#102 I Need You! is that true?

Needs are external. The beast uses our Basic instincts of Social and Security to trick us into to thinking we need, money, approval, status, nice things ect to be happy. So the question is where do I find my true self, my purpose, direction and value? This session includes a rich discussion among the participants.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Support, And The Big Question
• 0:44 Programs For Happiness And Cultural Conditioning
• 6:04 External Success As A Prison
• 8:13 From Suffering To Addiction To First Relief
• 8:28 Lower Self Versus Higher Self Principles
• 12:01 Alignment, Honesty, And A Higher Power
• 14:12 Shares On Fear, Anger, And Service
• 18:16 False Self Masks And Nightly Inventory
• 22:07 Being Over Doing And Real Connection
• 26:09 Boundaries, Saying No, And Fitting In The World
• 31:18 Practical Tools: Pause, Action, And Steps
• 53:59 Serenity Prayer And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_09: 0:03

Welcome to the gathering. My name is Roger. My sobriety date is October 11, 1978. And you've joined the gathering. If you're listening online, streaming, there's a place that you can go at the bottom of the description of the talk to become a supporter. You can support for as little as$3 a month. It helps keep this thing rolling because it costs money to do stuff for free. There's an old quote by one of Gandhi's handlers, and he said, it takes a lot of money to keep Gandhi poor. And it takes a lot of money to keep these things going. So anyway, here's a question. I need you. Is that true? Yeah, that came through my head as I'm struggling with things that I'm powerless over. And the beast is telling me what I need and what I don't need. And here's the truth. So as we we referred uh before, I referred to Thomas Keating in a Fair Mountain. He says there's three essential biological needs when we're born. Security and survival. That's our so what we call our social instinct. Power and control, that's our security instinct. Affection and esteem. That's our social instinct again. Those three things are needed for us to get a whole and healthy start. When they're not there, that's what we built, what builds our program for happiness out of. That's what you got when you grew up and you were looking at your environment, your family, the neighborhood, the culture, the place, the location you grew up in. What is the formula for happiness? Who are the happy people? Right? They seem to have money, or they seem to have nice cars, or they seem to have relationships, they seem to have kids, they seem to not have kids, they seem to have dogs, whatever. So we've all got a program for happiness. And it's literally programmed into us by our culture. The culture outstanding, the overall culture, which the U.S. has predicated on self-reliance. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You know, if you want it bad enough, you can make it happen, right? So I come into this thing feeling inadequate, feeling less than, because those essential needs were not met in order for me to form a decent sense of myself. And so what happens, those deficiencies determine our program for happiness. So I'm afraid. So my program for happiness is gonna have something to do with arm myself. What am I gonna arm myself with? Self-knowledge, reason, force of will, power. Right? Um the inadequacies. This you saw it in Bill's stories. I proved to the world I was someone. I had that chip on my shoulder as a little boy. And no one told Bill he was no one. Bill concluded that. My parents, no one told me I was nobody, and I was no good. No one told me that. I determined that from my experience of not having those basic needs met. Do you hear my dog whining? He's so tired of listening to me. Okay, boy. So we're on a search to get our our needs met. And in this culture, being that is severely materialistic and consumeristic, the answer lies out here. You want to feel better about yourself? Be a success. What's a success? Well, for some people, a success is I have multiple degrees. For some people, a success is I have a I'm a I'm a professional, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'm a whatever, right? For some people, it's I'm a successful parent. For some people, it's I'm a mother. I've always wanted to be a mother, and now I'm a mother, right? Um, but we've all got that idea. What is it going to look like when I'm a success? Because I've got to prove to you that I'm not what I fear I am, which is inadequate and inferior and unsafe. Just hanging together. So this throws us into self-reliance and external referral. We have been told that the answer lies out here. So if you just get the right mix of things, and it's different for everybody depending on where you came from, but if you just get the right mix of what you need, what you need, not what you want. Want is a desire. There's okay with, it's okay to want if I'm willing to do what it takes to get from where I am to get what I want and stay within my principles and ethics. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how we improve our lives. But when it becomes a need, I will do anything to satisfy that need. And I slowly give myself away. And these things that I'm striving to have that I've told myself the beasts told me are going to make me happy and give me purpose and meaning to my life, become my prison. Because there's no satisfaction in it, in the externals. Remember the first double truth we talked about in Buddhism, I think it was last session. Desire is what causes suffering. And we suffer when we're falling short of what we think, actually, what we've been told and programmed to believe we should be. You don't want to be a loser, do you? Then you got to be a winner. Because that that secular system we're talking about is dualistic. It's winner-loser. It's not, oh, wonderful, you're third place. That's not what we're going for. We're going for perfection. We're going for winning. We're going for not just surviving, we're going to be the top person in whatever we're doing. That's not working. So I've got the external referral. And the problem with all this stuff is even when I get the car, if that's the idea, I need a new car. I get a new car. It's really great for a while. And then it's just a bunch of payments. Because the the rush of getting what I need fades away quickly. And I'm just left with the payments. What I'm left with is more. I need more. I need something else. Maybe I need a house. Maybe I need a camper. Maybe I need a motorcycle. Maybe I need a girlfriend. Maybe I need a boyfriend. Maybe I need a relationship. Maybe I need to be loved. Right. And so I'm asking things that don't have the ability to satisfy my true needs, which is to have a purposeful, meaningful, fulfilling life. I'm asking these things essentially are false gods. Things that I'm things that I'm placing ahead. He didn't like this topic. Things that I'm placing ahead of everything else, because I'm driven by this idea. If I don't get this, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to be okay. It's an existential argument that's saying essentially if you don't get what you say you need, you're going to die. Approval. I want to be liked. Everyone wants to be liked. That's not a problem. But I'm when I say I want to be liked, what I'm really feeling is I want to be adored. Right? I don't want to be loved. I want to be cherished. And I don't even know what those things mean. So this program for happiness takes me down this road. And it's very unsatisfying. That is why we that is the thing that set up our necessity to find shelter from the suffering that we didn't know we were having. And that's the first drink, that's the drug, that's the addiction. It appears to be the answer. Because for a moment, it seems to dull all that or have it disappear. And a weight comes off, and I feel like I can breathe a little bit, right? So there's a really interesting and useful question when you're examining, which we do with the steps all the time, examining your thinking and your motives behind that thinking and the principles that inform those motives. How's it working? How's it working? It's not working well, but when you don't have a solution, you just try harder, right? That's what the B says. You just need to double down. Try harder. Try harder. You can do this. And so I keep pushing myself further and further away from the answer, which we know is in alignment with the higher set of principles and ideas. So the only thing my quest for this external gratification produces is things like sadness, frustration, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, depression, isolation. And I don't have an answer. But we do have an answer. We in this group have an answer. And that's what's saving our bacon. As you can see in the world, in this country, especially right now, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of fear, there's a lot of divisiveness. And there's not a lot of places you can have these conversations and practices. So we create a space for that, and that's what we're doing, right? So I've got some options. In these in the the reason they call them basic instincts is because they're universal. We're trying to satisfy those instincts, but we have to do it in a principled way. And the principles that I'm talking about are things like um we have a let's see if I have this here. Yeah, here. Share this with you. Can you see that handout? Higher self, lower self. So we're talking about principles. When I'm in a in fear and in my my uh disease, my running addiction, dishonesty is the organizing principle of that world. You have to lie, you have to cheat, you have to keep it going, right? And the dishonesty is not just with you, it's with me. Our addiction has been this enormous delusion about being dishonest with ourselves, about what's working, how we feel, and what our plan is, right? So you can look down those lower principles, this is the suffering. Because that these are the what I'm calling the lower selves, principles, values, morals. And then we add the cultural conditioning, self-alliance, and we suffer. I mean, you can just do the analysis for yourself. I didn't know I was suffering. I thought it was just intense and I was driven. But what we're trying to do is align ourselves with the ideas on the left side. So honesty is the organizing principle of our recovery. Not a lot of honesty in our culture. Our culture's endorsed lying. It's just degrading and all these, all the swearing that's going on in the in the public domain on the news with political leaders and stuff. It's just an indication of the desperation and the hopelessness of the situation. So I have to find a way to find what I really need in our parlance and whether anything. If you're faith-based, recovery-based, the solution is alignment with a higher power, higher authority, God as you understand, God, creator, whatever you want to call it. Or pick a principle. I'm going to grow towards love. I'm going to grow towards empathy. I'm going to grow. That's the starting point. And that's all we need to do, is to start. So this is a choice. And we don't know it's a choice because of our programming. We think we're just supposed to try harder. So it's not okay to say, I'm afraid. It's not okay to say this isn't working, because that equates to a failure. So it is okay to be aggressive. It is okay to be cynical. It is okay, because what a ripoff the world is, how badly I've been mistreated, et cetera, et cetera. And the self-righteousness is that false sense of superiority, right? So these are choices, but sometimes it helps to visualize it. So when I get into this higher self, I find there is a dimension of me. This is the fourth dimension of living that the big book refers to the spiritual realm. When I elevate my consciousness to a higher level, and then I as I assign it with and to this higher power, I start to thrive. I don't thrive overnight, I don't thrive in a minute, but things gradually get better. And I find I'm doing things and having experiences that I didn't know were possible. So another way to say that is I took actions that I didn't think would work, and I got results that I didn't think were possible. Because my true need and all the pain that I've suffered and all the failures has been trying to point me to God. He's been trying to say, This isn't working, Roger. Try me. Try this other thing. Until you know that other realm is available and you have a path to get towards it, you're just lost. We're just lost. And this is how we find ourselves, our true self. So, okay. I need you. Is that true? I need my truck. Is that true? I need my love. I need sex. Is that is all this true? No, it'd be nice. It might be nice, but I can't let it become my God. I can't let it become my reason for being. Because there's no there's no intrinsic value in it. It's all gonna degrade, it's all gonna need to be replaced, and it won't satisfy the need. And so our recovery, prayer meditation, inventory is offering us a platform to produce this change, implement this change. So turn it over to you. What have you learned about needs and wants, desires? What have you learned about results? What works, what doesn't work. So now we just open it up and if you want to share, just unmute yourself, talk, and introduce yourself, and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_04: 15:12

Thanks, Roger.

SPEAKER_07: 15:14

I'm Doug, I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Doug. Uh appreciate what you said. Trick is to remember all of it. Let's back up a little bit. My earlier memories uh are mostly of fear. Of what? Have no idea. I was not mistreated. I did not grow up in a bad circumstance or family, happened to be a farm, loved animals. In fact, that's who I spent most of my time with were animals, because I knew they were friendly. Now, as far as a defense for all this fear, one of the things I chose was anger. If I'm going to be defensive, he who hollers the loudest wins. I'm going to be somebody. Listen to me. As a result of some of that, when I was 10 years old, I was begging my dad to go out in the field on the tractor and follow my older brother around the field, planting whatever it was in the springtime or whatever it needed to be. There was an ego thing there, obviously, but I decided early on, I think, in my mind, if I can do stuff that other young kids aren't doing, I'll become better. I'll become important. People will look at me and say, hey, look at him. He's only 10, and he's operating all of this machinery. To add fire to that fuel, when I got older, I had a chance to get into the broadcasting field, radio and television. Great for the ego. It's wonderful. Little Hollywood. Wherever you would go in that town you were working in is, I know you. Well, I'm sorry I don't know you. Well, you must. I see you every night on TV. I still don't know you, but thanks. And it was great action in the bar, too. Hey, I'll buy that guy a drink. I know him. He's on TV. I know him, he's on radio. So I uh in a convulsed, convulsed way, I guess. That's that's how it turned out, I guess, at that point in my life. I was feeding this animal in me. This need to be accepted, this need to be at some times exalted. Yeah, look at him. He's he's he's on TV. I loved it. But it's empty. Inside, I was still empty. I'll finish this off by saying when I think of those things in that way, in my mind, in my memory, the best thing that ever happened to me was to become a drunk and to find Alcoholics Anonymous. Because at that point, and I know more now than I did a bunch of years ago when this happened, I found a method and a way and information to where, if I want to, I can grab onto these principles and these actions and fill that empty space, and to become satisfied, to find serenity, to learn about humility, and to begin to understand that part of the reason I think that my creators got beyond the earth is to help some other people, along with myself. And the interesting thing I'm finding or have found that through helping other people, it helps me. What a revelation. Neat thing to happen. I had no clue of that until sobering up and getting involved in this program. I appreciate what you do, Hank.

SPEAKER_09: 19:34

I appreciate what you do too, Dougie. You know, there's two things in there that were really critical, and anger. Anger is a secondary emotion. The primary emotion of anger is fear. In our culture, when a man is angry, that equates to power. Oh, he's a tough guy. He's got it, he's got it down. You know, when when I came into age, They were all talking about fear. And I'm thinking, what a bunch of losers. I'm not afraid of anything. And then when they told me that anger, you got a problem with anger? Well, I might have a little problem with anger. Yeah, I said, well, that's a secondary emotion of fear. And then I became, I went from being afraid of nothing to being afraid of everything. It didn't take long, right? The other one that you hit on, Doug, that's really critical. When I help you, I'm helped. When I help you, I'm helped because love is reciprocal. I can't receive it until I give it. So when I'm helping someone, it comes back to me in the form of purpose, direction, satisfaction, right? Our line in the book is maximum service to God and our fellows. Not drinking forever, not improving your 401. It's maximum service to God and your fellows. And what the closer I get to that, the better my life becomes. And I don't claim to be doing this perfectly at all. Susan will attest to that, won't you, dear? Gladly. Gladly, but not loudly. Yeah. But it's important because it's these are ideals. Maximum service to God and my fellows is an ideal. And I'm just a strive towards it. I don't expect to achieve it. But on some days I do pretty damn well. And other days I do it pretty poorly, right? But that's being human. And I just have to keep getting up and turning back in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you so much. Who else?

SPEAKER_02: 21:42

John Alcoholic. Hey, John. Hey. So uh I saw a medical professional outside of AA, but they go together. In um when I was younger, I spent a lot of time in Nepal and India, and I was really trying to self-actualize. And then I focused on uh professional and forgot about that part. And now with returning, well uh beginning with AA, um I've I've found a new pathway to I'll call self-actualization. But interestingly enough, I was told today by this person that I wasn't allowed to use the words need, must, should, obligated, or have to.

SPEAKER_09: 22:34

And I would add an ought.

SPEAKER_02: 22:36

An ought, yeah. And the reason for that is we're trying to visualize who I want to become and use positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. So if there's something, it's very important to look at each thing you're doing, um, and deciding for yourself is that something that it makes sense and on what who I want to become, versus I have to do this and it sucks. Um, and then I'll just show you with two other thoughts um and that I kind of enjoy. One is knowing is not doing and doing is not being. So it's nice to know stuff, but unless you do anything with action, and action is fine, but unless it becomes you um through repetition. Well, and then the final is um practice makes not perfect, but progress. Um and so the more you do something, the more it becomes ingrained in you, and um hopefully I become or I become, I should say, a better person. And with that, I'll pass.

SPEAKER_09: 23:48

Thanks, John. Good stuff. This is really important. Several of the points you made were critical. The oughts and the shoulds, the negative, those are shaming statements that I put on myself. They don't do anything progressive positive at all. But the other one I think I just forgot what I was gonna say. Yeah. Oh knowledge is nice, information is nice, but if you don't have a way to apply it, it's just a dream state. It's just a fantasy. Because I go, I go in uh treatments and stuff where people are newly sober or newly newly not drinking, and I'll be doing a talk and I'll be reaching for a line out of the book, and I'm not a page guy or anything, and some guy says, That's page 29. So I think a paragraph on the right, and he'll recite it, and all his peers go, Wow, I don't know, man. And I look at him and I go, Yeah, why are you five days sober? Because you don't apply what you know, and it's not real until I apply it. Then it becomes my experience. I need to digest, I need to internalize this stuff, and I do that by acting on it and then assessing the results. What do I need to do to get better? That's your 11 step at the end of the night. Thank you. Good job. Well, good night here, folks. Kicking the ear off really well.

SPEAKER_03: 25:39

Hi, Bill. Hey, before I begin, John, could you just repeat that? Knowing is not doing, and doing is not what was that the rest of that quote?

SPEAKER_02: 25:48

Yeah, knowing is not doing, doing is not being. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 25:54

So yeah, I'm grateful for a place where I can just share um, you know, some of my fears, my inadequacies, and so grateful for the gathering. And um you talked, Roger, about how because of fear, um, we have to arm ourselves. And I've heard, you know, various methods of arming ourselves. And I think for me, um, it was it was uh self-protection, it was kindness, it was flattery, it was overly, you know, um generosity, and it was these things that really were not true generosity or kindness or flattery, it was really just about self-protection. That was my uh my way of of uh dealing with my fear. So if I had no confrontation out there, if no one was mad at me, if people thought well of me, as Doug said, exalted, you know. I guess if I were honest, I kind of like that idea, you know, and that's probably what I was what I what I'm aiming for a lot when I'm not operating in my true self. Um so um I can I can just relate to that. And then one of the things that uh I've been trying to practice recently, and it comes from what you've often shared about um regarding the the five lies of the false self. And even though I'm still trying to understand exactly what you know, I'm set I'm separated from others and I'm separated from God, what what those the last two lies mean, but uh the first three, you know, I am what I do, I am what others think of me, um, I am what I have, and then I'm separate from others and I'm separate from God, right? Correct. So when I was sitting with uh uh someone talking to him, and they said, which one jumps out to you? And it's for me, it's I am what others think of me. So um what I've been trying to do at night as a way of like step 10, I guess, and not even at night. I'm terrible of doing it at night. I do it in the morning, but um, but I uh I look at each of those, like some of the things that kind of irked me during the day, and why am I feeling uncomfortable about this, that conversation with this person, or you know, um, why did I feel anger there? What was going on? And I and I I'm sure it was buying into one of the false self, one of the things lies of the false self. It was, well, I'm upset because I did this and this person didn't recognize me, or you know, this, or, or this person misunderstood what I said. And so it's this it's getting back from the false self to like saying, Well, what's really true? And what's always really true is that I'm I'm a beloved child of God, and I have to get back to that and kind of try to try to listen to what my higher power would tell me in these situations and let go of some of that those false self lies. So um, I've been trying to practice this so far. I've got about two days under my belt. I don't know if that's really sustaining anything, but but starting, it's it's a start. It's a start. All right, and um, so I'm grateful for those tools, and I think that that, you know, in terms of the the lower self, higher self, false self, true self, those are really speaking to me right now and helping me to examine some of my motives and dishonesty. So thank you. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_09: 29:11

Thanks, Bill. Those five ideas of the false self. I am what I do, I am what I have. That's the image of materialism, right? I am what you think of me. That's the source of the people pleasing and the dishonesty with my projection. I'm separate from you and I'm separate from God. So there's a Greek word that means mask called persona. And that's I if I'm a people pleaser, my persona is he's such a wonderful guy, and he just says yes to everything, and isn't it great? And then I go away and I'm pissed off at everyone because they didn't thank me enough or they didn't appreciate me enough, right? So there's what is the mask that I'm showing the world? Mine was a dangerous guy, volatile, um argumentative, sarcastic. This is how I kept you at bay and under control, right? But the problem with the persona is think of it as a wall. It's protecting me from being hurt. But behind it is my prison. I'm trapped because all these things we need connection, love, esteem, affirmation that we get from our community are withheld. And so I'm literally locked in a prison. I created my own hell, and it's all in my thinking. It's not them, it never was them. And that doesn't mean that awful things didn't happen to some of us. That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, what I do with it is me. What I do with it is me. You know that, John, you were talking about doing the bean. One of the first things when you meet people in a social business study is what do you do? And I'd like to go, who do you be? Because they think they're doing is their being. And sometimes it is. I be the boss, I be the manager, I be the director of sales, I be my title, right? And then when it's gone, I don't know who I am. So who else? Thank you. Good stuff, good stuff tonight. You can only dissemble that persona with the truth. And the truth comes from the self-examination, the inventory work. What shows up in the first five steps, what shows up in ten, eleven, and twelve. So who's next?

SPEAKER_01: 32:03

I'm a Kirsten alcoholic. I like what you said about your you've created sort of a prison for yourself when you try to be who you're not, who you're not truly being. If you're being performative about um you know, being the people pleaser and all of that stuff. And I read something by Melody Beatty once, beautiful paragraph about when we go around bending ourselves out of shape for everyone else in our lives in order to be liked, in order to be not disliked, even. You know, just don't not like me. But, you know, I want to show up and just be this everybody loves Kirsten person. I don't have any idea who I really am. And not only is that a jail, but I'm attracting all the wrong people. You know, they don't know who I am because I don't know who I am, and I'm wondering why I feel so alone and and why I'm at the monster truck rally, although I've never been to one. But you know, for me that would be like something I really don't care to do, but I would do it because someone else wanted to go, you know. That's an example, right? And and I'd be miserable. And and for me, that's a concrete example of attracting all the wrong people, you know, someone who wants a people pleaser. What am I doing at the tractor pool? You know, yeah, I don't want to go to the tractor pool. I don't want to go to the monster trucks, you know. But uh, you know, I want to hang out in my garden and and observe the beauty of a chicken. And a lot of people don't want to do that, and so I don't really want to hang out with them either, right? Because the commonality, the things that we find that are the juice and the energizing stuff that we find in people when we just go ahead and allow us to be our own selves and not be performative and look at me, look at me, look at me. Um, it's the it's the quiet, just be me stuff that I have found to be so surprising and and unbelievable in the kinds of loving care that I get and you know, from the people who are attracted to the kind of person I be, not what I'm doing, not that I always have the nine-volt battery when someone needs it and all that kind of crap. You know, it's just um it's kind of annoying actually, um, to when people refer to me as the person that I was when I was drinking and just showing up and exhausted and wondering why I hate myself and most of the people around me. Anyway, not really hate, but you know what I'm saying. This uh discomfort, the dis-ease is really hard to live with. And um, so you know, as I grow into knowing who I really am, life gets just so much more easy to accept. And with that, I'm gonna pass.

SPEAKER_04: 34:47

Thanks, Kirsten. The question is, who do I be, not what do I do?

SPEAKER_09: 35:00

And the fear prayer in the big book is God, remove my fear and direct my attention to what you would have me be, not do. So you first find the motive idea, the principle, be kind, be helpful, be compassionate, be unoffensive, be quiet, right? Be tolerant. Find the being, and as soon as you find that being, you'll have a menu of options. What would kindness look like in this situation? What would empathy look like in this situation? What would compassion look like? What would love look like? Right? And then you act out of that, you can't miss. You can't miss.

SPEAKER_06: 36:08

Hi, Tom. You know, I really, I really liked what Doug said earlier about um paraphrasing so many words when he really uh it was great to really become a drunk or really hit bottom. I'm I'm paraphrasing. I think that's what you said, Doug. And actually that was a gift for me, you know, about five years ago when I really admitted that I was an alcoholic, admitted that I was a drunk. And um, you know, thank God I did. Um, but for many, many years, I spent most of my time. I didn't think about this, but I needed to be the best, whatever it was, you know. So sports, all kinds of sports, corporate work and starting a business. And um, but it was all that I needed that stuff looking back at it. I didn't know it, but it was like there were great accomplishments. But in um, and I meant I want to say this um with humility, they were they were looked to the outside world as they were great accomplishments, but to me, I just needed it, and when I got it, whatever that whatever it was, there was no juice, and really there was just no love, no freedom. And so get drunk, you know, and then uh crash and hiding, don't let anybody know because I'd do it, I'd finish it off at the end of the night, and then have to sleep it off and get up and go do it again. So I really didn't get that I needed that, but I but I was, and and uh I did. And now, on the flip side, the great news of really hitting bottom and admitting that I'm powerless over alcohol. There is such great freedom. I I really have a sense of presence with people. I've always I was always friendly and looked like it with people and hadn't knew a lot of people, a lot of people knew me from a distance, but I I really didn't let them know who I was. Very few. I wasn't gonna let any, I wouldn't let them in. Now the gift of sobriety is I'm just being myself, you know, and I'm not separate. I think whoever it was, maybe John was really powerful everybody tonight, but but I'm really closer to God, but I'm closer to everyone else because I'm really I'm I'm truthful. So I'll pass.

SPEAKER_09: 38:46

That here's an idea that closer to everyone else, closer to God, closer to everyone else. When I'm close to you and we're we're living out of spiritual principles, that's the divinity in me connecting with the divinity in you. Because God created us, God is within us, lives in us, and when we have that connection, it's God talking to God. Nothing to hide. The other thing about those those attainments of goals, the emptiness that comes with it, there's usually a little rush of a thrill to attaining the goal, but it fades really quickly. And then you're just going, is this all there is? You know, what am I supposed to do? Get another goal. Right? I started to say something earlier about anger, and I didn't finish the thought. In our culture, when a man is angry, it's perceived as strength. When a woman is angry, it's perceived she's a bitch. We just want strong women here. But when they get when they become strong, they get pillared, right? It's a double standard. And it has nothing to do with strength, right? So anyway, what else? That's good. Wow, you guys are really on tonight.

SPEAKER_00: 40:08

Um hi, I'm Allie. I'm an uh alcoholic and um I be Pelotoning. Sorry, I'm training. Um I uh this meeting has been fantastic. What's that?

SPEAKER_09: 40:19

Are you getting anywhere? I've been watching you back.

SPEAKER_00: 40:23

Oh my god, I'm actually getting somewhere. Look at no offense, Peloton. I digress. Um I um this has been so great. Um I think when it comes to like emotions or being your true self, I remember, and I'm sure everyone's, you know, we're all completely unique, but it was that weird thing of if I disagreed with people, and there was that line between being rude and being honest. I mean, you know, being it's like you can be tactful, but I just remember I didn't, you know, it was like a conundrum of like, I guess I gotta say yes, but I don't feel that way because the yes is acceptable. And again, um I think also um I didn't know how to process bad feelings, like about either you know, disappointment was like over just overwhelming. So you stop, you know, uh wishing for things because it's so much easier just not to set yourself up. Um, you also suck out a lot of joy. Um, but it's also like I, you know, I feel bad about myself because I don't like my mother. And I, you know, I don't know what to do with that. And so there's um, I truly feel like everything gets bottled up and eventually it comes out, and in some form of way, you know, healthy or unhealthy. Um, but I do know that um in recovery, it's been still that, you know, it's it's a luxury, but you know, even when I try to do like, what's my intention for the day, or you know, what I I'll be stumped. I'm like, I don't know, be a good person, um, be at peace with myself. Um and again, it's these sort of basic questions of um how do I want to show up today? Um, I've got some good adjectives. Um, but again, I love that whole idea of you know applying and finding a way to be um to be myself, but also um honor, you know, societal norms or just you know, sort of it sounds silly, but just get out there and you know, when I'm with friends and I don't agree or I do agree, or just you know, that there's a way to I can you know I can feel a certain way, I don't have to express it. And hey, if I keep an open mind, I might change how I feel. Um but I also think that um one of the things too that I really learned is like competition and you know, setting goals. Everybody sets goals, you know, the person who gets there and the person who doesn't get there, they sent this, they set the same goal, whatever it was. And so I love sort of the like uh the process because through recovery, it's like I used to think my dad just had a suitcase and went to work every morning. I mean, and he sort of did his business. The in-betweens was like, oh, you know, maybe he didn't want to get up at 5 a.m. every morning. Hey, maybe he had to go through these situations. Hey, he had uncertainty about the direction, these sorts of things. Um, I just that I missed all of them. So when I'm going through life now, it's like I I feel like, you know, if I'm not good at something straight away, I really have trouble learning. And what I'm really learning in AA is how to learn, because you know, you there's a certain level of, you know, whether it was in sports or whatever, um a level of quote, accomplishments, but I really realized it was when it came to actually learning and growing and getting better, I didn't know how to do that. Um and um so it's and in terms of, and I'll just close with um, it's interesting, the um I am training for a race, but I'm so just I'm not interested in the race so much as the process of getting there. But even just tonight, I was like, you know, that in between work and the rest of your night, I was like, I don't know, I want to go to the meeting, I want to ride. Um it's just this whole thing like, I could just ask my higher power. And it was like, hey, maybe you can do both. It was so funny. It was like, hey, what an idea. Um, so even something silly as that. Um, because I want to show up at this meeting, I want to get my training done, and you know, um, with the help of higher power, I can do both. And uh it sounds silly and basic, but for me, it's like call that a win. So I'm really grateful for this meeting tonight. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09: 44:50

Thanks, Allie. You know, you brought up a good point, several. Um one of them was saying yes when you mean no, or saying no when you want to say yes. That immediately puts me out of integrity with who I'd be. And so the other question was that she brought up was how do I do this in the world? Because I don't agree with everybody. I don't agree with, do I be brutally honest? Do I that won't work? Sometimes you don't need to do anything. You can just be quiet. You're not being asked to weigh in on every situation and every idea. But that's one of the challenges and one of the promises of this is I'll be able to fit myself back into the world, not just cloistered in my meetings and with my little groups, but back into the whole world. And that's that's Jesus' big challenge. Can you be in the world but not of it? Wear it like a loose jacket, you know. Can you roll with it? Can you go with it? And uh your consequences tell you yes or no. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04: 46:23

I'm John, I'm an alcoholic. And John.

SPEAKER_08: 46:28

I was immediately reminded as you were talking about this, how when I was growing up, when I was starting to make some of these choices as far as who am I, that one of the really simple choices that I made was that I wanted to be happy, like the alcoholic members of my family. I wanted to be laughing at jokes, I wanted to be kidding around, I wanted to be uh having a good time. And, you know, in a lot of ways, in retrospect, that was a very shallow assessment. It only lasted for four and a half years for me, trying to laugh and have a good time. And and and if if it needed to, well, then maybe I needed to have another drink, maybe I needed to have another joint, etc. etc. And uh, you know, it just it just didn't cut it. So I got sober. I you know, I mean, I ran into a brick wall and I had to get sober, and I and uh and I got sober and I started to look at myself more deeply. Very, very, still very shallowly to begin with, and that's okay. That's where I started, you know, and and we just continue on this road. And uh, you know, I I have a hard time with the philosophy side of it, because generally speaking, that does not give me a practical application. And that tonight what we've been talking about is that practical application of it. What do you say? You know, do you know I'm I'm I'm drawn back to some of the discussions I've had in meetings recently, you know. Um, does something need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said now? You know, uh another acronym, which I haven't quite got all of the uh um answers, the the the meanings for the letters is pray, and but it is pause, and in the end it's yearning, wish for something, you know, yearn for something, pray for something. Um and uh you know the the whole idea of making it practical for me is is that in some ways I need a simple program that that makes it obvious for me. And and I'm grateful because I've gotten that out of this meeting, as well as all of the philosophy. And the philosophy is not unimportant, but it is, you know, like I said, it has to be answered with the practice, the practice of being. And uh, you know, sometimes you have to speak up, sometimes you have to shut up, pause, you know, use that, and uh, and it's it's uh it has its benefits, and we don't necessarily realize those benefits right now, but it's a good thing to do, and it works for me, and I'm grateful for that. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_09: 49:40

Thank you, John. The uh pause, practice awareness until spirit emerges is an acronym that I've used for that. The other thing, you know, you were talking about step one, and and we're all beginners when we come here. Nobody knows what this stuff means. I come in and it goes, yeah, that's the question, are you powerless over alcohol is your life unmanageable? I'm thinking, you're damn ready, you know. I didn't think of it that way, but now that you mention it and I do some reflecting, I'm powerless over alcohol and my life's unmanageable. I think my life's unmanageable because I drink. And it was I drink because my life was unmanageable. But then when I put the drink question aside, a new problem arose. If drink was the problem, why haven't I solved the unmanageability part? And now we're back to me. That's what those steps are gonna reveal to me. One through four are gonna reveal to me what I what the problem is, what the block is. But you can only be where you are. So we come in as a beginner. I don't know, I don't know that the step really for me is saying what you're looking at is the failure of self-reliance. You're powerless over alcohol. Oh, yes. You're also powerless over your thinking, you're powerless over your actions. That's the unmanageability. But you don't you don't know that stuff out of the gate. You just start where you are, and with the consciousness you have when you come to it. And we all come to it with the same beginning idea. I got a problem here, and I think it seems to be the substance. Okay. So what do we do? We arrest the using part, and then we start realizing there's some other stuff going on here because I'm instead of being more comfortable, I'm getting less comfortable. Because now there's no anesthetic for my weird thinking. And it's it's pointing to me at pointing me to the problem. Time for one or two more.

SPEAKER_04: 51:45

Feel free. Roger, Doug again.

SPEAKER_07: 51:58

Uh, real quickly, I I happen to be thinking of what a guy used to work with told me uh while I was trying to uh find serenity. That's who I had also drank with, but he sobered up before I did. He obviously knew what I was doing, and he told me one day, he says, Doug, you can't think your way into better behavior. You gotta behave your way into it. And it took me a while to kind of figure that out, uh, but it has to do with action. I can think about it if I don't everything that there is in the program and put it in place and into action. I'll stay drunk. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04: 52:48

Thanks, Doug.

SPEAKER_09: 52:53

The way it was told to me was I can't think my way into right action, but I can act my way into right thinking. That is the that is fake until you make it. That is believe the impossible, right? And I always thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard until I was about ten years in, I realized that's exactly what I did. I took actions I didn't think would work, and I got results I didn't think impossible. Wrap this up. Everyone knows the serenity. But it holds the key to the whole deal. It starts with the affirmation of the power of God, and that we're as a request, a grant. What? A still calm mind, serenity, for what? To accept, to believe as a fact, the things I can't change. And if you start examining that in depth, you realize I can't change anything out here. The courage to change the things I can, that's my attitude, that's my approach, that's my thinking, that leads to my actions. I can do something about that. And then the last part, the wisdom tell the difference is discernment. How will I know? Is it God's will, is it my will? How do I know if it's the right direction or not? Right? Try it out, see what happens. Try it out, see what happens. Okay. So I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Roger, thank you. Appreciate it. Be well. Yeah, you too, Doug. Thanks for coming in. Thanks, all you new people, for coming in, too.

SPEAKER_02: 55:08

Thanks, all.

SPEAKER_09: 55:09

All right, well, say goodnight. Thank you. Good night. Thanks, Roger. Roger.

SPEAKER_02: 55:14

Right.

SPEAKER_09: 55:15

Bye.

SPEAKER_02: 55:16

Thank you. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_01: 55:18

Bye for.