Step 11 and Spiritual Ego – FOTS Step 11 Workshop – Part 15 of 25 – Heather A.

Heather and hi everybody I'm coming here and I'm a little winded for a few reasons um I'm winded because I'm emotional I used to be that when I got asked to share I could I had the luxury of you know reading throughout the day taking a walk meditating for 20 minutes about step 11 or whatever topic and it looked a lot different today as I sit in my living room and I have three children under seven and we're all in lockdown and in one house with husband working in the bedroom. And as many of you, it's a challenging time but the truth remains the truth. So to be asked to come here and speak about the truth is such a gift. Now for those of you... Hi Teresa, I've met Teresa and I know many of you. I live in a place called Palos Verdes in Los Angeles County, and basically what that is really, I get bad reception. So I am on a phone, and I can't see you, which is an odd feeling. I can scroll through. So if you're sleeping, I won't notice. I don't know how to start except for thanking Ali for asking me, and let's start the Step 11 meeting with a few minutes of silence. I live in California, but you know, my home for many, many years was Toronto. And so I've missed all of you terrible. And if there's any silver lining to this strange time we find ourselves in, it's that I get the opportunity to be in rooms virtually with people that I carry throughout my sobriety every day and that's a very privileged stance in Alcoholics Anonymous. Every time I practice step 11 many times my heart swells for the newcomer or even the person with time who is lonely and isolated because for the alcoholic of my nature to be isolated and unable to do that thing that we do especially at the beginning But really, what I've come to understand is the power in the rooms is tangible. I can be anywhere on the planet and find an address and hit an Alcoholics Anonymous room. And the minute I get there, I'm home. And my soul knew that pretty much from the get-go. And so if you're new or if you are lonely with time, I practice and I pray every day. What I do know after leaving Toronto, I guess going on four years now, and leaving the group that, every group that I had ever known, every old timer newcomer coffee shop, every place I did this work in this book look at my book when I left there I left a part of my soul back there and I'm at home in California but Toronto in terms of sobriety I carry Ali with me every day in my sobriete I carry afsi every day I carry many brothers who are in sobrieti back in Toronto and I carry my brothers and sisters in the room so so this thing is transmittable on zoom and it's transmittal on the phone and I've had some powerful powerful fifth steps and 12-step calls during this time of lockdown and it works it says that in step 11 it works it really does so let's just read the topic I have to mention to Mildred F is somewhere on there I can't see Mildred but I wouldn't be able to have the current consciousness I have about step 11 if I hadn't by the grace of God on Founders Day in Akron had the courage and the foresight to get mildred F's number and I'll get back to that a little bit later but mildred is family and every day. The way I practice and understand myself, Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 steps, particularly step 11 is due in large part for the teaching and the time that she gave me. And I will always be grateful for that. So hi Milton. I call you Millie behind your back because it's, you don't know Lil Wayne, but it's a reference to million dollars and you're the jackpot for me. So here we go. We Alcoholics Anonymous, or sorry, We Alcoholic is from 88 and step 11. This is like the last paragraph. And the topic I chose after doing a little meditation on it was we alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined. And we'll get to that outline in a minute. And the reason why I chose that was in part, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous on a gurney. I came here on a stretcher after a 24-hour pass from my second treatment center. I'll be 50 this year. I was 23 at the time and I don't do the math because that's not my sobriety I'll be 17 in a couple weeks but um I came here literally on a gurney after drinking charcoal in a diaper with femur paddles where a doctor said there's no medical reason for you to be alive you have um stage one of cirrhosis of the liver and however you've been living something has kept you alive you shouldn't you shouldn'T have come to and uh and so I'm going to do my best and when I leave here you better start praying and thinking differently and doing something differently. And he called for the chaplain to come and bring me a Bible. It offended me too, don't worry. But when he left the room, there was a woman in her 70s dying of cirrhosis of the liver. And she was probably frightened and she was muttering under her breath, the Lord's Prayer. Now you got to understand at the time I had a shaved head and a real attitude. And for me, the topic of God was something I had neatly evaded. I took the parts I liked when I was high or broken or on a jail cell floor, you know? But then as soon as I got up and my ego woke up or I got a little bit better, I sat on a bar stool mocking people of religion for being so weak they needed crutches. as if man had this weakness that I didn't have and I didn t need a crutch. Glug, glug, glug. And when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and I looked back at the root causes of that understanding of God or that apathy towards God, even the word, or that mushy thinking around spiritual things, it's because when I was younger, I was the middle child of some california artists we moved up to peterborough because my dad didn't like america and we will just leave that there at the time in the 70s was the vietnam war and i was the middle child we moved out to peteborough ontario canada and um we didn't talk about god we did not talk about god but we didn t talk about God we may be saying our father who art in heaven from uh the hair musical but we really didn't talk about god um church was something we went to because my brother was a singer we would go to choir uh on easter and occasions um and so but what i do recall is as life happened and uh and you guys taught me i had a soul sickness um so as things like divorce and my mother's cancers things happened in life happened to me i remember the feeling of going to bed at night and being frightened, a frightened child. The book talks about underneath it all is this deep, this basic understanding of God that we all have that in our nature. And I remember when I look back with you that I would say, God, if you're there, make my curtain move. And I would stare at the curtain and the curtain wouldn't move. And then later on, I would say, god, if your there make my parents not divorce. And the divorce would happen. And so by the time I found booze and I was a rebellious 12-year-old, I was young. Look at a 12- year-old. I was angry at God. It wasn't that I thought I didn't believe in God. I was just angry. And I thought that if there was a God, he certainly wasn't listening. And that was when the undisciplined Heather was born because what I started to do was push away anything good, God, orderly. so I got here and I had the physical uh dependence and I could not stop and I was at a place in life I was in my sobriety um when I when I cried out to God and I said the alcoholic prayer if you get me out of this I'll never do it again and I remember being 24 years old what led me to treatment that first time as I was in Miami I was a daily drinker and for me I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety that will take anything and do anything if it's going to get me out of me my will is not working I pray every morning to make it all stop make the madness go away but I don't see that alcohol and drugs are impairing any any any of that so so I in a blackout I beat up a cop and in Florida that's a felony and I wake up on a jail cell floor with people called Uzi who just uh yeah used an Uzi um and I am scared and I'm sobering up and I start saying the Lord's prayer out loud and I say the alcoholic prayer that if you get me out of this I'll never do it again and uh I go before a judge three days later and uh the first thing I do when I get out on the Monday. He says, you better get sober. You've gotten a problem with alcohol. Here's this, this, this, and this. And the first thing I do was go gather everything I need to anesthetize how I'm living, how I'M thinking and how IM behaving. And I'm off to the races again. So flash forward to this overdose. And it's basically the same thing. I had been in my second treatment center and I was paying a lot of money to go to treatment. If this isn't step one and powerlessness paying a lot of money to go to treatment and get well there were two parts of me there was the essence milton taught me the life force this ember deep deep deep underneath all the madness that was still there um and and yet there was this other part of me that thought the alcoholic life was the only normal one and so i i am in treatment and i'm paying a a lot of money to get well because the ember knows there must be a better way and I'm conning the eating disorder girls out of their drugs and I am drinking Listerine in the bathroom. I'm buying Listerines and I keep it with the eating disorders girls and I sneak down and drink Listerin and pay to get it well. They decide that I should have this pass and that's where I overdose on everything I can get my hands on. This woman next to me in the ICU is dying and I start saying the Lord's Prayer just like I did on the jail cell floor and and so that's my confusion with God when the chips are down and I'm at that breaking off point I'm reaching out and saying this prayer for help but the worldly clamors mostly within me slam that shut door shut the minute I come to because I need booze in any form so when I get here on a a journey. After I left that treatment center, I went back to a three-week program at Homewood turned into about six months of long-term treatment. And the concept of God, you know, I hear people, Bob D talks about this in his talk on Step 11. He talks about, you know, Step 11 is one of these ones that it was kind of like, yeah, you know, I was still beaten. I'd say the serenity prayer over and over. I didn't fight that but I wouldn't hold your hand in a meeting and say the Lord's Prayer because that was my business not yours so I was still confused when I got here but I had been beaten and had such a powerful experience in that hospital bed I couldn't deny that something existed and the spiritual experience you just read was I had the sudden variety after that doctor left and I said that prayer, I had the most powerful presence of God that I've had in my entire life. And no one from that day until now has been about cultivating what I felt in that room. So I get to Alcoholics Anonymous from the gurney and the cocktail of charcoal and I get out of treatment and God presented the teacher that I needed at the beginning. And the teacher was someone who was a fundamentalist, we'll say, in Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank God. And we sat in coffee shops and we sat at parks and we got a big book and we read this book line by line by line. And the language of AlcoholicsAnonymous is powerful. It says we were rocketed to the fourth dimension. And I certainly was rocketed into the fourth dimension i was praying anywhere you wanted me to pray i was doing fifth steps in the middle of parks i i found a pentecostal church and got baptized right and the reason why i told not that that gives you a little bit of background to why i chose this um and and my journey with step 11 over the last you know 20 years in alcoholics anonymous anonymous has been um understanding of alcoholism and how that plays in my life because when I get to the concept of step 11 I think yeah oh my god I love yoga I want to meditate I want to I want a study I want study the course of miracles and very very subtly more of our literature talks about there is ego involved with spirituality. And Bob Dee talks about this. He talks about very subtly, I'm slightly elevated in Alcoholics Anonymous because I meditate for 20 minutes and God has revealed the world to me. And I don't see it at the time because I'm just, I I'm high in the spirit. I'm in love with AlcoholicsAnonymous and I'm running out to every single drunk I can find. And I'm going through this big book right and um you know and and for a while there i'm reading page 80 86 so so here's what here's what the simple so we let god discipline us in the simple way we have outlined okay so where what does it say we get to step 11 it's in italics i know it's step 11 then on 86 it says uh what it starts with it says it would be easy to be vague about this matter of prayer and meditation right um and it starts off with so we we're going to give you some suggestions they're just suggestions and then it says on 86 when we retire at night it starts with the nighttime sort of ritual when we retire at night we constructively review our day were we resentful selfish dishonest afraid do we owe an apology have we kept something to ourselves which I should have discussed with another person right at once maybe my sponsor I should've called my sponsor were we kind and loving toward all hmm could we have done better huh were we thinking of ourselves most of the time and it goes on and and when I read that simple outline, that sounds more like step 10. That's not studying a course in miracles. That's nicht meditieren für 20 Minuten. Sehen Sie, meditierten für 20, all that stuff has been wonderful and I'll get to it. And then it talks about upon awakening, we start to talk about our thinking or we look at our thinking. Let's look at the next 24 hours, just 24 hours let's consider our plans for the day what i think i should do let's just consider that but before we begin we ask god to direct our thinking let it be divorced from self uh self-pity dishonesty self-seeking motives you see i can look back at my walk with with the steps and and and what i have learned getting up to this point is some harsh truths about how i treat people as a result of my alcoholism, my defects of character. So when I go through these steps and I'm humbled by booze and I get a good sponsor who takes me through this, and then I get honest in steps four and five, you know, I walk into step 11 understanding that it's the way I think and the way I treat people that needs to change, right? The first 10 steps don't say you better start to be a guru in Alcoholics Anonymous. You better start to get really good at speaking so that you can transmit what you found. No, no, no. It talks about building a daily reprieve where we get honest about how we're doing with what we've learned through the steps, right. what i learned and and and so very subtly for me that first teacher who took me through taught me this but i got so far off track with seeking god through the church through these all these avenues i was helping alcoholics i was powerful in alcoholics anonymous i was speaking i was starting meetings. I was doing all of that, but I got very off track and pretty soon 80 to 86 was something I gave newcomers and told them they best be doing. But you know, I'm year two, I'm your three, I'M your four and I'M getting baptized and I'm speaking in tongues. So what happened for me is I had to drink again when I came back. Um, my next teacher, uh, again, I went through the book again and the same thing sort of happened right I'm wallowed the book that our literature talks about wallowing in emotionalism and mistaking it for spirituality and what Bob D says is all that stuff is great I'm going to get to Mildred because what happened for me was I wasn't connecting that there was that divide I would get off of that 20 minute meditation and go about my day. And I was in a dysfunctional relationship. We broke up every two weeks. I couldn't really go back to page 52. I was preyed to misery and depression slightly. And, um, a mess emotionally in my relationships because jealousy and anger, I was quick to temper as any of my relatives, I was, um not great with money. I didn't pay my tax as well. I declared bankruptcy at the time, but I couldn't connect because I was meditating and praying and helping a bunch of drunks. See, Alcoholics Anonymous can be a self-fulfilling prophecy for ego. And when I got to Mildred at year, I don't know what it was, year five um of um I was divided I loved Alcoholics Anonymous I loved God I loved helping others but I was in an unhappy marriage my finances were still a mess and I walked into her house um in North York and I walk into her House poor Mildred and she looked at me out of the side of her eyes the way she does, head cocked. And she said, my dear, sit down, please. And she had two chairs, kind of like this, Mildred, I've set up two white chairs. It's kind of like your house. She said, tell me about your life. And I went... And she said, I don't know about all that, but here's what we're going to do. And And she set an egg timer in the table between us and we meditated for 20 minutes. And it was the most powerful thing that another human being, doctor, shrink, any sponsor by far, pastor, it was by far the most power thing that had ever happened to me. what happened there was another alcoholic admitted complete defeat she didn't have all the answers for me she said I don't know about all that but we're gonna do the steps again and we're going to do it thoroughly and this time when we got to step four and five we looked at eating disorder we looked at taxes we you know I wasn't writing letters to my exes and running out speaking everywhere we did the hard work and and we meditated but we did 80 to 86 and she called me on my stuff and in that practice I want to do a time check here Ali tell me how much time there's that practice that practical way of separating um what we do in alcoholics and amas so step 11 in terms of alcoholism right we're not talking about becoming spiritual gurus because it feels very good to do all that we studied uh joe goldsmith we studied eckhart tolle we had women's groups we um good uh 15 minutes we did we did all this stuff that was wonderful but it was in addition to and outside of the humble taking accountability for continuing what we learn in my inventory process in four and five to six and seven once I've made my 10th step list and I know who I am omens it's how did I do God how did I do today and that's when I started to change that is when step 11 started to grow and be something very very practical and what Mildred did by separating those two things is she gave me something that I can do today 3,000 miles away that i know will make my marriage better we'll make my fight see it's not it's not sexy alcohol it's not the nice part of uh spirituality um it's not it doesn't it's it's not very um um it's not very ego fulfilling spirituality to sit here and say hmm do i owe anyone apology how did i do how did i do because i wrote the tenth step i reviewed my bay the night before and then i get to on the next night again it's like it's like they didn't want us to miss this right they're repeating the necessity to commune with god and think about my my actions right and um you know these last 17 years on the outside um have been uh i've been through a lot you know talks about it works it really does but the thing i want to i want say that i've experienced in the 12 and 12 on page um it reiterates this this thing about relying on on on spirituality step 11 in terms of alcoholism in a very practical way it talks about um you know not being the two kind of pitfalls that ego alcoholic see i've got this ego uh chuck chamberlain always talks about this ego but i f everything up i f up my relationships i f out my finances because i'm a fright frightened you know alcoholic so it talks abut the pits the pitfalls we can fall into in step 11 um right after it describes the the saint francis prayer it goes down to um the hazards and it kind of breaks it into two things why can't we take something to god so a problem we're having why can't i take that directly to god this is page 103 in the 12 and 12 and it says um why can'T we ask god's guidance and manners um ranging um on specific matters ranging all the way from a shattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minor personal fault like tardiness. Quite often, however, the thoughts that seem to come from God are not answers at all. They prove to be well-intentioned unconscious rationalizations. The AA or indeed any man who tries to run his life rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand for God's replies, right? God has spoken through others and I've had many, many revelations. But basically, God replies to how I'm doing in very random things. I will go to get an apple. I won't even say it because it's going to sound crazy. I get confirmation all day long that I'm right where I need to be, where I needs to be. god confirms but it's in wacky random ways walking into a meeting hearing what i need to hear um it's not in hello you need to you need two uh rip up the uh change your last name so you don't pay taxes right it'snot in the way that i want it to come out um any um to any questioning or criticism of his action he instantly proffers his reliance upon prayer for guidance in all matters, great or small. He has forgotten the possibility of his own wishful thinking and the human tendency to rationalize has distorted the so-called guidance. I did that. I wrecked a marriage that way. I wreaked relationships that way, right? I made decisions based on self after meditating and thinking I got an answer rather than what it asks me to do is to look at my step 11 in a very practical way and go to my sponsor with the honest truth about my days and my problems, right? The other thing it talks about is we fall into another similar temptation in step 11 when we think we form ideas as to what we think God's will is for other people, right, oh I've prayed tonight, that works, try it with your husband, I've played and meditated in a warren, I have an alcoholic husband who's in sobriety, we have an AA home and AA babies And it wouldn't go over so hot if I came out of meditation with direction for him. We say to ourselves, this one ought to be cured of his fatal malady or this one ought to Be Relieved of His Emotional Pain. We pray for things of others. Basically what we're doing then, and I've done it. I've Done It. Like, I've Donne It. You know? Um, so I chose a kind of a not so hot topic because the trials that I have gone through in sobriety would not have been met when I was in that disconnect between step 11 really transforming my life what I would do is I would mistake the good things that happen for the work I did Mildred talks a lot about I'm not getting these if I get something good in my career and my relationship it's not because I've said the right prayer it's generally that I've worked a very simple tight program and continued to look at my my you know to continue to own when my fear jealousy selfishness has shown up in my relationships in my finances at my work you know when they talk about the promises it actually before it talks about finances this fear of people and of economics insecurity leave us right And so what I found with this practical approach to step 11 first, and then seeking all the yummy stuff that I seek because it feels great. Um, and does clear the channel. But if I do it this practically way, what's happened is I have, I'll be married 12 years in a week. I've been married a decade. The problems we had day one don't exist. We may have new ones. We don't fight really anymore. That's, I know Mildred, you might not believe, we have three children and I can show up for them. My big, big things that made me quit to anger and cut people off in my life, I have a choice in that. Or did they disappear completely? No, but I have a choice in how I act. Had I not had this sponsorship that made it very practical and humbling proposition, the 11th step, had it not been humble and practical, I would have been screwed when I got on an airplane at whatever year sober, 12 years sober, and come to California 3,000 miles away I would have been very lonely and what I found is that as it says is it works it really does I have a daily discipline that I practice and I have way of understanding where my wrongs are and who to go to to make it right this 12 of the last 17 years we've had these three babies and and we've moved I've had losses in sobriety that I've had to grieve big ones and the last year on top of global pandemic I have had some pretty heavy-duty health diagnosis diagnoses that I I've been okay with, you know? Eight weeks ago, I had an operation that disfigured me to save my life in a pandemic. And I don't need to get into those specifics really, but I say those things because I want you to see what 12 Steps Good Sponsorship and a practical program of change that I can access a higher power has done for me. I didn't do this by myself. I've had many, many, very large spiritual experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous over the last 20 years. But that does not replace and give me what I need. what I'm seeking is the transformation that is talked about in groups like this with people like this and Mildred and many meant Teresa, Ali I walk amongst giants and I'm very very grateful for that I think that what God wants for me is to be rid of those chains that bound me and and yeah I have 24 hours to do that you know I have 24 hours do that and I have a pathway out you know I can call Mildred and it could be months I'm much better at sponsorship than if I am that sponsee or ship and I I like to think it's not ego but honestly I work this 24 hours in this way and I'm for the most part I'm free but I can call her standing out the ocean is right here and I can stand out and walk away from the children and walk way from my husband and in about three minutes of hearing her voice she will say to me I phoned her last time and we spoke tears streaming down and I don't go there with really anyone and I said I'm lonely and I'm scared and she just said you know what it's not about all that and she's and she she could in two sentences just like afsi and i have in two sentences she could clear away the noise the human noise and get that ember that maybe was uncovered with the calamity of my life and it she could spark it and it could grow and um that's step 11 in my current consciousness with my current understanding and my current uh circumstances so i'm grateful to be here um and uh i i'm i'm thinking of you all if you are new if you're new or not new and you are struggling uh if you're a woman i'm happy isolated and um i can't wait uh to connect with you if you are struggling and i also can't weight for you if haven't had the experience of walking into a room of alcoholics anonymous and sitting there in the room with the power um i pray that that time comes again soon. And in the meantime, it works just like this. So thank you Ali.