The Fifth Step and the Double Life – 18th Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our 18th installment of the Big Book is Alive workshop. Oh my God, we got the bells again. I'm a recovered alcoholic, and my name is Mike Chase. And I'm also a recovered alcoholics, and I'm Mike Chase, and we're going to be talking about a very special guest in the room with us today. If you guys have been checking out mikechase.org for the past month, we've had another workshop going on that was and um savannah jay is here with us she was leading along with her her sponsee student uh kim and kim's not able to meet us here tonight but savannah's gonna jump in and help you read some prayers we're just gonna get it worked into the family uh we're not really sure how we're gonna work this we intend to wrap this session up after we get to 103 um we're not sure if we're going to incorporate the gals into our next round of big book workshop or let the gals start and do one of their own so um any ideas that you all have out there please feel free to send us in an email of what you'd like uh the four of us or just two pairs you know i think it's sort of cool to have a workshop just geared for the gials yeah we appreciate some feedback and you know with that welcome savannah yeah hi savannah recovered alcoholic and it'd be really cool for the guys and the gales to read in a workshop together too because we are able to coexist together because we have recovered and we can handle practically all situations since we are recovered. But send us your feedback. Let us know how that's going for you. So getting back to what we're here for tonight, our spiritual duty is to put newcomers' hands in God's hands as quickly as possible. We have found this to be most effective by doing our part to make the Big Book come alive. As a disclaimer, we're not experts. We're just a couple of recovered alcoholics that love the Big Book. However, we have made our utmost spiritual errand to become as familiar with the facts and the history as possible. In other words, if we are reading from the big book, it means that we are studying what we know to be a divine solution to alcoholism. At other times, we may share an experience, an observation, or an opinion, and we certainly encourage you to investigate the history and do your own research as you grow spiritually. Yeah, we're challenging you. You hear something here that you're not sure about, please track down, go into the books. There's great books on history. Let's make sure that you keep us honest, and we'll hopefully be able to stay honest for you guys. Basically what we do is we aim to reproduce what we do for our students in a one-on-one session, but here with a much bigger audience if this is your first time joining us. This, however, should not replace your own personal one-to-one work with your own teacher or sponsor. Matter of fact, could you read that one more time? Because that's important, Savannah. This, However, should Not Replace Your Own Personal One-On-One Work With your own teacher. Absolutely. This is not to replace it. This is to enhance and help you to grow in your spiritual growth. That's right. This is workshop style study, and our aim is to invigorate your current experience with God. Tonight we aim to get into the fifth step in the program of recovery, which is found in the chapter Into Action. It's not into rest on your laurels. It's no take a couple months and enjoy your fourth step. It's what? It's definitely in black and white, Into Action, Yeah, but we always appreciate spiritual consent to allow God to lead us. As we study tonight's material, please enjoy the pages which have been uploaded to MikeChase.org underneath the podcast. There you will find reference to the specific highlighting structure that we are referencing as we study. This will give you, when completed, a teacher's edition toolbox. It sounds so much more understandable than she reads it. And basically what that means is that what we do is we put the pages from the first edition big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. We've taken our highlightings, our underlinings, Our Boxes, and we put notes on the side for you to read along with us or if you'd like compile your own teacher's edition. And we say teacher's addition toolbox really because when you're finished working with your student, they should feel like a teacher themselves having been through the process. and copying this type of highlighting structure really sets them up for success when they do that. Absolutely. But before we begin our study of the big book, we'd like to invite you to join us in a brief two-minute meditation. We do this for a definite spiritual reason and that is to allow God to remove all forms of self which might block us from the sunlight of the spirit so that we may have a clear connection with God as we study. So did the harpist show up tonight? I reckon she's here. And I think the monks pretty had a crazy holiday because I can hear them out in the hallway like they're almost right in the room. So what we do is we invite the monks in and we set a timer in two minutes. We're going to give the harpist a little tap on the back of her head so she remembers to do the time. Actually, we don't. It's a recording. That sounds so much fun anyways. So everybody take a deep breath. Turn your lights off. Get comfortable. We're gonna set our timer for two minutes and we'll see you on the back side. Thank you. Satsang with Mooji Thank you for watching. She's beautiful, isn't she? I think we're all here. Savannah, are you with us? Yes. Okay. Joe, take us in to... Savannah is going to end that moment of meditation with a prayer at this time. Dear God, please set aside anything I think I know about myself, about my disease, about the big book, the 12 steps, the program, the fellowship, and all spiritual terms, and especially you, God, so that I may have an open mind and new experience with all of these things. Please help me see the truth. Amen. Yes, definitely. Thank you for that, and thank you for joining us. We find ourselves in into action, which we're starting off here with the fifth step in the program of recovery. This has had an enormous amount of context to it, though, as we've been explaining in our previous podcasts. We've met up with our students. We've spent time with them. We've gone through this highlighting and underlining the book and really have any experience with them? We got information from the history of Alcoholics Anonymous in the forwards, and we kind of learned about how it came together and how it really took off. So we actually knew and had context of what we would be studying. The doctor's opinion gave us the definition of the problem. It's imperative that any alcoholic knows exactly what is wrong with them so that they can seek a solution to that problem. and the importance of putting the problem first we got from The Forwards, The Doctor's Opinion, and also we saw Bill putting his story first when trying to help other alcoholics. At the end of Bill's story, it was apparent that he worked all 12 steps and he was greatly helped by the Oxford groups of those days. He had a spiritual experience sufficient to overcome alcoholism and he recovered and then this kind of all took off. we followed that up with a chapter there is a solution uh we talked an enormous amount about god we got straight into spiritual terms and setting this up that this is about god god is the solution this is what we should be seeking um we got uh the information about the vital spiritual experience from the doctor's opinion as well so these guys uh from day one they've been praying and meditating with us they've been studying they've Been reading they've been having experiences with God. We've been sharing this with them, and we moved into more about alcoholism. Just in case we're not convinced, we got a chapter on relapse, what will happen to an alcoholic without a spiritual experience, and then this really phenomenal piece of spiritual literature, We Agnostics, and it really challenges the way that we think things are, and our belief systems and our values and how we might perceive god and and all sorts of things that could be blocking us in the same context that it lets us it does challenge us it gives us some opportunities to slide in and bring some new information into our lives you know look at honestly what used to be fact is now possibly not fact and that's the cool thing about that every concept the spiritual the purpose of a man the purpose of a woman your place in society everything's up for grabs and it led with sentences like the realm of the spirit is broad roomy all inclusive never exclusive or forbidding and it told us the great news that it's open to all whereas the book the program has precise directions exactly pretty narrow stay within these guidelines if you want to have a vital spiritual experience if you wanna just have your casual daddy daddy do spiritual experience that will not recover you from alcoholism do what you want but if you want that vital one we're going to stick to the book and then we uh looked at how it works um the first part of which is very familiar from joe ask me how it work how does it work very well and that is a very apropos answer um you know we we hear how it looks in in meetings at the beginning every time and i came in and out of the rooms myself i can only speak for myself, hearing how it works, thinking I knew something about how it works. But the real testament to this philosophy of big book sponsorship is that by the time I got to How It Works, I had a resource of information to be able to make that third step decision. How It Works, that was on page two, right? No, it was actually page 58 plus the Roman numerals. So there was a lot of information leading up to that. It's a page in a book that has context. And so when it came time to making that third step decision and taking that third step prayer with somebody who was a leader and somebody who could tell me and introduce me to God, it meant something. And there are some amazing directions in there. You know, every opportunity to deal with this correctly is covered. Who, when, how, why to take this particular step, when to do this, how to do the prayer, suggestions for the prayer. It's just every base is covered here. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that really is a testament to the spiritual way that this all came together. And of course we got that from the context and the history. Savannah, you've been doing this for... How long have you been doing Big Book Sponsorship now? Over a year. Over a years. And you've had the opportunity to bring lots of women through this. Yeah. And you found this part of the third step leading up to it. How can you explain that, what you've done with your cows? Well, we've already explained how important this is, what it actually means to turn your life over to God. It's not just saying, yeah, I'm going to turn my will and my life over. We talk about thinking and action and what that's going to look like and how that should play out in their lives so they know what they're doing when they're going into this. So you don't find yourself doing this like in the middle of a Starbucks during the coffee this is a sacred opportunity sacred time for you guys gals absolutely this is extremely important extremely vital why treat it as anything less yeah oh i like that and that that i mean very well said that's exactly what we're trying to get at here is you know this this is vital this is important why treat is anything less than the sacred connection with god which is supposed to restore me to sanity and help me recover from alcoholism so that first part of how it works was the leading up to i cannot obviously run my life because i'm a self-centered self you know self-serving inconsiderate boo-boo right you know and if i change my will in my life or to care of god is that just my thinking and my actions which when you think about it isn't that hard to do you know but we have to follow through with it and what comes after that prayer well we uh follow through by immediately getting into what the book calls a course of vigorous action uh the first uh sort of sense of action that we greet that with is getting into a fourth step and uh the remainder of how it works takes us through exactly what is expected of somebody who's performing a fourth steps so is paint drying is that vigorous section paint drying does that doesn't really sound like it okay rocket taking off um launched so we get we get the sense that we're going to be looking at four lists here and uh that's exactly what this inventory process is it's a series of lists to discover the inventory of our own lives ironically and important we did this you've just done a force a third step prayer which is invited god into your life and you're more actively involved god is working his way you've allowed him in given spiritual consent so when we do do this four-step inventory each time we start off with god prayer meditation after you finish the first resentment once you finish that one you got more god than when you started you work through the fears and you got even more god and then you get your sex and you get more god you get to the harms and you gotta like you're just glowing god and you look at this piece of paper and go like who has been showing up and everybody you know It's like, hi, I'm here. And they're like slam the door in my face. Now I know why. I honestly see it. So we got a lot of information and description and detail. And Bill gave us an example of a three-column inventory. He then explained the remaining two columns, column four and column five. And Mike Chase just went through the four lists that we were looking at. How it works concludes with this sentiment that's going to bring us into the chapter into action. What page are you on? I'm on page 70. Ooh, the bottom of the last, yeah, the other bottom paragraph. That's right, and it reads... Let Savannah read that. Go for it. I like her voice today. If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot. We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have began to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people right there there has been major change in us correct absolutely the fourth step itself in combination with the third step major growth and this is where we come across our fourth inventory package we have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can boom bam on continue in this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves we hope you are convinced now that god can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him green and underlined if you have already made a decision and an inventory of your gross or handicaps you have made a good beginning beginning i like that what do you mean by that we've just started the process steps one through one and two are conclusions of the mind the third step is inviting god into your life now we're starting the actual work good that being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks about yourself see now if we didn't have the fifth step i don't know about you i'd take that little fourth step and look at it go like yeah but oh yeah yeah but you know and and by the time that afternoon rolled away you know i would uh i'd be back to where i was but the cool thing is we take this well what goes on what happens next joe uh we jump into action and we've got with God written in red below that just to kind of set us up for how this is going to unfold can I read please having made our personal inventory what shall we do about it this is yellow and underlined we've been trying to get a new attitude a new relationship with our creator and discover the obstacles in our path that's what we were trying for the whole time no mention of we were trying to stop drinking oh yeah we stopped talking about drinking long time ago that was gone And this is actually what we've been trying to do. We have admitted certain defects. We have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory. Now these are about to be cast out. And we've got that green and underlined because when you see these are to be cast out, once again, that implies vigorous action. You know, it's like this. We don't push it aside. We just don't hide under the bed. We take that thing and we just throw it. It gets cast out. This requires action on our part, which when completed will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our defects. Green, the exact nurture of our defect. I thought it was wrongs. Well, it's a synonym, if you will. It's a word that is very similar to wrongs So Bill, if your guys haven't noticed this, and we haven't mentioned it probably three or four times, Bill likes to use multiple words when he's trying to say the same thing. Yellow, underlined. This brings us to the fifth step in a program, in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapter. This is perhaps difficult, especially discussing our defects with another person. We think we have done well enough in admitting these things to ourselves. There is doubt about that. Green, underline. In actual practice, we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient. Hadn't we been doing that for years? Yeah. Hasn't that just been our modus operandi? Right, and like you said, we will sort of cast the inventory out and not even really take a look at what it's trying to tell us. Okay, that was good. The crucial part of this is that we need to, now we have this written down in front of us, we needと rebound it off of somebody who has an awakened mind in the presence of God so that we can really gain truth from what was going on. And this is where Bill uses his writing skills to sort of sneak under our attitudes and give us an opportunity and a reason to go take this to somebody else. We have this thing and we start getting some hesitation. We start to balk perhaps. Mind you, this was written for Indian Joe, right? In Broken Toe, New Mexico. He didn't have a sponsor. He didn'T have a support group. Unlike Broward County which has 762 meetings a week, there was nothing. So this guy was getting sober on his own with God. So he had to go track down someone to do it with and it had to be someone qualified and it HAD TO BE SOMEBODY WHO... Well, we're going to find out some general rules for that. But yeah, he's going to start pushing us. We need a little bit of push here. Not much of a push though because we are walking with God a littlebit more. Many of us thought it necessary to go much further. We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons why we should do so. Green and underlined. The best reason first. If we skip this vital step we may not overcome drinking. There it comes back up again. I don't know where the drinking thing... I guess the God thing will help prevent us from drinking, doesn't it? Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably, they got drunk. What we talk about, or I like to talk about my guys if I'm working with somebody through the book and we're getting prepared for this, I liketo mention some possible things that they might have done that have been very embarrassing or shameful to them or things that they just... Let's say they're cat burglars. They break into people's houses and they steal stuff. they intentionally leave that off because, well, I can just sort of talk about it and the outskirts of actually going at it. That's one of those things that are going to come back and possibly bite you. Now if he's up front and he says, you know, I'm a cat burglar and I broke into people's houses and he's trying to write down everybody's house he broke down into, you now, if he misses a house or two because he forgot it, he won't drink. Now that's not the end of the world. But leaving the fact that he's a cat burglary, that's major. And that brings us back to the two questions that we sort of left off last time with, you know, with writing this inventory, assuming that you're praying and meditating and invoking God to help you come up with what should go down. Did I honestly do the best that I could with where I'm at in the process? Or did I intentionally, intentionally leave something out? And sometimes subconsciously we can leave something up. Now here's the cool thing about this big book sponsorship we keep talking about. I currently, and I guess all of you have been working with your student up to this point we're on chapter six which means we pretty much did chapter five which means there's five six seven sessions right average two and a half three hours sometimes per session we're talking 21 hours before we even get to the fifth step one-on-one you with your students growing connecting God coming in and creating this relationship so chances are there's not much that you haven't already picked up on or spoke about or they've developed this thing called trust whereas the alternative is meeting somebody at a clubhouse you know and going out in the parking lot and doing a third step and giving a packet of paper and say come to my house in a week and we'll tell you you might be able i could see where people might not be willing to like divulge everything well they would if they wanted to get sober yeah but they're untreated you know we can't we can'T keep treating untreated alcoholics as if they're treated you know but by us building a relationship through this type of one-on-one study and conversation yeah i think most things have i i don't i can't see leaving anything off you know absolutely having persevered with the rest of the program they wondered why they fell now this is green and underlined we think the reason is that they never completed their house cleaning could you read the rest Of the paragraph they took inventory all right but hung on to some of the worst items in stock they only thought they had lost their egoism and fear They only thought they had humbled themselves, but they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty in the sense we find it necessary until they told someone else all their life story. And this is where we talk about what's in the four step to one another. This isn't like, well, let's go write your life story when you hear people who have been advised to just go write yours. You know, the earliest memories right on. It's like, Well, that's that's great filling up time. But how are we going to find the exact natures of your wrongs? See, by having an inventory that's specific in nature and takes us to these things, we can opportunity the exact nature of a run in their entire life story. Some of these things that we see in this previous paragraph, they only thought they had lost their egos and they only though they had humbled themselves. I did that before I got sober. I only thought I was a nice guy. I only though I was honest. I only thooght I was being a good employee. That's the kind of stuff that takes us down fast. So if you don't have a sponsor that's willing enough to risk their relationship with you to be honest. You might want to shop around or give them spiritual consent one more time. Say, remember call me on my doo-doo. And remember that concept of this person thinking that they've lost their egoism and fear is essentially an unrecovered person who has not yet been awakened. So, um... What does that look like? I don't know. Let's go to page 52. We were having trouble with our personal relationships we couldn't control our emotional natures we were a prey to misery and depression we couldn'T make a living we had a feeling of uselessness we were full of fear and we were unhappy we couldn' t seem to be of real help to other people that's recovering you know that's when you're in that that's that just when I'm recovering that's where I'm at I can lie cheat steal a little bit but if I don't drink I'm okay recovered is the opposite of that yellow highlight this is mass our mask box uh Joe want to read this one more than most people the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor. To the outer world, he presents his stage character. This is the one he likes his fellows to see. He wants to enjoy a certain reputation, but knows in his heart he doesn't deserve it. Good luck getting through yourself that attitude, right? I'm not going to be happy at all with myself. The inconsistency is made worse by the things he does on his sprees. So, I'm already not happy with myself, I've already sort of noticed that I'm a cheater manipulator you know i'm sort of a little bit of backstabber here and there you know and then i go out and get drunk and then we do things that we do when we're drunk and that's like taking a snow it's like that snowball thing you know making a snowman you start with a little snowball and just build it up and build it off pretty soon we got shame guilt remorse we did that we did this and it's you need a drink absolutely absolutely green these memories are a nightmare he trembles to think someone might have observed him as fast as he can he pushes his memories far inside himself he hopes they will never see the light of day yellow and underlined he is under constant fear and tension and that makes for more drinking now one thing we got relationships building in this process you're with your students your sponsors you have a thing going on when was the last i went to therapy anybody else here ever go to therapy also pre recovery therapy what was that like that was like a fictional story wasn't it you know paying out Good money for somebody to put up with our lies. Half-truths. Tell them just what we need for them to hear. You know, that could happen today in Alcoholics Anonymous. But, you know, through the big book sponsorship getting close, the walls hopefully have fallen down. Psychologists are inclined to agree with us. We have spent thousands of dollars for examinations. Underline, we know but a few instances where we've given these doctors a fair break. We have seldom told them the whole truth, nor have we followed their advice. Now, he's just not throwing that in there because he's like a resentful therapist or a teed-off psychiatrist. He's showing what's going to happen to us if we do not honestly go through this with our fifth step. You know, Bill is this amazing writer. He just keeps throwing the stuff at us. Continue to read. Unwilling to be honest with these sympathetic men, we were honest with no one else. Small wonder many in the medical profession have a low opinion of alcoholics and their chance of recovery. And that's because they're continually seeing us relapse and continually seeing us back in their office with a new story. And basically what's happening there is that kind of came about because we weren't really giving them anything that they could use to help us. The therapeutic value of one alcoholic working with another alcoholic, um, kind of takes care of that sacred trust and somebody can gain your trust like you explained by going through the process and just letting God be the connection between the two. it also goes on to say we must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world rightly and naturally we think well before we choose the person or persons with whom to take this infinite and confidential step stop hold on i'm sorry we missed something really cool here and this is the caveat love that word again completely mispronounced um we must be entirely honest with somebody if we are to live long or happily in this world you can have a half measured fist up, you can Have a half measured recovery program or meeting makers make it but are you truly happy? Do you see these people in the rooms that are not working the program as outlined in the book and when they leave the rooms are they truly happy, are they glowing are they passing on God's love this is the cool thing about being recovered you know they're we're in we can be annoyingly happy joyful and free because we've actually gotten the promise of of the promiseof alcoholics anonymous old school 1940s first first time around alcoholics anonymous when it worked instead of this modern contemporary pseudo-psychological babble crap where people are just like struggling through each day and the disclaimer is absolutely important because um if we expect to live long and happily in this world that's kind of like an affirmation i've admitted that i'm an alcoholic if i'm going to look at a happy life from this point forward honesty has to be a part and a vital part of that that's also a promise isn't it yes uh so it also started to talk about um how we are going to choose the person with which to take this confidential step whoa i can't this must have been really spooky in those days you know in today's it's kind of like you know we're this far through the process with maybe some of this one of these guys whose eyes are just clearing imagine looking up being like can i do this step with you i mean that's the cool thing i've got we've got each all of us have like little young sponsees crunch monkeys out there working with other newcomers that have 30 40 50 60 days you now and they're doing this fist steps with these people who else but to call somebody else on their crap is somebody who's just come through someone of their same generation someone who's been through similar things you know you must have a sponsor who's got at least eight years of recovery great that's that's all good i guess but you know nothing beats somebody just fresh off the off a lion spree and somebody who knows what's going on in modern day america you know these these kids that we have working with each other it's just that's the miracle of alcoholics anonymous you know that's why we You've got these little buckaroos just staying sober left and right, making their lives better. And I go by that too. I mean, I've had conversations with some of my guys to the nature of, you know, okay, so I've Had The Privilege of doing this a few times, but you're more green in this process. You've just come out of it. You can relate to this guy or the next guy. Or the gals. Or the girls. We've got Savannah here. On an entirely different level. So enjoy it. See what the process can give. Of course we sometimes encounter people Who do not understand alcoholics Oh yeah, we come across those all the time You know, and it's interesting You want to take this to an alcoholic Come on, just do it with your sponsor Get your sponsor Sponsor you're involved in this It's going to say later If you belong to a religious organization And you need to go do a confession Go do it But don't expect to get what you're going to get out of here As a recovered alcoholic I know what we're looking for As a recovery alcoholic, I know how to talk to these people. I knowhow to sit there and help them to get through this. We know what the end result is. Other people may not get that. A therapist, yeah, if you need therapy, go see therapy. But there's something magic about us knowing what needs to be done. If we cannot or would not rather do this, we search our acquaintance for a closed-mouthed, understanding friend. Perhaps our doctor or psychologist will be the person. It may be one of our own family, but we cannot disclose anything to our wives or our parents which will hurt them and make them unhappy. We have no right to save our own skin at another's expense. Such parts of our story we tell to someone who will understand, yet be unaffected. Okay, now let's not just fly over this part either here, right? Don't be doing this with your family members. You know, I guess if you're the only guy in Broken Cone, New Mexico, I still don't. You know this is one of those things, are you serious? Can you imagine if your sister had to hold one of your deep dark secrets from the rest of the family? That's going to cause her life to spiral and be miserable. Someone who's not affected, non-family members wherever possible. The world's not that small. You know here, we have no right to save our skins at another person's expense. Such parts of our story, we tell the somebody who will understand yet be unaffected. Green double underlined. The rule is we must be hard on ourselves But always considerate of others And that goes outside of the fifth step too Doesn't it? That goes into our day to day life as recovered alcoholics Read that one more time The rule Is that we must Be hard on ourself But always Considerate of Others I get this paragraph Themed as honest At last You know There's certain things That I could not say To family members That I can say To my sponsor And it's just Ah Get it off my chest Feel part of it And then they In their turn can actually go back and honestly evaluate and tell me what's really going on. The stuff that I didn't see, they'll see because they have no personal connection to this other than they want us to get well. You know, you want a sponsor that does not mind calling you on your doo-doo. Matter of fact, it's imperative that you find a sponsor who can call you on their doo-do. And also, later on down the road, if you've done a fist up with a sponsee, now you can identify her patterns. You can become more effective in seeing when she's falling off the path seeing her old behaviors pop up that you wouldn't be able to necessarily see if you hadn't gone through the fifth step with her and if you know what you're looking for and you you understand it and that's part of your job as a sponsor from this point on is to like pull them aside and say remember the thing in the fifthstep with blah blah blah yeah it's like what's going on here oh a lot of times they don't know it they don' t notice once again you're seeing it from a different obstacle and you know sometimes they'll be really happy you pointed that out and other not so happy but once again eventually they will be happy now here's a bit of historical context for us notwithstanding the great necessity for discussing ourselves with someone it may be one is so situated that there's no suitable person available broken tone new mexico the therapist only comes through town every six months not even a therapist the the the minister or the like somebody you know it's like somebody worthwhile only comes true once in a while underlined if If that is so, this step may be postponed only, however, if we hold ourselves in complete readiness to go through with it at the first opportunity. Can I see a show of hands who give their sponsees more than a week to do their fifth step? Nobody's hand is raised in this room. How about a week? Yeah, everybody's hand. Seven days is enough? Absolutely. More than enough. More than Enough. And we don't want them sitting in that too long. We don't wanna them like, let's move on, let's get them on. And besides, this is all about just getting to know God better. It's God for God's sake. How hard can that be? He's gonna do all the work. We're just honestly doing what we need to do here. It's a spiritual movement, which implies that there should be no stagnation. It should continually move forward. Now, sometimes things happen, a holiday weekend, something like that, you can postpone if necessary, but jump right back in. Get that motion, as Joe said, moving. Keep it moving. We say this because we are very anxious that we talk to the right person. Considering it is important that we be able... What does that say? It is important that he be able to keep a confidence that he fully understand and approve what we are driving at that he will not try to change our plan. But we must not use this as a mere excuse to postpone. This is a warning. And then he's going to give us a benefit or promise of what happens when we do actually go through with it. Seriously, don't give your guys or your gals more than a week. There's no reason to. I know guys that have three or four days. Two days. It's a three or four hour process. Boom. As soon as you can get these guys... There's not far and fast rule to say, drag it out. By the way, that, I wish you a long and slow recovery. BS. That's, you know, that has nothing to do with the step process. My brother's a surgeon, you know, and I asked him, when does the recovery process begin? And he looked at me like I was stupid, you know, which he does a lot. And he said, well, after the procedure's been completed, duh, what's the procedure in Alcoholics Anonymous? The step process? So yeah, let's get you through the steps, get you connected to God, get your doing your 10, 11, and 12, and then have a wonderfully long, slow recovery. Green, underline. When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time. Green, underlying. When we decided who was to hear our story we waste no time say that when we decided to hear a story we waste no time like I just want to make sure you guys didn't miss that and for me it was the gentleman that had spent 21 hours with me and fully explained how to write this stuff down so and you called a couple times I believe I did a little information what about this What about that? And this is where the village... I had a few questions. Yeah, and this is where the Village and the Herd come into play. Some questions Mike Chase handled himself and some questions he gave me a bit of information and then referred me to one of my brothers. Mm-hmm. And I was able to gain more of an understanding as I was going through the movement with specific things that I may have the jury was out on. So there's a couple opportunities to look at this what's going to actually happen. He's given us reasons why we need to do it. He's giving us suggestions on who, when, and how we should do it. And now he's going to give us a actual directions what to do with it. We're here. So we're imagine, let's just say for argument's sake that we're sitting in a non-sponsors of house, you know, somebody we selected, uh, uh let's just say a clergy member, you know, so we're sitting in the clergy members house. So let's just play this through as if we're at a clergy members house for a minute. We have written an inventory and we are prepared for a long talk. We explain to our partner what we are about to do and why we have to do it. He should realize that we are engaged upon a life and death errand. Absolutely, he should realize that we are engaged on a life and death errand. Most people approached in this way will be glad to help they will be honored by our confidence So there's probably a little conversation with this guy what's going on, what you need to do What we're trying to do is look for the exact natures of my wrongs here and I might have missed some of them. I need a different point of view another angle looking at the same piece of paper oh cool and you give them spiritual consent listen anything you see anything you need please talk about by the way this also goes with your sponsor if you're doing it that way green underline we pocket our pride and go to it illuminating every twist of character every dark cranny of the past oh this is sort of scary now because we're actually going to be telling people everything that we never were going to tell anybody you know thank gosh for us big book sponsors we're already comfortable with the people and this guy's just trying to get this guy he knows somewhat to honestly he's going to be honest we're not going to do this unless you give us something you know we're not goingto be a hundred percent jumping into this i guess if you're living in broken toe new mexico unless there's a good reason for it and this is where we have the fifth step promises you want to know why you should be honest to the degree that you need to be honest to this is why once we have taken the step withholding nothing we are delighted we can look the world in the eye we can be alone at perfect peace and ease our fears fall from us we begin to feel the nearness of our creator we may have had certain spiritual beliefs but now we begin to have a spiritual experience the feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly we feel we are on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe i don't know about you but that's certainly a good reason for me to for once be honest with myself you know no matter whom i'm with and any residual fear that we may have the books already told us that god takes care of that we kind of got a sense of that when we were preparing our fear inventory absolutely do you have any uh any stories or memories of your fifth step that you have would you like to bring up at this time savannah um i think the coolest uh part of my four through nine process was when i was actually writing my fourth step and i remember i tried to write in i didn't pray or meditate beforehand and then i kind of lost it i don't know what happened to it um second time around i actually took the time to pray and meditate beforehand actually followed directions and like you said it's it's god writing it through us things came up on that paper that I hadn't thought about. I'd blocked out for years and coming into the fifth step, it was scary. But if you look at these promises, this is what we've been searching for the whole time. Every time we were getting drunk, we wanted to look the world in the eye. We wanted to be alone at perfect peace and ease. Now we're getting that through just simply sharing something about our lives that we've tried to withhold. And at the same time, our sponsor is going to be telling us, I did something similar or I thought about that or you know well i did this and it's just such a cool process to finally be getting all the things that we've been searching for without the drink and it tells us that the feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will come will often come strongly this is our first promised mini spiritual experience um without giving actual names and specifics any being on the opposite side where you're the person giving the fifth step sharing the information taking what they're telling you and offering them some what have you been able to garner from that in your past year um and joe you want to jump in at any time any of us can just jump yeah sure uh i mean this is a magnificent um part of the process and and i think this was i can honestly say uh when i had realized that i had a spiritual awakening was being a teacher on on the other side of the chair you know lots of people and definitely within my family had told me that they noticed something different about me in that crucial four through nine phase as a matter of fact i think this is a very good opportunity for us to sort of shift gears and let's talk from the from the side of being the the teacher bringing the people through this you know i always tell my guys as we're going through the steps and you see the sparkle and they're glowing and they get the god bumps and And they're going out and they're changing their lives in a way. And I just look at them and say, this is nothing yet. This is amazing and this is a magnificence. But wait until you're in my seat. Wait until you are the guy taking somebody through the book. That's when you feel the power of God rush right in and really take you to a whole new level. So being a Fifth Step participant, what a gift that is. Any stories you guys want to share about that, please? well my my first uh fifth step as as a sponsor you know was quite a memorable experience and like i said that was when i i first felt that i had definitely had that spiritual awakening that's when i was absolutely plugged into the power of god because i showed up to that and i'd somewhat retreated back into self um and i thought that you know a lot of what was going to play out in the course of that room would have to come from me. And, um, it was the next indicated action. I jumped into the process and I had this guy who was looking opposite me and he was looking to me and all of a sudden, all of us, you know, something spiritual definitely happened. I felt an influx of energy and, um. Some rhyme and reason that I knew was not from me, By the way, some things that I've heard and learned over the years getting prepared for this. Schedule more time than you need. Absolutely. Also, schedule time before the event so you can get centered with God. Don't be coming running home from work, running home form class. Oh my God, I'm running to a fifth step and then this is sacred. This is an opportunity. You need to take a major prayer meditation leading up to this so when these people come in, And you're there with God. You know, God's not going to, you know, this is part of this whole thing, being prepared. Have a room that's set aside. Make sure you have privacy. Make sure it's comfortable. You know? You can have a two-hour. You can having eight hours. You never know how long these things are going to go. One thing I learned recently is that when you're doing the fifth step, have them... Joe just got scared by the cat. Which is... Whenever I have guys come to the Red Room, you always say, by the way, don't be surprised if a cat jumps out in your face. zero just got attacked by my cat um i'm okay and then the sponsors know that but um don't let them know when i'm when i'M doing the inventory and stuff like that um listening to them i try to stick to what they wrote because what they write down on their forcep that's the common that's communication from god you know short to the point and if you let them like go and talk that gives ego an opportunity to sneak in that allows the mind to come in and penetrate and you know stick with the honest written down say not what's the book say what you say in the fourth step what's it say on the paper cut them down you give a little leeway if you have a question but direct that question because the longer you let them explain or come up with you know talk it down it takes it's takes away from the purity of it so keep it to the point do what they say have a comfortable room time takes time and we can explain that to them beforehand And so they don't feel like we're being rude. You know, I always tell my girls, like, listen, if I cut you off, if I interrupt or tell you to stop talking, I am listening, I am paying attention, but I want to keep it to the point. And what's the point? We're trying to find our exact nature. Of our wrongs. Yeah, and we're looking for the patterns. So once you figure it out and you can point it out to them, it's like next. Next one. Next. You know. And definitely by, you know, sitting on the other chair as well was when I first kind of felt the phrase primary purpose purpose ringing in my ears you know that the gift of of being uniquely qualified uh someone who can actually do this and somebody who is tasked with doing this take lots of little god breaks yeah just sit back and get you could feel connected move on to the next. We pocket our pride and go to illuminate every twist of character, every dark cranny of our past. Need to have a place that's sacred, comfortable, they feel trust, and they feel comfortable. For a lot of guys, I know somebody who can do this in the pickup truck in a park watching a sunset go down. I know people that can do it on a lake side i've got a room that's specifically set aside for that you know yeah this this is absolutely a sacred trust between a sponsor and a sponsee you know and we've talked a little bit about this herd philosophy as far as fifth steps go nothing that is revealed over the course of a fifth step period however long that takes um is ever shared with anybody else in the herd And that is something that we have to make mandatory when you're talking to these guys. This is the stuff that doesn't leave this room. Certain things that you have in conversations, a bunch of you riding in cars and we tease each other and stuff like that. But the sacredness of the fifth step area never leaves. And that's, I guess, for having an older guy helps because they tend to forget more quick. At least the specific details on my part. It's like, oh yeah, did you do something? Yeah, okay, yeah. I've always found your memory to be quite acute, actually. Rat. Occasional ADD attacks that really are just intentional. But yeah, absolutely. This is something that is between you and one other person and it stays that way and that's a situation of permanence. As a sponsor, I spiritually cannot afford to break that and I make that clear to these guys before they start out doing this process. And of course, you share something about yourself with them at this time that is also just as revealing and by the way if they're coming up with stuff feel free to jump in and say yeah i did something similar i did this and stuff like that because you want to make them feel comfortable because we're all we've listen if there's a name for it somebody's done it and chances are we've all pretty much done the same thing maybe a different outfit a different location different situation but we're All Similar it's the it's the exact nature of our wrongs that we're shooting for and a lot of times when I'm going through these things. It's like if I start seeing it next, the same stuff over and over again and I'm just going to say, I see a pattern here. Do we have anything in the next page that's different than what this pattern that's already going on? And if we see a pattern, we've already identified it, we can just sort of, okay, well let's, I guess anything here that you need to talk about, let's end this package in meditation and move on to our next prayer. And the cool thing about this, you're going to notice that that first resentment one, the ice is cracked and then they come easier. It's so cool also, just like writing a four-step, having the four-stepped put out the way, the resentments. We just love to bitch about our resentments or blah, blah, brah, bra, bra. We got those things out, we got more God, right? We got so much more God because we've done a fifth step then we go into the fears, blah, bla, bla and then we have sex, you know? And then we're going to have a cigarette after sex. I always like saying that, you now? And then when we go back and we come seriously once again look at the harms because that definitely takes to be a very serious look at because that's where we've caused harm for people. We need to be willing to look at that honestly and take ownership. They need to take ownership, and we've got to help them feel comfortable with that. But this is not... This is... We're looking for exact nature stuff here. Is there any sort of guiding advice that sponsors can kind of lead by while their student is going through this process? Just trust God. Bring God into the situation. the whole idea is when you've noticed something, you can move on don't drag stuff out, don't let them talk too much about a certain thing don't drag this thing out, I used to do these things, we'd go out, we used to go to Publix we'd buy $60 worth of comfort food and we'd sit around and it would be like a 10 hour adventure, we didn't have blankets or pillows didn't we? I think we did a couple times and believe me, those things were magnificent i'm not saying there's anything wrong with that some of those were some of the most moving and honest situations that i've ever walked guys through but then again there's the ones i'm doing today where we just you know we get a couple give them a couple red bulls and we got some crackers you know and we just dive into it and two three hours boom we processed it the same but it depends on the person always just cater it to the situation the bells there is that spectrum a variance you know we have a variety of different experiences over the course of working with different people and it's always nice to kind of be awake as to where the spirit is leading you and to go with it not resist I'd like to apologize for that that burns on the air conditioner kicked in so we will work on that one next time around Savannah one last anything else you want to share about one of your steps you want to talk about just a couple couple things i feel like this part especially uh since the bells helps us make sense of our past now we see why we've gone through these things when you have a sponsee who's been through something very similar and we again are uniquely qualified to help them through that um i've found that taking notes is extremely helpful because i tend to forget things and like get lost in my mind oh before we forget anything before we even start the fist up with the guys and we read the We read up to this point, and then we feel the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. We put a line across it, and we write stop. We're going to put the books away, and they're going to bring out their four-step packets, and boom, the fifth step actually begins. At that point in time, stop, close the book, say, put this up on a shelf. Now, this is something that we're going to talk about just a little in depth before we take out of here. Remember, we started this as if you were Injun Joe in Broken Tone, New Mexico at some clergyman's house, right? You've been sitting there four, five, six hours, right? Get out of the guy's house. Let him get on with his life. Go home and complete six and seven in the privacy of your home if necessary. But see, big book sponsorship, we're in for the long haul. We stick around. So in our family, what we do is we just lock them in the room for an hour. Like the book says, we are going to get into this next week. I go into the other end of the house and I spend an hour with God doing meditation and prayer getting comfortable so when we both come back after an hour we're just like googling in the God stuff you know we'll get more into that next week amazing opportunity Savannah what a treat to have you here I hope you can show up next week maybe one of these days we'll be able to get Kim over here too she's got so much amazing opportunity I like this yeah me too send us some texts send us Some emails let us know what you guys think because you're who we wanted to please here. Stay tuned. Stay tuned, So this is a reading from The Doctor's Nightmare of the first edition of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, speaking from Dr. Bob's point of view. If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you. If you still think you were strong enough to beat the game alone, that is your affair but if you really and truly want to quit drinking liquor for good and all and sincerely feel that you must have some help we know that we have an answer for you it never fails if you go about it with one half the zeal you've been in the habit of showing when you are getting another drink your heavenly father will never let you down please join us next week as we continue to study the big book and remember to download the highlighted pages from tonight's session found under the podcast link we always enjoy hearing feedback from you guys so don't be shy about dropping us a line as it is a privilege to meet other alcoholics who are also on fire about god and on fire above the big book thank you for that i just got a couple of quick wind them up announcements you know we're starting to podcast these things and put them up online usually sunday night uh starting this week my home group the fort lauderdale primary purpose big book study group a few months back we voted to go current and do a podcast of that meeting so on december 30th we'll be wrapping up the big book session so next on january 6 well the next monday we're going to start on page zero of the bigbook and we're gonna do the primary purpose big book steady which is uh the joe and charlie and kristy cliff workbook that we're going to be doing but 30th were going to have a celebration in our home group we got peter Peter M. is going to be coming to have a special talk with us so if you guys want to stick around tomorrow I guess check out the webpage MikeChase.org and click the link AABigBookStudy.org we're going to have our weekly podcast so that you guys can join us in that so this is some exciting times we've got going here we look forward to that this is actually quite a unique experience it's going to be a pep rally for God and it's in the spirit of 10, 11, and 12 as we've just finished a session It's also going to be a family reunion. We're going to get all of our family and our generations and our multiple generations together, and Pete's going to give us some special insight on how we, now that we've been through the book, how to continue carrying that on. I'm looking forward to seeing lots of our families there, and hopefully you guys will be able to enjoy the podcast that we offer there. So be prepared. We're gonna close out here after another moment of silence with our family's fog-like prayer. And let's just take a moment of some silence. God, let your love shine through me like a fog light so those who are lost, sick, and dying can find your love through me. Amen. Once again, we'll see you Monday night. Hopefully you check in and come check out the Fort Lauderdale Primary Purpose Big Book Study Group podcast. We've got a special Peter M. talking. Savannah, honor to have you here. We look forward to seeing you with us on the next one. Godspeed. Godspeed, peace. Peace.