MOD Jack I

Before discussing the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and how they can be applied to all compulsive behaviors and obsessive thoughts consider this: Identifying the mental problem of addiction, like diagnosing any disease, includes the individual identifying with the problem as the only one who can diagnose their problem and act effectively to dissolve that problem. If we are free to choose what and how we think - then we are each solely able to determine how and what we do with the mental problems and suffering we create. Even without fully understating all of the mental defective traits that induce obsessive thinking it is easy to notice the effects of inner conflict, emotional turmoil and mental anguish. Since we share an Absolute Common Bond - common suffering is a gateway to help us collectively see that if there is a way into any nightmarish disturbance there is a way out. Since nightmares occur when we sleep it is worth noting that we are able to sleep walk while we think we’re awake. By identifying the disturbing elements we experience the obvious can more easily replace the chronic attempt to maintain oblivion. 

Focal points: The steps are based on principles. Principles do not change. There is nothing simpler than that which does not change and nothing is easier to complicate than thinking otherwise. Principles are natural and fundamental to our existence. Principles like our Absolute State of Being is not a choice - “They” Have Us - we cannot let go of them. Unprincipled, immoral, irresponsible, unstable thoughts are unnatural choices to make believe how we think about Reality, Truth, Life, Light and Love - determines our life rather than concede We Are determined by them: Absolutely and We Are so Free to choose how and what we think of them we can even choose to believe we are condemned by them.

Responsiblity, Choice and Freedom are all Absolute Natural States of human nature. Consideration is not a conviction but an awakened - eyes wide open deliberation as a meditative contemplation. 

We Know We Know.
We Are Aware We Are Aware.
We Are as We Are.

Reality is unlimited and never changes. The idea that how and what we think creates reality suggests otherwise. Acting on backward thoughts leads to behaviors that are out of order reflecting a reversal of our natural fortune that are accurately called disorders. Anxious, nervous and systemic disorders reflect this impossible attempt to reverse Nature’s Law and Order and our Universe's Essence. Dis-ease is the lack of ease created and maintained by such twisted mental acrobatics. Stress and Anxiety inhibit healing and compound and degrade health.

Mentality is a bodily function. Mental disease is a physcial ailment. For as long as it is misdiagnosed - any cure or treatment will perpetuate its contagion.

Principles affirm Our Indivisible nature. Sharing Principles confirms our natural indivisibility. Inspiration is natural while desperation, depression, degradation and acting oblivious to what is obvious is an unnatural choice to oppose reality which is impossible to accomplish though we are free to try.

Ignoring what is happening, acting as though it shouldn't be or isn't happening, produces the unintelligible gibberish of ignorance - not reality.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Today I want to talk about I want to start talking about the twelve steps of alcoholics anonymous. And I'm not gonna do that today, I'm gonna do that after a succession of conversations about things like the principles of relativity, absolute nature, history of alcoholism, for instance. Before the 12 steps were developed, there were only a couple of instances historically where groups had gotten together. A couple of them were the Washingtonians who were an abstinence group or a uh what do they call it? Sufferance or one of those words that suggested the temperance movement, where they didn't drink. It was one of their things. And they got involved in politics and all that and fell apart because of the division of what happens when people start to take political positions. And the Oxford group came along. And this, by the way, was on the heels of a movement within the Christian churches, Lutheran and Episcopal, and all the various Calvinists and all the various different versions of a couple of pastors saying, you know, Jesus didn't talk about, Jesus talked about love and forgiveness. And we are not operating in loving ways and forgiveness, especially when it comes to one another in terms of denominations, in terms of the arguments they had about who was right and who was better and who was wrong, all that stuff. And this new thought movement began with and led to Emmett Fox and Norman Vincent Peale and uh a guy named Ralph Waldo Trine, who wrote a book called In Tune with the Infinite, which sold two million copies at the end of, you know, or it has sold two million copies. It's still in print, it's available online. It's a beautiful expose on the whole concept of the infinite nature of existence. And uh this was done in the late 1800s. So in the mid or so mid or so 1800s, there were thought movements, and what it was called the New Thought period, because religion had historically early on, people thought you had to kill people, sacrifice them to get God's favor. And then that sort of went out of fashion, and then eventually led to thinking you had to have a certain kind of faith to get God's favor. And then that slowly failed because that largely led to royal families thinking they had divine rights over people who were not royal and not divine and ended up subjecting them to horrors, etc. And those people began to think, wait a minute, they're talking about an infant God, that must be our God, that must be something that we have. So that transition in the late 1800s, that many, many, many, many transitions through history have been identified and recognized. But the most current shift was this new thought transition of the pastor's saying, why don't we just love? Why don't we just forgive and love and do things for people and help? And what came out of that that still exists today is the salvation army and the Red Cross. The Red Cross said if you're on a battlefield and you need blood, you need medical attention, we're going to be there to help you. We don't care which side you're on. We're not taking sides. We simply want to be there for the human value of saving lives if we can. The Salvation Army said, if we want, if you need help, we want to be able to give it to you. So they started collecting like they do today, clothing and other things like that. The Salvation Army today is one of the most successful recovery operations in existence. And they do not take any government money, they rely solely on their own ability to function productively. And the people who enter that program are vetted, so they're not just simply allowed in there immediately if they don't go through a process that shows that they're absolutely interested and ready to act on that interest, to behave in accordance with that interest. And those people are put to work separating the clothing and separating the things that come in that are donated so that they can sell them through their stores and fund their operations, which includes the housing of these people and the feeding of those people, and beginning to introduce them to their spiritual nature. That's what their job is. And they're they're as functional as any today because they do not take people in who are uninterested. One thing that is certain, in my experience, is that if somebody isn't interested in getting better, they are not going to hear what's being said. They're only going to hear things that support the interest they're maintaining. And if they see a problem and have a problem, like a mental disease or a physical disease, and the two are the same because the brain and our body is in the body, it's the dashboard of the body and the operator of the body, the thinker for the body. And even that, beyond the body, beyond the brain, the body has knowing a knowing nature that's well beyond that. And people are talking about that more today. But during this time when this was originally, with the inception of this, one of the groups of people that had never really been taken care of were alcoholics. Historically, they were people that were thought to be, they were either institutionalized, imprisoned either in mental institutions or just isolated, exiled, like lepers who were never able to heal. So they would let them live in leper colonies where other people couldn't contract the disease, but they wouldn't be at risk because they already had the problem. And alcoholics had been treated like that, put aside, pushed aside, pushed out, beaten up, killed, excluded from society because nobody knew how to help them. Nobody knew what to do. And it's not different today to a degree. To the degree that we have policies that allow people to get bonuses for using drugs and alcohol without holding them to account for the things they're doing to cause the vulnerabilities and the weakness and the scarcity in their own ability to function at a level where they're able to provide for their own interests. We're actually helping those people get worse socially. Still going on. It's a different brand than it was back then when they would kill them and isolate them and throw them in jail. But it's the same basic thinking. So during that period, multiple religions began to realize that everybody was divine. Everybody had a sense of, not only a sense of God, but the essence of life in every form, and the essence of rocks and minerals, and all of that is based on and in an absolute essence that we all share. You and I have that same elements of a rock we share, ore and different variations of the elements themselves, gold, and all of that stuff is part of this material experience that we're having. Or the seeming material experience, because it's really forms perpetuated that we see. Eyes are designed to see forms, brains are designed to understand, which means that it's understanding is substantive because under if you think of understanding as something beneath our feet, we don't see the earth beneath the surface, but we know it's there because it's always stable for us, it's always there and available to stand on. Understanding and substance are two words that reckon with that. And so in this process of helping alcoholics, it led to Alcoholics Anonymous. The Oxford group had four absolutes: love, purity, unselfishness, and um honesty. Those were their four basic principles. And they had steps, and the steps were a short version of the steps today, the 12 steps. And they were basically about reconciliation, accountability, uh being active, helping others, serving others, etc., and confession, starting to actually release this stories of woe and the history that we've had. And that all led to the division of 12 steps. Bill Wilson thought that people needed more discipline, that alcoholics needed more framework to kind of get their bearings before they could have the, before they would be accountable and responsible enough to begin to function on a level that would be able to help others, which is the goal of sobriety, is to get well enough to be able to have something to offer that's valuable. We all have something to offer. But as I've learned, you can carry the disease and you can carry the solution. Both of them are options. And one doesn't become exclusive to the other. One doesn't stop happening because you're doing the other. They're both always available. It's a choice that we make that determines the basis on which we are offering our seeming service or help when we're really, you know, there there are levels of help that aren't helping people, like the idea that we give people condos and give them benefits for being worse on the street, or that we have now created drugs to help people that would otherwise overdose survive so they can continue to do more drugs, and then we give them more of the drug that helps them survive rather than really confront this mental issue. So during this time in the 1800s, several religions came out of it, which were Church of Science, Church of Religious, or I think it was religious, Christian science was one of them. Science of mind was another, church of religious science was another. And they were all, this was sort of the beginning of Emmett Fox and Norman Vincent Peel, and a lot of the other writers that started to talk about and embrace things from a very different perspective than they had historically been looked at, which was very inclusive, very much recognizing the human spirit and the potential and the capacity to function at a level well beyond the decrepit, deficient, dysfunctional basis that had been considered the plight of the average person or the normal person that wasn't divine and wasn't part of the royal bloodline in some way. It was a transition away from that. And it was largely started in the United States. We were a breakaway country in terms of what was consistently happening throughout the world with authoritarian dictators and royal families and other people basically being the seeming God's directorate on the planet, directors on the planet. And everybody else was a bystander, so it didn't matter. There was no moral compass in terms of what could be done to somebody who was in that category because they just wipe them out and kill them. And it still happens today. It's the same basis of the same authoritarian idea that the person in charge, if he feels he's at risk because of anybody doing anything that doesn't align with his thinking, he he has a justification to kill them in prison and they somehow limit what they're doing and undermine what they're doing. That's not part of that inclusive process or that thought process. But these religions all began to see that physical ailments were very much a byproduct of a spiritual ailment and a mental ailment. And that's very much the basis of what the steps were designed to work on. So we're going to get to the steps a little bit later, but I wanted to talk about a few things that I know the guys that I work with and women through the years have struggled with. And some of that comes from, I would say, a misunderstanding of what principles mean and what absolute means. And since that's what they were looking at in the mid-1800s, late 1800s, and it's what the 12 steps was based on, Bill Wilson saw clearly that this was a mental problem. He said that the alcohol is a symptom, the bottle is a symbol of an underlying problem in the mind, he called it. And I will suggest distinguishing between the brain and the mind is worth thinking about because trees and nature seem to have a knowingness that allows them to do exactly what they're designed to do, exactly what the seed of that tree holds becomes the entirety of that tree as it grows. It would suggest that there's some elementary, essential root in life that has a very knowing nature. Not thinking, a knowing nature. And one of the things in Ralph Waldo Trine's focus on the infinite was really beginning to describe words cannot describe something that has no beginning and has no end, because words are about definitions. And for our purposes, in our discussion, we're not going to try to fine-tune the definition of the words because we're all going to see them in some difference, just like we see everything in our own thinking, in some unique way. It doesn't mean that thing we're thinking about changes because we're thinking about it differently. It means that we change in relation to that thing and the way we're thinking about it. So when you're considering things like the infinite, there really aren't a lot of words that can define it because it's not a realm that's based in definition or limits at all. So things that are definitive tend to be limited. The one thing that defines the absolute andor principles, because they're really the same thing, principles are fundamental to how things work in the universe. They don't change because they're principles. Just like things that are absolute. There's no change in that whatsoever. There's no limits as a result, there's no dimension and there's no space. We're starting to talk about an essence that's completely unseen, indivisible, immutable, inviolable. That if it's the essence of anything, it's essential to everything. It isn't something we can exclude because we don't think it's there, but we can cause issues within our own inner conflict. We can cause inner conflict and other issues by simply thinking about it as though it isn't as it is. And if we're capable of doing that, that's precisely the kind of friction and frustration that ends up creating the misery that has addicts and others think that solving the problem means getting better at means feeling better than getting better at feeling. There's a big distinction there. We're constantly trying to feel better. We're not getting better at feeling because the feelings we're having are giving us an they are telling us about the thinking we're doing, whether it be right or wrong. That's what our design is based in. If if, and I'm saying if because you get to decide, you are a listener, you're part of the communication between you and I, and with everyone else, whoever listens, because everything you think and decide has an impact on everything that's happening. It's your responses and your reactions to what you're hearing that determine the value you will get, and your interest in this will determine your participation and your interest in listening to things that don't make any sense to you initially. Because if the sense we've been making is only the understanding we've been having, and the understanding we've been having has included misunderstanding, we haven't been understanding things well. And I would say this is a glaringly obvious historic human problem because we are the only species that kills itself and each other in the name of what things people think or don't think. And if you look at political conflict, it always comes down to how people think. It doesn't matter their color. We think discrimination is about color and size and shape and all that kind of stuff. That's secondary. The primary conflict is how people think. And if we have been using self-righteous indignation to justify what is unjustifiable, was inhumane and uncivilized, there's clearly a thread of evidence, if you look at history, that you'll find us. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of wars, millions and millions and millions and millions of people killed in the name of righteousness that's never right. The only reason it goes to that extreme is to try to prove the rightness of it, and there is no proof in what's right because if nature is nature, it's already natural, it's already already right, it already has its own awareness. And it is awareness, it is simple awareness. So the steps that led to, I literally mean the human footsteps that led to this awakening, per se, just like when we realized the earth was not flat, and so when ships sailed off to the horizon and went over it, they weren't falling off the earth. They were traveling to places that had been unseen by people on the shore watching the ships, or were unseen by them. And people who thought that the horizon was the end of doom, in fact, you can't reach the horizon because the closer you travel toward it, the further it gets on a sphere, which proves that the in one way proves that the earth is round. You're looking at it accurately, you're realizing you can't get to it. And I will suggest to you that you've never seen two halves of a ball at the same time, or two halves of a bottle or a cup, unless it's glass and you're seeing through it. We see the facade, we see the superficial aspect of it, the form of it. We're not seeing even the whole thing and the simplest things we see, which is an indication that we can easily make believe that all that there is is what we see, and then think that all that there is and understand all that all that there is is only how we see it visibly. But the invisibility, understanding, the nature of understanding is seeing things that are invisible. Science has played a huge part in this by beginning to say if we can't predict it, it may not be only predictable, it may just be a superstitious mythological uh idea that isn't doesn't have any basis. So science looks science as a word is knowledge. The science is looking for what actually works. How can I do something and you do that same thing and have the same result occur? That's what principles are. That's what the absolute nature of nature is. If it exists, I'm not telling you it does. Because one thing we each have is the freedom to think. And if I use that freedom freely and feel condemned, I would say that would be a pretty good indication of misusing the thinking and the freedom that we've been given. If I can make choices and determine that wrong is right, and then live with the conflict and make believe I need to get over it all the time rather than see that I'm the cause of the conflict I'm trying to get over, then the perpetuation of it is going to seem to me like it's happening to me rather than being caused by me. And so when I talk about the absolute, I can't determine for you what you think about it, but I can tell you this if it does exist, it's the basis of your existence, and it's the basis of all existence. And it doesn't matter what you think about it to it, reality doesn't change, truth doesn't change, your mentality is what suffers. And if you've been feeling that suffering, if you've been feeling if you're listening to this, there's some indication. Not a lot of people listen to this that are having fun. My experience is people never come to me and say, please help me understand how to think more negative thoughts and feel worse. And that's kind of laughable in one respect because it's so obvious. But why is it so often thought of obliviously as something that would make more sense than making believe feeling better all the time is the only thing we can make sense of? Think about the self-help movement. We've got billions of dollars spent on trying to feel better. Trying to get to our true self, trying to find our true self. If something is true, it isn't lost. It can't be lost. What's lost is the thinking we're doing about it. And when we feel like a lost cause, it's because we're paying attention to the symptom and the effect as being the cause. And we've reversed the whole order of nature, which is what disorders speak to. And there's a growing number of anxious disorders and growing number of people qualifying for those anxious disorders on this planet. And what we largely do is treat the symptoms to help people get feel better. If a doctor, medical doctor, misdiagnosed a disease and continued to prescribe people the same medication over and over and over again for the wrong diagnosis, he would typically be accused of malpractice, sued, maybe lose his license. It doesn't seem to happen in the political field and the mental field. Over-prescription, over-prescribing people has been held to account in the last 10 or 15 years. But think of what most people die from in terms of pharmaceutical drugs or painkillers. We're killing the bodies that have the pain, and pain is a notice to us that something's wrong, and we're not paying attention to it. We're not thinking about it accurately. The fact that it's possible for us means that we have a guidance system that uses pain to let us know when something's wrong, and we do not need to be buried so deeply in the pain before we do anything about it. That, in my experience, is it is a form of the denial, the distance we go, to pretend that it's not there, to think that it's not there, to think that overcoming it and feeling better about it is the only solution. That's just aggravated denial over and over and over again, making believe somehow I'll get better if I deny what's worse. And so we have a whole series of thoughts of don't think negative thoughts. Well, I'm going to tell you a negative thought is connected to every positive thought. Just like a proton and a neutron are absolutely connected in the makeup of the physiology and the anatomy and the basic workings of all that we know about the atomic structure, the subatomic structure, that which is so invisible that it takes, we can't even see it. We can only see collisions of it. These huge colliders that they make are just a chance to begin to see how things are working that we can't even see, but we can see the collision. So you and I can see the collision too. Those colliders and all that information that's coming out of it is the information that we're getting in our body that's telling us something is wrong. So that would not be the case if principles weren't principled. If there wasn't an absolute sense of knowing, and I mean an absolute sense of knowing, we call it all-knowing, all-powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, all all, all. That's what all those words mean. It doesn't mean some, it doesn't mean you have to be over six feet tall or under six feet tall. It doesn't mean you have to be white or black or brown or yellow or green or pink. It means all. All everybody completely. When I think in terms about the absolute in any limited way, I set my mentality off in conflicted ways. And I am ashamed and guilty for that. So I have feel felt feel a shame. I feel shame and guilt. And if you've ever felt shame and guilt, begin to notice it may be what you're thinking that you're feeling. Our bodies are highly attuned, highly able. Our functional capacity is enormous compared to the levels. Einstein said we use five to ten percent of our thought, our brain. And I think he was distinguishing or characterizing the fact that the depreciated value of our mental capacity has been depreciated by an addiction to mentality and to this idea of ego. For successive generations, as far back as people thought they were in charge and thought they had the right to kill other people because they didn't like what they think. If you look at history and go back, you're gonna find that consistently. So this transition mentally in the late 1800s, 1900s, led to a couple of organizations that we can see are functioning on that basis still today. And Alcoholics Anonymous came out of that in the mid-1930s. The big book was written around 1939, the 12 and 12 was written sometime in the mid-50s. Bill had then 17 years of sobriety to write another book where he expanded on the steps and talked about them in greater depth. And there's a lot of conversation within sober circles about it's not what we think, it's what we do. And I'm going to suggest to you something that may sound heretical, but thinking is a primary action. What and how we choose to think is an action we're choosing. We're acting on behalf of our thinking because no voluntary action has ever occurred without a thought preceding it in terms of human endeavor. We have trillions of chemical interactions going on in our body every second, and we don't think about it at all until something hurts. Anxiety and stress is one of the main elements that undermines our physical capacity to continue to heal versus break down and start to fall apart into disease of all various forms. There isn't a disease that's diagnosed out there that's made better by adding stress and adding anxiety to one's life and exhaustion. Anything unhealthy is unhealthy. It does not support the system. And we are keenly aware of the difference between those choices. And to become numbed to that awareness and think that we need to be desensitized is exactly what addiction is about. Trying to dumb down and stupefy our own experience in the name of making believe that if we're not paying attention to it, it's not happening. Which is a lot of where that, you know, focus on your power and focus on manifesting things that you want. I will assure you that we are already manifesting everything that we're seeing, and we're ashamed of so much of it, we don't want to admit that we're the manifestors of it. And if you're interested in manifesting, become interested in the present and what you're doing and how it's feeling. Your feelings will give you, people say in sobriety, feelings are not facts. That's right. In one respect, because what we think about largely are not facts. But I will assure you of one thing: the one aspect of feelings that are accurate is the aspect of the feelings we're having about the thinking we're doing. If I feel wrong and I feel bad, and I feel sick and tired, and I feel aggravated and frustrated, that isn't coming. I could say the feelings wrong, but it's an accurate assessment of frustrated, aggravated, wrong, bad thoughts I'm having. It's an immediate response to that. That may not be the totality of feelings, because that includes feeling things that aren't emotional. If I'm feeling ashamed, I'm feeling shame. Why would that be? That's not an emotion. If I'm feeling bad, why would that be? That is not an emotion. If I'm feeling guilty, that is not an emotion. We've turned it into one. We think about it that way, we talk about it that way. But it's actually an indictment. It's actually a conviction. It's actually the state of the thinking we're doing. If I'm guilty for the thinking, I will feel guilty about the thinking I'm doing. But the only time that seems to matter is when I violated the basic premise of my existence. Just like in court, nobody walks into court and feels that they're going to be, they're not charged with any crime if they're watching the court proceedings. We know when we're guilty because we're doing things that are wrong. We know it and we feel it. Think otherwise is to make believe that it's something again to get over. And that's that twisted kernel of thought that all comes from the idea that a lie can someday be true. So this transition, this thought transition, Bill said we will we will there he's telling us there's always more to know. And he's really saying there's always more to think we know, because thinking we know is very different than what we know. If there's an absolute source, that's our knowing nature, yours and mine and everyone else's. If we all share that, that doesn't mean we have to think alike. It means that we can acknowledge that we are all designed to think whatever we want. And if what I want to think is a combination of everything that's ever happened in my own experience, and some of those things that have happened have been much closer to my experience than your experience, then that impact is having a more dramatic effect on the thinking I do about it than it would in your life. Doesn't mean you weren't associated with it or affected by it, but your proximity to it wasn't as close as mine. Our thinking is where pain and pleasure occurs. Pain doesn't occur in the toe that's stubbed, the toe sends the message to the brain that something's wrong. And if you ever notice that your toe, if you stub your toe, it takes longer to get to the brain than if you burn your hand. Because the distance of the nerves, we have 38 miles of nerves in our body, roughly, which means we have a lot of nerve. And that means we have a lot of potential to be excitable and sensory in our capacity, enormous. We can feel a lot more, we can sense a lot more than we often want to, because we think it condemns us, we think we are those feelings rather than simply having those feelings. So today, as a bit of a trinity, think about responsibility as being the ability to respond, and choice as being the conclusions we make, which become our will. Choice is always our will, and our will always includes a want. We always want something when we make a choice. Even if we think we don't want anything, that's what we want. So the sort of wholeness of the thinking becomes more obvious when you start thinking of it as integrated and holistic and organic rather than in the bits and pieces and the parts and senses we have or the determination we have to make believe that it's all separate and alone and et cetera. We may have the freedom to think exactly what we want the way we choose to think of it. But the principle of that is that everybody else has that same freedom too. So for me to think they shouldn't be thinking what they're thinking is for me to think that I don't have the right to be thinking what I'm thinking. And to see it from that perspective begins to remind me that it's what I'm thinking that causes the greatest impact on my experience. And when I'm thinking things that aren't right, I am feeling wrong. I am feeling wounded. I am feeling like I am, I'm prey instead of having the capacity to benefit and offer and stand up and have a capacity that's so abundant that everyone benefits rather than everyone suffers to some degree. To any degree, I suffer, just like being on a boat. If the tide rises, the boat moves up. If it drops, it goes down. Everybody on it is equally affected. So responsibility, choice, and freedom are the basis of mental health, in my experience. And principles are the basis of how things function in our universe. And it's because they know what to do. You know, if you think about engineering and what we have done as humans to try to build buildings and try to maintain the structure of those buildings during catastrophic events like earthquakes and tornadoes and typhoons and hurricanes and all the other natural phenomena that occur. We always learn how to do it better by the destruction that occurs and studying what it was that was done wrong or insufficiently. But the basic idea of engineering is inherent. It's always existed. It's always the structure of the universe has always had the same structure. It's been morphing and changing, but those are just transforming in the exact same way they're designed to, just like a tree transforms when it grows. And it roots, can its roots continue to feed, continues to grow, it continues to grow, it continues, knows exactly what to do. The principles are already in place. And if you think of your stability in your thinking as unstable, begin to notice that it can't be unstable if it weren't stable. It's impossible. If the basis of the principles doesn't change, like the absolute doesn't change, it's infinite. We cannot be exceptions to that because they are essential. That essence is essential to all life forms and all matter, and the space in between that matter and the things we think don't matter, and the people we think don't matter. Those decisions we can make set us on collision courses. And if those accelerators that they create spend billions of dollars making, the particle accelerators are trying to see what's the result of the collision of those things. The result of the collision of our thoughts that we don't see, we never see our thoughts, but we feel their effects, are those effects. And to start noticing those effects is something you're doing in thought, is to begin to give credit to your thought, regardless of whether it's good or bad or right or wrong, and begin to notice the flexibility we have to make choices that can put us in conflict with reality. It doesn't change reality, it changes our mentality, it changes how we think about reality, how we think about life, how we think about truth, how we think about morality. To just consider that if reality is real, it's never gonna be unreal. The Course in Miracles goes over this in six hundred and some pages of very, very clearly written documentation. I would say it's documentation because it's as clear as any book I've ever read in terms of the order of it. It's like the big book, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous has largely never been rewritten since 1939. It's got a lot of things that wouldn't be appropriate today in terms of using he instead of she and they and all that stuff. But the fact is that the absolute majority of it has never been changed because the principles were looked at and hundreds of people influenced the writing of. Matter of fact, the original hundred people that got sober were very actively involved in helping craft that book, as were many, many, many other people who were well versed in writing and literature and how to create a book. So responsibility, freedom, and choice. Sort of the trinity and the universe is built on a triangular hexagonal. I think the tetrahedron is one of the most elementary building blocks. Maybe something else has been discovered since I originally learned that. But that's made up of Buckminster Fuller was a man who was self taught and determined that the tetrahedron was one of the fundamental building blocks, and out of that came the geodesic dome, which is a round dome made out of triangles, which doesn't seem right to have triangles, which are basically three sided squares, make some. round. And yet they do. So there is a lot within nature that seems to be hard to understand, but it isn't the it isn't nature that's hard to understand. It's the lack of understanding that we make believe is all the understanding there is. It's the commitment we have to the limitations of the thoughts we have. And you and I, you're a listener. We're communicating right now. We are communing. We're part of a community. You and I have a relationship. And my intent and interest is to be as open about this relationship as I can be, regardless of how it is thought of. What you think about it, I want it to be your business because it is your business. How you think about it, what you think about it, I want you to savor those thoughts, have those thoughts. As you can begin to have them, let me suggest to you that you may notice that you can't be them, that you're observing them, that you're actually watching them, that you are a knowing presence that's aware that is observing what's happening. What's interesting about the words we use to define things like immutable inviolable, which are all definitions of what's absolute is that let me read some of them right here right now. I'm going to go to my dictionary and I want to I want to share this goes back to the words. If we're using words and think about the spirit of what is being said rather than the order of the words it may help you begin to notice the common nature that we share rather than the seeming divisive thinking that we can do. And I know that I am capable of thinking anything about anything. And I also know that doesn't make what I conclude right. And it doesn't either make it wrong. It just makes it what I think and what I decide. That's it. Something I'm doing. I have a body. If I have a body I can't be that body but I can have that body and I can have responsibility for that body because apparently this whole concept of free will is what allows me to make the choices that can either lead in a productive beneficial abundant level or can lead in a destructive dysfunctional scarce level. Those are the choices I have I can choose desperation but I don't choose inspiration because that's the nature of nature. That's the nature of the absolute state. So let's look at a word immutable. Here's some of the ideas fixed. Well that would suggest it can't be broken because it's fixed. But yet the words used in fixed meaning it doesn't move. Well not moving within the context of other things that can move is not what this is referring to. It's saying it doesn't move because there is no change happening whatsoever in it. It's absolute in every respect. Not some respects absolute in every respect. What does that mean? No exceptions, no negotiations, no options, no choice. It isn't up to me, I am up to it, literally I am a product of it and if I'm not a product I'm simply of it period. And if that's the case and it's principled, since principles aren't divided amongst people, they aren't separate, they aren't divisible, then it's the case for you too. And if we can speak on that basis, we can talk what's perspective and start to see that what I might trigger in you or you feel heard or you feel antagonized or you feel damaged or you feel somehow or another unheard or unlistened to while I'm not even hearing what you say. I know those feelings can come up as a result of listening to anything anybody ever says if you can have that experience and feel separate, it is actually evidence that you have a greater sense of you wouldn't see that, you wouldn't feel that if you didn't have a greater sense of knowing that that isn't true, that that isn't right. It's just simply a collision of ideas that you've got that are creating effects that you may or may not like and in that infinite realm if it's perfectly quiet here's some of the other words inflexible think of yoga immutable would be flexible but here it's inflexible. What it's saying is it doesn't change it's not saying that it's stiff and rigid. But even using those words would immediately assign to bodily tension rigidity inflexibility. That's not what it's referring to. It's talking about something that does not change period never ever nothing can be simpler than something that does not change because for all the change we do in our thinking about it it remains the same absolutely in every way that may seem reassuring so let me tell you the responsible part about this there is nothing that can be more complicated than thinking about something that doesn't change as something that changes in any way. That is the ultimate dilemma it's a misunderstanding of what this absolute nature means. Because if the absolute nature is nature and natural that is our nature that is our knowing nature that is our present awareness. That is the essence of our thinking. So it isn't our thinking we're struggling with it's what we're thinking about our thinking that we struggle with. That's where this whole concept of ego is derived because since this thinking is flexible and up to us if we can make believe wrong is right, we can make believe who we are is all we think and that's it. Not true. We're living on the basis of not true. Why would people if if if that's the basis that's true in all we are why would people why would imposter syndrome exist? Why would people constantly search for their true self? They're admitting that they're thinking from a false perspective of self. And all they've done is mistaken their thinking about things for themselves. They're thinking about thinking itself becomes themselves. Not true in any way so some of the other words in immutable unvaried again doesn't change undeviating doesn't change static meaning perfectly still and yet static can also mean complete chaos but what's interesting about things that change is that the in the absolute is revealed in the fact that one thing that doesn't change about things that change is that they they always change. And that was Aristotle or Socrates somebody came up with that thousands of years ago beginning to see that if we think all there is is finite, how would it be finite if it weren't limited by something? Or at least we weren't thinking it was limited by something this idea that we can be apart from that and need to get to it comes out of that thinking. It comes out of this idea that the true self is lost that God needs to be found. That means God can be lost. Well that isn't a very powerful all-knowing God that's a self-made idea about God. That's my thinking about God as being God just like thinking about my thoughts as being myself. That's where it's deriving from that's the cataclysmic failure where self-righteous indignation has been used to kill to kill the person thinking it because they become so miserable. And ironically the people that probably would be better off dead sooner like Hitler was a good example. He waited until he destroyed everything before he killed himself. Millions of people had to die while he thought he was in charge, thought he could prove his totality and all of those ideas he had about what he thought was right. And ends up killing himself at the last minute but we're doing that I had a sponsor who said that the biggest problem in the world is that the wrong people kill themselves. We're all wearing the weight of the entire experience that everyone else is experiencing. We all feel it we all sense it we are all part of it. We are not distinct and separate from it at all ever never have been, never will be to begin to come to terms with this is to begin to transcend and transform our capacity our functional capacity our functional literary capacity to read the body's language as a guidance system to aim us in the direction of being more productive more beneficial as a result and the ultimate goal is to serve others so these principles the principle of the absolute is the basis of the principles of the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous and I want to introduce this I also want to introduce the I I I've written about this in a thousand different ways and I can come at it from any any direction and come up with something that can assign responsibility to the basic nature of nature. And I would say that ability to respond is very different than this dumbing down and stupefication and numbing of our experience because it's very much aware. If you are highly sensitive let me assure you that that is an actual function of awareness and intelligence. That sensitivity means that you are lit up you are alive you are able to respond. You are knowing your your awareness is keenly aware of what's happening. And when you look at it accurately you're going to find a lot of things out there that are not right. But the original looking at it accurately comes from starting to see the wrong you're doing in your own thinking. None of us suffer more than the thinking we do. Nobody can hurt us. It's what we think about what they're doing that hurts. Because if they're touching something that already hurts that we're trying to ignore we're going to blame them for it rather than take not only take responsibility but notice it wouldn't be happening if we weren't responsible. To start noticing the absolute is to start seeing that we choose desperation, we choose illness we choose dysfunction we choose disability we choose instability but productivity and survival and thriving and abundance aren't choices. They're the nature of our existence and we've been mistaking them as long as we have been thinking others are responsible for our experience. And in terms of step one, the identification of the disease if you have a mental problem and have inner conflict and emotional turmoil and mental anguish it might be worth looking at how you're utilizing your brain and maybe misusing your brain by entertaining ideas that all that all that conflict is telling you that there's something you're thinking that's wrong. Just like if your toe gets stubbed, there's something you just hit with your toe and you might want to watch for it. You ever notice people look back at what they did when they stub their toe or trip? They want to see that thing. They want to know it's there next time because they missed it this time. This is about starting to notice that we know and pay attention to what's happening in a way that actually allows us to attend to the accountability we have and the responsibility we have naturally accounting is always balanced if it's done right. Mentality is always balanced. It's how we think about it that is imbalanced and unstable. We have a nature that's natural you and I and everything else. It's unified exactly as the traditions in AA gave us an opportunity to do as an organization because most organizations at some time fall apart, splinter and start new organizations. AA was one of them. They came out of the Oxford group thought there was a better way to do it. He did it. He did it well enough to be here 95 years later 85 years later. That was his interest and he struggled emotionally through his life he struggled with mental problems. He tried NiaSon and LST and other things to try to fix it and figure out what was wrong. He was on it but his preoccupation was really looking at the organization and how he could create something that would survive the typical perils of any organization and end up expiring and it has not yet. But I think there are some kernels about what he left behind that we don't pay much attention to anymore even within the confines of Alcoholics Anonymous and any of the other 12 step programs. And one of it one of them is what Alanine is based on and that's enabling if I think I'm helping somebody but I'm helping them get worse I am helping myself to the idea that I'm a big help and nothing else. That is not the goal of service and help. Identification if you identify the disease as we're talking about and if you simply look at the effects mentally feeling stuck in thought feeling thoughts are intrusive feeling like you're at odds with yourself constantly you can't stop the thoughts all that kind of stuff it's all telling you something you're doing with how you're utilizing your thinking is wrong. It's like trying to hammer a nail into a piece of steel if you keep trying you're probably going to be frustrated it's not going to happen that easily if the steel's thick enough. But there are choices we have free to make and we are also free to face the consequences honestly when we're willing and interested so that's the first part of the 12 steps the identification with the disease it's fairly well known anxiety stress pressure inner conflict emotional turmoil mental anguish fairly well recognized today there's all kinds of diagnosis all called disorders because the thinking we're doing about it is out of order. They're all aptly named correctly as disorders it's just the the thinking the thinking is the primary source of our existence rather than nature as an absolute source is the primary source of our existence something that doesn't change that is perfectly still and silent. Something that's perfectly still and silent doesn't change. It gives us a chance to notice the ripples to notice the waves to notice the conflicts to notice the disturbances those aren't cast on us they're given as opportunities to begin to read the road signs just like a 15 mile an hour turn might be worth noticing when you're doing 80 miles an hour before you fly off the road we've denied it for so long that the culmination of these things has built up and fractured into so many different variations that it seems like we need to be lost in those to figure them out rather than get notice that the the source of that essence has never left us and never can leave. It's not something that goes anywhere it doesn't come it isn't more or less it isn't something we can do anything about to have any impact on it. But it's there to be utilized and expressed that's what our thinking is designed to do. That's what our bodies are designed to do is to express reality not create it and make believe that I have my own and you have your own and then wonder why we're constantly reactive and fighting one another. So identifying the disease in this case is beginning to see that to any degree I'm entertaining thoughts that aren't true is true, I'm insane. And if you've ever admitted you were an alcoholic that's not an easy thing to come to terms to because it doesn't seem like a high point in something you probably thought someday you'd achieve same with drug addiction or gambling addiction or food addiction or sex and love addiction or any of the other programs 100 plus programs out there for different compulsions. We're talking not about a compulsion we're talking about the reactive nature of the obsession the obsessive mind. So number one is identifying the problem number two is identifying you have the problem. And coming to terms with that when I came to terms with my alcohol and drug problem I did not say I am absolutely an alcoholic and there's nothing I could do. I simply thought that if what they're saying in the rooms that I've been in for six years listening and never came to terms with, never got sober other than for short periods, if what they're saying is true, if what they're saying is right, and I have that problem, if I have that problem, the next thought was maybe I should talk to somebody about that. I'd never broken out of that bubble of thinking I shouldn't mention it, shouldn't associate to it shouldn't act in accordance with that problem. So I thought of it as a problem that was insurmountable and one I was stuck with and one I was just hellaciously at odds with trying to avoid admitting Bill says in the big book the idea again showing the mental state that somehow someday he will control and enjoy his drinking and we can insert thinking there is the great obsession obsessions are always mental of every abnormal drinker. And let's just say abnormal thinker for the purposes of this discussion. If it's abnormal thinking we've been doing that's been causing the debilitating instable unstable deficient experiences we're having destructive inability to think of the bewilderment the bedevilments in relation to this they all add up to an inability to function every one of the devilments prey to misery and depression inability to be self-supporting inability to have intimate relationships meaningful relationships all of those are describing the basis of that thinking and the actions we take on it. Our behaviors are consequential to the thinking we do. As I mentioned earlier the voluntary actions we take are based on thoughts we have they always precede a thought people in comas don't tend to be suffering from emotional problems or disability. They don't seem to they're not there saying oh wow I'm disabled what a bummer I can't do anything. We are aware of this and we're not talking about it accurately because we're not thinking about it accurately and to start looking at this I guarantee you is going to cause some reactivity in your system and to think of that as being negative is to miss the value of that reactivity as giving you an indication of something that you've caused. It's like nuclear reaction. When those guys who are in charge of the nuclear power plant start to notice that that critical mass is getting out of hand they've got to act quickly And carefully to avoid a meltdown. And it hasn't always happened. We've had meltdowns. We have emotional meltdowns, nervous breakdowns, exact same structure we're functioning off of. So the big points today responsibility, choice, and freedom are the that's the triangle of mental health. And these aren't things that are optional, these are absolute states of being. Responsibility is the nature of a body to respond. If we didn't, we wouldn't be alive very long. Adjusting to circumstances, adapting to conditions. Charles Darwin said it isn't strength and dominance that helps a species survive. It's the ability of them to adapt. Einstein said very, very similar things. So it's identifying the problem, it's noticing that there's an absolute state and beginning to notice that that absolute state is not a negotiation, it's not an option, and it's not a choice. It's just the state of your being. If you didn't have that state, you couldn't question. You couldn't feel distressed. You couldn't feel damned. You couldn't feel doomed. You couldn't feel any of those things. Wouldn't be possible. You wouldn't exist. An addiction is a prayer for non-existence. It's a prayer for suicidal tendencies to finally take you out rather than simply concede the thinking you're doing about life, about reality, about truth is wrong. Think about that. Think of how far we're willing to go to avoid simply conceding that we could be wrong, that we may be wrong. And what I've learned is that in some degree, in some way, I'm wrong about everything. Because if I'm thinking all it is is what I think, I know those limits define the beginning of wrong because we're talking about something ultimately that's completely indefinable, completely indivisible, not something that's optional, not something that's limited, not something that's a form, not something that's an appearance, but the substance of reality, the essence of reality, that presence that we know we know, but don't always think we know. So responsibility, choice, freedom are all absolute states. They're the nature of our ability to function as humans and achieve our capacity, our functional capacity. And our functional literacy literally means how well we're eating the signs of our body. Body's giving us signs all the time. That's what our sensory organisms are designed to do, our touch and feel and smell and all that. And there are sensory organs or awarenesses way beyond the five senses that we think of. Our body is a knowing entity. All of the cells in it have the knowledge. The brain just is an analytical processor. That's one of the things. That's why we talk about our heart knowledge, and we can feel it in our gut. We know that gut has feelings because those feelings are coming from a knowing and awareness, that nausea, that seeming seasickness that comes from feeling upset and feeling disjointed in all of those things is knowing. That's an awareness. Give it credit for credit, due when you will start appreciating the value of the lessons it's attempting to teach. And it's up to us to decide whether we're going to learn. We have that freedom because we can deny as quickly as we can concede. And the difference is when we deny, it takes more and more and more denial, it will never be enough. And when we concede, we begin to realize that there is an awe-inspired nature that is already enough and already here and already possible. It is the possibility of all possibilities. And the beginning of thinking from that basis changes the thinking we do dramatically in relation to all things and all others. So the first part of that is identifying the disease. And it's pretty easy because you probably felt tense and irritable and restless, even within sobriety, and depressed, and sad, and lonely, and apart from and disconnected. And all those are indications of thought, not reality, because you can't be disconnected from an absolute state. They're just thoughts. And we're feeling our thoughts. Our body is designed to reckon with the body. Doesn't make it separate because we're all on the same platform. We're all sharing the same thing. If I'm doing it better, other people have a chance of doing it better too, just by watching and listening. So the first thing in that after the holy trinity, I call it, for functional capacity, responsibility, choice, and freedom is the idea of identification, identifying the disease as something that's happening. Doesn't mean it's right and real and isn't illusional. It just means it's happening. It's happening in some form, just like a dream. If we feel we're in a dream, we think what's happening is real because we think we're in it. When we think our thoughts are real, we think we're in our thoughts, and all of a sudden that's real. It isn't. They're both imagined, they're both dreamscapes, but when we do it with our eyes open, we think we can't possibly be sleeping. And the spiritual awakening is addressing exactly that. We are sleeping by making believe those thoughts are true and real. So identifying you and me as I identify with this, I have those thoughts, I do those things, I have that turmoil, I have that conflict. What's happened is as I began to admit it in the present, which is the only place I ever am, all of a sudden the delusion about it being something that happened in the past began to be obvious it was something I was doing in the present. And the disillusion was the dissolving of those ideas that the past had anything to do with it. Now, I can't tell you that they've all been dissolved because I still have thoughts about things I could have done, should have done, might have done. Doesn't mean I can't have those thoughts. But to see them as fantasy, to see them as illusions, to see them as imagine is very different than thinking of them as real enough to go back and do something about and then suffer the trauma that I can't get there because there is no place to go to get there. The place I am is the only place there is. The place you are is the place we share. That is true for all things and all things, all things, all that are and all that is, everything is operating on that same basis. We share that intimately and completely. So if you can identify the problem, you are probably identifying with the problem. And to begin to think in those terms, to see that you were the problem maker, is the beginning of being open enough to start to do something about the problems you might have thought were insurmountable and impossible to resolve. A dog chasing its tail, even when it catches its tail, which I've watched happen, lets it go and starts chasing it again. It's exactly what we do in the spinning cycle of thinking, that thinking more thinking is going to solve it. And I have found many times that I've had some level of awareness and think I'm done, think that I'm better enough to be done, rather than see that it's just like rising above the clouds and realizing the sun isn't always out. Just because the clouds are up does not mean the sun is out. Yet we talk about it that way. The sun's not out today. That's not ever true. We talked about the sun rising and sun setting. It doesn't. We go around, we move toward or do we move away from it in our own rotation? Think about that. We talk about things that are so obvious in ways that are not true. They're not accurate. We still do it because we still think in these archaic ways. If you have the problem and begin to admit you have the problem, you'll begin to admit to see that you may be the chooser of that problem, but you cannot be that problem. You can have it because you can have thoughts, and you can have any thoughts you want. And those conditions are something you have. That does not make your nature bad, wrong, or otherwise, because you're not those thoughts. You're just having those thoughts. It's like you're driving your car and you don't know how to drive your car on ice as well as somebody else does, and you end up in the ditch. You might think you're a bad driver, but the decisions you make, the choices you made, are what was bad. You might be an excellent driver, but in that case, you showed that your thinking failed you. Your presumption that you'd be okay, the presumption that you'd be fine, the presumption that it would all go right. Those are just thoughts. That does not interfere with the basis of our reality, of our absolute shared state of being, ever. So if you're here with that interest, you may learn. And I would suggest that if you talk to others about it, you'll begin to reinforce your awareness of the conflicts because you'll see in them things they're doing that used to annoy you, and you'll begin thanking them for giving you the perspective to see the things you're doing that you weren't paying attention to. Our own eyeball does not see itself, and yet we know when we open our eyes in the morning we can see. But what we often miss is that even when our eyes are closed, they're still seeing the backside of our eyelid. And we think we're not seeing. We're actually seeing, but it's obstructive. We do the exact same thing, the thoughts we don't think we're having, by making believe if we don't think we're thinking them, they're not happening. It's not true. Honesty is not about being truthful in terms of telling the truth, because the truth is already everything that exists and need not be told anything by us for sure. Honesty isn't about being right. It's about starting to reckon with what's wrong and right as a result. Our instinctive nature is to make decisions based on what's right, because those decisions can be productive and useful, not just for me, but for everybody. When somebody saw somebody light a fire with a stick, that person knew they could do that same thing. Before that happened, people shook their head and said, we got to wait for a wildfire. We've got to keep the fire going to be able to keep the fire. We can't start it because we don't know how to start it. We've been the ones starting this while we've been focusing on how to stop it. And what our discussion about is starting to notice that if we're the cause, then we have the responsibility and have always had the responsibility for the effects we create. And if we're free to do that, I'm free to continue just as you are. You have no obligation to stop whatsoever. But if you begin to notice that if you weren't starting it, there would be nothing to stop. That's what we're aiming for because we're starting to talk about things just like when they realized the earth was round and realized the earth was not at the center of the universe. All of a sudden the natural phenomenon started to make more sense. People circumnavigated the globe and discovered cultures and all the tea in China that they wouldn't have found otherwise. We started understanding why the orbits and the why the sky does what it does and why we do what we do in the sky. But only recently have we begun to actually look at the bottom of the ocean and realize how little we know about the earth. And I would say that's a perfect metaphor for how little we've been talking about our own thinking and the impact it's been having on the social structure that we all share. I'm happy to have you here. If you talk about this with other people, you will see that you probably don't have much language to go with this. Because I have done this a long time and I'm still struggling to put it in words that I think make more, either more sense or or come in an order that seem to be more uh digestible. But when you're talking about food for thought that's nutritious, for all we've done to try to make believe all the ideas we've had are true, it's probably going to take a minute to begin to develop the vocabulary. So if you're listening to this, that's one opportunity. To talk about it or share it is another. To begin to communicate with me or us, any of the people you hear here are available for you at some point or another. I'm more readily available because I do this. This is one of my preoccupations in life. Talking about it and beginning to interact over it begins to reaffirm your not only interest, but your healthy ability to act in your favor instinctively and knowingly and fulfillingly. Fulfillment is doing what's actually letting what's happening happen, no matter what it is, is fulfilling rather than making believe it shouldn't be happening. So this is a conversation. You are welcome to ask questions. I would encourage you to participate beyond the listening. I appreciate that you're listening, and I don't want to diminish that in any way. That's all you want to do, you're free to do just that. But reaching out, sharing my job in my life, my life form, this experience I'm having, is to do what I can with as many people as I can do it with. Because there's a confirmation in it, and the shared essence of it becomes so much more obvious when I participate at that level with other people, whether they want to hear it or not, isn't my business. But if I get better at speaking about it, which I'm not always very good at doing, that's the goal of the learning process and what happened when things through history were discovered. And it took a hundred years for people to begin to assimilate it. But the assimilation of those simple things, like the number zero, zero is a as a component of mathematics, was a revolution in mathematics. It didn't exist at one point. That's a story of its own. Took over a hundred years to get assimilated because people thought within Western culture especially that making numbers disappear meant black magic and it was voodoo and some kind of superstition and some kind of dark force. Today it's the fundamental nature of the whole entire computing system and our ability to create modes of operating that help us function better. And I would say even that has some corruption in it. Because the thinking that motivates it is often strictly commercial and not seen as for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of a few. So that kind of thinking is what we're here to discuss: the inclusive, all-powerful, all-knowing, absolute state of being as our source rather than something we need to go find, and then start looking at what we're doing to cripple our ability to express it. If you're interested, I appreciate it. I know that you wouldn't be here if you weren't. You may not think you are, but to be here and participate and listen is an indication that you have some interest and commitment and understanding that you have a drive, that you want to survive, that you want to thrive. And it's not just for your own sake or your own seeming sake, but for everyone else's too. That's the ultimate goal, because that's the ultimate benefit, just like the ultimate deficit is to do anything wrong, affecting everyone else to continue to help reinforce their wrong. Love to all. Deep breathing. Carry on. Let's continue. Contact as you may, I'd be happy to talk to anybody directly if you're interested. If you find a lack of words, you can always share an episode and talk to your friends about it and see if that brings any kind of discussion to light that you've never had with them. Because the ideas in certain cases are going to be somewhat new to people. So best be well in all respects.