Willingness to Go to Any Length – Workshop – Part 2 of 7 – Raymer W.

And if you've got a guy that can't deal with the idea of God, you're not going to be able to work much program. Will time help? Sure. Will the miracle of all of your reconciliations help? Sure. You bet. But you've gotta kind of know who you're dealing with. Any of you guys ever worked with a Satanist? Somebody that was in the Church of Satan? It's a trip. It's true trip. I still get that. And God's sitting back laughing his butt off like they're going, see, I told you, man. It's the absolute cooler. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you can understand the value, though, of knowing ahead of time a little bit where this guy's bent is around things spiritual so that you can help guide him through some of this kind of stuff. The assumption that he will get it on his own is a scary assumption. If I kind of know what the game plan is ahead of me, it's like I'm sitting there, I'm trying to find out where the mines are ahead of time so I'll know what's going on. And the third thing, and then we'll get back on this other stuff. The third thing is this... I'm going to find OUT if you're willing to go to any length. You've got a book. Let's do something real quick. This is a two-minute sidetrack. Flip over to page 58. I always get people that get ambivalent about when to start working guys through the steps. In Dallas, the big mantra, the Big Thing is they'll tell you when they want to start work in the steps We forget that they're sick and we're supposed to be the healthy ones on the deal like that but that's their deal They'll come tell you My deal is and my experience has been is they won't tell you. They'll just get sick and go get loaded and we won't see them again. I mean, it's pretty ugly. But look down the thing. We read this thousands of times a day in thousands and thousands of meetings. Go halfway down the page. Our story is disclosed in a general way. What we used to be like, what happened, what we're like now. Here it is. If you've decided that you want what we have, that's a question, and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. so stick with me just a second how many meetings would you have to go to to decide that you want what we have and to make the decision that you're willing to go to any length to get it you may not have to go to any you understand what I'm saying you might have to go to some I'm not saying don't go to the meeting guys some people say well you just hate meetings come on you know me better than that already you know me better then that don't you I don't feel that way at all like that I just think that sometimes this idea that the meeting is the center, the epicenter of our recovery is problematic. There is a dark side to meetings that cause problems and that we can avoid sometimes if we just do a little work ahead of time. Y'all get that? Some of you aren't digging this at all yet, but we're going to talk about unicorns in a minute. It'll be okay. We'll be in something that doesn't make you sweat. So look, they're going ask those two questions and this is it. Those are the three things from a nuts and bolts A, B, and C that I'm going to do with everybody, every man that I've ever sponsored, certainly over the last 15 or 16 years, we're going to sit down and go. Once I know what's going on here, then I have an idea of kind of a bead and I'm not going to leave. The willingness to go to any lengths, we are going to talk about it later on this afternoon or tomorrow. We are going to spend a bit of time talking about those specific questions that I would ask because I want him to know what the deal is. If you tell me you're willing to go at any length and then later you balk, that's my bad because I didn't tell you what any length looks like but I'm going to, you see. And this is the reason why I think that stuff's important. So I don't spend a whole lot of time... I heard guys talking about weekend workshops on step two. And I guess in some experiential kind of thing you might be able to do that like that. But really and truly, I mean, it was just... Do you believe that there's a God? Do you bleed that there is some spiritual path that you could get on that's sufficient enough to bring about recovery. You don't have to have a full-form doctrine. This idea, I was raised in a Christian church and then left and said, I'll never ever go back to church. You will never catch me in a church again and left and for many, many years that's the way it was and when I come back in like that now it's a different deal. I'm back sitting in a different place in a new Christian church again and I'm quite groovy with it but my point is this idea that our new guys and gals have to have a full-form doctrine in their head about what they're believing in like that is, I think, a mistake. Because most of us, I'm not saying all of us but most of it have really, really head full of old ideas that are problematic. I had a bad experience in a vacation Bible school class when I was 12 years old. 12 years older and I felt like I'd been disrespected in a Vacation Bible School deal in a Baptist church and I just said, screw these people. You understand what I'm saying? And so I judge everything through that lens all the way up into my adulthood. Isn't that the craziest thing in the world? I was 12 years old for crying out loud. Why would I do that? And so once I finally got to a place where I could drop my guard a little bit and began to reinvestigate and look at these things through a different set of circumstances, I began to see that I could get clear of a bunch of that stuff. But y'all are pretty cool with this, right? Some of you guys, some of the most fascinating stories, how you got here, I never even hardly look up because I really don't give a rat's how you got here. Seriously, your stories bore me as bad as my story bores you. But how you came to know God, how you became to an understanding on a spiritual path, I could listen forever, non-stop. I'm fascinated by those stories because most of you guys are just like me. You're on a special journey that continues to change and grow and alter and it's pretty fascinating to listen to those deals. So we've got a guy here that's been qualified. He's ambivalent about God, but at least he's not militant about it, about not wanting to do it. And so I got him clear of this kind of stuff and the next thing we would look at is page 60, 61, 62. I'm just going to read a couple little pieces on this thing so we can talk about this for a couple of minutes. let me ask you a question am I the only guy out there that felt like this whole piece between 60 and 63 was like pages found after the manuscript had been put together stop and look at what it is we've talked about Bill's story we have all of this stuff about booze we got all of his qualifying stuff about the mental obsession in the last two chapters and then we get into this deal here where all of a sudden we stop talking about boozed completely We're not talking about it at all. And they introduce us to this idea that is truly, truly out of left field. Wait a minute. What does self have to do with any of this? I mean, I'm a booze hound. Canadian whiskey and methamphetamine, that I think is the root of my trouble. You understand? It had nothing to do mit selfishness. It's like they wrote the manuscript. They got everything all gathered up like this and then somebody in the back of the room goes, Hey, Bill, what's this selfishness and self-centeredness stuff? What's this? And he goes, Ah, shit. Here, just stick it there. It just seemed arbitrary to me. And all of a sudden, there it is. And so look at the bottom of page 60. If you don't have your book, don't worry about it. I'll read a couple little pieces here. The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. on that basis we're almost always in collision with something or somebody even though our motives are good it goes on down a little bit it compares us to the actor who wants to run the whole show I mean, we're not even the director we're the actor and we want to run the whole thing we want the whole show it's a great illustration of me a little later on today we're going to talk about this inventory stuff that's coming up this idea of who we are authentically who we really are without playing all the games and this kind of stuff and they're beginning to introduce us to this idea here that perhaps there's more to it and that perhaps we are self-deluded as to who we really are. Okay, so I'm just talking to men. I'm not going to talk to you. I'm still just talking to men, okay? You girls just ignore me because I still think you're weird. I still don't get you. Girls just baffle me. I have three daughters and a wife that I adore and women just scare me. I don't know what goes through their head but men let me just tell you can you in a relationship situation and I want to talk specifically about relationship stuff because it's the easiest one for us to see ourselves in this deal so in an evening in a single evening can you not be the kindest man in the universe and the biggest dick on earth in the same evening depending on how the evening is going yeah some of you little angels are all going not me I always know who I am listen, driven by what you want aren't you willing to say and do whatever even if it means lying and telling them you're somebody else or doing whatever the deal is I'll tell you some stories when we do four step stuff you'll think I'm a total fruitcake I will confirm that I am a fruitcake but it's an amazing thing this idea then they go on in 60 and they keep talking to that life would be wonderful and trying to make these arrangements our actor may be sometimes quite virtuous Virtuous, he may be kind, considerate, patient, generous, even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he maybe mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest, but as with most humans, he's more likely to have varied traits. Gals, in the men in your life, can't you see them be a full-grown adult at one point in the day and an eighth grader in another part of the day? I mean, complete with stomping up and down mad stuff and crazy, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just depends on the deal. And then they introduce you to the idea of center page. Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? I am blown away by how many people in our fellowships don't know anything about these pages that we're talking about right now because they're not addressing alcoholism per se in terms of booze and stuff. We just ignore it like this. And yet this is what drives us. This is the fabric that we are made out of and when you begin to see it, when you can connect the dot that you are a full-blown idiot around some of this stuff, then you will begin to take a step into some humility and take a steps into some peace and comfort that you've never known before. It's the coolest thing in the world. Women tend to do it better than men. Men want to get real stoic and go, Selfish? I'm not selfish. They get all bowed up about it and I'm just going, Yeah, you are. Wait till you see. Without these three pages, is your approach into the inventory that we're getting ready to look at is going to be a tough one. It's going to being a bugaboo. If you can begin to see that perhaps you're kind of crazy around some of this stuff, then it becomes easier to understand and see your behavior. You're not going to so willing to just want to overlook your bad behavior. Don't those pages want to keep convincing you of that point? Yeah. Being convinced. Yeah. And then more convinced. and then basically you paint me right into a corner and then I've got to do inventory and then I see it. Absolutely, but this is the part that baffles me. This is why I get so frustrated when people refuse to look at this. Why do we spend so much time talking about your day with your grandkids in an AA meeting? I love my grandkids. Why do we spend some time talking about that when we could be trying to help people see? Look at the greatest line in the big book over there as far as I'm concerned. 62, and the most difficult for me to understand that beginning of the first full paragraph on 62, selfishness, self-centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles listen, if Bill Wilson had called me and said, Myers will you rewrite this for me it doesn't have the meaning I thought it was going to have I guarantee you I would have rewritten it it would have been Canadian whiskey and methamphetamine that I think isthe root of my problems you see let me ask you this question How many of you thought that the moment you got booze and dope out of your life, that your life was going to be groovy? We thought most of us did. We thought that everything revolved around this. I'm a mess because I'm drunk. But when I'm not a drunk, I won't be a mess. Well, then how many of us, if you're like me, got to a place where you were sitting there looking at yourself in the mirror in sobriety and going, I can't even look up in the mirrow. I don't even like who's staring back at me. You see? there were years in AA when I first sobered up like this, when I never looked in the mirror when I shaved and my wife would look at me and she'd go you did it again and I said what and she said you shaved half your beard off and I went what do you mean and it would be real little over here and it'd be real big over here because I'm shaving without looking in the miracle because I can't stand to look at myself in the mural because I know that deep down inside I'm still a liar, I'm Still a thief I'm not who I wanted to be at all not who ever dreamed I would be the only thing that's different is there's no addictive stuff in my system. I'm still getting credit cards that my wife doesn't know about and maxing them out, you see? I've got a burn rate on credit cards that will scare you, the crazy stuff like that. Any of you guys ever buy anything you didn't need? Chris Schroeder is my music mentor and sponsor. He and I love the same kinds of music and this kind of stuff. But when he got me back cataloging all my music, I found three... You remember a band called Simply Red? I think they were in business and out of business about like this. I have three Simply Red CDs. One opened and two in cellophane sitting on my shelf when I was going back to... And there were dozens of them that were like that where I had duplicates that I never... Why would I buy a CD that I already owned if I wasn't insane? I mean and that particular CD it wasn't even one that I actually listened to a bunch it was just holy shit so look at this look at his nail I'm going to be quick so our troubles we think are basically of our own making they arise out of ourselves and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self will run riot though he usually doesn't think so above everything we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us. God make that possible. Listen, guys, this is not empty rhetoric. This is not Bill Wilson trying to just write some flowery shit. He meant what he said when he said it and we want to trivialize it and discount it like it's not even worth reading. Those musts that aren't supposed to be in the big book, how many of you guys have members of your group that still say that? There are no musts in the Big Book. There's two right there. There's one. There's a two right here. there's 67 musts in the big book there's 153 if you count the ones in the story but I digress good to know you just never know when you're going to need to know this kind of stuff so they introduce you to this deal let me make one little quick point there's a prayer in the center of that prayer I'm going to leave the rest of this stuff for my buddy but in the center of that prayer, there's a line there that always really caught me off guard. Did it ever occur to any of you guys, did it bother you guys in this Thursday prayer that there's no mention of booze? It was the very first thing I looked at. The very first time that I noticed, I went, wait a minute, they don't talk about... What does it say in the very center of the prayer? Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. When you get up in the morning, it's not booze that's waiting for you. It's not something like that that's going to kick your butt. What's waiting for you alarmingly close to you is self. And to the degree that you let self creep back into the picture you stoic guys that have decided you don't need sponsorship anymore there's some of you in here I know I mean I've toyed with that idea myself it's the craziest idea in the whole wide world some of these guys we get into situations where we just we don't want to be held accountable give me a five minute conversation with somebody that's been in our rooms for a long period of time and I can tell you whether they're working a program without knowing anything else about their background all I want to do is see how many times I is mentioned in the conversation if you ask them how their week's going or something like that sometimes we just become so self-absorbed again we just take everything back and all of a sudden we've ensconced ourselves back in the center of our universe and from that perspective we're always going to be in trouble It's always going to be. And this is why this is so problematic. Relieve me of the bondage of self. If I can just simply get, this is the reason why 12-step work is so amazingly powerful, why it's so important that we understand it. We have a whole generation of us folks who have decided that 12-stepped work is an option that we can leave or take depending on what we want to do. And there are geographic areas where there's no 12-steps being done at all. It's crazy. You won't find anybody sponsoring people. In the Midwest, There's areas like that where there'll be entire counties, tri-state, tri county areas like that, where there will be one tired old lady sponsoring every woman in three counties. She's the only one that will step up and do the deal. I can name you 16 at least deals that I've run across that are just like that. Some broken down old guy is sponsoring half the town because nobody else wants to step up and doing it like that crazy. We're going to talk about it tomorrow not to make anybody feel uncomfortable but to to help you see and understand that there is a payoff for you doing it. There's a payoff. And some of us have distanced ourselves from some of the cool stuff, and then we wonder why we're not happy in AA anymore. We're wondering why life has gotten tough on us again. And the reality of that is it's all about you again. Left on your own devices, you pull in and concentrate on your stuff, your bad back, your bad feet, your bed breath, your whatever. You start doing this, and I promise you, you'll find yourself amazingly unhappy in short order. Come on, guys. I've got a guy right now that I'm sponsoring who's been in a hospital dying of some untreated weird cancer or weird stuff. Cancer is part of it, but there are some other coexisting situations. But he's been In a hospital bed for a month and a half. He breathes on a respirator. And I'm telling you, when you go up and see him like that and talk to him like this, he'll laugh his ass off. He'll laugh so hard that they'll ask me to leave every time I go up there because we're always talking about something goofy. And he's just full of life, and he's always saying, Myers, don't come back up here without a new guy for me to work with. So every time when I go upp there, I'm bringing some little guy that has no clue what's getting ready to hit. And this guy, I mean, he talks just like this. He goes, okay, now, so this is what we'll do. you can imagine how tedious it is it's tedious to listen to it but you can image how tedious it is for him and yet he can't wait for me to bring every week I'll bring somebody else up there to see and he's as happy as he can be this is what this stuff is about finish this stuff ok very good you know the first three steps I believe that we need to come to terms personally with them we need to own these steps. There's such a tendency in certain AA members to understand them a little bit, not really be conversant in them, not be able to explain them to the people that they're working with. There was a lot of pointing people toward the step book when I was coming up through the ranks in AA. If you were asking questions about step one, and they'd say, read step one in the 12-in-12 30 days in a row. And that was how they're trying to get you to understand the first step. I think we need to take ownership of these steps. We need to understand them experientially ourselves, and then we need be able to present them to the people that we're working with, the people who want our help. In step one, we went over what step one was, what powerlessness looked like, a little bit about unmanageability. I'll explain my particular take on unmanangeability like this. Separated from alcohol in an unrecovered state, a good day would be restless, irritable, and discontented. A normal day would pray to misery, depression, self-centered fear, guilt, shame, remorse, anxiety, depression. a terrible day would be pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization uh the hideous four horsemen terror frustration bewilderment despair these are all emotional psychic spiritual you know debilitators these uh these these these states of existence and that's really how my unmanageability presented i used to think that it was the crashed cars but it wasn't it was my emotional spiritual state that was in pain and that was damaged uh in step two coming to believe that a power greater than myself can solve my problem really is what what step two is you know what what does that look like if sometimes it's very very difficult for us to talk about this concept about of god so often we bring our old ideas to this our old prejudices and our old ideas. When I walked into AA, my belief system about God was basically like this. An old dude up in heaven sitting on a cloud with St. Peter and a big ledger taking down all the little sins and mistakes the Schroeder boy was making so that when judgment day comes, there's going to be a reckoning. Now think about that as a conception of God. That's not going to keep me sober very long. You know, think about that. That's a childish Santa Claus-esque picture of my experience with God. Now somebody that sat right there next to me in Sunday school will have a loving conception of a loving presence and a divine loving presence. It's the receiver. I don't know where I came up with these belief systems. But I had to be willing to let go of them to move me into something that would actually, actually work. And I've studied a little bit about AA history. And you have to look back at what was going on in the prehistory of Alcoholics Anonymous from 1935 to about 1939 is really kind of like the pre-history. They They were really Oxford Group until the book was published. They were groups of drunks hanging out around the Oxford Group, splitting off from the Oxford group, but they hadn't really named themselves Alcoholics Anonymous yet. You look at what was going on in those early days and what was happening and you read some of that early literature and you'll see the early alcoholics, what they were doing. really interesting Bill Wilson in New York is exposed to the Oxford group through Ebby that's in his story we all pretty much know about that independently Dr. Bob is in Akron and he was exposed to the to the Oxford group through his wife and Henrietta Seiberling and some other people and they were both going to the oxford group now the oxord group was a group of Christians who believed in practicing the principles of first century Christianity. Frank Buchman, the guy that put this together, was looking for a deeper experience than just going to church for an hour on Sunday. He really thought that humanity needed a better shot in the arm than that. So he put together the Oxford Group. And what the Oxford group looked like in those days was people would get together early in the morning to do early in morning quiet times. They would get together at night to have little meetings. On the weekends, they had what was known as house parties, which look remarkably similar to what we're doing here this weekend. A number of people would get zusammen, and there would be spiritual practices and talks all weekend at somebody's house. And they got very, very involved in spiritual action. That's really what the Oxford group was about. But just like AA, there were some people that were really buying in and doing the work and being the people who were really practicing this stuff. And then there was the people that would just come and sit and listen and not get too involved. Now Bill Wilson in New York is going early, he's staying late, he's asking everybody what else can I do to help in the early days. and he's staying sober and about six months into his sobriety he's going like, you know, I'm trying to help drunks because he knew right away that this Oxford group experience worked for him so he honed in on other alcoholics to bring in and expose to this you know he recognized about six months in that these other people weren't staying sober but he was he was trying to health people stay sober and he was practicing these Oxford group principles Now, on the other side of the coin, Dr. Bob is going to Oxford Group meetings, but he's coming late, he's leaving early, and he's not getting involved. Okay? Leave me alone. Now, doesn't that kind of relate to some of the people that we've worked with over the years? You know, isn't it usually the people who just want to half-measure it, the people Who don't make it in AA? Well, Dr., Bob was continuing to drink. Now, what they learned early on was engagement in these spiritual exercises and spiritual practices would bring about a change in attitude and outlook. And it would expose you to a power greater than yourself that could solve your problem. The practice of this spiritual living and spiritual life. They learned this in the auction group. So Bill Wilson understands absolutely that we must begin to come to believe in that power greater than ourselves. We must, otherwise we're not going to engage in the spiritual exercises of the steps and the spiritual living that will bring about this change in our life. So the first thing we have to do is believe that it's possible. Come to believe that the power greater Than Ourselves can restore us to sanity. And then the third step, the way I see it and the way I explain it to the people that I work with is simply a decision to go through the rest of the steps because that's what's going to bring about this deepened relationship with the power greater than yourself that's solving your problems. And to try to develop a closer connection to that divine power which most of us call God and make that decision and that decision for it to mean anything has to be followed by the spiritual exercises and spiritual practices that they're asking us to do to get that spiritual awakening as the result of these steps so when I'm working with somebody before I move anywhere they have to be convinced of their problem and I have to convince too like Myers was saying This is qualification. We absolutely must understand whether or not, you know, what the person's truth is about the personís problem. What are they powerless over? What is the truth about their powerlessness? You know, and then Iíll expose them to a little bit of the history and a little Bit of the concepts in Steps 2 and Steps 3. So often we bring these prejudices and these damaged belief systems into this work. And we think that if we're going to take step three, that means we have to go back to church or we, you know, we have to believe in the Trinity or all this other stuff, which, you know, some of us do. Some of us don't. This particular realm of the spirit is broad, roomy and all inclusive. It's never exclusive. It''s never forbidding. There is, you know the hoop that you have to jump through is larger than you think it is and we can all find common ground with these concepts but what will take us out at the knees is saying no like myers was talking about the militant atheist saying no i will not go there i cannot go there this is not up for debate, that will put the brakes on this whole recovery process. It will. If that happens with somebody, there are some ways that I can help and try to get around it. I was working with somebody recently who had probably more than enough exposure to defective religious teachings. Listen, you know, I believe that in a lot of the religions, I study comparative religion. I know a lot about Buddhism. I know a super lot about Christianity. I've been studying that for 20 years. I'm just drawn to religious studies, yet I'm not a religious person, if that makes any sense. I don't go to a church regularly. I'll go to churches occasionally, but I'm not a member of any specific church, but I know a huge amount about religions and about what all this is about. I find that incredibly comforting, but I don' t necessarily need it to sustain my spiritual condition. This is spiritual stuff. So I'm talking with this guy who is basically saying he's an agnostic. I'm not sure if he knew the difference between an agnostic or an atheist. And I told him this story, and he started to get it a little bit. I basically said this. There's this fish one time, and this fish is swimming around, and every time he stops somebody, he asks them, where's the water? I hear there's this great thing called water. Now, the fish is swinging through water, and water is moving through the fish. Yet the fish is looking for water. He doesn't understand his own personal experience with this. I said, you're like the person, you are like the fish. You are in God's creation and God is working in and through you and you are asking where God is. Prove to me that there is God. You are like a fish that is saying, prove to me there is water. It is a shift in perception. It's understanding the truth about your nature as a human being. And we're not saying that you have to do anything religious. We're not say that you believe in specific attributes of God. But we are saying that if you don't come to terms with a power greater than yourself, and you are alcoholic and you aren't an addict if you don't come to terms with the power greater than yourself and work toward understanding and aligning yourself with that power, you are going to die you will die from alcoholism personally I want to die with alcoholism I don't want to die from it so I'm paying very very close attention to this stuff I want to finish this, and we're going to take another break. But I wantto finish it telling a story out of my work experience. Now, a little bit about what I do. I'm a facility manager. That means that I run contractors, construction crews, maintenance crews, custodial staff, grounds crews, pest control people. I mean, I run the facilities process for a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, okay? Now, in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, they have two things that are incredibly important. One is best practices and the other is change control. I want to explain a little bit about each of those. Best practices are through experience, through deep experience. They have found that to do something a certain way is going to bring about the best outcome. And it's very, very important to understand and detail that best practice very, very carefully. Remember, what we do is we manufacture life-saving medication. You've got to be paying attention when you're doing that. So we have best practices in how to do that. Now, we also have what is known as a change control procedure. Once we've defined the best practices, if you want to change something, you have to go through an incredibly detailed change control procedure. You have to get permission from six different departments, have to sign off on this change control for something to be altered because they want to be absolutely sure that the change you make is not going to affect the outcome. All right? now here's an example of when this went wrong there's a lid on one of the conveyor belts where the medication goes through it's part of the production process and this lid broke and they found out that it's going to be an eight week lead time for this lid and you know that's going to stop this whole production line for eight weeks so they had somebody make one all right now the individual made one now the quality control people come in about a week later and they go, this doesn't look right. This lid doesn't, doesn't look right and they find out that with all good intentions somebody went and took a specific lid and made another one that was different. Now when you do that on an assembly line for pharmaceutical manufacturing products you need to be able to prove that the change you made is not going to affect the product's potency or effectiveness. You have to do that. It's an FDA regulation, and they didn't do that. The person was just putting a new lid on. He thought he was doing his job. Well, they had to put all that medication on hold until they could do studies to prove that that lid wouldn't have made any difference before they could let go of the pharmaceutical product. Why am I telling this story? Because we have a path that if we thoroughly follow, if we thoroughly follow this path rarely have we seen a person fail yet what happens with us is we get in there and we build different lids and we change these processes and what they do in most cases what they affect the outcome we're about to start on step 4 we're going to start looking at step 4 step 4 is very explicit in this book There are instructions from step four through step 12, specific instructions. Yet we have people that sponsor and we have groups that promote changes in this, differences in this. What we really need, you know, what Myers and I sometimes are is we're the quality experts. We come in and we point out where people have made changes and how that could affect the outcomes. if you want to rarely have we seen a person fail if you wanna be one of those rare leaks you need to be paying attention to the best practices and the best practises are in this book does that make any sense we have a question how come there's no change control on AA good question I don't know it's a good question I'd just like to add something up on the wall there is the four absolutes. And one of the things when I went to Akron that moved me so was on Dr. Bob's desk, he had a whole humility prayer, which was absolutely beautiful. And I don't remember much of it other than, if I get in a really crummy place, let me be at peace within myself. That was the essence of that. But the other thing which I thought was interesting during the archival stuff was they used to have a pamphlet that they first handed out before the big book was around, and in that pamphlet it was up on sponsorship of what you should do and what the sponsee should do and that sort of thing. And at the end there was a little bibliography. And in that bibliography there was this book called The Greatest Thing in the World written by Henry Drummond. And someplace I read the story that somebody called Dr. Bob and said, What do we do with Mary? Because Mary is drunk and we don't know what to do with her. And he said, give her the medication, which she probably prescribed for three days. And then give Mary that book and let her read that book every day for 28 days. The book was on love. I bought the book from Amazon. It's very inexpensive. I've learned so much about love and service out of reading that little pamphlet thing. And the guy was probably a Billy Graham of 1870 or something like that. But it's a great pamphle if anybody wants to enhance their own... What was it called? The greatest thing in the world. Henry Drummond was a very, very influential spiritual person around 1880-1890. He was the Billy Graham of his age. And he was incredibly influential on people who became influential on AA. There was a number of people, Bill and Bob had libraries of spiritual books. And if you do a study of what books did they have in their library, you'll see that they were highly influenced by Glenn Clark. You know, he was a great author. You want to read some amazing stuff that just shouts Alcoholics Anonymous. You know read some Glenn Clark stuff. A lot of the books that were written by Oxford Group people are important. For Sinners Only, I think Bill was influenced incredibly by the book For Sinner's Only which was written, had a lot to do with talking about recovered people who had different kinds of problems, some of them alcoholics. You know, when you look at the Oxford Group, one of the amazing things is that Bill was not the first drunk to sober up in the Oxford group by any means. He wasn't even the first drink to soberup in the Oscar group who wrote a book about it, you know? He was simply the first drunk who sobered up in the Oxford group who dedicated the rest of his life to helping other drunks. In his story, it talks about on his hospital bed, he came to the conclusion that there are millions out there that need what I have just received because he just had a spiritual experience on the hospital bed because he went through a whole bunch of steps with Abby. You know, I need to carry this message. That experience is why we're all here today. Without that experience, without him coming to the conclusion That he needs to dedicate the rest of his life to this thing We wouldn't be here Now you've got to remember, Bill was on Wall Street Bill had made a million dollars and lost it a couple of times He could have easily said Wow, I've just had a spiritual awakening Man, I can get back to Wall Street and make some bucks Because a lot of people probably did that Instead, he was guided and inspired to carry the message to other alcoholics and here we are but Myers said it well when he said Alcoholics Anonymous is unapologetically about gaining access to the power of God in today's day and age in AA it's become easy to forget that believe it or not There are a lot of meetings where you're kind of told, Myers, you talk about God all the time. You're going to be scaring the newcomers away. Lighten up a little bit, will you please? There's a lot Of places, and I think Alcoholics Anonymous World Service is somewhat to blame for this. I'm going to Be critical for a minute of Alcoholics Anonymous world service. I apologize beforehand, but I will. the foundational literature is clear even the 12 and 12 we call it the step book up north it's the 12 steps and 12 traditions in most other places even that book is very very clear on the problem and the solution and how we're to do that I want to just read real quickly here from the foreword of the 12th one of my favorite sentences AA's 12 steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. That's a great sentence. It talks about what this whole thing is all about. It talks about what this whole Alcoholics Anonymous thing is about. But after where after, say, 1955, what it seems like to me is all of the literature that's been written and published by AA World Services, all the pamphlets and the Living Sobers and all these other books, what they look like to be is it looks like they're paying attention to fellowship membership, not program recovery. And that may just be my perception. If you don't believe that, go look at the forwards to the first edition, second edition, and then watch the dramatic change in the third and fourth edition. Just read it and look at what it is. Their only focus seems to be on membership and I've got to tell you, somewhere during the weekend we're going to slide in a little piece here on some literature because there's some fun stuff that you just need to see that you'd get a kick out of. Most of you guys have been around for a little while. Your oars have been in the hay water for a bunch of years, and some of this I think you'll see is fascinating because you'll begin to see and understand why some of these changes began to happen within our fellowship as a whole. We didn't just wake up one day and say, I think we're going to take God out and I think wir'e going to do this. Some of this stuff was taught to us by our own central office. The literature began to move us away from an idea. We won't take up much time, but we'll spend a little bit of time talking about some of that stuff. It's pretty fascinating on the deal. There is no change made in the literature unless it goes through the conference with the delegates. The central office doesn't make any decision, capital decision, without being led by the conference. That would be great if that was true, but it's not. Stick around. I'll show you. It's frustratingly true. It is. I would be interested just to follow you. Absolutely. Are these people trying to hurt us? Is AA trying to send out literature that's going to damage us? Absolutely not. Their focus, though, is on membership and opening the doors as wide as they can possibly be. And listen, I know a bunch of delegates. I live very close to New York City. I've sponsored grapevine editors. I know all about what's going on. They put me up for a trustee position a couple of years ago and I didn't make it but I understand what's going on in there I've been to the conferences because my friend would bring me I've bee there for the annual World Service Conferences I don't think there is anybody that is trying to damage us but I think their motivation is to get as many of us in as possible Now, I'll speak for Myers and myself. I believe that we're more interested in quality than we are in quantity. I would rather be going to a meeting with 10 people who have recovered than with 50 who are just running wild, half-measured, still sick and suffering, causing a lot of trouble out there in their lives. I would. And every single time they publish another piece of literature, it's like, oh my God, do these people do the steps? We're in charge of all this stuff. You have to ask yourself because I know some of them. I know that they see the 12 steps as a nice philosophy. All this is great in theory, but there's very few of them that I believe have actual working experience with these steps. And to really understand these steps, you have to understand them experientially. We will form theories about these steps before we do them, but our theories are almost invariably incorrect. When I walked into the meetings and I saw the steps up on the wall, I was reading them, oh, okay, that sounds good. Don't see really any application to me and my problem. You know, I didn't see a direct relationship with doing these steps and solving my problems. What has to happen is you have to experience these steps. And after you've done them, you will understand them. You're not going to understand them beforehand. You know? Think about it like this. Let's say you have two sons. One of the sons is a plumber. every day he drives around in his plumbing truck and he fixes plumbing problems and your other son is going to school to be a plumbing engineer and he's in school and you can learn about pipe diameter and PSI and how to hook up boilers and he is sitting there in the classroom every day and he will actually be an engineer he will be able to do drawings of plumbing work and everything. Now, all of a sudden you have a house and water is coming out of the ceiling. Who are you going to call? You're going to called the guy who drives around every day fixing plumbing problems. The one that knows all the theory and can teach in the university about it, that's well and fine, but you need the problem fixed. Well, a lot of times there's people who sound really good in AA. They sound like they really know what's going on, but they don't have any working experience with these steps. You know, when we're looking for sponsors or we're looking for spiritual advisors, we want somebody that's had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we don't necessarily need some. We don't live by advice. We live by spiritual principles. You know what I mean? And we're taught the spiritual principles through someone who has experience going through these steps. I am a master plumber and as far as plumbing engineers, there is no such thing. There's apprenticeship, there's journeyman, there's masters. You have to take a test at the state, wherever your state is. And then you have to go and there's a problem. So you apply yourself to the degree of your knowledge if you become a master, then you can hire other people to work for you. Secondly, can you explain a little bit about you're saying these theories or whatever on literature that's approved literature, not approved literature? Is there anything as far as approved literature and how they got rid of the envelope before it was added? We're going to talk about that later on this afternoon. We've got a little opening in there. We're kind of working there like that. We'RE not trying to be provocative or stir anybody up. There are just some things that I think that if you stand back and look at it from a distance around how some of this stuff happened, you begin to connect up in a bigger picture why some of us began to feel the way we felt on that. We'll do that. I'm from Michigan. In Michigan, we have this thing that came from Ohio and it's a guide to the 12 steps. They're pink pamphlets and they're yellow pamphets. They're 16 pages. I really think they're hurtful for AA as a whole unless it's explained to the newcomer this is a guy because we have meetings there that unless there's a big book thumper around that's going to take a big book and sit down these people spend day in and day out on the 16 page guide and you know step 12 with it says now you're on your own you know in step two it says remember back when you were little and you ran to your mother or father when you got in trouble good alcohol don't relate to that kind of but that does have the old emblem on it and somebody said that it came from Ohio and they made this up to I'm a little lost I'll help you connect it up after lunch we'll sit down with it and when we come back from the quarry let's go smoke for a second and then we'll take about 20 minutes Mr. Schroeder has got to make a fast telephone call he's got to get done and then we'll come back and we'll do... What we're going to do is set up this thing on this four-step thing before we go to lunch so that during the break and during the afternoon we can talk about it and think about it a little bit and kind of get some stuff in our head. I'd rather talk about this inventory stuff coming up than anything else that's there. Some fun stuff. Okay? Y'all go smoke a butt. We're good. Well, did we get everybody in just about? Yes, sir? Can I make a short note before we get started? Yeah. Is there a Tim G. in the room, standing in room 5? At some point today, would you see the front desk about your business? They found the porn. I'm sorry. Tim, you're a wanted man. That's all I can say. So, welcome. Golly, it's just the coolest to get a chance to talk about this stuff and to get a chance to spend some time getting some information back from you guys. It's always an amazing deal like that. Somebody told me one time, he said, you know, AA is the same everywhere you go. I just love that about AA and I'm going, buddy, you must not travel much. Seriously. Seriously. Because AA is not the same. It ought to be. In theory, every time you saw a circle and triangle on a door, it ought to look exactly the same and it ought feel the same but in my experience, it is amazingly different in places and sometimes it's like a crapshoot. You just don't know. You just kind of roll the dice. Sometimes it will be a great experience and sometimes you just sit there and scratch your head. I had an email from a guy, a friend of mine, that baffled me. I couldn't believe that it was a text message and I'm looking at it like this and I am going, he couldn't have meant that and I called him back and he said absolutely and here is the text message said, this was in Houston, Texas, I just went to my 17th straight AA meeting with no mention of the steps. Seventeenth straight meeting with no mentioned of the step. Now, guys, correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe I'm just being too critical here. If the steps and a relationship with God are at the center of our program, then how do we have anywhere seventeen meetings where we find more things to talk about that are more important than the steps in God? It just baffles me. We don't call that an AA meeting. I mean, I've gone in there and sat through it and I go, okay, this is some other kind of meeting but this is not an AA meet. And some people insist on notifying if they're in a directory as an AA meting, they need to be called out because there's not a mention of the steps, the program's not included in the preamble at the very least then it's just somebody got some guy, someone who's just come up with an idea for a meeting and they're running something. I've seen that rarely. I agree. So let me explain. Sometimes I think that people scratch their head and they say, well, I don't understand why you talk about some of the things that you talk about. I think it's important to understand as sober members of this deal and as more mature members of the program, I think there's a responsibility that goes with it. We're going to talk about it in the morning some. I just think that the more we know and understand about our program and about recovery, the better it will be. I'm not trying to be some Billy Badass. I'm no trying to be provocative. Listen, I can't tell you how many times I have gotten... Chris and I were doing a workshop one time in... I might not tell you where but it was back up this direction but you might know some of them so I'm going to... We're in a car driving out of the airport and this guy is sitting over there. It was the guy that was driving and his buddy and Chris and i are in the back seat. This guy goes, Oh, I can't wait. I can' t wait. You guys are going to give them hell. And Chris goes What? And he said Ben, I ca' n't wait man. You're going to stir these people up so bad like that you're going ot rock their world like that. And Chris is looking at me and finally he taps this guy on the shoulder like this that's driving the car and he said Can you turn us around? And the guy said Did you forget something? And he says Yeah, we're going back home. I'm not your hired gun and I'm not here to try to be provocative. Some of the things that we talk about are a little bit provocative and some of the Things We Talk About may make you think a little big. If you've been doing AA one way and somebody comes in and says, maybe you ought to be talking about the big book in your meeting instead of Sally's Bad Day and that offends you, I'm sorry. But I didn't come from Texas to stir somebody up. That was not my job. You see? I want to make sure that everybody is clear on this stuff. I so desperately love this program and so desperately want it to be here for the next generation. And the things that I see, because I do travel so much, the things THAT I see make me sick. I am sickened by... There are still wonderful people and there are still cool things going on. But guys, when you have groups where they're charging you money to hear fifth steps, that's a mistake. Don't you think Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob would be flipping over in their graves to hear that kind of stuff? And listen, stick with me a second. The fact that somebody would charge money to hear a fifth step doesn't bother me nearly as much as a fellowship that will sit back on their thumbs and cross their arms and not say one word about it. And it goes on in Texas all the time. All the time." Yeah, well, that's Texas. Unfortunately, it's the center of my world. And so it's just like... You see what I'm saying? But it's like... There was a kid that I did a talk up in... I can't tell you where it is either. Someday they're all going to come together and kill me in my sleep. But I did this talk and when I got back to Dallas, I got an email from this lady and she said, I can not believe