Laying Aside Prejudice and Willingness – Lee and Bob D. – Big Book Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Scott L.

Good morning, I'm Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic. After a moment of silence, would you join me in a prayer? Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about You, everything I thing I know abut myself, everything I thinIk I know bout others, and everything I think I know about my own recovery, all for a new experience in you, Lord, a new experienced in myself, a new experiencing my fellows, and a much needed new experiencing in my own recover. Amen. Amen. Good morning. Good morning, Lord. We're going to finish up and make the transition from step two into step three this morning. And we had been going through some parts of the book, We Agnostics. And I want to touch on two little parts out of We Agnostics. One is really the essence of what I have to do in Step 2. And it's a lot simpler than I imagined. And Bill refers to that in the 12 by 12 when he talks about the hoops we have to jump through in Step 2 are a lot easier than we ever thought. And in the middle of page 46, there's a paragraph and it talks about two things. It doesn't even really say I have to believe. If I can just do two things, I'll be on my way. And it says, the second line down in the Middle Paragraph in the page, it says let us make haste to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to, first, lay aside prejudice, and second, express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commence to get results. Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. I think sometimes one of the most misunderstood things in Alcoholics Anonymous is the last couple words in the third step where it says, God as we understood Him. And it's easy to imply from that, as a lot of new people do, as I did, that I must first understand God. And it is not a closed-in expression. It is a broad and open-ended expression, meaning that you don't have to understand anything or anything you understand is approachable. It is of your understanding. Whatever, from zero to 100 on any scale, whatever that is. and I misinterpreted that as I had to understand God and the book really comes out and tells me very point blank that you don't even try and the only reason I would try anyway is because the stuff I try to understand I can control I mean, that's the only thing that's not the only reasons I try to understand so I shoot a couple angles here to get a little bigger piece of the pie I want a little more grace of this grace thing that you guys talk about than everybody else has because I definitely need it more I can tell I can feel it So I don't have to understand God. If I can do these two things, lay aside prejudice. I didn't know what prejudice was. It comes from a Latin word, to prejudge. It is all my opinions, my judgments, my preconceived notions about God, about spiritual terms. If I could get to a point where, if I could move towards a point of being childlike and know nothing, And that's a hard thing to do for opinionated guys like me who think they know all kinds of things. I know stuff I don't even know. You can ask me a question about something I don' t even know anything about and I'll tell you the answer. I'll make one up on the spot because I want to be the I know guy, right? That's the kind of ego I came in here with. So to get childlike enough to know that I don''t know. and then the second thing it says is to express even a willingness and the wisdom of the old timers when i was new they had me taking actions that seemed to me in my judgment inappropriate they had been getting down on my knees and physically physically getting on my knees and praying every morning when i didn't even really believe in god as of yet you know i remember arguing with this guy said you know well i'll kind of feel like a hypocrite doing that? He says, you've been a hypocrite all your life. What's the difference? Well, it's true. I mean, I was, I never did what I said I was going to do. I was the guy who owned, I was owned by my feelings. I tell you, oh yeah, I'll come over and help you. I want to came time to come over to help you out. If I didn't feel like it, I'd do something different. I was owned my emotions, childish emotions. So I was a hypocrit. So I started, I was living in a halfway house and I would go in the bathroom and I'd feel stupid. I'd lock the door make sure the curtains are pulled over the window tight, push the rug underneath the crack of the door to pray, to get down on my knees as if I think somebody's going to look under the crack and see me praying or something. I don't know I'm crazy. And I'd get down to my knees and I'D say simple little prayers like whatever's there, I need help today please help me to stay sober and I'd get down on my knees at night and I would thank whatever that was and some funny things started happening to me it was a while before I could connect the dots and realize that they were initiated by those actions and one of the things that started happening to me was I started having a lot of eerie good luck like eerie good luck. I mean like, and I'm not a good luck kind of guy. I'm a bad luck magnet. You know what I mean? I'm a bad lucky magnet. And funny things would start happening to me like most new people my first couple years of sobriety I would go on these emotional roller coasters for no reason. I could be just sitting in a meeting feeling good and all of a sudden it would be like some key would turn in my head and I'd just get depressed all of a sudden and feel like awful. And sometimes I'd be like that and I wouldn't know what to do and I'd just say, well, they say pray this pray thing, prayer, prayer. So I'd say, God, please help me. I'd go to a meeting or I'd been at a meeting and somebody would start sharing. Some guy I don't even know and he would be talking exactly about what's going on in my life. I mean exactly. And I don' t know how he got that and he's got an answer for me. And that didn't happen to me once or twice. that happened to me over and over and over again. I was in early sobriety I couldn't get a job and the perfect job just came to me. I mean it wasn't the job I really wanted, God had that but it was the perfect job for a guy like me It got me out of the halfway house It gave me room and board. It was a job is a live-in house manager for a treatment center for teenagers. It put me in a safe, sober recovery environment, gave me room and board, and it got me out of the halfway house. And my one roommate in the halfway house was selling heroin, and the other one was dealing marijuana. I mean, I don't know how much longer I could have stayed there without going off the deep end. And I started to see that there was something. Something's going on here. Something. And I'm a skeptic, and I've always been a skeptIC, and I'm the cynic, you know, and I don't believe easily, and I am the guy that... Because I want your approval, I would come to AA meetings and talk like I believe in God way before I really did. I mean, because it was the proper thing to say in AA. And God forbid you'd reject me here because I had nowhere else to go. so I wanted to be liked here but I started to really come to believe the only way that a guy like me, I think, that's wired the way I'm wired could ever come to believe, God had to come to me I just made tiny little actions, just tiny little actions and God came the rest of the way he was so gracious in my life for a guy like me who really was a skeptic and a cynic and a judgmental kind of guy and what my experience was like as it evolved was very similar to I heard a story years ago about this over in London and I just came from there and they still do this in some parts of London. The streets have gas street lights and there was a guy years ago who would go around the streets of London with a long pole with a flame on the end and he would light the street lights and he was called a lamplighter if you climbed up to the top of one of those towers in London or one of these high buildings and looked out over the city at twilight you couldn't see where the lamplights were but you could always see where he'd been by the lights in the city and I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at two years sober or two and a half years sober and I couldn't see where God was at that moment. But I'll tell you, I could see where He'd been in my life so clearly. And even more distinctly, I could See Where He'd Been in the guys that I watched get sober after me. You know, I started doing HNI work when I was brand new and I would go back into the detoxes in the prison and some of these guys I'd watch, I would see them in detox And I would talk to them, and they were more dead than alive. These were hopeless, hopeless, homeless, used-up human beings that don't have a chance that alcohol has just demoralized them and screwed them up mentally and emotionally, that they'll never save their own life. They don't even like themselves enough to do that. And then they start taking simple actions that open this door. And then six or eight months later, I see them get their kids back. I see them in meetings with guys that they're trying to sponsor and the lights are on and I watch them turn the corner and man that has to be some kind of power that is beyond anything I could imagine that is changing them and it's easier I think for us to see God's hand in others than it is in ourselves because God's hands work so slow well he's old I mean, he's very good. And it's hard to see him work in my life because it's such a slow evolution sometimes and I live the change. It's like trying to stand in front of a mirror and watch your hair grow. It doesn't mean that it doesn't grow. It's just a slow thing. But I could see it in you much clearer and easier. It took a longer time to see it than me. on page 55 the big book is this is an amazing page the two paragraphs in the middle of this page it says exactly when exactly where and exactly how I will connect with this juice this grace this power in the universe that I will die without the book had said lack of power is my dilemma Alcoholics Anonymous is really a quest for power by people who are dying and desperate for power, by people who have exhausted every source of power they could find. And alcohol and combinations of alcohol and drugs was a tremendous source of power for a while. I mean, think about it. You have something that at one time, no matter how bleak and lonely and desolate this world seemed, no matter however depressing it was, five shots of Jack Daniels and the world would shape up. It would just get better. That's power. That's true. It's power to come out and play. It's a power to talk to people. Power to integrate myself when I felt like I was dying in loneliness. Power to be a part of. Power to have some control over my emotional nature. Power to just rise above my depressive tendencies. Power to shake off the anxieties that just seem to eat my lunch and the worries. That's power. And I must find this power somehow or I will perish. and on page 55 it starts in the middle of the pages this first second full paragraph it says actually we were fooling ourselves for deep down and every man woman and child deep down within me is the fundamental idea of god it may be obscured which it may be blocked it may be obscured by calamity by pomp by worship of other things but in some form or other it is there for faith in a power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself we finally saw that faith in some kind of god was a part of our makeup just as much as the feeling we have for a friend sometimes We had to search fearlessly. Fearless and searching. Sometimes we had to search fearously, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality in capital letters, the great reality deep down within us. And when? In the last analysis. after I've looked everywhere else on the planet for power, in this cosmic Easter egg hunt to claim my inheritance, after I look everywhere else and find nothing, in the last analysis it is only there that he may be found. It was so with us. And that's really my story of this last analysis stuff. You know, I spent seven and a half years fighting alcoholism, and I sought help and power to do that in a lot of places. I went to some of the greatest psychiatrists in the world. My dad was politically connected. He got me in to see people that you couldn't get in to See unless you were like a movie star or something. these amazing psychiatrists that had founded whole movements of psychotherapy and I went to therapy for them and nothing changed I tried the medications of the era that were popular at the time by psychiatrics for guys like me and nothing change I did religions I did a lot I did meditations I did chanting I did everything that was available and nothing seemed to change. And through all of that, on a regular basis, I keep ending up in rooms full of alcoholics. Now it's not that I have alcoholism, but every time I drink, I end up where all the alcoholics are at. Like I haven't connected the dots with that one yet. And I'm looking everywhere else and I keep ended up with you. And I come in here, and I look for power for my first couple years of sobriety everywhere else. Jobs and relationships, money, activities, committee positions, general service. I'm looking for juice. I'm Looking for validation. I'm Lookin' for security. I'm lookin' for the power to sure up my life and fill my vacancies everywhere else, and then it after several years of sobriety i started to be as scott talked about on page 53 last night i'd be started to become crushed by these self-imposed crises i could not postpone or evade and i had to fearlessly face this proposition and start to go back through the work again because I had missed a lot of stuff and much to my surprise is that I started as I did the work to clear away this channel to clear away the pomp the calamity the worship of other things which really is completely touched on and cleared away in steps four through seven as I cleared away that stuff a presence started to come into my life. Not a constant presence, but a presence that is often overshadowed by, as Bill uses a term I love, the worldly clamors. You know, when I get in my head. When I'm in my Head, I don't feel God's presence in myhead. You know why? Because when I'm In My Head, I'm not in the place where God is. It tells you in chapter 5 exactly where you're going to find God. It says, There is one who has all power, that one is God. May you find him in a place it refers to that's most of us seldom visit. And you find Him now. I mean... Now! Even as I'm saying that, some of you aren't even here. You're in your head thinking, Oh, I can't wait to tell Joe that. Oh boy. You're not even here as I am saying that. You're somewhere else. So that I would start to connect if I could clear away those three things. And I heard a story by a guy, it wasn't an AA, a guy named Earl Nightingale who was a, he told this story and he said this is a true story and it was an account of a thing that happened in South Africa. When I heard this story, it blew my mind because it was exactly what had happened to me. and he told this story about this guy who grew up in South Africa and he had inherited a ranch from his dad. And it wasn't like a spectacular ranch, but it was a nice ranch. A ranch that would have secured him and his family a nice living for generations to come, a nice comfortable existence. But he inherited the ranch at a time when the diamond boom was on in South America And there were people that were becoming overnight Rockefeller, Bill Gates, mega rich. And the more he heard the stories of their wealth and their abundance, the more dissatisfied he became with what he had. Sound familiar? And finally after a while he couldn't take it anymore. He sold his ranch, took the money, invested it in equipment to go prospecting and searching for diamonds and went out to the bush obsessed with striking it rich. And he never did find diamonds out there. And he died out there bitter and alone and had a miserable existence. It came to pass that this ranch he sold, he sold it to two developers and they were going to develop some of the property and they Were moving these stones out of the way one day. one day and they found these unusual looking rocks and they'd never seen anything quite like them before and they took them to a guy and the guy said well they're diamonds, diamonds in the rough and when you, they cut them and clean them up and they founded this ranch was the largest diamond deposit ever found on the planet and these brothers one day all of a sudden they have to form this huge corporation to mine and market these diamonds? And one guy says to the other, well, what do we call this corporation? And the guy says, I don't know. He says, well why don't we name it after that poor SOB that died out in the bush that we bought this ranch from? And the guys say, that's a good idea. What was his name again? Oh, it was De Beers, that is right. And they named this company after De Bears. And I am reading that and I am thinking to myself I am that idiot. I am looking everywhere else and God keeps throwing this stuff at me. You know, I go, I'm sitting in meetings, you know, I'm standing in meetings thinking how I'm going to connect with God and what should I do to make my recovery better. And in the background somebody's reading this thing and goes, and these are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. God, I wish he'd stop giving that over. It's interfering with my thinking here. I'm that nut. And this thing that I will find the great reality, the presence of God. Presence like as opposed to past and future. The presence of god in my life if I can clear away the things that keep me from showing up in my life right now. The things that keeps me up in here. That keep me in the bondage of self. This pump. If you don't know what pump is, it's ego. I think I am capable of being so full of myself and my judgments and my opinions, there's no room for God's grace. I could be that self-consumed. And calamity, oh, we all know what calamity is. The book says we're producers of confusion rather than harmony. You know, I'm a producer of calamity. Father Martin had a great saying once. I heard him say this in one of his talks, and it was so right on. He said, you can go to any workplace in the country and pick out the alcoholics not by the alcohol in their breath. He says, look for the people that everybody walks on eggshells around. You know, we produce calamity. We produce confusion. We are not, there's no alcoholic with untreated alcoholism is ever accused of being a source of harmony. I mean, it just never happens. We're the opposite, you know? And this worship of other things. I didn't get that for a long time. And I was sober about a year and a half and I was coming out of my first sober relationship. And I'll tell you, there's not a person on the planet more self-obsessed than a guy ending his first sober relationship. You can go up to a guy like that and say, I just came from the doctor. I have terminal cancer and two weeks to live. And he'll go, and you know what else she said, man? You know, it's just on you right here like that creature, an alien that attaches itself to you. You're just awed. It's on you. And so I'm like that. And I go to this meeting and I can't hear anything in the meeting because she's a member of AA and she's not in that meeting and because she is not in that meeting some hideous force has implanted a spring in the back of my neck and every time the door to the meeting opens I just go like that you know I can't help it it's like and then when the door is not opening I'm not listening to anything because I'm in my head thinking about driving by her house and thinking about you know I'll say this to her and then she'll say that and then I'll say this and then She'll say that and then I'll hit her with this oh it'll humble her she'll realize how wrong she was beg my forgiveness be properly ashamed of herself and it'll be wonderful and when you're like God can be trying to talk to me through the people in the meeting and I'm not hearing anything I'm locked up in here and the meeting's over I've heard nothing I end up going out to coffee with some people and I end up in this coffee shop me and a guy from California who was a visitor a guy from Glendale who I've never seen since. I've even actually looked for him. I don't know. I've Never Found Him Since. And this guy's sitting there and he's patiently listening to me talk about this relationship for 20 or 30 minutes. I think his eyes glazed over about 10, you know. But he's a very patient guy. He's listening to go on and on about her and her. And when I'm done and I run out of gas, he says to me he says you ever thought about the first commandment and I'm you know I'm kind of new I'm a year and a half sober I'm still have a little bit of prejudices from my childhood and I said to him something like oh I'm not really into that I'm just into AA and he smiles and he goes yeah he says I know he says guys like me and you we never get past the thou shalt not he said I think I think the ten commandments lost something in the translation out of the Aramaic through the latin into the english and and i he says i think they were originally written as statements of spiritual cause and effect he said that in the first commandment i am the lord thy god thou shalt not have false gods before me he said he said i think you could throw out the doubt shout not it's it's he said I think with God he loves you no matter what you can put anything you want between you and God that's perfectly all right with God. The problem is, you've just put something between you and God. You've just blocked the light. You now are in the shadow. You live in the shadow of what you put there. And he said, what you worship or put between youandGod is that worship, he says, doesn't mean to bow down to something. It means to just obsessively turn your consciousness towards. He said, you want to know what you worship? He says at the end of the day make a pie graph of everything you've been thinking about and the thing that owns the pie graph is what you have been obsessively turning your consciousness towards. And when he said that I pictured a pie with a tiny little sliver for work and a little slither for A and the rest of the pie was her. And no wonder I felt lost and desolate and in the dark my soul was in the dark because I put myself there and I did that I did it I did not do that in a false quest for power because I was functioning under an illusion and the illusion is if I had her in my life then it would complete me I will have rested happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well and I wish I could tell you from that moment on I've never done that again but I've done that a lot. I've been in the church for a long time. I've seen it with relationships, I've known it with work, I've shown it with things I want to be right about and I've got to make you see. I've told it about resentments, I've talked about fears that I'm obsessed on and we'll talk about this in the inventory, obsessed on to the point where I've made them come true. I've taught it about a lot of stuff and every time I do that, I live in its shadow and I'm cut off from the light and it's not a moral judgment God doesn't stop loving me I sort of sometimes imagine that he weeps for the loss of me that he loves me that much there's a line in our book that says that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him and that has really been my case I'll tell you, if God was somebody like me, Bob wouldn't have got helped. I think it was George Bernard Shaw said something that was remarkable. He said that God created us in his own image and then unfortunately we turned around and return the favor and start to imagine that God has all the little judgments in the pettiness that I have you know because if I was God first of all half of you would be dead right before the end of the day just and I started that's part of my prejudices and I heard a guy a few years ago a friend of mine from California named Jim tell a story about going to Florence Italy and I'm going ever since I heard this story I'm going there for about 10 days before the International with a couple of the guys I sponsor because I've always wanted to go there. And he said he was in Florence, and it's the center of the Renaissance art. And he told this story about walking around looking at these sculptures, and he was looking at it. He said it was a Donatelli exhibit. And he walked into this one room, and he said there was a life-size statue of the Mary Magdalene that stopped his heart. And he said it was unlike any statue of Mary Magdalen he'd ever seen. Most of the depictions he'd seen of Mary Magnolene showed her with long flowing hair and robes and she was very beautiful. He said this was not like that. This was a depiction of Mary Megdalene where her face was etched with pain an emotion and he said that she looked like she had been turning tricks on the back alleys of jerusalem for years and he she stood there and he says he looked at her he started to weep because she had her hand out like this and an expression on her face as if it said this could be for me for me and when Jim's told that story I started crying because it touched something within me a deep seated feeling of unworthiness and this friend of mine says something maybe your feeling of unworthiveness is just good judgment because the truth is I probably don't deserve the help I've gotten you know which really gives me a different view of the universe than I've always had it is the treatment I've gotten from this gracious creator of the university that lets me know how wrong all my old ideas have been that this could be for me and is and always will be and if I ever lose this it will not be from God's end it will be from mine because I will be the guy that will put something obsessively between me and God he will never turn his back on me he will wait patiently as we would wait for our children if they get lost he would wait and that to know that doesn't make me any less alcoholic but it sure gives me hope that no matter how far out I may ever get if I can just turn my consciousness back towards him and back towards my primary purpose of helping his kids that I will be reunited with that power source and if I'm the guy who gets to choose every day God is either everything or he's nothing he either is or he isn't Bob, Bob, what's your choice going to be every day I get that choice I've had days where I've chosen poorly I've been spiritually bad hair days where I just can't imagine life without something some kind of thing it can be different It can be different, and I just grab onto that. And you know what I think hell is? It's holding on to something that you intellectually know you should be letting go of. You know what? If there's a hell on earth, it's in the abyss that opens up between what I'm really doing and what I know I should be doing. That brings us to one of my favorite, favorite parts of the book, a part of the book that turned my life around and was really the beginning for me. And it starts on page 60, and it's the section that leads up to the third step prayer. And it's really the best description of why my life is unmanageable sober. And I'll tell you, I don't think that what they're talking about is drunken behavior. I think they're Talking About Me When I Quit Drinking. This is me when I quit drinking. and it starts on page 60 and it talks about the three pertinent ideas that everything we've done in Alcoholics Anonymous up to this point the chapter of the agnostics the description of the alcoholic and there's several the personal adventures our stories our experience, strength and hope everything we do to this part brings me to three pertnant ideas A, pertinent idea A that I am alcoholic and could not manage my own life. I have the guys I sponsor go through this and take a pencil and cross out the plural pronouns and change them to the singular and read it like that. It reads different when you read it like that it's easy to read this in the plural pronoun and you know as I did in early sobriety I had my sponsor let me read this and I'd read this and it wasn't me but boy I could sure see how this was a lot of those people at AA, this self-centeredness and this wanting to run the whole show thing they're talking about in there. It became very clear to me and I thought well you know he wanted me to read this so I could straighten him out because they need straightening it out. But I couldn't see it was me. And Bill in the ABC's when he says and could not manage your own life that's really very clear for me. See I can take step one, as it is in the beginning of this chapter. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable had to me, I can interpret that as past tense I caninterpret that as when I was drinking but now I'm not drinking and I'm starting to think clearly let me at my life there used to be talk in AA years ago and I haven't heard I'm the only one who ever talks about it anymore about the second surrender how we come here broken by the bag and the bottle and in sobriety in this delusion of resting happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well that I will crash and burn and fail and be demoralized and crushed by self-imposed crises in sobpriety that eventually I will try to keep from hitting that bottom sober by juggling this juggling act of my life and I will do everything to keep from hitting that bottom but it is the brokenness of my sobriety and my absolute failure to rest happiness and satisfaction in this world by my own management my failure at fixing me that is the greatest blessing I will ever have because that and that only will bring a guy like me to the table when it comes to God in sobriete why would I do it if I can manage my own life sober why would I have to desperately seek new management I will just manage it and as long as I have the delusion that I can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world I am not really brought to the table I'll circle the table but I ain't sitting down at it because I don't have to and I'm one of those have to guys I wish I've kind of wished for years that I was one of those kind of guys that could kind of just sort of see how I should be doing something oh yeah and I'll just go be that way I ain't that way I am brought to the table either through pain and occasionally by inspiration but never by never by cognizant decision so i could not manage my own life sober be that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism and the only way that we know that is by trying we try everything we can it earlier in the book and there is a solution it says we get to a place where there was nothing left but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet we get to that point because we've tried everything that there was and there's nothing left I don't know what would have become of me if the day I was checking into detox if I'd have seen an ad for a new treatment for alcoholism or a new medication or something I don' t know I'd probably have a different sobriety date if somebody would have given me $100 the day i was checking in to detox you know I wish I had more moral fiber than that but I don''t But I've been a different sobriety date, if I had one at all. So no human power could have relieved my alcoholism that God could and would if he were sought. So my job is to become a seeker. And I don't think that we know that this is true. I don'T think C is really real. We own C for a while here. maybe you take it on faith and then eventually the faith becomes trust because it becomes real but I did a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous in my early sobriety not because I would believe they would work I just was so demoralized I just would do whatever you said to do and often doing it thinking this is a waste of time and then you do that a couple times and it works and then You start to think a little different You start thinking maybe it's not a waste of time. Maybe there really is something. And I'll tell you something, your track record and God's track record with me has been 100%. There's nothing in this book or that my sponsor has told me to do to date that hasn't been for my ultimate fulfillment, my ultimate happiness and satisfaction, my ultimate improvement of my ability to love, to be a part of to enhance my spirit. There's nothing you've told me to do that hasn't. And I'm waiting because I'll die me all out. The minute you give me one bad thing, I'll dye me all up. I'll be around telling everybody. You know what they told me to do? Not yet. Not once. But I've been very blessed with sponsorship and I think sponsorship is a blessing. I think God's hands... My sponsor's not infallible. But you know what's infallible? The power that shows up between us when he's trying to help me. That is what I bet my life on. I'm not infallable with my own guys. But if you're sitting here and you sponsor a lot of people, you will notice a dynamic that happens. A guy will come to me with a problem and I will sit there in amazement as I listen to my mouth say things I don't even know that are true. Not only true, right on the money. and then he'll go, a month later be telling everybody how I really helped him and then I'll kind of take credit for it aren't I wonderful that ain't me there's something happens to me something happens to my life when I'm thinking about you and I put me aside some presence moves into my life I don't that's the juice in Alcoholics Anonymous A couple of things I want to talk about. Page 62 talks about the root of our problem. Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. The root. Without the root, nothing that grows can exist. It's what feeds the bush, the tree, the plant. it's what it all comes from and if that's true then what they're saying is that underneath every trouble that I will ever have in my life, underneath my obsession with alcohol underneath sex and romance problems, underneath work problems underneath people problems underneath emotional problems underneath mental problems underneath finance problems Underneath every trouble or problem I would ever have, the root is selfishness, self-centeredness. The root. It's where it all comes from. And I couldn't see that. I tell you, I didn't even think I was self-centred when I first got sober. I didn'T know what self- centred meant. I thought self-centered people were overconfident and composed and put together and kind of self-assured people. And I was none of that. I just felt like, I was a squirrel cage. I had no self-esteem. I think and feel very poorly about myself continually. And I'm in a meeting one day and a woman is sharing her experience with selfishness, self-centeredness. It's a topic. And I'm sitting in the meeting, and I'm not really even paying attention. My mind is wandering, and I hear her use a term that blew my mind. She used the term self-absorbed. And it hit me like a two by four because I'm sitting in the meeting thinking about myself, thinking about what I'll say if I'm called on, what it'll sound like what you'll think of what I'm saying how I should sit while I'm saying it to look like I know what I am talking about I'm thinking about my relationships I'm speaking about my job I'm talking about my finances I'm examining my emotions to the point of excruciating pain I'm sitting there totally absorbed in myself and she uses the term self-absorbed and it was like a light went on And I was like, oh my God, I'm sitting here totally consumed in myself. That's what self-centered means. It means my consciousness is centered on myself. And I didn't get that up until that time. And it was an amazing realization for me. And from that, all of a sudden, it was like a curtain had lifted and I could start to see it in all these aspects of my life. I started realizing the reason I have never sober felt like I fit out here in the world is that the reality is I don't even live out here. I live up here. And self-obsessed, self-centered people are not of this world. We're of this one. Right? and I live up here most of the time you know it talks earlier in the book about being rocketed into the fourth dimension Scott talked about it about the physicist talking about the fourth dimensional being time I remember asking a guy that was in our group of scientists what does that mean this fourth dimension he told me about time but what's that have to do with me and he said He said, well, maybe if you were rocketed into the fourth dimension, you'd hear this loud pop as your head came out of your butt and you'd actually show up in your life. Isn't that what alcohol... Remember walking into a bar and you've got your life and your emotions and your future and your past kind of on you like that creature, an alien that attaches itself to your face and you're just locked up in here and everything out here is so disconnected and so you're so dissociated from life and people and after about five shots of Jack Daniels, pop! I could be right here. After seven shots, I loved everybody. I love you, man. Hugging people and listening to their problems. Oh, she did that to you. Just really being present. I was present in my life. Not at the end of my drinking. At the end I was just as disconnected, drunk as I was sober. But in the early days. Tremendous stuff. Treméndous. so that maybe alcohol relieved me of the bondage of self. It brought me into this world at one time and then when it turned on me and it would no longer do that, the desolation and loneliness of alcoholism is overwhelming. You know, we are the people who have tasted the glory, tasted a type of integration and intimacy and a feeling of belonging that is really above the normal. And to go from that to the desolation and loneliness of alcoholism, to be hostage to my own self-centeredness in this bondage of self is brutal for us. It's brutal. So selfishness, self-centredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. So in this effort to run the show, as it talked about the actor who wants to run the whole show, to get everything lined up, to get Everything Just Right. In this effort to do that, I'm driven by this. I'mdriven by all the forms of self. I'mdriven by a hundred forms of fear. I'mdriven by self-delusion. I'mdirivenby self-seeking and I'mderiven by self pity. Trying to get my own way. Trying to shore up my life. A victim of a delusion that I can wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world if I can just get it right. Man, if I could get them at work, they're not doing it right, if I couldn't get it, it'll be good for everybody. It'll be great. It's going to be good. Now, I'm not running the show here. I'm trying to make things nice. Nice. If you were doing the same thing, you would be a control freak. But I'm right. That's the problem. I'm right. And driven by self-pity. Self-pitty is a hideous emotion to be driven by. I couldn't even admit, and I was a depressive guy sober when I first got sober. I wouldn't even commit suicide. I wouldn' admit that I was driven by cell pity. I had a guy, I'll tell you, I first copped to it when I was sober a little while, and I'm going through this deal, and a guy in AA had this big open house party, and everybody in AA is invited. But he didn't give me a personal invitation. And being sensitive, I'm really attuned to those kind of slights in alcoholics. And the day of the party comes and a guy calls me up and he says, aren't you going up to so-and-so's house? Man, it's going to be a lot of fun. No, I'm not going. Well, why not? You know, I really don't feel like I was invited. It's an open house. Everybody's invited. Well, I just don't feel like I'm really wanted there. Well, of course you're wanted there, he likes you, he'd be glad, he wants to have you up there. No, I don't think so. He said, come on up there, you got... No, you go ahead, I'll watch Gilligan's Island and stay at home. Isn't that pathetic? It's just... My friend Scott Redman, Scott R. says if you could bottle self-pity, it would not crack off the market in a week. So I'm going to finish this point up so I can get off of here. So driven by all this stuff, driven. You know, we all get that edge to our life. We're driven people in sobriety, driven, driven by all that stuff, I step on the toes of the people around me. And I don't even know I'm doing it because I can't see anything except how it's got to be a certain way. And when you're like that and you're driven and people try to make suggestions, well Bob, why don't we do it this way? I won't even know it but I'll treat you like you're an idiot. I'll give you the cold shoulder I'll teach you like your stupid. And what happens is when you are like that and you are wrapped up in self, all of a sudden these people, you will end up stepping on their toes, and you don't know you're stepping on their toes. And it's a natural cause and effect. They will retaliate. They will start getting an adversarial position towards you, and it says the book says sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation. I don't Know Why. Right? But we will invariably, and this is a vision of what I will find in Step 4, we will invariable, which means almost always find that at some time in the past I have made a decision or taken a stance or done something based on self that put me in that position to be hurt. And you see, I've never ever been the victim. I'm the perpetrator of all my separation. I'mthe perpetratorofallmyconflict. I'mtheguywhodidit and yet for most of my life I made out cases where it looked like you. Scott? Oh, we're going to take a break. That's right. Five after. Five after, yeah, five after. Howdy, I'm Scott Lee and I am an alcoholic and very grateful to be here. I'm having a ball. I tell you, Bob really touches me deeply. Didn't you love that lamplighter story? Mary Magdalene, boy, I just cried. That's me. Oh, man, thank you so much. Just great stuff. It will take me a minute to get organized up here. A couple of things. I think I may have given the impression last night that I thought the steps were the only answer, and I don't believe that, and the book doesn't either. Page 95. Simply this is what worked for me. I'm not saying people who don't work the steps won't stay sober. I'm saying people that do work the step will all stay sober." Bottom of page 95, we have no monopoly on God. We merely have an approach that worked with us. That's my story. Also I noticed on page 1 in the text, Bill told my story in a phrase. About five or six lines down, the great thing alcohol did for me, it says I was part of life at last. That was it. That was what happened. happened for me. And page 30, I have the privilege of taking meetings into jails and one of the things we like to do, I'd like to make the observation here about four lines down, five lines down. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. I could sometimes control my drinking or I could enjoy it but I could never do them at the same time. If I'm going to control it I am not going to enjoy it. If I'm going to enjoy it, it is going to be out of control. I thought that was kind of an interesting piece. And what we like to do in the jail and I hope you all will play with me is a show of hands here on page 31 says heaven knows we've tried hard enough and long enough to drink like other people. Here are some, not all, some of the methods we've try. Drinking beer only. Who tried the beer experiment? Right. I'm not drinking any more of that hard stuff. I ain't smoking none of that either. Right. Tried that one. Okay. Never drinking alone. Try that. How about never drinking in the morning? Now, I have a point of order. Now, Brandy Alexander is actually just being continental. That's not really drinking, is it? Or Bloody Mary, that's just being social, right? No, that is drinking in around a bridge abutment or a tree or something. And he approaches the driver's side, and he says to the guy, because the guy is conscious, he says, are you okay? And the guy says, you know what, officer, I've absolutely got to stop driving. Made sense to you, didn't it? You bet. Never having it at home. Never having to get in the house. Oh, yeah. Never drinking during business hours. Now hold on, I have a point of order. Lunch is not actually business hours, is it? I don't think that should count, do you? No. No. Drinking only at parties. Now, I've got to tell you right now, I am a party hunt in a location. Right? Aren't you? Huh? Switching from scotch to brandy. Did you try from one kind to another of some kind? Boy, I tried that. Drinking только натуральные вины. Ah, Gripolis. You've never been anywhere near a grape. Who said that? I'll tell you what I noticed about the natural wines too. I'd puke really funny colors when I was drinking that. Did you ever notice that? Really technicolor on that. Agreeing to resign if ever drunk on the job. Anybody ever get barricaded at work? Yeah? Okay. Taking a trip, not taking a trip. Don't you love that? Huh? We covered both sides of that. Swearing off forever with and without solemn oath. Huh? Who did it solemn oath? Yeah, boy. Minted every time. Taking more physical exercise. Did you try that? I tried to play tennis stoned. But I'll tell you something, you can get hurt running and laughing at the same time. That is not safe. Reading inspirational books. Bob said it last night, we're the backbone of the self-help industry. Had everything Ogmandino ever wrote, didn't you? You bet. Going to health farms and sanitariums. Yeah, we call them treatment centers today. Accepting voluntary commitment to asylums. I'm not going to ask for hands on that. and I want you to know I was not a volunteer. When they put me in that insane asylum, I was flat captured. I was not a volunteer. They put me in a little rubber room and boy, I think they probably saved my life. That's my story. That's my story I was part of life at last. That was why it was so hard for me to lay down because alcohol works for me. If it hadn't done so much for me, I don't think it could have ever done anything to me. I think that's Clancy's quote And boy, that is so true. So true for me. Page 60. Cover some of the things Bob had covered. We're going to be a while on steps 3 and 4 because he and I both believe they're terribly important. Not that anything else isn't. But there's a lot of meat here that I think goes by pretty fast. We covered the ABCs and I'll emphasize again God could and would if He were sought, not found. Sought has to do with action. The steps don't call for me to have any results at all. Step one, section B says I'm not in management anyway, so I'm Not Responsible for Results. I'm responsible for actions. So the action is to seek. And then it says being convinced we were at step three. Well, being convinced of what? A, B, and C. And I don't mean to oversimplify. And if you're new, I hope your sponsor's gone to depth with you on the Roman numerals and the first 60 pages. I hope you've really talked about it a lot. But very simply, if A,B, andC are true for you, if you're convinced, I would propose you're at step three. I think that's what that just said. Which is that we decided to turn our will and life over to God as we understood Him. I'd like to observe that on the preceding page on step three, it uses the word care. Made a decision to turn out will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him. On this page, it says we decided to turn my will and life over two goddesses we understood it. I don't have an editorial on that but I like to observe it is kind of important because I see people going one way or another on that. You know, what are you really trying to do here? And I think the important word for me and all of that is the word decided. For me, clearly step three is not where I turn my one life over to the care of God. It's where I decide to. It' s where I decide to and my sponsor said there were three frogs sitting on a log in the middle of a lake. Two of them decided to jump into the water. How many left on the log? And I said one. He said no, no, three. They just decided to. They haven't jumped yet. and so if it's step three I'm going to decide to turn my will and life over to God or over to the care of God whichever one you want to read then how do I accomplish the decision and he said the answers are numbered four through twelve and I point at the first line of step twelve as the evidence of that having had a spiritual awakening is the result spiritually awakened people to the best of their ability turn their wills and lives over to care of god because it's the best deal there is available I surrendered for a long, long time. You think about the word surrender and the military connotation. There's blood and noise and screaming and all that. That's my blood. That was me screaming. And then I gave up and then the battle was over. And I surrendered. I surrendered it for a Long Time and I don't surrender anymore. I didn't surrender this morning. I got up and volunteered. Same result, but it comes from a very different place. I volunteered in my own enlightened self-interest because this is the best deal I ever had. I didn't fight anymore. Fight's over for me. I'm not surrendering, I'm volunteering. It's a different level. And it's the concept that Bob talked about of not closing my mind on something that's now working. If I close my mind and surrender, I can't go to volunteer. If I closed my mind unvolunteer, I can go to the next level above that. So to continue to hold in an open mind those things that are given me so that I can build on them. Because I don't ever know when I've got the last one. Maybe I never get the last One in any of these things. Could easily be. And so we decided to turn our will and life over to the care of God as we understood Him. The first requirement, aha, there are requirements and there are more than one. A lot of information there. We'd be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Is anybody doubting that? Great. It says on that basis we're almost always in collision. How do you like the power in the word? Collision! Blam! Broken glass, screaming blood, bent metal, ambulances on the way. Collision. That would be different from mild disagreement. Almost always in collusion with something or somebody even though our motives are good. This thing for me is not about motive. I hear it in meetings a lot check your motives but I can't find where it tells me to do that in the book with two exceptions we're not going to go to them I'm going to tell you very quickly on pages 69 and 70 it says check your motive when you're going to bed with somebody is it selfish? and on pages 100, 101, 102 it says check your motifs when you are going someplace where they are serving booze are you going there to get vicarious pleasure or do you really have a good reason to be there nowhere else in the books does it tell me to check motives this was an important lesson for me so I'm gonna share it And when I got this, I was sober a couple of years. I'm a commissioned salesman by trade. And I had a purchasing agent at a major account that represented about a third of my income. He bought my category. I sold him a lot of stuff. We were personal friends. Our wives were friends. We were guests in each other's homes. We had a lotof spiritual discussions, never a religious one. For an earthling, this guy was unbelievable. And his son was born premature, several months. And he called me from the hospital and he said, this child is not doing well. Would you come down and pray over my son? And I said, sure. And I got in my car and I drove to Vanderbilt Hospital. I think I could show you the parking place I was in. And I was sitting there doing what I'd heard in the meetings, checking my motives, and I can't answer the question. I don't know if I'm there to pray over this child or try to bring spiritual help to this family or if I am there to prayer over this childhood closer to the old man because he could have bought a lot more stuff from me. He could have doubled that easily. and I'm sitting there doing what you told me, checking my motives and I can't answer the question. And I prayed about it and I am not asking you to believe that the answer I am going to give you came from there. I am gonna tell you I think it did. I believe that when I need an answer and can't get one, one of two things has happened here. It's either okay that I make the mistake because I am gong to get the lesson better that way or I have asked the wrong question and the right question on the wrong day by the way is still the wrong questions. Yeah, the guidance would be right on time. I don't need it three weeks in advance. And so I prayed and I said, help me here. And what I got was another question. And the question was, does going into a hospital to pray over a sick child violate any of your principles? And the answer was no. That's good enough. There are no right reasons for doing the wrong thing. There are not wrong reasons for the right thing. Yeah, that helped me. And that's the difference between motive and principle. When I operate from motive, I'm trying to govern the results. I'll give you an example. I'm about to make up a story out of my past that never happened to help you get a lesson. It's a great motive. What's wrong? It's alive. Sure, it violates principle. And when I do that, what I'm doing is I'm not doing it right. What I'm going to do is govern the outcome. Step one, section B, I'm non-management. I'm responsible for the outcome and I'm also responsible for my actions. is that what principle does is it governs my action irrespective of outcome. It's a very important thing to me. And I don't find any place else in the book that tells me, and I'm not going to quote all the pages, there's a bunch of them, but my favorite there is still at the top of page 60. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to have good motives on all our affairs. That's not what it says. That is not what het says. Let's practice these principles. That was a big lesson for me, so I wanted to highlight it because it meant so much to me. It says each person, like the actor, wants to run the whole show. Whoever is trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery of the rest of the players in his own way, if it's arranged, it would only stay put if people would only... Did you notice that it's not the director we're talking about? This is one of the actors. It's the director's job. This is what they ask. They didn't say it was the star of the show. It's not the star. Not the co-star. This guy may not even have a speaking part. There are a lot of times when he shouldn't have a speaking part. I know that. My wife, Miss Linda, says one of the great Al-Anon prayers is, God, please keep your arm around my shoulders and your hand over my mouth. I've got to step out of the business of trying to run this thing. And I think that's really important. Let's go ahead and turn the page. Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles, driven. How do you like that word, driven? Not mildly disabled on rare occasion. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self seeking, self pity. Let's take a look at that series of words. Now they're going to appear in slightly different form all over the book. Let's hang on to 62, we're coming back to it. Take a look At 67. Second paragraph, referring to our list again, putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done, we resolutely look for our own mistakes. Where have we been? Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened. Pretty much the same list. Pretty much. 84. Two thirds of the way down the page. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. Page 86. When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid? Page 88. Third line. Excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. Not the same list, but pretty close. 145. Paragraph begins in the middle of the page. The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear. This is analysis by me. All right, I warn you now, red flags. Those things look to me like the earmarks of self. They really are the earmark of self-self. I heard this, a fellow from Houston tells this. Resentment is when I didn't get my will in the past. Anger and depression, when I'm not getting my will right now. And fear is the concern that I won't get My Will in the future. keeps coming back to my will. And this list, here we are in 62, 100 forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self pity. Bob covered that so beautifully. It's all the self thing. Self and the four. Reemergence of self, ugliest thing in the world. My sponsor told me before this next paragraph, he said, you're fixing to get the best news you'll ever get in your whole life. I said, really? Okay. Hit me with it. He said, so our troubles we think are basically of our own making. is that it that's it I know it doesn't sound that good to me he said that's the best news you'll ever get because if it really is the cops, the courts, the blacks, the Chinese, the Russians the PTA, the ex-wife if it truly is them you're cooked because we can't do a thing about them the good news is you are the problem and with a little willingness on your side We can work on that. Oh, didn't sound that good. It says they arise out of ourselves. The alcoholics are an extreme example of self-will run riot. He doesn't usually think so. Above everything. Now I wonder how important that is. Above everything, that's somewhere right around the middle, isn't it? Above everything we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. Gee, I wonder why. Well, it'll kill us, it says here only. We're threatening your life. We're going to do that a lot in the next few pages. it says often I think when there's a concept presented in the book more than once it's important I think that when there is a concept presented in a book more than one time more than ones on the same page it's real important more than wants in the same paragraph I think they're trying to tell me something no way of entirely getting rid of self without his aid capital H his aid that was it many of us had moral philosophical convictions galore could not live up to them even though we would like to neither could reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power we had to have god's help concepts in there twice self isn't going to push self out of the center it can't all right it says this is the how and why but first of all we hadと quit playing god at time out i thought we had a first two pages before that the first requirement be convinced any life run on self-will hardly be a success so we have two things in first place there if i could have got two things down to two things in first place. I might still be out there running hard. And I had thousands of things in first places, didn't you? Okay, so this one is we had to quit playing God. And I sat at the feet of one I call him one of the masters the grandmasters of this thing we do. And I set with him I had him a whole morning all by myself and I asked a lot of questions. And then he stopped once and he asked me a question. He said here on page 62 you agreed to quit paying God. I said yes. He said how did you play God? I said I don't know. and he said here's how i played god someone would die and i'd be angry and that's me saying i know who should die and how and when i played God because i tried to manage my own life and those around me and the closer you were to me the harder i triedto manage your life clearly God's job not mine i judged people and the reason i know that is because i had resentment and the only way to get a resentment is to judge someone find them guilty be angry with them and then feel that anger again the word resent comes from the latin re-r-e means again like reread it's something you read another time centuri means to feel and in english what we feel again is old anger that's what resent literally means it's old anger and i had resentments i therefore had judged those are the ones he had i've added some since then i needed to know i asked the question why and that's my spiritual arrogance saying if i can collect enough data i can like bob said take god's job and run this whole thing another one was that i was sure that everything i knew for sure was correct boy does that block me and isn't that playing god and um and another one was that I trusted my motives. And I've come up with some good motives to do some of the ugliest things you can imagine. I'm going to spare you and not list them, but trust me, it's not a pretty story. Okay, so we had to quit playing God. And here's a wonderful reason. It didn't work. Oh. Remember that first rule of cavalry? When the horse is dead, dismount. Not me, baby. I'm just going to the whip. Maybe we get this thing's attention. next we decided so here's the decision we talk about i break step three down into about nine parts so you just saw the first two all right here's here here's the decision we call for next we decided that hereafter in this drama of life god was going to be our director he's the principal we're his agents he's the father we're children and when i the perspective i'm going to take for the rest of the time we're together is how i coach a new man through these twelve steps please don't feel like i'm telling you what to do i am not please disagree I'd love it. I may learn something. Please, your sponsor's right. I'm wrong if there's a disagreement. This is simply what I do. And at this point, I ask him for a decision. Have you made that decision? Have we heaped enough evidence on you? Have you heaped it on yourself as to what happens when you manage? Have you had enough? Are you done? And if the answer is yes, and if you want some time to think about this, please take it. This is not a lightweight decision. And when you're ready, I want you to read that to me in the first person. and he will read I have decided that hereafter in this drum of life God is going to be my director He is the principal I am His agent He is The Father I am his child and I will say I think you've made an excellent . . . . Thank you.