Step 11 and Spiritual Vanity – Workshop – 2023 – Part 1 of 6 – Bob D.

I'm an alcoholic, I had a few people in my life with stage 4 cancer and they've been given things from their doctor saying you have a very short time to live and I was just thinking if that, if I was ever in that position I would hope that David would give me a CD of just all his jokes. And I could listen to it and it would make it seem like forever. Well, I'm not going to be asked back here again. I can do that. Sure. it is how many people in here go to church how many people in here that go to church confuse church and AA good because alcoholics for many centuries have been confusing church with AA because and thinking that there's an answer there and there's a good There's good stuff there, but when it comes to alcoholism, AA is the deal. It's the deal, church is fine, going to the gym is fine. But AA is only treatment for alcoholism and there was this horrible drunk, he just burned his life to the ground and he's walking down the street and he is in despair and everything is horrible and he has lost everything and he doesn't know what to do and he got problems in every front of his life. And he's walking by this church, and here's the music, the hymns. And he thinks to himself, you know, I'm not much on church, but maybe they can help me. Maybe I'll go in there. And he goes in, and he's sitting in the back of the church. And the pastor, it's a fundamentalist church. The pastor does what they call an altar call, where the people that have problems come up and will lay hands on you and will pray over you for your problems. and the guy thinks to himself, man, I got a bunch of problems. And I don't even know which one to tell him about, but I got a bunch. So he shuffles up to the front, to the older call, and he's kneeling down there, and the guys comes up, and says, son, what troubles you? And the guy says, well, sir, it's my hearing. Not a problem. Puts his hands on the guy's head and prays fervently. And he says, how's your hearing? He says, I don't know. It's not till Tuesday. You say that in AA, they'd say, do you have an attorney? I mean, we jumped to the chase right away. One of the things that was key to me in Alcoholics Anonymous was step 11. When I got sober in 1978, one of the things in addition to therapy and combinations and medications and various things that I tried to treat my alcoholism with, I went to a lot of yoga meditation retreats. I did TM. I got a mantra from TM. I did Divine Light Mission. I did Raja Yoga trying to put chakras around. And I did a lot of that stuff, not because I wanted to grow spiritually or I wanted to be more useful or any of that. Primarily for some self-serving reasons. One is it was cool and hip when back in the hippie days to do meditation, you could go to a party and you could say to some, some guy or girl in the party to say uh so do you meditate and if they said no you could go and walk away and feel spiritually superior right also in a yoga class or in a meditation seminar there was a really good chance to acquire two things you could buy really good marijuana in those places. And also some of those yoga chicks were easy to get played with. I mean, just so I liked, I liked those things. I thought it was cool. I get sober in 1978. I go to meetings and every once in a while I'm in a meeting where they're talking or mentioning the 11th step and I'm hearing people share and they're not sharing. Now I've went to a lot of these seminars, There's a lot of this stuff. Nothing they're sharing matches that stuff I learned back in the day, none of it. And I thought, well, I want to get into this 11th step. And I don't think it was because I wanted to be more useful or a greater servant or align my will with God or any of the reasons that AA suggests. I think it Was so that I could be superior spiritually to the people in AA that evidently didn't know anything about meditation. So I went to the book, because my sponsor said, well, just look at the book. I looked at the books, and I started reading the section on step 11, and it starts on page 86. It actually starts in the bottom of page 85, where you can tell they're going to start talking about step 11 because in italics it says step 11. it says step 11 suggests prayer and meditation we shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer better men than we are are using it constantly it works if we have the proper attitude and work at it it would be easy to be vague about this matter what matter step 11 sought through prayer and medication 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 so the book says it would be that easy to be vague about this, but yet we can, we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions. So they're setting me up to give me directions and suggestions on step 11. Very clear. And here's what I start to read. When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. We're resentful, selfish, dishonest, afraid. Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves? Was I kind and loving towards all? What could I have done? And I'm reading this, I'm thinking that ain't right. That's step 10. And back in the day, we used to, we were suggested, well, you take your step 10 at night before you go to bed. And this is talking about step 11. And I thought that ain'T right. And I read further down the page. I read all the way to the end of the chapter, and there's nothing in there that matches what I know meditation consists of. There's some prayers, several, that we ask for our thinking be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, self-seeking motives. We ask for freedom from self will. We asked for inspiration. There's prayers, but there's Nothing that even remotely looks like meditation till the end of the chapter, nothing. And so by the time I'm pursuing this, I don't realize it, but my ego has come back just enough that like most egocentric people, I do not follow any directions that are not my idea or that I do NOT agree with. So I never did the directions in this part of the book. Never followed them. And it was not that I did not try to do something. Through my whole sobriety. I've always prayed in the morning, I pray at night. I read we used to have those daily readers 24 hour book day by day, one day at a time I used to read that stuff. I did the prayer of St. Francis out of the 12 steps and 12 traditions, step 11 I found a different version the version I liked a little better was instead of make me a channel it said make me an instrument of thy peace. The wording is a little bit different, similar intention I found, I heard somebody mention a meditation and I couldn't remember what it was and I tried to figure it out and I could not figure it so here is what I came up with and I started saying this I wrote it down as I tried to remember it and could not remember it but I wrote down as best I could and I start saying this every morning I am the place where God shines through Him and I are one not two I need not worry, fret or plan. He wants me where and as I am. And if I could be relaxed and free, he'll carry out his plan through me. I started saying that in the mornings. I like that. I still like to this day, still use that, still used the prayer of St. Francis to this date. Those things center me and return me back to my purpose. I started exploring churches amazed at how my church in my childhood had gotten better I did the rosary too tedious for me I went to Chuck Chamberlain he was involved with the Church of Religious Science for a period of time he was really good friends with Wendell Holmes I went there for a while intellectually kind of cool but I don't know what I'm doing And I went to the Course in Miracles. I did that for a year. I went back and did SGI, you know, the Nam-ne-yoho-renge-kyo, chanting that along with the big litany that you chant. I tried that again. I did a lot of stuff. And it's all good. The book says be quick. quick, the bottom page 87, be quick to see where these people, these spiritual religious people are right. Make use of what they offer. But I think the intention is in addition to, not in substitution for. And so I'm doing all this other stuff, which is all good, but I'm not doing what's in the book because it doesn't match up with my preconceived notion of what it should say. and I'm sponsoring a guy who's sober a long time. He's double-digit sobriety, and I think somewhere past 20, I guess. And he comes to me, and he's very serious. He wants me to give him specific concrete direction on what to do in step 11 in the morning. Well, I want to help the guy. The problem is, I've done so many different things that I don't know what to tell him. Because none of it's really definitive. It's like it's all good, but I don' have one thing that's the home run. I have some stuff that's good, it's helped me, but no home run." So I said to him, what they teach you in secret sponsor school to tell a sponsee when you don't want to tell them, they say, well, tell them one of two things. say well just pray about it your sponsor ever says to you just pray about what he's really saying is I don't got a clue or the other thing is just we'll just do what it says in the book and I said to him well just do it says turn to page 86 let's do that and this guy without preconceived notions without prejudice or opinion went to the book and actually started doing everything it said when he retired at night he constructively reviewed his day He looked to see where he was off the track from the decision he made in step three. So that in the morning on awakening, as he ponders or considers or contemplates what's on his plate, he knows where the correction needs to be. Because the last thing you ask yourself at night before you go to sleep is we ask God and maybe God and ourselves what corrective measures should be taken and it becomes one of the first pieces of business in the morning when you consider your plans for the day this unfinished business from the night before and this guy started doing all this stuff and asking God to divorce his thinking from all the aspects of self and freedom from self will and all this stuff and at no time at all he was doing better than I was which I do not like that and how often do we suggest to somebody else that they do something that the truth is we're not doing and then we see the results they get and go man you know I probably should do that and I started doing exactly what he was doing I started following the directions and I've been doing that now for a couple decades I guess where every night before I go to bed it takes two minutes I review my day and I'm looking for things that need correction I'm working on I'm not looking for where I've moved off out of line I'm Looking to see how I need to readjust myself back to the decision I made in step 3 I think often what we do in AA is this combination of self-examination meditation or slash contemplation, if you look at how Emmett Fox talks about the three approaches to God, what the directions in the book almost fit his contemplation description more than the meditation description. But whatever you want to call it, the directions in here, if I follow them, they're designed to work with the self-examination. They're connected. There's a little passage in step 11 in the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, where Wilson explains why we work these together, why this in-depth inventory that's actually more in-depth than the description of how you do step 10. It's more in depth than step at night, and why that's part of step 11. He says in there that self-examination, meditation, and prayer, when taken separately, and that's what I was doing can bring about much benefit and relief I don't need relief I'm a relief junkie I seek relief to my own demise what I need is what he talks about in the next line he said but when they're logically related and interwoven they create an unshakable foundation for life The thing that after you're practicing this a while and problems come your way, it doesn't rattle you because you've got something underneath you that's greater than the obstacles before you. It's an unshakable foundation for life. And you see, I got a guy right now who's got stage four pancreatic cancer and he's under, it's unoperable. He's under a death sentence and he is a wonderful guy. And I talk to him, and he humbles me in his positive spiritual attitude under a death sentence. It's humbling to me because he has an unshakable foundation for life. He's been doing this a while. He's got something under him holding him up that's stronger than what's wearing him down. and so these are meant to be done together and so I do this nightly review and I'll tell you there's one question in there that first time I started reading this I thought oh no that can't be right it says was I kind and loving towards all well all's not right let's face it there's people who don't deserve kind and loving I'm kind and loving to the people that are kind and loving to me, for God's sakes. But what about the mean people? What about the angry people? What about the people who are doing it wrong? What about the people that are hurting your family or hurting AA or hurting your pride? They don't deserve kind and loving. I may be nice to them, but kind and loving? Come on. What do you think I am, Mother Teresa? And it says all, all as God would be kind and loving to all of us. I mean, wouldn't it be horrible if he only helped the ones that deserved it? I have a prayer I gave a guy that's 25 years ago. I was sponsoring a guy who was sober a long time. He was sober actually longer than I was. But he'd never worked the steps. And he was if you've ever seen someone that's sober physically over 20 years with the benefit of step none they're a bit brisk and you do ever walk do you ever drive down an asphalt road in august when the heat waves are coming up off the road these guys have that you can feel it just they bristle with this stuff he's very uptight has no friends no family nobody will have anything to do with him and he was going to commit suicide well when he started going to get the gun to kill himself he thought i might as well get drunk minimize the pain of it in case it hurts and the minute he thought about getting drunk he got scared he's not afraid of dying he's afraid that the people in aaa that he resents so harshly are going to realize he lost his sobriety and so he comes to me and he asked me would you help help me. I'm a bit suicidal. Okay. Well, about a month into this, and I'm trying to get him to get through this fourth step because he's got a ton of resentments. And I'm sitting, I'm standing outside my home group speaker meeting one night, and he's going on and on just trashing all these people that I kind of, that I like. Some of them are my sponsor. They're members of my home group. He can find fault, he can find fault in Mother Teresa, he could find fault in anybody. He's trashing all these people and I finally said to him, I said stop it. I don't want to hear this stuff. Stop it. He goes oh yeah okay and I start to get ready to leave and I said I want you to do something. He said what? I want you to go home and I want you to get down on your knees and I don' t want you to beg God to say, God, please. Tomorrow I want you to judge me and treat me the way I've been judging and treating people today. And I said, I'll call me tomorrow. And I walk half I'm halfway to my car and I see I hear this loud. I'm not going to say the F word across the parking lot as it sank in what that prayer would mean. Because he's, he doesn't want that anymore than he does. He wants to give it. He just, he can give it, but he can't take it. And that's really the core, you know, in the prayer that we say at the end of most AA meetings, it's actually my favorite prayer of all the prayers that have ever come in and out of AA and all the prayers I've ever encountered in religion. My favorite prayer is the old pre-Christian version of the Lord's Prayer. It's fantastic. And so in that prayer, it says, it talks about a relationship between two things. The desperate need and desire for forgiveness and our ability to forgive others. It says, forgive us our trespasses as, implying you got to do this to get that, as we forgive those who trespass against us. You you're tired of being depressed. You're tired of feeling inadequate. You try to beat yourself up. How do you take yourself off the hook? You take them off the hook and you end up off the hook. What a beautiful line, and that's really what we're trying to accomplish here is this freedom from this bondage of self that it doesn't ego is funny because it doesn' t matter whether I feel superior to everybody or I feel like such a low piece of crap, I'm worse than everybody. I'm not one with everybody in both cases. I am in a state of separation, whether I'm better than or less than, I ain't with you. And so what do we do? We say this every night. I had a guy, so funny, I just went through this with another guy, but he didn't get it. He just, he wouldn't wake up to it. I get guys that good members, solid members of a sponsor. A lot of people do a lot of stuff, but they have a hard time doing step 11 and they intend to do it because I tell them, I said, I want you to, you got to sit quietly and answer those questions before, no, before you go to bed at night when you retire. And they intend to, They go, oh yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it. And then when I asked him, well, I, I didn't, I didn'T get around to it and they're honest with me, which I respect, but they don't do it. So one of the things I've done probably a hundred times at least over the years is I will give guys an instruction that's not designed to enlighten me, but designed to discipline them. And what that instruction is, is okay, you need some accountability in order to learn the habit of doing this. So I want you to answer those questions on the top of page 86 every night in an email or a text to me every night. Can you do that? Nope, and I wanna see him every night and the guys will go, yeah, and then I'll start getting them and what it does, it's not that I need to know the answers. They need the discipline of doing it and I got this guy who's now sober 30 some years and he likes me to tell the story. I've told it when he's in the room a couple of times and he's sending me these emails and every day I get an email from him and it's was I resentful no selfish no dishonest no afraid no I want apology no if I kept something myself no was I kind and loving towards all yes what could I have done better really nothing where to think you know and I mean now now it's feasible that you could have one day like that once in a while. But I'm getting this for three weeks every day, and I'm thinking, no, either this guy's delusional or he's the reincarnation of Gandhi or something. I mean, it's like impossible. So I call him up, and I said, man, you're sending me these emails every day. You're never selfish, afraid, resentful? You don't owe any apology? Yeah, he says, oh, yeah. I love my sobriety I'm so grateful to be sober my life's really good I'm full of gratitude I said well that's great he said no I really don't have any self okay okay that's good I said I want you to do something he said sure anything sponsor what you want me to do I want to make a hundred copies of them I want them to your wife to answer every night and there's this dead silence on the phone, and then this meek little voice that goes, that's not fair. And when Clancy says this is a disease of perception, boy, he hits something. When he looked at it through his own filters of justification, you know, stuff rationalization, he didn't think there was any problem there. That's how many of us, we live with the elephant in the room. and how often guys like me will judge my spiritual condition based on how I feel rather than what I do. And you want to know if you have a good sponsor? Good sponsors don't care how you feel, but they care what you do. Clancy was such a, when he started sponsoring me, he was shocking because my first sponsor and I were so close, he's like my dad i could talk to him for hours and he just would listen to how i feel about stuff but clancy no no he did not like that he didn't he didn'T really care how i felt but my god he cared what i did i could tell him i raped a nun and he'd give you a story about how he did something similar to that 20 years ago and they don't feel bad kid just got to make amends. And you know, he'd be, he wouldn't beat me up over it. It was like, he would try to try to bridge the thing between me and him. So I know I'm not alone. He'd be very kind. I do horrible things. He'll be very good. But if I told him I missed my commitment at my home group, you'd think I peed on Bill Wilson's grave because he was more concerned with my participation patient in my solution than he was on how I felt. And I love that because I'll tell you, the opposite of that is so erroneous that you never see and wake up to the truth. There have been times in my sobriety, but probably in my mid-teens when I was just, and I'm selfish and self-centered so if you ask me how I'm doing, I'm going to answer you based on how I feel. I'm doing great man. Did you see my new Jag? See my Harley? I'm doing great. I'm grateful. I'M DOING GREAT. Yes, Clancy? I don't know. Bob lives through this. He might help some people because I was feeding everything that should have been starved my second divorce I went through it and it was painful and it was expensive and it depressing I felt like a failure I felt like I did again I'm doing this my second of course I felt horrible and I I would talk to Clancy and he would give me directions and I would follow them And if you ask him in the middle of that internal emotional turmoil I was going through, how's Bob doing? He would say, Bob's doing great. Bob's making his commitments. He's calling me several times a week. He's still praying. He's doing what he said he's going to do. He's sponsoring guys. He's looking for people to help. and he would base how I'm doing on what I'm doing and not on how I feel. Because there have been times in my sobriety I've felt good and done bad and there have Been other times where I felt bad, but been doing good. And the only thing that gives me a view of reality in my particular life has been the actions I take. You want to know who I am? Watch what I do. Want to know what kind of an AA member I am? Watch what I do. You want to know how serious I am about God and surrender and all these things? Watch what they do. Some days, I'm not the best example. But you'd always see a guy that's in the game. You'd always seen a guy trying and making big mistakes, but trying. And I think that's perfect. to have a good sponsor that judges how you're doing by what you're doing. And so in the step we start to consider our plans for the day and I you know, how many times I get to the end of the day and I do that nightly review and I got something stuck in my craw You know, it could be anything from being too hungry and going to a restaurant I don't know if this ever happened to you, but whenever I go too long without eating and I go to a restaurant, it's like the kitchen staff gets together and they go at Bob's really hungry. Let's slow everything down until his head blows up. You know, now they don't do that, but it seems that way, you know? And I've gone off on, I've gotten off on waitresses and they're not doing anything to me they're just doing their job and then that night at night i think about that right man that ain't right they didn't deserve that they didn'T deserve my anger they didnT deserve the things i said that was out of line bob and i asked god what corrective measure should i take and I wake up and I woke up one time and I knew that I just, I knew, I gotta go to that restaurant and I gotta have a conversation with that waitress and I got to tell her how sorry I am for what I said and did and my attitude in there and she works hard and she didn't deserve that because she didn' t do anything to me I'm taking everything personally as a selfish self-centered person and then you go and you make those amends and it's like something's lifted up off you that you don't even know is on you until it's gone. It's amazing. That's one of the things about amends is it's, like, every time I've made an amends in my life, it's as if I'm cutting a sandbag off the side of a hot air balloon. My very spirit, my very being gets lift from it. And what am I getting lift from? I'm getting lifted up and out of myself. And I get a bit of a feeling of freedom because it's off me now. And so as I go through the day, I watch for things I do in step 10 and I watch and when I don't catch in step 10, I catch in 11. You know, I think that the relationship between the nightly self-examination in step 11 and the on-the-spot self- examination in step 10, because step 10 is in the moment. You know I'm supposed to pause when agitated or disturbed at all and look through those five things it says in the book. But here's what happens to me. And I think it happens to a lot of us. You work this program and you take it out in the world and you take it in your job and you're taking your relationships. And what happens is I get a big, robust, full life. And a lot of my days, I'm going from one event to another, one return phone call to another one place. I got to meet a guy to another. It's just like that all day. And I get agitated and upset about something. and I, instead of pausing and doing the five things in step 10, I roll over it because I'm busy. The problem with that stuff, you roll over enough of that that starts to build up and it starts to affect the way I show up in the world. It starts to effect the way i feel about myself, the way l feel about you, the way L feel about life. And so you go to New York City or any city that's full of big skyscrapers, Dubai, Hong Kong. And you'll see this in New York. This is the first time I ever saw this was in Newark City. You'll see in these skyscerapers, sometimes they're doing repair work on the outside of the building for maybe replacing windows or some of the facades, that concrete facades they have the fancy stuff in the building. And they might be doing it on the 70th or 80th floor. Well, they're working on the outside of the building On the 70th or 80th floor So they got a net underneath where they're Working because if you drop a hammer From the 80th four by the time it hits the ground It's a freaking missile Right so they put a net under there And then if you look On the first floor They'll have two tiers of scaffolding With more nets above the scaffolding Because they know something They know that there is a chance That something could get through a brick, a piece of concrete, a hammer could get through the first net. And so the second net is to catch what was missed in the first knit. And I think that's when Wilson put that thing at night, he knows guys like me. He knows I'm going to miss a lot. I'm too busy to look too clearly. I'm supposed to watch for the return of self. I must watch for resentment, dishonesty, selfishness, fear. I'm supposed to watch for those things and then when I see them I'm exposed to immediately ask God to remove them and then call my sponsor discuss them with someone immediately now if it's something I've done that's embarrassing immediately could be six months make amends quickly and I learned from my own painful experience that I have a selfish, egocentric people like me hate, hate making amends. I'm afraid of it. I feel I'll be diminished. I'll being made small. I hate it. And so what do I do is I put it off. Now I know, I don't argue with this, I know intellectually I need to go make amends to that guy I mistreated. But I put if off and I put i off. And why would I put in off? Well, I mean, he could die. The planet could blow up. And I put it off with an erroneous hope that I'll never have to make it. And here's the problem with that. Every single time I've ever done that, I spiritually and emotionally suffer in the gap between the deed and the amends. it's like a stone in my shoe it's an irritant and it never goes away you can try to sweep it under the rug but it just keeps popping up if you do that a few times after a month or two months of putting it off you finally bite the bullet as it says in the book, take the bit in your teeth and you finally go and make it right what a tremendous relief because why is it so much relief? Because that's what I should have done right away anyway, you know, to reduce the separation, to reduce the conflict. So the way that step 10 and 11 work together they work together for two things. One is to align me with God and to carry out that decision I made step three and the other thing is so to grow me in usefulness that that's really what I'm trying to do I'm to let God and my own alcoholism craft me through the difficulty with it into becoming a better servant that I can be more helpful to God's kids. One of the great verbiages in AA is the word only in step 11. I think that word in the 11th step epitomizes what we're about. When you think about it, you're asked to pray only, only for knowledge of God's will. You don't petition God. You don'T give God directions. You don't say, God, take a knee and I want you to write this down. God, grant me this serenity. Give me serenety. Put that down. Serenity to courage. Put that courage. God, encourage. You're not telling God what to do. You're nicht playing Gott. You're trying to align your will with God's. And one of the, and I'll say this prayer, one ofthe earlier versions. I got this from Mildred from Toronto. of the Lord's Prayer. It's one of the only prayers that really lines up with the 11th step. And we all know the Christian prayer that's used in churches, but the pre-Christian version was a little bit different in the second part. And when you look at it objectively, the pre-'Christian' version has continuity between the first part and the second parts. The Christian version doesn't. In the version we know today, it starts out the same as the Hebrew version, our father. And that is a beautiful picture. In Hebrew, they paint pictures and there's a picture described in the Torah where they're talking about God as if he was your father, who as he's coming home from work and you're his son, and you're standing on the porch that's about eight steps up, that your son, as you get near, throws himself off the porch into your arms because our Father is the one that will never let him fall. And he'll always catch you. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It's just simply a praise of that which is true. It's an acknowledgment. hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done step 11 pray only for knowledge of his will for us as it is as it is on earth and it is in heaven and then here's where it changes in the second part in the Christian version you're giving God directions it's not thy will be done anymore you're saying give me this day my daily bread. Forgive me my trespasses. In the pre-Christian version, it's an acknowledgement. It says something along the lines of Hebrew, but it would translate closely to you give me this day my daily breath. And he always has. You forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me. And you lead me not into temptation, but you deliver me from evil. And it is a recognition of that which is true. Chuck Chamberlain used to say, you don't have to ask God for anything. He's already given it all to you. You just don't know it. You're just not awake to it. Because the alcoholic mind only sees the lack it never sees the abundance. It only sees the negative, it doesn't see the good. And I think that's one of my favorite prayers and I don't push that on anybody but when I'm sometimes in groups when we close the meeting with the Lord's Prayer I will secretly say quietly you give us this day our daily bread and then I'll think to myself thank you and you always have. You forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and you lead us not into temptation and you've always delivered me from evil. And I say that and it does something for me. There's a rightness about that because I'm not telling God what to do. I'm just trying to align my will with God's. Let's break. 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