The 11th Step and Conscious Contact – FOTS Step 11 Workshop – Part 2 of 25 – Ronald W.

My name is Ronald White and I'm an alcoholic. What better introduction could you get than that? Teresa, thank you. The pressure is truly on. You know something I've spoken at lots of meetings about Alcoholics Anonymous. I should let you know that I have a home group of Alcoholics Anonymous since 9604 South Figueroa. My home group that I truly call my home book now is you never too early big book workshop which meets every Sunday morning we have it on zoom we can provide that information for anybody who is interested in traveling through the steps we've been doing it for the last 33 years we've been doing the big book worship my sobriety date is July the 14th of 1986 Oh, today is July the 14th. So yes, I am celebrating 34 years of sobriety today. Thank you so much. I see you, Wes. Thank you guys for all the applause and everything. It's really funny. When Ali first asked me to give him a date to share in this workshop series, I wasn't thinking about the fact that July the 13th was my birthday. I was thinking, okay, the second Sunday, I mean, the second Tuesday in July, I think I'll be ready then. I know I don't have a group. I do a lot. I work kind of like in recovery and I do some hybrid work in my old kind of profession, which used to be the law. I used to practice law. I don'T any longer, but I now do groups. I run what are called competency groups for people who've been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. And I have seven houses that I do competency groups for all these men and women who've gotten declared incompetent. And I teach them about the court system and everything. And I do that on Tuesdays. So I have come fresh off talking through seven different houses today. I just finished about half an hour ago, I rushed home so I could do this. So I've been doing nothing but talking ever since about nine o'clock this morning. so yeah great timing for me to go ahead and say that i would do this but you know something you could not pull me away from a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and particularly for the fellowship that literally saved my life and gave it back to me and to be able to do it on this death 34 years after i was rescued from a cesspool I could think of no greater honor than to do that and to be able to talk about the 11th step that step which says saw through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him praying only for knowledge of his will for us in the power to carry that out an awesome step obviously it's a step that presupposes i've done the first 10 steps uh the one that that causes me to establish the connection um and now what i'm seeking to do is improve that connection the first part of the 11th step are those steps the nightly review and then we've got the morning meditation and this this line that they pulled from the book theresa knows we had kind of gone through this in our workshop and i made some comments on on this line ali was there too and so that's why uh i think they pulled this where it talks about we are um then in much less danger of excitement fear anger worry self-pity or foolish decisions that's a line that comes out that it's kind of like taken out of the middle of something else and this is talking about what we do as we go through the day. We had the nightly review, we had the morning meditation and now they know Ronald even though I kind of got lined up I cleaned up last night what I did and this morning when I got up I kind of got quiet I get up real early really I like to get up at about four or five o'clock in the morning my first group didn't start until nine however I like to be a real early when nobody else is moving around because I'm easily distracted so i like to be able to get quiet and i like to beable to think about my day that lies ahead and i get quiet, and i look think think about you know some inspiration and i really best believe you know this meeting was part of that because i've been speaking at a lot of meetings since I've been sober. I probably started doing a lot of speaking when i was about nine years sober eight or nine years over and so that's about 25 years worth of a lot of speaking and so you know i still get in my head after all this because i love you guys so much and i respect and admire you so much that i have this fear of failure that still jumps on me no matter how often i've spoken no matter what people say to me and if you've seen me before i have this fear oh they've heard this already what are they gonna think about you know they're probably tired of you know because i'm so self-obsessed and self-absorbed i think everybody's thinking about me of course and and so i think everyone's got my pitch memorized and everybody you know i'm the duh you know i know when i write when i watch some of the best movies i like the part of my story and i think i'm a jump in the part of that because it's hard for an alcoholic to talk to listen to somebody who they can't identify with and so i think i need to qualify a little bit but i'm going to jump around a little bit today as i talk about this daily pausing that i have to do what i do throughout the day to stay in much less danger of excitement fear or worry and all of that because the line is that comes before that is pause remind myself i am no longer running the show god thy will be done and whenever i do that i am in much less danger of excitement whenever i start thinking about that i stop worrying about what you guys don't think about me because i know you guys love me and i know your guys that theresa and ali would not have asked me to share if they didn't think i had something that would be a benefit to somebody and i know that you know i don't run the show i'm not in charge of people's reactions to me all i need to do is just share honestly just like you guys taught me you know be open be honest and i knows that's good enough whatever that is and so i pause god thy will be done and then i don' have to be agitated i don''t have to worry i don´t have all excited about you know what and i used to think excitement was a positive thing i never looked at excitement as being a negative because i always wanted you know i wanted that excitement and stuff but you know something i understand now that i need to be even killed if i'm going to make um god-centered decisions not ronald centered decisions and so in this way i don't make foolish decisions either so getting back to um getting over this fear of what i think you think about me i love uh shawshank redemption i love i don't know if anybody else knows that movie or has looked at it or whatever and i could name a few other movies because i am a xenophobe you know i look at tv all the time now so my tab i love watching things i need a soundtrack to go with my life because that's when I really feel emotions, when I hear the music. But look at Shawshank Redemption and I'm here to tell you that when I see Andy Dufresne after he's broken out of prison and he's standing with his hands up looking upstretched at the sky and the rain is... See, people who never saw the movie may think why am I waxing so poetic about it? I need to let you know that they had better not ever change that scene in shawshank redemption they had better not never changed that scene of morgan freeman riding the bus to go meet his friend and and him talking about the wind is on his face and uh because you see those are the things i tune in for to see because that's why i love it so i understand that my story is my story you know and i'm not i can't change it to make it any particularly more sexy and if somebody really likes it they want to hear that part about me getting my ass whooped in front of my mother on july the 13th of 1986 and my mother stepping on the porch and not doing anything to try to stop that beating that i was receiving and knowing that at that moment 34 years ago less a day quicksand stretched all around and see so I understand I understand man that I need to pause know that I'm no longer running the show and say God thy will be done I'm 65 years old I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles I have five brothers there's six of us four of us are in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous we didn't grow up believing we were going to ever be members of Alcoholics Anonymous who were pretty much squares we were church boys my mother made sure we were in church my daddy was a bit of a drunk but my mother is the one who ran the house she put my father out when she was when i was about nine years old and um and we were raised on the straight and narrow with my mother made sure that uh we uh were well educated that we stayed in the books we were bookworms we loved to read i'd love to fantasize and and i lived in my head all the time as i grew up um you would not be able to tell the loneliness that I felt in that house full of boys with my brothers, my best friends. But even as I was among them, I felt less than. Ralph seemed so much more athletic than me. Reggie, who was below me, he could throw a baseball better than me and play better than me. Now I thought they made me always play right field or I played second. i always played where the guys really wasn't gonna hit the ball very much they would stick me you know and um nobody ever said anything bad about me but it was enough that i felt it in my head you know and and i always felt too short and too dark and too you know to whatever whatever it might be i had the ism of alcoholism that state described by dr silkworth in our doctor's opinion that ism that soul sickness see i know by the time we get to step 11 i understand now why it is so very important for me to improve my conscious contact with god as we understood him because i knew that prior to my even drinking i had this malady of my spirit i had this this cavern this hole the chasm inside of me that i've always tried to fill with something with books because when i read i escaped from who and where and what i was in my head it later progressed the television to playing superhero putting on a towel that was a cape because i wanted to be like those guys in the comic books and i i've always tried to become to be transformed to someone or something else you know that's the story of my life and so i've all gone through through life seeking excitement even though i wasn't seeking fear these things that that line said we were being much less danger of excitement fear I'm always been fearful always full of fear always not believing that I measured up always afraid and who's gonna find out and you need to know this about me I'm not only feel like I'm less than I also feel like I'm better see I always feel like deserve something more than what I'm getting you know and I'm all of not getting that so I believe I'm not going to get what i deserve and i think i'm gonna not lose what i have story of my life full of fear self-pity oh golly they had me throughout the big book of alcoholics analysis because by the time we get to step 11 we've had to do some other steps before that so find me in step three find me and the part of the book that says selfishness self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles driven by a hundred forms of and they got me self-delusion self-pity self-seeking right fear you might as well illustrate ronald white right there on in the book because those are the things that i have always been driven by that separated me from the spiritual solution my mother has always tried to feed me by taking us to church, that fulfillment that she was always able to get. These clamors within me, these worldly clamors, within me that made me not be able to either continue to try to improve the contact that I'd made with the power early on because I would be in church and I'd be sitting there... See, I always hate sharing the meetings because it makes me tell stuff myself that I'm not particularly proud of except here it goes I will be sitting on the pew we were Baptist you know and we would have these pews and I'd be sitting there in the preacher be throwing down he'd be preaching and there's this little girl that I liked there would be sitting with her mom right next to me and she would be wearing you know how they had the girls had to wear stockings back in those days you know this was back in the 60s and stuff indeed she had these little silk stockings and she was I don't know if would cross her legs and she would move it and i would hear the sound of that silk see wes you you hear what i y'all please don't think i'm a pervert or anything like that but when i heard that sound i couldn't even hear what the preacher was talking about and the worldly clamors within me and i knew man i was going to hell i knew i knew that this sinful thinking because my thoughts were so impure and i just knew man this wasn't normal i knew why how could you be sitting in the house of the lord and thinking these carnal thoughts and i knew then i started to separate and there were other things that happened along the way that caused me to separate and i've met i yearned to be cool so bad i didn't want to be this square in church and stuff quote quoting scriptures being able to tell you the vibe the chapters in the Bible backwards and forwards I don't know what utility that was to know how to say I'm backwards but you know we knew how to do all that kind of stuff and I was lost and so I understand that when we read the big book about call tonight there's a chapter a chapter called we agnostics that talks about the soul solution the solution to me being connected to the spirit that I am now in step 11 going to be seeking to improve this contact work and you guys taught me how to meet that spirit step 2 you told me that we had you had witnesses see the part of my story is I later because of that reading and all of that I later was able to become an attorney at a very young age I did not start drinking until I got in college the summer before I started college it later progressed to other substances that I used in addition to drinking oh I hate to say other issues because you know when I mean think what are we children but we know it's it's poop it's dude no I started smoking some weed and snorting cocaine in addition to drink okay I don't dwell on that in alcoholics anonymous but you just need to know that I'm an alcoholic that when I drink the craving to drink is created and because I have this bottomless hole I will try to fill changes the way my mind in my mood and so that didn't happen to me until later that progression so I was able to get through law school I was able to pass the bar exam at age 24 I'm practicing law and I need to let you know that when I would go into court I knew it was very important that you have witnesses to prove your case and in Alcoholics Anonymous in chapter four okay here are thousands of men and women worldly indeed the witnesses we see them at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous they share you know they testify at podiums and rooms at tables and they they share their experience strength and hope they give me testimony about the single most important thing in their lives today is the fact that a power has come into their lives that has changed made a revolutionary change in the way that they act and they think and that interested me because in order for you to convince me I need to know that there some something there's somebody that I can relate to, that I can identify with, who can testify about the power in alcoholics' knowledge. And so when I heard that, it interested me and it made me want to find out what is that about. That's what brought me to Step 3. And when I read about that selfishness and self-centeredness and about, you know, invariably I find that there are decisions I made based on self that later placed me in a position to be hurt identified and the big book of alcoholics anonymous came alive for me in the manner in which it described my illness and not only that my solution the solution that you had found so I wanted that you told me I needed to do some other things I needed to uncover discover and discard some some nasty truths about myself and so I did I wrote an inventory not just about my resentments but also about my fears and also about my conduct in sexual relationships and i found out a lot of things that i were defective in my character step six and i prayed and i asked god to remove those things step seven because i don't have the power to change me myself and they said in order for me to get out of the way and have god effect that change ronald we we think you need to go about making amends to people make a list of the people you've harmed step eight and so in step nine i started sitting down with my mother hard amends my mother told me that she didn't want the money that i was offering to her and at first i was thinking but thank god i had some good men and women and alcoholics anonymous to tell me don't let yourself off the hook ronald and i told mother in a language she understood i said mama i need to do this i need for you to take this money because i'm trying to get as close a relationship with god and she understood that and she said okay and so she took the money and every month i came to pay her that money i had unintended consequences that i hadn't thought about when paying that money every time i saw my mother i saw the look in her eyes of a returned son and that fear and that worry that i put on her about a year ago i've been married 29 years and i've had some rocks some ups and downs in my marriage some conduct i'm not proud of some things that i needed to make amends for my wife but it's so funny how you can live with somebody all this time and you we met while i was sober and so for some reason she wasn't on my list and she heard me talking to a sponsee one night i mean laying in the bed on the phone with his fiancee talking about his amends and she leaned over to me at the end of that conversation so when are you going to do that with me i said damn i wanted to that's not how the program works you don't ask for it a couple of months later after talking with and sharing with one of my friends and alcoholics anonymous about what i needed for that immense to be and how to do it and the main thing she said is before you do that the man's why don't you need to pray with your wife and when I made the appointment we went to a park and I asked my wife can we hold hands and pray before I do and everything that I thought all the bad things that I felt were gonna happen as a result of that just melted away and there is power in prayer and it's step 10 it says for by now sanity will have returned finally the promise of step 2 comes true in step 10 because I've done all of these things, all of these acts against my will to place myself in God's will. All of these things that seem so arbitrary that I didn't think could be connected with this, you know, these chores you guys had me doing, this writing and the sharing and all this stuff. And now I have become a changed man as a result of that. And they say, Ronald, that's not good enough you need to continue to seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact my awakened contact with this power and so I start doing it through all of these different ways in the book I really love this part that would that they assigned to me today because to read I don't know if it was tea or if there was Ali that picked this out for however the book says at the bottom of page 87 as we go through the day we pause when agitated or doubt and ask for the right thought or action we constantly I love that word constantly we constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show humbly asking humbly saying to ourselves why would put this in many times humbly saying to ourselves many a times each day thy will be done because they know ronald white they know me they know i need to pause many times during the course of the day not just when agitated or not i need you just look god ronal you're no longer running the show god thy will be done and then i go about the day i go about god's business because then i know it's no longer ronald's business this is god's visit i have the opportunity to share and talk to people every day man who have an impact on my life the one thing if there's nothing else that i've learned my helping you helps me as much or more than it helps you I've learned that unselfish acts there's this act of me being unselfished is the antidote to selfishness and self-centered which is the root of my trouble I know I am driven by those hundred forms of fear and self-pity and self and And if you don't get me out of the way, I was an attorney for nine, from 1979 is when I passed the bar. I got sober in 1986. I described for you how I had gotten a whooping, a beating in front of my mother because I stole some money from a drug dealer and he was a dangerous guy. and i had a bright idea that i would take this animal this wolf into my mother's house it was a sunday my mother just got dropped off from church dressed beautifully in some church clothes and i i knew this guy lived a few doors down for my mother and i knew he respected her even if he didn't respect me he respected my mother and i felt that if i just take him in my mother s house he won't do anything to me in front of my mother and so i took in this this wolf in my mother's house she's cooking sunday then i'm explaining to him kenny i'm sorry i don't have you kenny is very reasonable he just says ronnie it's cool and i we'll just make credit arrangements why don't we step out on the porch and talk about it and i think he's just mindful of my mother he just doesn't want her to hear us talking about this drug stuff right you know so he steps out on The Porch and i step out after him mr naivete this hadn't been the first time i faced life-threatening situations so i'm a little bit you know full of myself and as i step out kenny was waiting on me and he hit me as hard as he could and i flew across lisa i flew across this i look at you in colorado i'm looking at you i flew across the heaven that long like i was a superhero without a cape and he proceeded to kick me and stomp me in the head trying to kill me and as he did this i felt as if i removed from my body watching this happen and i saw my mother step out on the porch and this mother who would love me more than anyone in my life who continued to rescue me to enable me to believe in me to not give up on me this woman who was the most devout most spiritual woman that i've ever known in my life this woman watch this dude beat me without saying a word and my mother turned around and walked in the house back in the house and she closed the door and i knew that whatever it was that i had done that it beat the love out of this one That was 34 years ago. How dark it is before the dawn. I thank God for not making misery comfortable. The next day is when I, I was going to say I checked into the Harbor Light Center a place run by the Salvation Army but I didn't check in I do I'm out I try to make it sound fancy no I didn' have luggage that I didn have reservations they weren't expecting me no I was dropped off by my oldest brother will more dead than alive a broken man and you guys met me where I was and you hugged me, and you loved me and you nursed me back to health. I will be forever grateful for that. How could I not seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with that power? That power that has given me so much. And best believe it is not all been peaches and cream while i've been sober i've had some tough times i wanted to commit suicide five years ago because i lost my law license i was disbarred i represented someone and i didn't watch his actions and activities as was my my duty and he did something illegal and because i wasn't watching him i lost My license and I wanted to kill myself out of ego out of pride of what i thought you would think about me how could i not think that you would love me anyway in spite of them i talked with a member of alcoholics anonymous a few days after that um it was either kent coleman or steve lee i was at a convention in uh nashville ralph and i went there to do a workshop and i didn't know how i was going to do it and they mean i thought i wasn't gonna tell nobody about that disbarment i'm just gonna kind of breeze through this but but you know how y'all got us. You make us truth tellers if we're gonna talk. So I'm sitting at breakfast with them and I'm sharing with them what had happened and I've saying, who would ever want me to, I'm a failure in Alcoholics Anonymous. My shining beacon has been this, I got my law license back, I've been able to help people, I'm doing this, that, ego, right? And I'm, I'm sharein' with them how I wanted to kill myself man, I've got to stop speaking. Nobody's going to want to ask me again to speak. And what I'm saying, Ronnie, are you kidding me? And they shared their experiences. And one of them had gone through, I think, a bankruptcy and went through a failed relationship in the fellowship. And they talked about how they walked through that. My brother Ralph had done something similar, walked through some financial problems and stuff right in front of me. And I'm so self-absorbed so full of self i can't see that until you share with me your experience and what i'm finally saying ronnie are you kidding me um don't you know in alcoholics anonymous and you guys excuse the language somebody said don't an alcoholic's anonymous the more you up your life the more we want to hear your story and I thought that's true because not because we want here how you screwed up we want to hear how did you not drink through that how did you not drink through that and I know that there is a power I never know that on a daily basis I need to pause continually and say I am no longer running the show God thy will be done I have some of my old attorney friends who talk to me now and they look at me and they say Ronald you look so much more relaxed you look somewhat more happy I wish I had what you God does for me what I cannot do for myself the miracle of alcoholics knowledge I think is my 40 minutes up well I know it's 540 I know I may have have started maybe about five minutes after that except I have ten minutes Ali let me let me tell you something right now whenever the reservoir is empty I don't try to add on to it but I will be happy to add onto it through answering questions from people and so with that I'm going to say thank you for letting Michelle.