Ego and Surrender – Emotional Sobriety – Part 2 of 6 – Sandy B.

Hi. Thanks again for having me here. and this morning we're going to touch on the ego factors in surrender and alcoholism. And I want to give you a brief history of Harry Tebow because he's a huge instrumental part in Alcoholics Anonymous. He's an unsung hero. He's almost gotten lost in the shuffle, so I'm hoping that we can revive Harry and bring him to life again. In AlcoholicsAnonymous Comes of Age, harry tebow was a psychiatrist that worked with alcoholics in the 30s and 40s a manuscript of the first big book landed on his desk before it was published for him to overview he found it fascinating because he had looked at alcoholics at that point from a psychological standpoint so he'd been picking apart how they got alcoholic maybe it was that there were they were neglected their parents spanked them and he couldn't get very much he didn't have very very good results in this alcoholic hospital the way he was working very few people ever got any real physical sobriety for very long and there were components missing that he found in Alcoholics Anonymous which really revived his whole practice and his whole outlook on what to do with alcoholics. So let's see here. This is what Harry says. My first two or three years of contact with AA were the most exciting time in my whole professional life. AA was then in its miracle phase. Everything that happened seemed strange and wonderful. Hopeless drunks were being lifted out of the gutter. Individuals who had sought every known means of help without success were responding to this new approach. To be close to any such a group, even by proxy, was electrifying. So he was just on fire for his alcoholic practice all over again. It was all new. It was coming to life again. He had a lot of hope for alcoholics. In addition, from a professional point of view, a whole new avenue of treatment for the problems of alcoholics had opened up. Somewhere in the AA experience was the key to sobriety. here was the first authentic clue after many years of fruitless effort the possibilities ahead were intriguing perhaps i could learn how aa worked and thus learn something about how people stopped drinking yes i shared in the general excitement of those days i could see some daylight ahead a study of the 12 steps helped a little but a far greater importance were the many insights already possessed by Bill W. and others into the process which Alcoholics Anonymous brought about. I heard of the need to hit bottom, of the necessity for accepting a higher power, of the indispensability of humility. These were ideas which had never crossed my professional horizon and certainly had never influenced my non-professional thinking or attitude. Revolutionary as they were, they nevertheless made sense and I found myself embarked on a tour of discovery. So here, a layman like Bill Wilson brought something to the psychiatric community that had never been considered, this hitting bottom, that why all the insistence that every AA must hit bottom first because few people are going to do this unless they need to in order to stay alive. Harry Thiebaud didn't see that. People would come into his office, and the wife sent him in. My husband's a drunk, and I'm going to get a divorce. And he'd come in and say, you know what, Harry, you've got to fix me or the kids and the life are leaving. and Harry Thiebaud had no idea that a surrender needed to be produced in order to help these people so he'd take their money and he'd spin them dry and he tried all kinds of experiments and ask them all kinds OF crazy questions what was it like in kindergarten digging and digging for the root of the cause and having very little effect because of this hitting some hitting bottom and surrender aspect the individual alcoholic was always fighting an admission of being licked, of admitting that he was powerless. If and when he surrendered, he quit fighting. He admitted he was beaten and he accepted the fact that he Was powerless and needed help. If he did not surrender, a thousand cries could hit him and nothing constructive would happen. The need to induce surrender became a new therapeutic goal. So here's this whole new gold that harry tebow had from bill wilson's accounts of alcoholics and how to treat them all of a sudden he wakes up to the idea that wow a therapeutic goal the need to induce a surrender the miracle of aa was now a little clearer though the reason was still obscure why the program and the fellowship of aa could induce a render as might be expected i enjoyed a thrill of my own i was getting in on what was happening all of it an enjoyable experience still questioning eagerly i shifted my therapeutic attack the job now was on to induce a surrender in the alcoholic but i ran into a whole nest of resistance to that idea totally new territory had to be explored as i continued my tour it became ever more apparent that in everyone's psyche there existed and unconquerable ego, which bitterly opposed any thought of defeat. Until that ego was somehow reduced or rendered ineffective, no likelihood of surrender could be anticipated. The shift in emphasis in hitting bottom to surrender to ego reduction occurred during the first five or six years of my initial contact with Alcoholics Anonymous. No AA, regardless of his veteran status could ever relax his guard against the encroachments of a reviving ego recently one a.a writing to another reported that he was suffering he feared from a halotosis the reference to the smugness and self-compliancy which so easily can creep into the individual with years of sobriety behind him the assumption that one has all the answers and the contrary that one needs to know no answers but just how to follow aa are two indicators of trouble in both cases open-minded is an is notability absent perhaps the commonest manifestation of the return of the ego is witnessed in the individual who falls from his pink cloud to a state of mind familiar to you all the blissful pink cloud state is a logical aftermath of a surrender so harry tebow states here that there's a pink cloud. There's an aha-ness in that surrender. I believe today that that surrender can be lived moment by moment, years into recovery. It doesn't have to be in those first 30 or 60, 90 days. The goal here for me is years into physical sobriety that I can manifest a surrender where I don't need to know anything and I can rest in the bosom of God, where I start to trust in the universal mind of God. Where I start to trust in the process, where I start to accept the things that I cannot change, where I get off my ego muscle, where i get rid of my opinions and my desires and my wants and my ridiculous driving forces that are always pulling me into the future. The ego which is full of striving just quits and the individual's sense of peace has quiet within. result is an enormous feeling of release and the person flies right up to his pink cloud and thinks he has found heaven on earth everyone knows he is doomed for a fall but it is perhaps not equally clear that it is the ego slowly making its comeback which forces the descent from the pink cloud into the arena of life where with the help of aa he can learn how to become a sober person and not an angel. I could go on with many more examples familiar to you all to show you the danger of ever assuming that the ego is dead and buried. Alcoholics Anonymous, the ego factors we're going to talk about more and the reason why hitting bottom and treating this ego and going into this print is so important to me. In my home group primetime, this material is very common amongst all of us. It's something that I use as a tool on a daily has sponsorship and working with others. You know, I just had breakfast with Bridget and we were talking about there's a really big difference in sponsorship and working avec others. I work with a lot of people and I sponsor very few, you know, and it's a topic that's not talked about enough. Like what is the exact way to sponsor people? I don't know that there's an exact way. I can tell you that the relationship, if I am feeding the sponsee and they're growing, then I'm growing also. And we're in a growing relationship. But so often these people come and go and come and go. And the alcoholic who has years of sobriety takes it very personally and their feelings get hurt. And I can tell you, I have just as a crummy track record as anybody else out there. The same things happen to me that happened to you guys in this room. I clean out my phone every six weeks and out goes her, her, her. I even forgot who she is. Where did that name come from? And they come and they go and they come and They go like a bus stop. What I've given a lot of people, without actually sponsoring them, are the ego factors. And it's an easy material to go through once you learn how to decode it. You know, real quickly, I want to touch on one other thing in the big book. The Lasker Award is talked about on page 571. And that LaskER Award was, Harry Thiebaud is the one guy that got alcoholism deemed as an illness and a disease so that the American Medical Association could recognize it as an illness, and we could get our health insurance to cover for detoxing and all kinds of other stuff. So now it's not a moral issue. And this last little page, it says, in 1951, the Lasker Award was given Alcoholics Anonymous. The citation reads in part as follows. The American Public Health Association presents a Laskers Group Award for 1951 to Alcoholics Anonymous in recognition of its unique and highly successful approach to that age-old public health and social problem, alcoholism. In emphasizing alcoholism as an illness, the social stigma associated with this condition is being blotted out. Historians may one day recognize AlcoholicsAnonymous to have been a great venture and social pioneering, which forged a new instrument for social action. A new therapy based on the kinship of common suffering, having a vast potential for the myriad other ills of mankind. So Harry Thiebaud did a tremendous amount for Alcoholics Anonymous and for the world at large. We're going to go into the Thiebault papers, and I am going to skip over some of the paragraphs, so we're not going to go in a linear way and cover everything. I'm going to start at page three, up at the top where it says The Concept of the Enlarged Ego, which is the second line on the top of step three. The concept of the enlarged ego, as noted previously, is available to common observation. Those who don't recognize it in themselves can always see it in some member of their family or among friends and acquaintances. what did we get stuck oh and and and self can't reveal self to self the ego is designed not to see itself the disease is designed Not To See Itself so the first time I ever read this I think my parents need this but I don't that you know that and it takes a while to desire to be self honest and to start looking at self and to become self-reflective but that's a huge application for the program and Alcoholics Anonymous is being self-reflective. So everyone knows egotistical people and has a perfectly clear idea of what the word means. Besides egot mystical and the series of words mentioned earlier, adjectives which help to round out the portrait of the egot statistical person are prideful, arrogant, pushing, dominating, attention seeking, aggressive, opinionated, headstrong, stubborn, determined, and impatient. If you're sponsoring and you want to use this material, I can tell you, you could sit for a good two hours with a sponsee and just break down those words. I get very raw with people that I work with. And I talk about each word here. I talk about where I'm still prideful, where I can be arrogant and arrogant can be so subtle. It can be a noise like whatever it can look just that small. Oh my God. It Can Look Like That. And it's subtle. The ego is subtle. It doesn't announce itself. It's just there and operates below the level of consciousness, pushing. I've got to have my way or even on the freeway or looking at the 10 items or less line and seeing three people in front of me. And now she's going to pull out her checkbook. And I just feel the ego's urgency. I need to get out of here. You guys are just pawns on a chessboard. Everybody needs to move, and it's almost a kill or be killed instinctive attitude, and there's no humility. There's no surrender, and its untreated alcoholism in all its blazing glory, and I continue to walk around like that, and i'm not going to get very far with any kind of peace in my life dominating. I'm going to trump over something if I have a better idea oh no you know my idea i know better it's going to go this way and i don't know that i'm doing that because i operate below the level of consciousness attention seeking you know look at me i'm noisier i'm louder listen to me aggressive opinionated i think i know more headstrong stubborn determined so these words we can sit and we can get self-reflect and see where today not yesterday or when i was a child i'm talking about right now in the day that i'm in Where do I still have these attributes of the ego? All these terms are inadequate, however, because they describe only surface features without conveying any feeling of the inner essence from which the ego springs. So we want to get into the essence, and that's why for me it's so important that I go through some of those words. Unless some appreciation for the source of the Ego is gained, the dynamic import is lost and the term may seem merely a form of name-calling. It is easy to say someone has a big ego without awareness of what is really happening in the deep layers of that person's mind, without perception of the ego. Nor is it a matter of intellect. The need here is to lay hold of the inner feeling elements upon which the activity of the ego rests. Only when these elements become clear can the fundamental basis of the Ego be clarified. So we want to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves. I want to see what's motivating me. I wantto feel the urgency. I wanto know what it feels like when I need to interrupt you, when Ineed to say something, when Ieed to tell you something, when Ieed to beat my horn ten times, when Iead to push the button to get to the crosswalk. That urgency, that hurrying, that pushiness. I wake up in the morning and there's 10,000 things rolling through my mind and my mind can't pick which one to do first. it's scattered and it's frenetic and the ego is coupled again with untreated alcoholism and then it triggers self-talking and the next thing i know i'm in some turbocharged warped instinct and i'm grabbing for more and i'M getting into financial fear and iM getting into resentments of the past so looking at this is going to really help me to stay centered it's going to help me go deeper in treating my disease and creating more emotional sobriety in the moment that i'm we're going to go down to the bottom paragraph on step three certain aspects of the infant's psyche may be usefully examined there are three factors which should receive mention first is a freud observation in his priceless phase hers her majesty the baby or his majesty the baby the queen and the baby of the king of the baby that infant is born ruler of all he surveys he comes from the nirvana of the room where he is usually the sole occupant And he clings to that omnipotence with an innocent yet determination which baffles parent after parent. So the queen and the baby for me is, how dare you treat me that way, is the queen, or is the baby? I want it now. I need it now, no. And then the queen mentality leaps up, and if you don't give it to me, off with your head. God sees him. Goodbye. So it swings from this infantile, you better give me that too and i will kill you and have you beheaded back and forth back and forth but there's no such thing as as humility or as just accepting or allowing life to unfold living life on god's terms backing down the restraint of pen and tongue you know shutting my cake hole not saying anything not having to have an opinion or a desire or a want um let's see the third okay the second stemming directly from the monarch within is that the infant tolerates frustration poorly and lets the world know it readily so i have the inability to accept any kind of frustration if the tv doesn't work i keep pressing and pressing and then i just take the clicker and i just throw it at the wall what does that do you know the coke machine doesn't give me my Coke. So I kick it really hard thinking that's going to work. You know, the washer at the laundromat doesn't work. I'm just going to shake it really hard. You Know, the inability, I can't accept frustration. I just can't. I get so mad. I hit the hood of my car. I throw a coffee cup at the wall. And this is really the nature of untreated alcoholism. And we really see it. That, I mean, that is just the way we generally roll. That's who we are i'm telling you normal people don't have the frustration outburst like we do i'm not saying that they don't Have frustrating outbursts but i feel that in the alcoholic it's extreme you know often i feel That there was neglect and rejection and problems in the home as a child and so it's quite possible that the psyche never formed properly and then alcohol and booze came in very early. And what can often happen is that, you know, they'll say that I stopped growing emotionally when I started to drink. So the basic psyche of my ego remains at a 12-year-old's and I'm stuck in a 50-year old body and it doesn't work very well to try to navigate through this world or in relationships or in a work environment. I can do a lot of damage in one day or one weekend i can get myself in a whole lot of trouble pushing and shoving and having really loud opinions and thinking that i need to have my way observe youngsters on the beach they run rather than walk observe them coming on a visit the younger one tears from the car while their elder siblings adopt a more leisurely pace the three-year-olds and more so the twos cannot engage in play requiring long periods of concentration. Wow, I have the attention span of a hummingbird and I want it now and if I can't get it now then I don't want it anymore. This is untreated alcoholism in all of its glory. I talk fast, I move fast, I put the dishes away so fast it'll make your head spin. I used to brag, I get more done in one day than the average person gets done in a week. That's not something for me to be proud about anymore. It's a singleness of purpose and it's backing down and it is breathing through and just focusing on what is right here, right now in front of me because multitasking is not healthy for us. We are natural multitaskers in a very sick way and we start juggling and there are just things all over the place and then nothing gets completed. There are so many unfinished things or they are not done in a healthy way and completed in a health way. There are loose ends over here and loose ends under here and I am looking for the quality of my life today. I'm looking for real emotional sobriety. So there's a lot to consider here. Whatever they're doing must be done quickly. As the same children age, they gradually become able to stick to one activity for longer. Okay, now we're going to go down to this paragraph that says, Now the question is, also on four. Now the questions is, if the infantile psyche persists into the adult life, how will its presence be manifested? in general when infantile traits continue into adulthood the person is spoken of as immature oh my god can anybody relate a label often applied with little comprehension for the reason for its accuracy so people say that to me and i just take it personally i don't even know what that is you know you're really immature i just think you know that's how i that's instead of self-reflecting and going, wow, I wonder what they meant by that. Where am I falling off the beam with my maturity? A label often applied with little comprehension for the reason of its accuracy. It is necessary to link these three traits from the original psyche with immaturity and at the same time show how they affect the adult psyche. If this is done, not only will the correctness of the appellation immature be apparent, but moreover, the feeling for the nature of the unconscious underpinnings of the ego will have been created. So this impatience and doing everything in a hurry and having a queen and having baby mentality, he says if we can show these to the alcoholic, we're going to really help see step zero before step one. Like how is the, how does the disease operate in my mind? When I can see the underpinnings of untreated alcoholism and I finally go into step one, the physical allergy part is so easy for us to accept that we all have a physical allergy. I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. But the unmanageable life is what we're talking about here today with years of sobriety, days of sobrietty, months of sobpriety. I don't think that anybody's going to drink by the end of the day, but we may think, and we may think in a very disturbing way i'm a deeply injured character and i want to raise my consciousness so this really helps in the beginning and even throughout my whole recovery to look at where i'm the queen and where i'm doing things in a hurry let's go over to page five and um the second paragraph let us take let us make sure that we're doing everything in a way that we can take the same trait of doing everything in a hurry and apply it to the word immature. Few will deny that jumping at conclusions, doing things as speedily as possible, give evidence of immaturity. It is youth that drives fast, thinks fast, feels fast, moves fast, acts hastily in most situations. And I do. I throw people away. I think I need it now. Move over. Hurry, hurry, hurry. I've never been in a long-term relationship. I don't know how to stay with somebody for 10 or 15 or 20 years. i haven't stayed at the same job forever i don't like things and i throw things away i have the total inability to form deep true partnerships with another human being unless this ego is examined and i build a real relationship with god because only god is going to give me enough humility to accept things to back down to have courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference of what is what you know usually it just doesn't work for me and i'm finished with it and you know if i look at my life my past becomes my future over and over and over i'm not so clever it's the same behavior drunk or sober i operate from the same way with the same unconscious underpinnings there can be little question that one of the hallmarks of the immature is the proneness to be under pressure for accomplishments big plans big schemes big hopes abound unfortunately not matched by an inability to produce yeah we're gonna build a house and live off the land oh my god i've had every pipe dream there is out there and not been able to produce very much today my life is very simple i don't future surf and i don' t have big dreams i'm not saying that big dreams for people aren't important some people it's really probably divinely inspired and it's something that's God's will, but I don't think, God, someday when I get married or someday I'm going to move here or someday I'll be rich. I stay away from all future surfing at this point. I really just enjoy my life today and I don?t know what tomorrow or next week holds. I really don't know where I'm doing. I know that God is divinely inspiring me and if I stay close to God and keep close to him, the spiritual principle is that I will always be taken care of. That spiritual principle in every religion and every spiritual program. It's just a truth. It's an absolute truth that if I stay in humility and I vibrate at an open-minded space, God's going to inspire me and God's gonna take care of me. But I have free will and in a heartbeat the ego comes back, takes hold of the steering wheel. There's an urgency. There is an opinion. I need to harm somebody or hurt somebody or push and shove and then I get what I always get let's see but the effect upon the adult of the persisting infantile quality to do everything in less than sufficient time can now be seen in a clearer light the adult trait is surely a survival from the original psyche of the infant grown up people don't do this they don't act this way let's see how much time we have here um okay so let's go into the the bottom line on page five omnipotence is of course associated with royalty if not divinity the unconscious result of the persistence of this trait is that its bearer harbors a belief of his own special role in his own exceptional rights. Such a person finds it well nigh impossible to function happily on an ordinary level. Obsessed with divine afflatus, the thought of operating in the lowly and humble areas of life is most distressing to him. I'm not going to clean for somebody if the economy goes bad i'm not going to drive that car i'm not going aware generic jeans that don't have a label on them i've been a victim of all of those things the queen and the monarch within you know i think after being in and out of jail nine times and living in the street and eating out of dumpsters you know for three years all of a sudden you need to treat me a certain way and i need to have certain clothes and i need to work in a certain environment that really i didn't work for at all i created no foundation to ever arrive there but the divine monarch within says oh no not for me and i don't know how to take a humble stand and just pick up the broom clean out the coffee pot and in that place when the ego finally does back down humility is a much better vibrational frequency than the queen thinking it needs to be somewhere be treated a certain way but the ego will never tell me this information it will do everything to hold on to its fast driving pace the ego doesn't want to die it's a real living entity i believe the ego even knows that there's a god and it's afraid of it like when the witch gets all that water poured on her oh my god i'm melting you know the ego is alive and kicking down in the basement you know the biatch in the basement rattling her chains we're gonna you know we're going to get what we need i'm going to tell you something things need to be a certain way don't you shut me up and in the beginning there's a continuous practice of me saying no thanks not today i'm not listening to this i don't want to have a dialogue with you and i really ask god to help me and it's often like a ping pong game i mean it can be an incredible amount of spiritual warfare star wars things going on like oh my god self is just trying to capture me especially if there's a drama that comes into the picture that has to do with one of those three primary instincts sex security or my desire to be someone in society when it comes to you know money property prestige and that kind of stuff the ego and the alcoholism can go on full blast with a lot of dialogue of how things are supposed to be and that queen of flatus and i'm in a whole lot of trouble so again it's a continuing backing down backing down so the very idea that such a place is all one is capable of occupying is in itself a blow to the ego which reacts with a sense of inferiority at its failure to fill a more distinguished position. Moreover, any success becomes merely ego fodder. So any success becomes an ego feeding if I'm not treated. Even in Alcoholics Anonymous I start to get asked to speak. People recognize me. Oh my God, now in my own home it's happening. Geez, every time I think I've found humility the ego wears a different hat and there she is. She's got a new outfit and I'm like where did you get those shoes? You must be kidding me. so it has this incredible recuperative power and it will attach itself to anything right here in my own home in Alcoholics Anonymous it'll do it here all of a sudden the queen says things need to be a certain way I need to be treated a certainway how dare they blah blah blah and it's painful because the ego is the greatest separator of all when the ego is large and in charge I can't merge with you I can have a relationship with you. And I don't see the separation. I'm not aware that I'm separated from you. I're not aware that I am one among fellows. The ego won't tell me that, but it's only when I have a true surrender that everyone's face looks really beautiful. And all of a sudden the minutes turn into hours and I go, wow, that whole thing just went by and everyone was so great. And it's so obvious to me that i was with a power greater than self okay so the ability to administer the affairs the affairs of state both large and small is taken for granted the belief that he is a natural executive placed in the wrong job merely confirms his conviction that at best he is a victim of lack of appreciation oh my god how many times have i been there they don't appreciate me they don't see me at worst of sabotage by jealous people who set up roadblocks to his progress the world is inhabited by selfish people intent only on their own advancement the ego plays the game of chessboard a chessboard game the ego is always comparing i gotta be strategize i gotta get here so we can get there i gotta have this i gotta Have that any comparing and any strategic mind function is always the ego. The God consciousness rises up out of the strategic mind function and allows everything to be exactly the way it is. So there's no more one is hot, one is cold, one is fat, one ist skinny, one rich, one poor, one recognized, one not. There's no waying, there's scale in the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension when it opens up, everything just is in all of its isness. you know and i can be around all kinds of the sickest people and they don't trigger me i can be in all kinds Of crazy situations and i'm not affected by it i can Be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic i can have two flat tires in one day i could be diagnosed with cancer I could have my child, you know taken away from me or killed bad things could happen And I can handle these situations that used to completely baffle me because the ego is out of the way and the God consciousness is ever-present. And this, again, is what we're talking about as a goal for emotional sobriety. This is not behavior modification. This is nicht intellectualizing something. This ist nicht psychotherapie. This ist ein psychischer Ver�nderung als Resultat dieser Schritte. Das ist das, was Alkoholics Anonymous designt f�r und jeder Schritt kommt mir n�her zu der Humilit�t und jeder Step kommt mir nahe zu den spirituellen Erfahrungen und es ist nicht nur eine spirituelle Erfahrung. every single aha moment is a spiritual experience every single one of them when i when i see differently that's only god that can produce that the ego could never do that it just has an opinion and throw that away and move over and everybody's a thing on a chessboard we gotta go go go come on you know and the god consciousness is the only thing that really allows me to stay centered and to enjoy my life and to be accepting of everything that that is presented you know and again, please, if this is new information for you, don't allow your ego to tell you that you can't achieve this because every soul can. We are wired for God. Absolutely wired. Neuroscientists will show you over and over andover the studies get bigger and bigger. We're wired for angelic beings were wired for inspiration and intuition were light were wired to have intuitive psychic feelings we're wired for surrender we're wired for compassion we're wired for forgiveness it's inside but also the bad calls are coming from inside the house so we got to find where the telephone is who's making the phone calls and unplug that stuff and get God down into the basement and shine a light on this so again self-examination is very important one of the prayers that I often give people is God help me be a better self-reflector. Help me to look at myself. Help me to see from a bird's eye view where I'm still getting off the mark. Help me see what's triggering me and start to notice throughout the day the subtleties of triggers where I, or I bristle or, you know, any kind of jumping inside, I stop and I go, wow, what was that? What was that all about? And I'll really just look and take my emotional temperature because it's always the ego trying to recover, trying to recuperate. And again, this is about right now. Emotional sobriety is not about time. If somebody in here has one week of sobriete, I guarantee you can achieve this just like somebody with 25 years. The soul is outside of time. It is eternal and it is dying to come home while it's still stuck in this ratty Volkswagen on this third dimensional earth. It wants to come home, but we have to feed it because God's not going to do anything for us that we won't allow God to do. So how do we remove the blocks, which are the ego, to allow the sunlight of the spirit to pour in from the inside out and then be the light of the world in Alcoholics Anonymous and be somebody who's a demonstration of the 12 steps as a design for living, to be a demonstration to somebody that can carry a message and live a life without blood on their hands and move through life in all kinds of problems and really help raise the bottom in our own home group. You know, that's another thing that is a really great topic is like there's so many people in my home group who just don't get it. That's our job. Once we get a message like this, I believe to share just about every single meeting and to share a message of strength and a message OF HOPE and be very consistent with that and be loving and be forgiving. We are in the sick bay and everybody in there has a gown that's open in the back with tampon strings and testicles hanging down. This ain't a joke. I mean, this is, we really have the sickest of the sick. We are the bottom of the bottom and yet we have the capacity to go to the top of the top of the tip of the toe. Even monks and nuns often won't go as high as an alcoholic who went from untreated all the way to the tippy top because there's such a tremendous amount of pain. It's absolutely the touchstone you know to all of the spiritual progress i'm going to allow for a couple of questions on this at this point if there's anybody that has something that they want to add or ask is it too much information go ahead good come on up well you gave the example yesterday of the sorry of the 405 and you know every 15 miles on the 406 there's a sign that says in the media that says slower traffic keep right and it drives me absolutely crazy because slower traffic doesn't keep right. And it's like the rest of society is enforcing my ego to listen to my ego and to scream at that car in front of me who's not keeping right and scream at whoever it is who's doing what I've been taught was right and wrong all my life right from a scientific sense or from a from a training sense or as you said all the way down to the Freudian sense of I was the queen or the king when I was born so I mean how do you suppress when you have the whole rest of society I got it so so you please allow me to just go into your ego because the real Greg is dying to be born and so I'm going to go at the old character and the old character ego inside of you is the king and he's the freeway monitor and he knows exactly what every a-hole on that freeway should be doing and they're not doing it right and someday we're going to get an Uzi and we're just going to take some of these MFers out. So for Greg's old character, what you want to know is that your ego gets triggered by driving more than anything else. That's your trigger. Mine's family members, yours is driving. Before you put that key in that ignition, you sit for 30 seconds and you say, power, help me drive this car. Please God, could you help me drive for one mile without taking the bait? And then you go a mile and you see something, the ego says, no thanks, we're not going to do that. I got to get to work because honestly, I can say that driving doesn't trigger me at all. I can drive anywhere in any traffic and there's usually one leg up and there's rock and roll blasting or some AA thing going on. I'm never bothered middle fingers never wave on the freeway they wave in other areas but for me so it's definitely it's an inside job and the calls are coming from inside your house and it's you it's not them I have to say that because I love you and I want you to get help so I'm going to go straight for the jugular they're not doing it they're just doing it and you're taking the and reacting. So you might also, I'm just guessing, have another character defect that runs along with this. You might possibly have a time management issue and run slightly late. So if you always get to places late, half of your late problem is you left late and now every a-hole in the world needs to move over because here comes Greg and don't you know who he is? So it would probably help that character flaw if you left a little bit earlier and you prayed to God. And this is all about application. How do I apply more of these spiritual principles to my life today? I really hope that helped. Okay, does anybody else have a question about this? Yeah, Bridget. it's this okay this one's working also um thank you astrid um this stuff really hits home but i could be aware of it too which i'm grateful with and um there was something about multitasking okay so i get that i'm a multitasker and i was wondering if what if if someone has a lot on their plate, is that also untreated alcoholism? No, not necessarily. It's the way I respond to life. I actually can be with a power and multitask. Sometimes things speed up throughout the day and I can actually run at a very high functioning pace and get everything done. But if I start out in untreated alcoolism and I've never been surrendered and I'm always grabbing and taking more and trying to deal with more than I can handle, yeah, sure, I'll pet sit for you and I'll come to your birthday party and oh my God, I got to run so-and-so's errands and geez, there's a bunch of stuff in the laundry. You're insane. You know, I'm insane if I do that. So I want to pick and choose my battles carefully and it's an inner feeling more than anything. If I can become a great multitasker with a power greater than self, then that's wonderful. But if there's so much on my plate that I feel like I'm going to explode, then why don't I get rid of some of these things And I can only treat my disease in the moment that I'm in. I can Only have a relationship with a power in the Moment that i'm in and I can Only really be focused wholeheartedly on one thing at a time And god wants me to be god-centered and I believe that the key To getting access to that power is being completely awake to the moment With no other thoughts and being focused with a singleness of purpose on my steering wheel or brushing my teeth or talking on the phone to you or eating my meal or vacuuming my house. It's a tall order, but for the alcoholic, I feel like this design of living gives us so much more strength. You know, most normies, they don't get into as much trouble in the mind as the alcoholic does. They can drive their car, and believe me, that's a very common question that Greg asked. I see it much more with the guys than with the girls. It's almost one of the number one questions from the podium in prime time people on the freeway drive me crazy it is so common i hear it every single day you know it's i think it might even be a slightly male aggressive testosterone you've got to get in front of the herd thing i think het might even have a a drive like that but anyway the bottom line is the urgency and the multitasking do it all you want as long as you're feeling like you're okay and with a power greater than self if i'm doing it with this future surfing urgency and there's this frenetic energy inside all bets are off i'm going to be exhausted at the end of the day and i'm gonna show up to dinner i'm gotta go you know what bridget can you just be quiet for a minute because i need to breathe and who wants to be around me when i'm behaving like that it's like you need to breath i need get out of here you know it's very toxic and i don't realize the toxicity that i spread around when i am in untreated alcoholism so i hope that helped anyway let's go further into let's see uh the genesis of i think we're at the genasis of all this is beyond his perception to tell him that his reactions spring from the demands of an intercept in their unsatisfied king is to invite incredulity and disbelief so far from the conscious mind or any such thoughts or feelings so to tell somebody who's up on their muscle with their ego you know what you are such a queen they can get really mad the queen gets triggered by someone calling the queen a queen wow you know it's just like when we were drinking that people go you know you're drinking too much it really bothers me it's fine you know i can't handle it i can'T hear it unless i'm going for more unless i have a desire to be in a program of recovery the diseases the disease in the ego, the way it's designed is so clever and so hardened and it recovers so fast even from humiliation, even from a slap in the face. It just recovers and it gets back in the driver's seat. That didn't hurt. That didn' t hurt that much. Whatever. And it just keeps going forward because it's the inner structure that's my survival mechanism. And if I don't find God, I'm always going to be surviving from the ego. And that's what we so often see in dry untreated alcoholism in AA. The individual may admit that in many ways he acts like a spoiled brat, but he is scarcely conscious of the extent of the tendency, nor how deeply rooted it may be. He, like most people, resolutely avoids a careful look because the recognition of any such inner attitudes is highly disturbing. To hear this information for the first time is highly disturbing. God's not going to show anything to me or to you that I can't handle. God is not going to show all of our alcoholism to us in all its blazing glory because we go running down the street pouring napalm on our heads and flick both of our bicks and light our hair on fire. It would just be way too much. This is a gentle program and it's progress, not perfection. It's not a race. There's no finishing point. It's a lifelong journey. A lifelong journey of unfolding in the spirit of looking for more, of going deeper and digging down into the dirt that's still inside the soul and seeing the things that block me. The unconscious credence in one's special prerogative savors too much of straight selfishness to be anything but unpleasant to contemplate, and so, for the most part, people remain happily ignorant of the unconscious drives which push them around. they may wonder why they tend to boil inside and wish they could free themselves from a constant sense of uneasiness and unsettlement they may recognize that they seem jittery and easily excited and long for the time when they can meet their life more calmly and maturely they may hate their tendency to become rattled but their insight into the origin of all this is next to nothing, if not a complete blank. The king or the queen lies deep below the surface and far out of sight. So, you know, Thiebaud even says that I don't like that I tend to boil inside and that my mind will tell me that I'm just waiting for the day where I'm not so jittery anymore, where I am more calm and I am mature. And then the ego will tell when I get the job, When I lose the weight, when I get the guy, when I get The Thing. And then I get The Thing and I'm like, I got The Thing, I did The Thing how come I still feel the same inside? And then the ego says you didn't get the right thing. Go over there and you get that thing. Bring it back in and I go on this ridiculous scavenger hunt and Igo over there and I might even work on something for like a year to get The Things and I getTheThing and I bring it back. I'mlike phew, got it. Now we're going to be happy How come I'm not happy? You didn't get therightthing. Gooverthereandgetthething and my entire life has been chasing the thing and the thing and the think and the thing and thing and the thing because like I said before the ego will never ever tell me that it's the ego so what I need to see is the deep underpinnings of the unconscious part of the ego that's why I do believe that it's important in the beginning to not only watch the mind but write down the most repetitive thoughts because those repetitive thoughts are attached to an unconquerable ego those repetitive thoughts you know it's often a wound from childhood or my ex did this or how welcome my daughter, or if only it had been different, or when we get there. And you want to see what the mind is spinning on and chewing on, and then you wantto see what instinct it's attached to and what defect spins off from that mind function. So we look at the repetitive thought, we see what instant it's attach to, and we see how it motivates me and makes me poop in my own nest on a daily and make more trouble in my life. And this is how we get to the core of the ego and the core of our defects. So you can do a real healthy spot check inventory way down in step two by looking at the unmanageable life. And it's the same example as in step 10, you know, the steps are the steps and the application and the spiritual principles are the same, whether it's in step 2 or step 10. I want to get self-honest. I want go slower. I want back down and I want start really seeing what's driving me. The inability to accept frustration, page 7. The last trait carried over from infancy is the inability to accept frustration. In an obvious sense this inability is another aspect of the king or the queen within since one of the prerogatives of royalty is to proceed without interruption don't you dare stop me, don'tyou dare tell me what to do you know and it's really it's it's blocked me from relationships for so long because sometimes somebody has something to interject or a good idea and i just won't hear it and i'll throw and dismiss the whole thing and i'm going to do what i want to do and i get what i always get i can't handle dictatorship or even a suggestion you know when someone comes to me and says you know you may not like to hear it i'm already thinking right i'm not gonna like hearing this i mean that's just how the ego drives instead of going wow somebody really cares enough to be honest with me and tell me something let me hear what is it that you got so so passionate about that you really wanted to express to me i want to hear this god help me be open so in an obvious sense this inability is another aspect of the king within since one of the prerogatives of royalty is to proceed without interruption for the king to wait is an affront to the royal rank a slap at his majesty the ramifications of this inability to endure frustration are so widespread and the significance of much that occurs in the behavior of the alcoholic is so far reaching that it seems advisable to discuss this trait under a separate heading so harry tebow says that in alcoholics sober alcoholics he's seen the inability to accept frustration the thin-skinnedness the fragileness of alcoholics such a big big big scheme in their life that what he really wants to do is even have it under a whole separate heading it really needs to be examined and looked at that i have the inability To Accept Frustration That I'm Thin Skinned That I Can't take it that i have to have it my way um as already indicated on the surface the inability of the king to accept frustration is absolutely logical the wish of the King is the law of the land and especially in the land of infancy any frustration is clearly a direct threat to the status of his majesty whose whole being is challenged by the untoward interruption even more significant is another aspect of this inner imperious behind it lies the assumption that the individual should not be stopped you know i remember it more as a child like now i've really lived in a lot of surrender and humility but just even wanting to stay out till midnight and your mom tells you 10 god you could just take a knife and stab her like i just i can't be stopped or you're in a relationship with a boyfriend he says i don't want you to hang out with those people Or you wanted to go to one college and they say, no, you have to go to another. That kind of stuff. Normal healthy people can handle those kinds of things. Alcoholics, it's very, very difficult for me. I get so frustrated in a stopping if the ego is on and cracking. Again, this is logical if one considers how an absolute monarch operates. He simply does not expect to be stopped as he wills and so will he do this trait persisting in the unconscious furnishes a constant pressure driving the individual forward it says in essence i'm unstoppable the unconscious which cannot be stopped views life entirely from the angle of whether or not a stopping is likely imminent or not at all in the picture when a stopping ist likely there is worry and perhaps depression when it seems imminent there is anxiety bordering on panic and when the threat is removed there is a relief of gaiety i'm gonna do what i want to do when i want to do it health is equated with a feeling of buoyancy and smooth sailing ahead a sense of the i feel wonderful sickness contrary wise means lacking vim vigor and vitality and is burdened with a sense that i'm not getting anywhere the need to get somewhere to be on the go and the consequent suffering from the eternal restlessness is still another direct effect of an inner inability to be stopped and you know Bill Wilson says we remain restless and irritable and discontent so often we're picking our knees are bouncing we're looking at our phone we're glancing all over the place it's so difficult to be in untreated alcoholism it's a very painful and disconnected disease um the king not only cannot accept the normal frustrations of life because of his inordinate driving ahead is constantly creating unnecessary roadblocks by virtue of his own insistence on barging ahead thus causing added trouble for himself you know and it's like i'm my own worst enemy i get into arguments or i say things or i do things hastily and i make a problem and now I have more damage control, more Valdez oil spill. When I vibrate at a higher frequency and I'm connected to a power, those things don't happen. Everything just is in its isness and I'm very focused on what I do and I'm able to produce at a much higher level. Of course, on some occasions the king gets stopped and stopped totally. Illness, arrest, sometimes the rules and regulations of life will halt him or her. Then he or she marks the time, complies if needed waiting for the return of freedom which he celebrates in the time-honored fashion if he is an alcoholic he gets drunk or just runs back going back into ego initiating a phase where there is no stopping the immaturity of such a person is readily evident he is impatient if of delay can never let matters evolve he must have a blueprint to follow outlining clearly a path through the jungle of life the wisdom of the ages is merely shackling tradition which should make way for the freshness and influence of youth the value of staying where one is and working out one's destiny in the here and now is not suspected the 24-hour principle would be confining for one whose inner life brooks no calm confinement the unstoppable person seeks life fun adventure excitement and discovers he is on a perpetual whirly gig which carries him continuously ahead but of course in a circle the unstoppable person has no time for growth he must always inwardly feel immature and we see so many people in alcoholics anonymous like this we're riddled with this in in our you know they can't even hold on to a job or relationship a car they they say they say things like alcoholics don't have problems getting things but they have problems keeping things. You can see the untreated, even body language of a male youth that would be 15 or 20 and he's like, you know, 40. Oh, Donnie, what's up? You know, all of that untreated pushing, driving, noisy, insecure, excitement, fun, adventure, unstoppableness. top of page nine this then is how the carryover of the infantile traits affects the adult so encumbered he is possessed by an inner king or queen who not only must do things in a hurry but has no capacity for taking frustration inside she seeks a life which will not stop and finds herself in a ceaseless rat race all this is part and parcel of the big ego the individual has no choice she cannot select one characteristic and hang on to it shedding others other more obvious undesirable traits it is all or nothing for example the driving person usually has plenty of energy sparkle and vivacity she stands out as a most attractive human being clinging to that quality however merely ensures the continuance of excessive drive and ego with all the pains attendant upon a life based on those qualities. The sacrifice of the ego element must be total or they will soon regain their ascendancy. So here even Thiebaud talks about a total ego reduction or sacrifice oftheego. I don't know if you're aware that in the psychiatric community, I actually believe and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's against the law for a psychiatrist to bring religion into their practice. So a psychiatrist isn't going to use prayer and meditation and finding a higher power. They're going to us a lot of self-help, self-modification kind of stuff. And self is the last thing I want to be helping. I want get rid of help. So I feel like Harry Thiebaud even in the 30s and 40s was very cutting edge when he'd say the ego needs to be reduced or getting rid of and still you can go to a psychiatrist today the best one maybe 150 bucks and she or he is not going to recommend that it's your ego that's driving you and your opinions and if you just get rid of them and be humble with god because my what an easy answer and we'd have nothing to talk about at the end of the day there wouldn't be any more problems so learning to live page nine those who view the prospect of life without abundant drive as inutterably dull and boring should examine the life of the members of Alcoholics Anonymous who have truly adopted the AA program. They will see people who have been stopped and who therefore do not have to go anywhere, but people who are learning for the first time in their lives to live. They are neither dull nor wishy-washy. Quite the contrary, they are alive and interested in the realities about them. They see things in the large. they are tolerant they are open-minded not closed-minded bullying ahead they are receptive to the wonders in the world about them including the presence of a deity who makes all this possible they are the ones who are really living the attainment of such a way of life is no mean accomplishment preliminary to this discussion the conclusion was offered that the ego was a residual of the initial feeling life of the infant and it should be evident that the immaturity characteristically found in the makeup of the alcoholic is a persistence of the original state of the child. In connection with the description of the manifestations which denote a large and active ego, it should Be recalled that the presence in the unconscious of such ego forces may be quite out of reach of conscious observation self can't reveal self to self only through the acting and feeling of the individual can their existence be suspected does anybody have a question a remark no okay let's go to um page 11 no compromising with the ego and just do that second paragraph thus the dilemma encountered in ego reduction would be best resolved by recognizing that the old ego must go and a new one take its place then no issue would arise about how much of the earliest elements may be retained the answer theoretically is none actually the total banishment of the initial state is difficult to achieve man can only grow in the direction of its complete elimination. Its final expulsion is a goal which can only be hoped for. So here Harry Thiebaud realizes that the total expulsion of the ego and the banishment of it could only be possibly Gandhi, and maybe even not Gandhi. You know, I heard Gandhi cheated on his wife relentlessly. But I can tell you that I have had moments and hours and days where the ego is reduced and completely treated. And I can tell you that from experience, so I know that if it can happen for me, it can happen f�r anybody in here, because we all have the same disease, we all ha ve the same mind function, and we all h ve access to power much greater than self. So if we're going for emotional sobriety, then I believe that there's an inward goal here, and that is to remain in humility and not to be driven by the ego. And this can only be produced in the moment that I'm in. I can't go to India and get this. I can'T be baptized and get this. There's no amount of spiritual literature that's going to get this. I must roll up my sleeves and do something in here. It's a self-awareness program. It's going inwardly. It's an inside job. I don't even have to tell people. I don'T even have TO tell my sponsor what my character flaws are. I begin to know what I'M UP AGAINST. Oh, that again. God, CAN YOU TAKE THIS FROM ME IN THE MOMENT THAT I'M IN? can you remove it from me today? Can you help me today not eat that chocolate cake, not look at porn, not drive so fast, not hate on somebody. Pick your poison, whatever it is. The ego and the instincts are always going to attach itself to something else. It wears new hats and faces. Just when I've put out one fire, another one starts over here. it's a continuous lifelong journey it's an ongoing process okay where did was i just at okay then down at the bottom of 11 the effects of surrender upon the psyche are extremely logical the traits listed as characteristic of the ego influence are canceled out the opposite of the king is the commoner yay man let's become a worker among workers you know i don't need to be anybody in AA. I don't need to be anybody in this world. I take myself out of the popularity contest. I'm not running for race anymore. It doesn't matter. I am a wallflower. I like walking into some store now and I am not hot and skinny anymore and I don?t even get recognized and people call me man. It is a good thing for me. It really is. It's a really good thing for me and I can grow in those shoes and be okay in my own skin. I can look at my wrinkles. I can see that i have you know that i've grown fatter or older whatever and i can be okay with it alcoholics anonymous teaches me how to be humble how not to have those inner drives alcoholics unanimous stresses humility the opposite of impatience is the ability to take things in stride live and let live you know let go and let god to make an inner reality of the slogan, easy does it. The opposite of drive is staying in one position where one can be open minded and receptive and responsive. This picture of the non-ego type of person might be amplified in many directions but to do so would serve no immediate purpose. To have discussed the effects of the ego upon behavior and to have pointed out what may happen when the ego is at least temporarily knocked out of action is sufficient to make the point of communication so what tivo's just saying here is that a discussion of the effect of the ego is really important between one alcoholic and another a real discussion of like dude what are you rolling here what's going on what's your mind telling you where is the urgency where's the fire where do we need to get to uh really going deep deep inwardly and just getting as self-honest as possible you know in the end there's really nothing to be ashamed of it's all the false self it's all the old character it's All untreated alcoholism it's all faulty foundation that needs to be torn out and built a new unfirm bedrock and the more I desire to be with God the easier it is to even like okay I'll tell you the one I'm really embarrassed about it it all just begins to go it is the ego which is the arch enemy of sobriety wow go for it harry tebow and it is the ego which must be disposed of if the individual is to attain a new way of life okay the last part on page 14 turn the page the capacity the last uh the last paragraph the capacity of the ego to bypass experience is astounding and would be humorous if it were not so tragic in its consequences. And what that means for me is that the ego recovers so quickly. I get a DUI, and I'm so humiliated in jail, and the next day I'm drunk again. I can't even remember the pain. I'm beaten up. I'm ripped off by somebody. They took my money out on the streets or whatever, and the Next Day I'm back at it again, you know? I get caught in a lie. I get Caught Stealing, and it just recovers, and it says do it again because i i can't do anything else the alcoholism it's a repetitive mind function and it does the same thing over and over again often even knowing it's going to get the same results but it can't stop it because the obsession of the mind and the ego is so much more powerful it trumps over everything except god god's the only thing that can treat the ego there's not enough psych meds then there's not enough love, and there's not enough money, and there's not enough alcohol, and there's not enough anything that can treat the ego. There's only one thing higher than the ego, higher than the lower self, and that is a power greater than self. So like I've said so many times here, it's a spiritual solution. Let's see, cutting the individual down to size and making the results last is a task never completely accomplished so there's no finishing point we're not saints we're willing to grow along spiritual lines we claim spiritual progress you know what i've been taught is when i backslide and i go back into a defect today it's just oopsie it's not like oh my god you did it again how can't i just be an oopsie can i just have an oops can i like did i say that oh my God did i do that again oh my god did i eat that again oh my god do i spend that again it's an oops god protect me god strengthen me god help me move forward because the ego will even attach itself to beating me up you know it'll take the underside it'll takethe bottom of the heap i'm never gonna get this right whatever the self talker is saying i just want to be rid of it so that i can be with god okay the possibility of a return of the ego must be faced by every alcoholic if it does return he may refrain from drinking but he will surely go on a dry drunk which is what we're talking about here emotional sobriety with all the old feelings and attitudes once more asserting themselves and making sobriete a shambles of discontent and restlessness not only the ego is decisively retired not until the ego ist decisively retired can peace and quiet again prevail as one sees the struggle in process the need for the helping hand of a deity becomes clearer mere man alone all too often seems powerless to stay the force of his ego he needs assistance and he needs it urgently thank you harry tebow for the ego factors i know we covered a lot of material i have never been through the tebow papers in one hour that was like wow and i understand if your head is spinning but you have the papers now and maybe you even underlined the paragraphs that we went over and i know that the cds if you purchase them you can go over and over and back down and be able to focus on it it's this isn't a race and there's a lot of information here and it's a lifelong journey and there're going to be many more aha moments along the way as we go into deeper layers of self-discovery. I think we're going to stop for a 15 minute break and just thanks you guys for being here and allowing me to do this. It's a really beautiful experience. Thank you. Thanks for listening.