Emptying the Self and the Set-Aside Prayer – Workshop: Expanding Higher Power Consciousness – Part 3 of 5 – John J.

so good evening everybody and welcome to our third installment of expanding god's consciousness and uh what i really want you to get is i am foremost and confident of being an alcoholic who by the grace of god has been separated me from alcohol since december 23rd 1972 me, too. I belong to a group. The group is called Agape, and it's a meditation meeting. My name is John, and I just want to throw in, I do have a sponsor. I've had the same sponsor for 50 years, actually. The fellow that 12-stepped me at the right young age of 23 is still my sponsor, and turns out to be a lifelong�it's more than a friend. It's a kindred spirit. Him and I share a lot of laughs together, tease each other, and at the same time it's evident that we have love for each other. So I've been praying this week and thinking about the workshop, and I want to say this to you. This may sound kind of weird, but I do want to say this to you because it's important that you understand. You know, what authority do I have to lead a workshop on God consciousness? You know simply, I want you to know that I'm a wounded drunk and I'm willing to travel a daily spiritual journey called life asking and perhaps begging for healing And it's still necessary for me to do that, to explore this idea of freedom. I don't want to leave you with the opinion that I'm an authority, because that would be misleading. I don'T want to LEAVE YOU THINKING THAT I HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL. Just the opposite. Today, I woke up this morning, 74 plus many days. I've never been 74 years old with as many days in my life. So it's a new adventure for me, how I'm going to respond to my environment, how I am going to response to any stimulus in the environment, and how I will honor and explore the possibility that I am doing God's will. So it is new to me today. I would really like you to think about that although I am speaking in this workshop, god and you are doing the work and part of what we do here and it's a practice that's going to be making a little clearer next week is that that beautiful prayer that annum prayed for us on our behalf sometimes what happens we are so distracted and not present we hear may hear the words but we may be thinking about something else, thinking about doing something else. Maybe thinking about what's going to happen next and we miss the opportunity to be emptied. Now I have to say to you friends this is significant. This is not just an opinion but depending on how empty you are, we call it kenosis as a Greek word that goes back thousands of years that the human beings have been emptying themselves mentally, so that they can be clear about what comes next. So they can lean in and be available. And in prayer, we want very much to be that way. We want to come from what is written as poor in spirit or childlike. We don't want to have any preconceived notions or assumptions about what it is. We don't want to think we know something based on our past experience because our brains work in a funny sort of way. They make meaning out of what we experience, and we think the meaning that we make is the truth, and it isn't. The brain makes it up. So this is an important piece of a spiritual growth as being available as much as you possibly can through practice of emptying, and the most perfect prayer is that set-aside prayer. So if you weren't paying attention or you just heard the words and you weren t doing anything, I m just asking now to imagine all the preoccupation that you walked in this room with tonight, that you re willing to let go of it. And you gotta let it go in language. I am now prepared to let go of any assumptions, conclusions, judgments�this idea that I know something�and just let all of that go and become available. You know, just imagine the metaphor of a glass of water, and the glass is filled to the brim And the water in that glass represents what we think we know. And God is ready to pour out something more magnificent than we can ever imagine. But there's no room. There's no way. There's not enough room because we're so concerned about our preoccupations. and what we've been doing about in the last three weeks two weeks actually we've been really discovering a couple of very important things and investigating in a vertical way a deeper way what it means to be powerless over your life we talked about being powerless over alcohol is really simple it's easy to understand uh we have evidence very clearly and either you're going to drink or you're not going to drink. But the manageability of one's life is not that distinct and clear and black and white. There's levels of which we are willing to let go of what we're concerned with, the life that we want to have, our occupations, our money, our power, our reputation. and what we discovered together is that there's really two types of beings one is the false self which you can't prevent from happening by the way it's kind of it's conditioning on growing up and we make all these incidents and situations and stimulus as we grow up we create things in our minds so we can survive and maneuver our way through life What we're doing is creating a false self. Now, you can see the false self because a false self is all about restlessness, irritability, and discontent. It's about being so self-sufficient that there isn't room for anything else. It's about worry and concern. It's about anger. It's about unhappiness, despair, frustration. it's easy to recognize the false self because we react to it and then behind that is the ego that says you're broken and you need to be fixed and unfortunately we're so used to listening to that voice in our head we believe it to be true but in Alcoholics Anonymous we come to discover that there's something else in us a spirit if you like divinity a true self a self that contains love and responds to life in the most loving and kind way we don't have to get it we already have it and i know that there are times we can't see it or feel it. Because the false self runs interference constantly. So we do, the last couple of weeks, we did the powerlessness. We did the believing that a power greater than ourselves could restore. That big word, restore. The sense of the word means this, that you're going to be brought back to wholeness. You're not going to be created new or different, you're going to be brought back. And in that word restore we begin to see the possibility of wholenesse, kindness, being in service and caring for others. and then we make a decision and I know through the comments in our Instagram account some people got a lot of the word decide the CID family of words meaning to kill off any other options We make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, meaning that we're not looking at any other possibilities. We've killed it off. Just like suicide, pesticide, homicide is to kill off. To decide is to killing off any other options. Now, that doesn't mean that we will never take our will back right away. But we're so committed to be under the care of God that all we have to do is go back and get ourselves back under that caring umbrella of love. And you notice we've been working on an Instagram account where we've Been Posting Suggested Exercises. These are only suggestions, friends. because there's something in our behavior we confuse knowing with doing. Knowing is not doing. They're two different things. And we're so excited to learn new ideas from the big book and the 12 and 12 other literature, recovery literature that we learned a history we were able to quote quotes from the books and get some satisfaction and make these phrases and words really mean something in our lives. And that's a beautiful experience. But it isn't practicing. Knowing is not practicing. And if we really want the full benefit of what AA has to offer, we need to practice. We need to learn, to come to understand, and then really cement it is to practice. I had an occasion to talk to someone this week and they were talking about, and they'd come across very clearly that they knew what to do, what's going on. And it was very obvious the person knew. But somehow or another, knowing got interfered with practicing it. See, this is what we have to be careful of. And every time I share at a meeting or I listen in a meeting when I'm part of the audience, I make it a habit of taking one thing away for me to practice on�one new thing. And that's when I know I've had a successful meeting. See, I used to seek to be inspired. I didn't seek to work. But today I've learned some hard lessons in Alcoholics Anonymous. Hard lessons that could have been corrected if I was prepared to practice principles. Somehow or another, I thought learning them was enough. So I've gotten ahead of myself. So tonight, I'm just going to ask you to have a quality of workshop is to walk away with one action in mind as a result of something that's being said or shared or some inspiration you got from an intuitive thought. And that you listen and put an action plan together and go out and practice it the best of your ability in this upcoming week. i encourage you to join us on the instagram account where i'll be every day outlining a few simple practices nothing too large or too difficult won't take a lot of time it'd take literally minutes because what we're trying to do here is change our focus from the false self into the true self in god's presence just the change in the focus will help you to expand God's consciousness. So, get the most of this workshop empty, any preoccupation that you have. Just let it go. Forget about what you know. Forget about what happened today. forget about your sobriety that you have and come at this conversation as if you never heard the words before and be willing to be led not by me but by your higher power be willing to be lead be available to and be prepared to hear that voice, that quiet voice that doesn't speak. It could be a nudging. It could mean raising your interest. It could me curiosity. But that spirit will speak to you. Pay attention. Notice. I use these words often because sometimes I get lost and the dark edges or creases of life. I need to notice God's presence. I need His notice how God is working in my life every day. So be available to lean in, to engage, to get into the zone and switch your focus, if you are in your false self, to your true self. Letting go of any comparisons and judgments, conclusions, and be grateful for being here. An opportunity to be in this spiritual space to get direction. So quickly we're going to review the last two weeks. We're surrendering because we're powerless to manage one's life and believing a power there's so much power that we're going to be restored to our original true self if you think about those two three steps that we are talking about here what a magnificent transformation just in that we are making a conscious and free decision to turn our will over to the care of God we should no longer care care in a sense of worry or concern because we've turned our will and our lives over we're moving from problems into a solution see the false self offers problems and the true self offers solutions and we are in the presence of God tonight I'm going to ask you to stop fixing yourself through the lens of self trying to fix yourself suggests that you're broken and I know that you may have evidence to prove that to yourself but what's underneath the pieces is wholeness stop trying to fix yourself maybe under our self-created rubbish It's perfectly connected soul. Once restored, everything changes. We see and hear things differently. But the ego keeps telling us that we are broken. So it can remain in control. It's a fighter. You'll never lose it. You often hear that ego is the enemy. The truth of the matter is ego is necessary. Nature found it necessary to give us an ego. What we need to do is to manage it in some way so it doesn't define us. See, the ego isn't the enemy. We're the enemy because we believe and be defined by our ego. So tonight we're going to stay in our lane. We're not going to play God and pretend to fix us. We're going to be looking for underneath that brokenness and look for wholeness. So we're going allow God to be God, and we're gonna be the beloved. Steps 6 and 7 clearly and succinctly explains what to do. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. In my view and experience, becoming entirely ready is about the willingness to allow, to trust and to surrender is being prepared. As simple as that, we become ready. And if you can imagine other areas of your life where you became entirely ready, it might be going to work every morning, the effort you put on to be able to go out the door to go to work, you know, the clothes that are ironed, the face washing or their shower or brushing of their teeth, the eating of their breakfast, looking over your agenda perhaps. All those things get you ready to go to work. And in this spiritual step, we have to be emotionally and mentally ready, entirely ready, meaning we have to allow. See, one of the biggest mistakes I made, and I don't know if you can identify with what I'm about to say, I was operating on self-sufficiency for many, many years. I thought that was the work. Somehow, I didn't read those steps six and seven. I didn' t follow that direction. In my mind, I went on a journey of self-help, fixing my problems, agonizing over the thoughts I had, concluding that I was broken and weak and undisciplined, not smart enough, not educated enough, and not intelligent enough. And I kept at that game for many, many years. And that's not at all what steps six and seven are about. It is the exact opposite. I had to be in the habit of allowing and I have to use a word that's oh, I don't know in this language, in our culture is almost like swearing and cursing that word is obey I had to learn to obey to be open so this is all about letting letting and as we approach step six and we're becoming entirely ready we're allowing and letting god move in the way in which god is going to move not the way i want him to move i had to drop these notions and illusions i had about what my life looks like what john how john is goingto show up in the world how much money he's going to have how many businesses he was going to do, how much power he was going to get. Oh, I had it all thought out. Not for a moment did I consider that God may have other plans. And this step is all about that. It's about saying, I don't know what my life should look like. But I'm certain about something that I will never be happy, joyous and free until I reconnect to the purpose of my life by being restored. And it wouldn't matter how much money I made or how many cars I had or how much suits I wore, how many suits I got, what kinds of exotic vacations, homes with pools, and I did every one of those things. And yet there was a longing, the emptiness, the abyss, the dark shadow saying, is that all there is? I hadn't learned to let. And a great story in Genesis�it doesn't matter if you believe the Bible or not, it's really insignificant to me, but it's a great story because it gives an explanation to how it was all created. And interesting, in reading that wisdom literature, the word let, let there be light, and there was light. What I drew out of those words was, I had to learn to let. Let God do His work and let me be the creature. This all comes out of step six. So it's not about doing more, being more, getting more, having more�this is the opposite. The spirituality of dissent, going to nothing, poor in spirit, like a little child. But see, the ego conflicts with this idea. It doesn't want to do that. It fears for its life, for its dominance. It creates conflict and creates this drama that has me pay attention to it. So there's the internal conflict I had to face and begin to understand what's at stake, which took time. So now we're ready. We're ready to let. we're ready to allow we're entirely ready and in step seven it talks about humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings now friends humbly is asking meaning as we are so prepared to let for God to remove the shortcomings or for us to be retained in. Maybe it's not in God's design to relieve us with some embarrassing defects of character. Maybe there's more for me to learn. I had to learn to trust when humbly asking to remove our shortcoming. In other words, I am now going to follow the dictates of this creator, this powerful creator in my life, to shape and fashion me the way that he had always intended. But what about my agenda? I don't want to be a hole in a donut. I want what I want. And that is the human journey. We make up our minds in Alcoholics Anonymous doing these steps is to trust God. Trust doesn't come easy to an adult, particularly an adult who's been gone through trauma or has been harmed or harmed people. We go on distrust and we have experiences to give us that evidence. But we have to learn. We have to be we have got to learn in order to find peace and happiness and joy in our life. So we humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings. So I'm going to pray this prayer for us, and I want to go through the exercise with you because this is how I pray. It doesn't necessarily mean this is how you pray, or I'm not saying to you this is how to pray. This is how I pray. And you may like what I'm doing, and you may want to follow it. You may want to modify it.You may want to reject it completely and do the way you're doing it. All of those things are okay with me. So the first thing in prayer, what I do is to really get present to what I'm about to do. Have you ever started to pray, just read the words and you finish the prayer and you wonder what happened, if anything? And then you read the prayer like a novel, like an essay. You just get through it. Prayer is an experience. It's a rich, deep spiritual experience It's an interaction. It's about developing a relationship with God. It's not about getting what you want. The best thing that we could ever get from God is love. That's the best thing. And it's the love that's going to drive out the defects of character, by the way. So really what we're engaging in is deepening and strengthening this relationship that we have with a higher power. So I imagine, to begin with, that I'm standing on holy ground. And I'd like you to do the same, wherever you're sitting, wherever you're at. Call to mind the presence of God within you. Remember that you're on sacred ground. You're not entitled to have another breath in this life. But we've been given a gift, a tremendous gift. the gift of hope the gift of recovery and the gift of love and belief and grace so let us call to mind the sacred ground on which we're standing and empty ourselves completely and make ourselves totally available and I'm going to pray the second step prayer And what I want you to do is imagine that you're actually getting what we're asking. I want You to allow it through your mind, past your mind and into your heart. Just let. Just let! There's nothing else for you to d0. Don't examine it. Don't analyze it. Don't look for evidence. Those are all false self things using our mind. Prayer is about raising our hearts and mind, raising our heart to God. And everyone is capable of this because it's a natural process. First thing you'll notice, I'm going to pray slowly. I'm gonna allow the words to develop, not only in my mouth, but in my spirit. So once again, we're empty, we are available, and we're prepared to let. My Creator, I'm now willing that You should have all of me. The good and the bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in my way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding." Now at the end of the prayer, I sit in silence for a moment. Now we won't do that here, because it's a recording. It's being recorded, and it's going to sound kind of odd. But what I do, I sit with it for in a moment of silence, maybe one or two minutes, to allow it to absorb into my soul. And I'm feeling gratitude for the experience that I'm just having. And the last prayer I say is thank you for the gifts that You have given me. I assume that God has changed me in ways of which I could never know, that I may not be conscious of it. But by deepening and strengthening my relationship to God, I know I must be changed. you see expanding god's consciousness going back to the title we have got to have a living presence about god in order to expand we can't have a 10 minute prayer period and go do our work all day not think about god and at the night it makes a fast prayer that will never expand consciousness about you know that's just the hard truth we need to carry these things these ideas everywhere every day in our lives and pay attention and notice the presence of God working in us and through us, looking for opportunities for us to show up with kindness, with love and tolerance. See, that's widening and strengthening and deepening this God consciousness. Now, there isn't one of us that do it 24-7. So each of us have work to do, because I believe by being in God's consciousness is where the true self can actually provide us with the peace and joy, the happy, joyous, and free idea is only with and through God. now here's a little tip to help expand time with god and it's the way i pray when i read the big book you know today uh the big book is being read and studied in every community in our fellowship you can jump on zoom and participate in many great study groups it's just wonderful i always read and study with the presence of god i could be by myself i could do a one-on-one or i can be in a group of people but i'm always reading it with my god being present like he is like the not only the author but he's the director he's got his arms over my shoulder I imagine pointing at some things for me that I need to learn this is what I do first thing I say what is the author saying pretty obvious I read a paragraph read a sentence what is it what is what the author is saying and I try to analyze what the offer is saying What did Bill Wilson mean by this? What's he saying to me? But then I take another step, step two. I say, how can I identify what the author is saying to me? How does it relate to me ? How does this experience relate to me? Step three is, what is God saying to me here? God, what are you saying to me? I'm listening. What are you teaching me? What are you pointing to? What should I undertake? How can I conform to do your will? Show me in what I just read. Then I say something to God, like, thank you for showing me that. I didn't see that word like that before. I did look at it from that perspective, although I may have read it a hundred of times. Thank you for showing that to me. So I offer some sort of prayer back. So there's an interaction happening, you see? It's furthering a development. There's God consciousness. This relationship is growing. What do I want to say to God? And then finally what I do is, what action am I taking today due to the reading or the studying of what I just read? You see, to practice those great words and those wonderful sayings that we come accustomed to, what can I practice? How is this going to develop my character? What action am I going to take? And I like to use the word action as something observable. somebody in my life that's close to me in my inner circle can point to me and say well you're doing that differently or you're saying that differently that's when I know I'm in action see that's how I study the big book it's a collaboration with the divinity and whoever I'm with I'm not separating myself from whomever I'm worth but my teacher friends has got it is God. So, I want to go say another prayer with you. And I'm sure everybody has read this many times. It's a favorite of many people. And first of all, I wanna get back to this place of emptiness that we're available and that we'll be able to and that were allowing. And we're gonna allow these words to soak through our brains and into our hearts So we're digesting them. They become our DNA. And it's the great fact. Let's receive it tonight in its totality. Let's perceive it. Let's allow this transformation to take place tonight. Here's a striking thing. It's in chapter two. there is a solution on page 25 now think about that chapter 2 the beginning of the big book in the early stages of the Big Book we have this great fact and it's a statement so let's allow the spiritual truth to enter us in this present moment. We're on sacred ground still. The presence of God is all around us and in us. He's guiding us and directing us and is leading us to this place that we can begin to understand how much he loves us. And it states this, the great fact is just this and nothing less. That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences, which have revolutionized our whole life, our whole attitude towards life, toward our fellows, and towards God's universe. the central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our creator has entered our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous he has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we can never do by ourselves this is not about fixing friends we're not playing God we're not fixing ourselves God has commenced to accomplish those things which we could never do by ourselves just allow these words to go in and be on your mind and be open to receiving this amazing gift. So after this class tonight, after this workshop, what is the author saying to you? How does this relate to you What is God saying to me? And what would you like to say to God? And what action will I take as a result of receiving this gift? Now, I just noticed the time. I went longer than what I anticipated. Forgive me. Allie, I know we want to do a question and answer period. I just want to leave you with that moment. And I want you to be transformed as a result of praying the seven-step prayer and allowing the great fact to insulate us, to guide us in our decisions and choices so that we begin to sense the miracle that's actually happening in us in this moment. Thank you, friends, for your generous listening. Thank you for listening.