resentment, then it's gonna define me. It's gonna own me. I'm not perfect at it, but I'm better at it. And so when I'm going through it, which is trials, tribulations, if you will, struggles, I know, I know from my history, my belief is that I'm gonna get through this. You know why I'm gonna get through it? Because I've gotten through everything. I've lived through everything. I've been shot at, stabbed at, chased, run over at. And went through tremendous healing. But it doesn't happen in an not for me. It's never been quick. So it's been slowly and and and evolutionary. It just start with an idea and I let the idea work on me. I don't work on the idea. Because every time I work an idea, I make things worse. I don't know about you. I just don't work on the idea. So we're gonna take a break. Carl's gonna sell you some stuff, then we're gonna have lunch, and then we're gonna do some other stuff. Okay, thank you.