Biochemical Allergy and Mental Obsession – Herb K – Workshop – Part 23 of 25 – Herb

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening actually wherever you are actively listening to this 12-step zoom video recording telephone workshop it's called is being recorded and maybe you're listening watching it at some other time which is of course the point of recording my name is Herb and I'm an alcoholic today is November 20th here in Los Angeles I would ask you to really intentionally recommit to that open mind and that open heart that is expressed in the set aside prayer god please set aside everything that i think i know about myself my brokenness my spiritual path and you for an open mind and a new experience of myself my brokenness my spiritual pattern and especially you Please join me in the serenity prayer, God. Grant me the serentity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things can and wisdom to know the difference. Just to give us a sense of where we've been so that we can be where we are and kind of anticipate how it fits into where we're going. We've engaged in a process, a very precise sometimes difficult process of waking up from being asleep not knowing actually that we're asleep but suffering whether you're suffering from your addiction because you're relatively new or because you have for whatever reason some circumstances in which you find yourself relapsing whatever your addiction is you're suffering that's the first half of the first step and we spent a long time doing a deep dive into at least getting an understanding of what does that mean I have a problem with my body it's a biochemical problem it's not my fault it's my genetics I have an allergic reaction to some type of substance or some type of process it's a metaphor it's not necessarily science but it really explains and helps me to resolve why question why when I start can't I not stop Oh biochemistry physiology biology well I'm pretty intelligent fairly well-educated and I have a strong will in many situations why can't I stay stopped when I stop because I don't like the suffering that comes when I start not because I have problem with mind I have an obsession it's not my fault it's the way am built psychologically but I also come to realize that although it's not my fault it is my responsibility to deal with it because I'm a human being that knows that they know eventually or it has the capacity for that and they have I have free will to be able to take make decisions to take actions to deal with the suffering nobody else is responsible for my addiction except me dash that my life had become unmanageable now you may be sitting here with months or years even or decades even of abstinence in recovery continuous abstinence in recovery and yet you're sitting here perhaps because your suffering serial sober suffering not from your addiction but from the unmanageability of your life as you experience it in circumstances and with other people suffering is a great motivator to try to find a solution to modify the suffering one of the reasons for our addiction is we wanted to reduce the tension in our life then we found out that short term it did work long term it just increased the tension and we looked at the bedevilments as the behavioral manifestation of the spiritual malady or the human malady I don't need to use the word spiritual the descriptions on page 52 made current and personal suggest behavior that describes my suffering how does it look and then on page 62 it describes underneath why does it happen oh because I'm self-will self-centered it's not my fault it's the way I'm wired existentially ontologically big words that just mean is my very nature I will always choose me on my own power that's the Waybill conclude page 62 the second paragraph we We can't even reduce it much by wishing we're trying on our own power. I wish more people would really have that experience, but that's unmanageability. That's what Bill means in step 10, that we're not cured. We're always going to be human. In step 10 he says watch for resentment and fear and dishonesty and selfishness when they crop up, not if they crop up. We will always on a daily basis be human. And as humans, we can make progress in consciousness and in our practice and action, but we will never be perfect. Please hear that. There's 30% of you out there that are perfectionists whether you know it or not. It's not healthy. To want to be better is healthy. To want to be perfect is a delusion, it's a neurotic aspiration built on fantasy. And so we collapse in full surrender at the defeat that we've experienced either from our addiction or from our life. And we take several months to complete step one. Understanding it is good. it is really the point and then out of that complete implosion we're asked to make a decision with that free will that we have determined is not so free bill asks us on page 53 which is the bullseye point of step 2 God is or God isn't what is your choice Wow that's in your face that's a confrontation and in fact the next sentence says now we're confronted with the question of faith okay a decision of my free will oh I finally get it I don't have free will with regard to my addiction I really don't know free will with regard to my unmanageability. But I do have free will in my choice of God or no God, power or no power, hope or no hope. It's a faith decision. There's no evidence, there's no certitude, there's not knowledge, there is no feeling, there are no emotions, no substance it's dark and thin and we make this decision because we don't see any alternative and we choose our concept and we move on realizing that reality that we have made a choice about the concept that reality behind the concept a mystery that we cannot comprehend is deep down inside of ourselves no it's another decision we don't feel it we don' t know it we just make that decision and so we realize within me there is not effective human power within me there is effective power it's just not me but it's available to me and it cares about me and I can have a relationship with it capital I again no feeling no knowledge no certitude nor emotion no substance thin and dark that's the journey of faith and yet although it's dark there's the light faint faint flicker of light of hope at the end down the road in the tunnel down at the of this tunnel then maybe it's that you've seen witness to the light by other people that it's there or you've read something and then been inspired that the light is there because you hear it you see it in other people or in other circumstances and you proceed on that that existential leap of faith leap of faith into the abyss taking actions and we began those actions with step four what are the obstacles in me the clouds in me to the light bill uses the term sunlight of the spirit deep down inside underneath all reality the clouds in me that are me that are from me block the sunlight that is available to me deep down in me and the process of steps four through nine is the identification of the clouds and their dissipation and removal partly with my action mostly with grace that that's just a term i use to describe a mystery of the x plus factor that i can't explain because what i know is i do an awful lot of work from four to nine i do an awful a lot of it takes weeks months maybe even years for some of us to complete steps four through nine we do a lot and then we realize that the results are disproportionately larger than the work I contributed to it that's what I call grace that's when I call God that's why I called gift that's what I call a power other than myself that's that's what I called the mystery because I can't explain it then I don't need to I can observe it now standing on the path months or years later after I have finished step 9 and lived that way in steps 10 11 and 12 a practice that is is a daily practice I look back over my shoulder and I go I still don't know whether it's true all the theory all the words all the explanations that I have heard and I have read and I seen and I actually said myself I have no idea whether all of that is true as I have expressed it what I do know is true is that i have been changed i have been transformed i have i've been given a life that flourishes and it started 31 years ago yeah now i'm sober 35 years and that was a gift in the story for another day alcohol was removed from me without my request and without my action my only response to that is humility and gratitude I went to a two or three months after I had quit drinking after drinking had quit me and at four years of sobriety going to a meeting every day talking to a sponsor every day I met a man a magnetic North Pole for me that changed my life a mechanic with the big book he took me through the steps for the very first time out of the book precisely like you're doing and we came to step four mm-hmm and we did their resentment inventory like you've been doing columns one and two and you've begun to do column three and I believe I gave you the assignment of taking a look at pages 65 66 and 67 it's in between column 3 and column 4 65 when we were finished we considered it carefully well you're not finished I know that but why wait when you have a tool in front of you that could in fact expedite the process that you're involved in why not become acquainted with it right now i didn't know this 31 years ago but after i've done the work and i look back on it i get very practical when i encounter these tools that it took me weeks or months to become exposed to and incorporate into my program I saw how effective they were why would we wait I mean that's one of the reasons that we start the workshop with 12 11 and then 10 so that you can become aware of the purpose and the tools for a spiritual awakening why wait oh you're not going to do them at the beginning of the workshop as competently as you're going to do them at the end of the workshop okay but you can do them and then practicing them get better at them as you make progress in the reason for them the first thing apparent was that this world and its people will often quite wrong to conclude that others were wrong were as far as most of us ever got we blame others were victims I was a victim 48 years old four years sober I was the victim they didn't know that I did it no I thought that I did one of the speakers in a meeting said it's not the things that we don't know that hurt us although that is true they do but what really hurts us more is the things that we know with certitude that are just absolutely wrong and that was absolutely my experience both with regard to who I am and why I'm not and what this whole thing is about God and it took me another few years and a couple journeys through the steps for the full curtain to part in terms of knowing Who I am knowing who I'm not and then realizing that my concept of God up till that point was the very impediment to my relationship with the mystery the usual outcome was that people continue to wrong us and we stayed sore nothing changes if nothing changes sometimes it was remorse and then we were sword ourselves it's okay to put yourself on your resentment list the big book is very supportive of that I'm not encouraging it I'm just saying that if in fact that's your inclination and experienced why not the more we fought and tried to have our own way the worst matters got as in war the victor only seem to win, our moments of triumph for short lived. Now he's going to get into a prayer practice. The whole point of this now next 10 minutes of discussion, this review of pages 66 and 67, is to introduce you to a prayer practice, a prayer for the removal of deep resentments. We each have a cancer, many cancers maybe, that will metastasize if in fact not dealt with. they will metastasize if not dealt with it is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and happiness so he's making a distinction between regular resentments and deep resentments I'm asking you to take a look at your list whatever your list is of resentment and to identify with the checkmark the deep ones those that have roots down into the marrow of your bones I had eight my father who was dead 12 years at that point but I had a visceral rage every time I thought of him my mother my wife my sister four coaches excuse me for bosses and a coach I had eight well I think that's it the point is I had a whole big list of resentments at that time I've tried to help you shape yours so that it's no more than 20 but even if it's less than 20 just identify the deep ones they're not all 5,000 pound sharks some of them are one pound trout, five pound tuna. I'm not a fisherman so I'm not sure of the accuracy of my count. To the precise extent that we permit these do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile? The alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience this business of resentment is infinitely grave in fact he says it will put you in the grave we found that it is fatal for when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit see the metaphors i use i get from the big book clouds and sunlight resentment is a cloud it's a cancer small and then it metastasizes and grows if not treated excised by surgery chemotherapy radiation use your metaphors It needs to be eliminated, otherwise it will grow and it will squeeze the human life, the spiritual life, emotional life, and eventually the very physical life out of you. The insanity of alcohol, the insanity of our addiction, the obsession, that's insanity. be different this time a thought that is a lie returns and we engage in our addiction again we drink again it says here and with us to drink is to die if we are to live and be free of anger the grouch and the brainstorm are not for us they are the dubious luxury of normal people dubious it's doubtful luxury not necessary normal nobody on this call well you already know that we are abnormal we are innately defective Our bodies are different. Our minds are different Those are the things that make us innately different. It's not a moral thing It's a biological and a psychological thing And even as human beings Not even connected to our addiction As human beings were defective our will Is defective in that it will always choose me as a survival mechanism And the whole point of my free will is to grow through some type of rite of passage to full maturity where I'm using my will properly. Certainly to survive, certainly to thrive. But mostly to have a relationship with meaning broader than myself and a contribution to the community of humanity around myself. That's science now. Psychology, happiness. not just theology and 12-step spirituality we turn back to the list for it holds the key to the future we are prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle 180 degree view we're going to turn around from left to right we're to turn a round from inside to outside to begin to see the world then as people really dominated us in that state wrongdoings of others fancied or real had the power to actually kill we're looking at that column 1 column 2 column 3 how did it impact me it diminished our lives as we perceived and interpreted it how could we escape resentments must be mastered, but how? Here's the wooden stake in the heart again. We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. We're as powerless over the removal of our resentments as we are powerless over our addiction. That is a heavy hit. So we say now we're going to need prayer. This is our course. we need to change our attitude we realize that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick well, that's a new attitude they're not just jerks and other four-letter words oh, they're spiritually sick it introduces a little compassion for their humanity though we did not like their symptoms I'm on page 67 and the way these disturbed us column one column two they like ourselves are sick too oh this new attitude of compassion for them includes me acknowledging that I'm just a human being just like them not so much compassion as it is awakening to the reality I am actually no different than they are a pathetic human being pathetic in the sense of a warm affection that recognition of my brokenness not not in judgment now here it is we ask God to help us show them the same tolerance pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend when a person offended we said to ourselves this is a sick man how can i be helpful to him god save me from being angry thy will be done see bill is suggesting a prayer here when we're powerless he always suggests prayer we will see that in every piece and component of the fourth step we're powerless over our resentment we're powerful over our fear we're powerless over our dishonesty, we're powerless over our sexual behavior. We have the responsibility of identifying it because we can know. We have the responsibility of taking some action because we can decide to take free action and some of that may help but in the final analysis we're powerless to remove resentment and fear and dishonesty and to change our sexual behavior and to not hold secrets we're powerless over that so in the final analysis we ask for power we ask god to help us notice we're not praying for them this is a poorly understood area in the big book because you hear it all the time in the meetings oh pray for them no i mean first of all that's a wonderful spiritual practice i'm not dismissing it i'm just clarifying that that's not the recommendation here that's the instruction here the instruction here is we pray for ourselves we invite the divine surgeon to enter into our cancerous soul to remove surgically the cancer in us and to bring healing to us We're asking for divine intervention. We ask God to help us show them tolerance, pity, and patience. He goes on in the next paragraph. We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. There it is again. That mantra in the big book of the ultimate antidote for self-centeredness is other-centeredness as expressed in being helpful. That's how page 89 starts, working with others. Nothing will so much ensure immunity. Immunity! We have a disease, we have a need for immunization, and this is the inoculation. Prayer and compassionate action. Steps 11, step 12. You'll hear that as a recurring theme because that's the underbelly underneath this spiritual practice of turning and of being turned turning my commitment to action and the action being turned my acceptance that there's grace there's an x plus factor there's a mystery at for at work here that i hope and expect and am grateful for when i experience we cannot be helpful to all people but at least god will show us how to take a kindly intolerant view of each and every one and i add that to the prayer if you go to the way of life document in between column three and column four you will find a current version of prayer for the removal of deep resentment what I'm suggesting here because it was the suggestion made to me in the practice that I incorporated that gave me freedom from my deep resentment is to number one check off the deep resentments you might have one you might have ten it doesn't make any difference what the number is it's your judgment it's a relative term you're the one that makes that decision whether it's deep or not and then begin to pray this prayer specifically one prayer for the removal of each of those now I had eight deep resentments at that time I chose to pray eight separate prayers one for each of them every day and I prayed for three months on a daily basis with nothing happening but after about three months as I recall now it's 31 years ago one of them had no negative valence no energy no resentment I crossed it off and I prayed seven and then as they disappeared like snow in springtime it went down to one and then none and the real magic number one is that they were removed but the even bigger experience was the next time I did the step works none of those resentments were in my life they had been permanently removed see the focus of the work is a relationship with power to give us freedom freedom from our addiction certainly that's the original stimulus first half of the first step but freedom from unmanageability on a daily basis living free of these irritations circumstances and people life and reality as it is that serenity that's the freedom that we want and we'll work hard for please join me in the serenity prayer God grant me the serendipity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things i can't and wisdom to know the difference brilliant call today thank you everybody