Rigorous Application of the Big Book – Big Book Step Study – Part 2 of 2 – Tim M.

There we go. I think I'm recording myself, so hopefully that will work. My name's Tim. I'm an alcoholic. Very glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me. I've heard a lot about Big Book Step Study meetings. I've never been to one. We have a slightly different system in the UK. My date of sobriety is 24th July 1993. I first started sobering up in 1990 when I was 18. I'm in my 50s now. In my first 16 years of AA, how I did things was very old-fashioned middle-of-the-road AA, Pacific Group style if you're familiar with Clancy and similar the speakers. So not a lot of Big Book. At around ten years I started to take an interest in the Big Book specifically because I had questions about step one and how did I know now I was ten years sober, I couldn't drink normally and the Big book gave me some answers I found some very good speakers. I was one of those aggravating people who would go around to big book meetings saying, well, you know, all of those promises, that's just Bill, the marketing man, being extravagant. Because they hadn't fully come true for me. They had in part here and there lots of... everything was better than it had been but boy was there a lot that was radically unresolved unresolved at root level and i listened to some tapes of people that talked about using the big book as a textbook for how to get well i was very active in aa at this point i was sponsoring a bunch of people I did use the big book to some extent I did a lot of service but what I'd never done was everything I'd Never gone through the whole thing right from the cover to the end of page 164 Dr Bob's Nightmare I'd never gone through all of that and said right let's test what happens if I do precisely what it says leave nothing out make sure everything is complete step eight complete step nine complete the idea was presented to me on tapes because there's no one in where i was living to show me how to do this i did everything with the book and some tapes but the idea is presented you can't tell whether the The promises are extravagant or not, unless you fulfill the conditions. And Bill's story says, when these things were done, my friend promised me I would enter into a new relationship with my creator. Done, D-O-N-E, not partly done. So I did everything. I crossed the I's and dotted... What do you do? You cross T's and dot I's, that's the right way around. and I was as surprised as anyone to discover lots of problems either evaporating on the spot or showing not just improvement but showing a way forward things were not going to get fixed straight away the relationship with my mother was not goingto get fixed straight away but I could see that movement was finally happening it's like being in a train that's stuck and it starts moving, you now know you're going to get to your destination because the train is now moving. And ever since then I've been a, and that was always 13 years ago, something like that, I've being a real aficionado of the big book and I've taken hundreds of people through the process. Fear inventory. So I've got the text in front of me. Notice that the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer and the wife. I'd done a step four, those columns out of the big book, but I hadn't understood them. I understand it now. The reason I'm resentful is because I've got a plan, and The world hasn't followed my plan. I've got a plan for people's conduct, personal relations, sex relations. I've Got A Plan For My Finances, how their conduct is going to improve my finances if they would only do what I want them to do, pocketbooks. If they behaved right, if they followed the scripts, I'd get all the things I need to be okay, security. My ambitions would be fulfilled. my image of myself, my self-esteem would be plumped up and their perception of me, my pride would be intact. Behind every single resentment is a pair of things. Self-seeking is a plan, there's a plot, there's an scheme, there is a design which ain't coming off. My mind has been monitoring everyone's behavior for whether or not they've complied with the script and if they don't the klaxon goes off, I get a resentment. And behind the self-seeking is the fear that my self- seeking plan will not succeed. So behind every resentment of self- seeking and fear, and here is where I start to look at the fear. Notice that the word fear is bracketed. It's behind every single one of those. It may not be behind every single one in the book, but behind every simple one of my resentments is fear. The resentment is what's on the surface, the fear is what underneath. This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives and I think the reason why it's the mosquito principle. A mosquito is very very small but if it's buzzing in your ear it's as though it's filling the whole room. I heard someone say you can't contaminate the water in one side of the glass he didn't say contaminate. You can't contaminate the water in one side of the glass and hope to drink out of the other. If there is fear in any part of my life it infects the whole thing. Now, the fact is there was fear everywhere. We'll come to why but even one thing either I'm at peace or I'm not at peace if I'm not at piece I'm NOT at peace! It doesn't matter how big the situation is. It's like a smell, it fills the room. Fear is like a smell, it fills my life. It was an evil and corroding thread. So my fear, some people say oh there are good fears and there are bad fears. Not according to this. It wasn't evil and corroding. Evil is not good. There is prudence and caution but they're not fear, they're common sense and intelligence and discernment. Fear, that kind of gut reaction to a situation. Evil, evil and corroding thread, the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve but did not we ourselves set the ball rolling. Setting the ball rolling is going into, for me, is going into the world saying I can only be happy if and then if I have a career, if I'm successful in the career, if I don't have a job, if I have money, if i have all the things i would buy with the money, if i get married, if i'm surrounded by interesting delightful people if i have some kind of social status if i have a good reputation if i if i have a spiritual awakening if i'm a speaker in aa or it doesn't matter what it is you can turn any good thing into a plan and as soon as i have the plan i know you look at the world you know that plans do not come off how many people say that my wedding day well it's the happiest day of my life and the tragic thing that's the case is downhill from there for a lot of people how many marriages end in divorce how many people thought the marriage was going to end in a divorce the best laid plans I know at gut level plans do not come off they might for a bit but how many plans have I had where the plan comes off and immediately I have another plan. So when I left college, I thought I'd get a job. Amazing, I've got a job, I'll be happy now and then I want to get a promotion, then I wanna get another qualification, then I Wanna get a different job, then i wanna get a better job, that I want people to behave, I want my clients to behave right, I want My boss to behave Right. The ego will always come up with a plan for every plan that succeeds the ego will simply say right great we're doing well let's have another plan. And with every single one of those plans comes fear. So I set the ball rolling with all of my fears and I set The Ball Rolling, therefore, with all of My Resentments. On page 66 it will say about resentment, to the extent that we permit these. Oh, so My Resetments are not your fault. My resentments are my fault. Why? I set the ball rolling by going into the universe with a blueprint for how everyone should operate, what the outcome should be, what my image should be of myself, what your image of me should be. So I'm at the root of all this. There's no one to blame. It ain't my childhood, it ain't them, it ain't the government, it ain't the system, it aint any of those things is me my friend Astrid always says the calls are coming from within the house that hit when I heard that we reviewed our fears thoroughly, we put them on paper, technical point I've already written about fears at this point on page 68 questions middle paragraph page 67 what are we frightened of um incidentally um that paragraph where i say what are my mistakes where am i self-seeking selfish frightened dishonest where am I to blame what are my faults what are wrongs it says I'm to disregard everyone I've written about in the resentment inventory Once I disregard everyone I've written about in my resentment inventory, I'm asking those questions about my whole life. So by the time I get to this, I've already written what all the fears are in every single area of my life, whether or not I have resentments in connection with people because I've looked at every area of mine. And here, what I do, I gather them together in one place. We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them. We asked ourselves why we had them. Now here Bill does a very clever thing. I was educated, I know I don't sound like it, but I was education partly in Russia and the Russian teaching method is they say blah blah blah why because there's no gap between them asking you why and them telling you what the because is because they don't trust anyone to answer questions and Bill is doing this here. It doesn't trust us to answer the question, why do we have these fears? It comes straight in with the answer, wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? I do find it useful. One tiny thing that I do there though, we asked ourselves why we had these fears. I play a little game which I call the domino game. So I'm frightened of criticism from my boss. Why? If that domino falls, what domino does it hit? Well, I'm frightened I won't get a bonus. I'm frightened I want to get a raise. I am frightened I'm gonna lose my job. Why am I frightened I am going to lose my Job? Well what will people think of me? I'm X years sober, unemployed. What's that gonna look like? And I let the dominoes fall until I find out what the underlying fear is. I'am frightened of being alone. I''m frightened of being scorned. I´m frightened being unloved I'm frightened of being unloveable I'm frightened of loss of control like I had any I look at what the core fears are and they're interesting they're all the same I can have a thousand fears on the surface and inside I get it down to half a dozen there are half dying alone poverty physical pain emotional pain pointlessness emptiness they're all boiled down to that in the end so it's not about the boss it's not about system it's not about government is not about gas prices not really there's some so I let the dominoes fall anyway bill tells us wasn't it because self-reliance failed this very interesting either I'm going to trust Bill is telling the truth or I'm not if I've if I say that Bill is selling the truth that the reason I have any fear is because of self-reliance failing me that must hold good for any fear now it is true you know you can mess things up because you're doing things on your own you're not asking for help and that's the plain meaning of self-reliance i'm going to do everything myself i'm gonna mend the lavatory because i'm not good i'm i don't need a plumber i'm to do it myself and then you mess things up fine but there are an awful lot of things in the world which i don t have any control over which can affect me which i get frightened of so i was born in the 70s in the 80s i was terrified of nuclear war that was not i wasn't wasn't terrified of nuclear war because i was like marlborough man that was not why there's some there's another meaning and the answer is in the big book funnily enough uh it's partly on page 28 where it says if what we have learned means anything at all it means that all of us whatever our race creed and color are children of a living creator that means who i am is a child of God. Offspring are like their parents. Therefore, I am of the same nature as God. Therefore I am not my physical form. I'm not my life. I am not my circumstances. I not my finances. I I'm no any of those things. Those are the tools I'm operating with on this plane and that is self. This attachment to my material life it talks on on 60 to 62 um and in other places as well uh you know in this in this there's this drama of life what's going on out there it's like a drama on a stage the stage in the theater the theater is not the universe there is a huge universe beyond the theater the material world is the theatre. I'm here to play a role and a set of roles. I play a role as a husband, I play a role as what my job is, I'm a teacher, I also have my own business. I play a role as a neighbour, as a sponsor, as a sponsee, but none of those are who I am. They're the roles I'm playing. The actor is not the part. The actor, when the part gets killed, if you play a part in Macbeth, there's a pretty high odds that there's going to be blood on the carpet by the end of it. The actor's fine. The character goes home at the endof the day. It doesn't matter what happens to the part . If the actor thinks he's the part, he's going to be frightened. If I identify myself with any of those roles, with any of those circumstances, with any of those externals, I would be psychotic not to be frightened because every single one of those is vulnerable. There is nothing secure in the world. That is what self-reliance means to me. When I'm relying for my identity, who I am, my value, how much I'm worth and my purpose, why I'm even here on the world, those three things can be threatened. If my identity is I'm a child of God, I'm spirit that is operating in the material realm, that can't be harmed by anything in the world. Whole layer of fear goes right there. What is my value? I'm of infinite value because I am a childofGod. That saved me about 20 years of therapy, let me tell you. I had low self-worth. I was wrong! It didn't need analysis. I didn't need to find out why I had low self-worth. I had to recognise I was wrong and I had trust people that said you are of infinite worth because you exist and I practised that idea in my life. I practised applying that, affirming that with everyone around me. The more I affirmed that with anyone around me the more it bounced back against me. I thought, I really am worth something. So middle finger up to anyone who says that I'm not or anyone else. Trouble is, all the people you resent are of infinite worth too, even you-know-who. And what's my purpose? My purpose is to wake up and help other people wake up. That can't be confounded. There is nothing to be frightened of. When I'm frightened, I've forgotten who I am and why I'm here. perhaps we think there is a better way, we think so for we are now on a different basis I'm going to stop in a minute Steve, don't worry for we're now on the basis of trusting and relying upon God we trust infinite God rather than our finite selves we're in the world to play the role he assigns so I affirm on a daily basis that God is available to work through me in my life and in the lives of people around me how i don't care none of my business it's my job to affirm that that there is an infinite power and then all i have to do is go to god page 86 in the morning on awakening tell me what to do i'm showing up for work show me whatto do and it says it says as much here um where is it um well a couple of things we ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be if i'm frightened in a situation i say to god what would you have me be if you don't know pick from these patient tolerant kind loving there is almost no situation where those aren't the ideal things to be when i'm focusing on being patient tolerant and loving the actions take care of themselves the intuition that the intuitive line to god is activated by me adopting that position consciously um just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us i don't even need to get it right i just need to be sincere in doing what i believe is god's will if it's wrong i can admit it promptly the worst thing it can be is a terrible mistake and then he can enable us to match calamity with serenity and there's i'm going to finish on this the last line, once we commence to outgrow fear. Fear, and this was pointed out to me only relatively recently. I've known for a while that prudence and caution and intelligence and discernment are the way that I can forefend ills in my life. I don't need to be frightened. I need to be observant, to plan carefully and then let go it doesn't stop all bad things from happening but boy is life better when you're prudent and cautious in my experience now the fear that it's saying here at once we commence to outgrow fear what does that mean? It means fear is associated with a stage of my development. It's associated with my spiritual childhood. I have to outgrow my milk teeth. I have lots of things I outgrew naturally. Fear I didn't. So kids are born frightened, fine. I didn'T outgrow it. My friend Bill says the two things you need to know about your childhood are that it was very, very long and it's now over. My fearful childhood is over. Gone, done, finito, basta, nothing left. I do not need to go back there. I don't want to go Back There. so as soon as fear as soon as fear arises and it has on this trip there have been a couple of doozy situations I'm not going to go into details but a doozy you know what a doozie is I've had one of those and I could have freaked the fudge out but I didn't, I went straight to God I did two hours of meditation a day affirming that God is working in my life and I feel fine i shouldn't but i do i don't care if i'm deluded and thinking that god is powerful seems to be working for me and my proof i really will finish on this i've got a coffee machine out there in the kitchen when it's working well it makes this beautiful little purr and a hum and then there's a beautiful cup of coffee when there's something wrong with it it makesthis cranky noise when i am making a cranky noise in my head or in my life, I am not being operated in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. If I'm at peace and things are functioning well, I must be being operated in accord with my manufacturer's creator's instructions." So that's my proof that this is real because if it's not, why is it working? That's all I've got. Thanks for listening.