The Spiritual Program of Action Is Not a Theory – Don M.

Good morning, everybody. My name's Don, and I'm an alcoholic. And thank you, Al, for that beautiful send-off talking about Clancy, and thank you all for inviting me. I'm mighty grateful to be here, and among such lofty company is the rest of the speakers because you guys have got a great conference lined up. I don't know about your kickoff speaker, but the restof them are really spectacular. And Al has given me finally a really wonderful, clear topic. Over the years, I've accused Al of giving me topics like reconcile Thomas Aquinas with the fifth tradition. But this one is just beautiful. It's simply the spiritual program of action. And I'm not going to talk about it all day, but I believe I could talk all day about the spiritual program of action because it truly is everything to me and the spiritual program of Action to me boils down to the action that is the 12 steps and for me this program is action one of the greatest turning points which remains a turning point because I have to return to it and return to it and return to it that ever have that i've ever experienced was beginning to realize that my thoughts feelings and beliefs that i thought were the center of absolutely everything have never one time left a footprint on reality they are really just a will-o'-the-wisp between my ears They don't have any substance. Now, if I abdicate my behavior to them, they leave a great big ugly footprint right in the middle of reality. But in and of themselves, they don't and they can't. The only way they impact reality is for me to act on them. And the realization was that, and is, that I can behave different and better. than the old crazy picture show in the back of my head. I remember being told within days of getting sober, and my sobriety date by the way is April 9th of 1981. My sponsor is Bob B from St. Paul Minnesota, my current sponsor. I've had several wonderful sponsors throughout that, my sobriety. My home group is the Calm Down Group and I named that group 35 years ago when a couple of other guys and I started it because it meets on Wednesday and particularly at that point in my life by Wednesday I really needed to calm down but my recovery is not what goes through through my head. My recovery today is what I do. One of the most, I was told during that conversation a few days after I got sober, I had enough information about AA and had had enough information about AA for at least two years to stay sober the rest of my life without learning a single new piece of information about AAA or recovery. They explained to me that what was killing me was not what I knew and didn't know. What was killingme was what I was doing and not doing. And that was a huge turning point when I realized that I could uncouple my behavior from the old crazy picture show in the back of my head. And one of the many miracles that's flowed from that is it turns out that it's like everything else. Because when I behave right, I usually eventually wind up thinking, feeling and believing all that folks are right. But if I keep waiting to be fixed so that I think, feel and believe in order to behave, in order act, I just mow further down in the mud. But the big book, of course, says that the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. And that kind of sums the whole thing up. I was told early on that the action, that is the 12 steps, The action that is the first nine steps, which brings us to a state of recovery temporarily and deflates our egos very temporarily. Immediately followed by the action that steps 10, 11 and 12. That behavior, those actions are literally the prescription for alcoholism. that they work on alcoholism precisely like an antibiotic works on an infection. If I have an infection, it's going to kill me if it's not treated, but will respond to antibiotics. I don't need to understand the origin and nature of my infection. I could learn everything there is to know about the infection, and if I don' t take the stupid pills, I'm dead. It doesn't matter what I know. No, I don't need to understand how an antibiotic works in the human body. I don' t need to believe that taking those little pills can take care of these terrible things wrong with wonderful meat and probably more important than any to me. I don''t need to want to take the pills whether or not I want to take the pill couldn't be more irrelevant. of it. If I have the infection and I take the pills as directed, I will get just fine. And they promised me that the action that is the 12 steps will work precisely that way. And the fact that I'm with you folks today instead of having been rotting in a pulper's grave for for over 39 years, is pretty good evidence to me that it works. It really does. And I've been blessed by seeing that miracle happen in hundreds of people over the time of Master Bryant. I don't think I can read, think, and discuss myself into a spiritual state. i think i have to behave myself into a spiritual state and i believe that in any given moment i am just precisely as spiritual as i am behaving and there's certain little simple things that contribute so much to spirituality i believe and two of them are courtesy and persistence and here's what I believe about courtesy I think it is the single most under discussed most underrated spiritual trait because if I am unfailingly courteous I've got a really good chance of behaving like a spiritual person would behave. On the other hand, I don't believe it's possible. I know it's not possible for me and I doubt it is for anybody. I don'T believe it'S possible to be discourteous and spiritual at the same time. I do not think they can coexist. And I believe that there's no excuse for ever being discourteous. Now, in my business as well as my life and sponsoring quite a lot of people, I have to tell people some things that are pretty harsh facts, really harsh facts. But I can tell them that with compassion and courtesy. And when I do that, the conversations go better every single time. And another thing that's a huge contributor in my mind for living a spiritual life is the prayer of St. Francis. If I take that prayer of St. Francis with me throughout the day and silently and repetitively say to myself over and over before and during my human encounters, Lord, please let me lay aside whether I get any love, comfort or understanding out of this transaction. action and let me seek to love comfort and understand the other person or people involved when i do that and couple it with praying to give my entire interest attention and love to whomever or whatever really is immediately in front of me in the absolute right right now. I'm a long way down the road to living a spiritual life. Practicing these principles in all of our affairs is the bedrock, of course, of living a spiritual life. And there's absolutely no new spiritual spiritual ideas in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There are new ideas on carrying message, there are wonderful new ideas on lots of things, but spiritual truth has always been here and Bill's genius and God's grace and intervention in the writing of the big book, in my opinion, packaged it in a form that was so simple and applied so directly to our situation as humanly hopeless alcoholics that it performs the miracles of our sobriety but the the core the the the The core truth is that thinking about myself will lead me to the abyss. And trying to serve only myself will leave me to be a bitch. On the other hand, leaving my welfare up to a loving God. And when I don't feel that way, it works just as well when I behave like a person who is leaving their own welfare up to a loving God. And I'm concentrating on what I can do to quote my AAE Rochukse, what I Can Do To Help God's Kids Do What They Need To Have Done For Fun And For Free Because I Want To. too. Will miracles happen? Will miracles happen? And I think persistence is so important in spirituality. I don't know if I have any spirituality, but if I have any, it's because of persistence. You see, when the process of working or doing the steps didn't make me a spiritual person but just as the 12th step promised what it did it awakened to me spiritually i had been comatose to the fact that i am indeed a spiritual creature in god's spiritual world and the process the action of those steps awakened me to that situation question. And after becoming awakened to it, of course the question was in my mind how do I become spiritual? What do I need to learn? And it turned out that I didn't really need to learn all that much and please don't misunderstand me I am all for the wonderful spiritual books that are not AA books I'm all for them the the great truths that are in in the Bible but I really believe this my original sponsor was a guy by the name of Cherry Carpenter, not Jerry but Cherry Carpener in Nashville, Tennessee. And Cherry said that when a person kind of skimmed over the big book and the steps and then threw themselves into all the outside spiritual and psychological and self-help literature that they were standing on a whale's back, fishing for minnows. And I believe that because the big book is indeed, for me, the spiritual whale. Everything that I need to know to behave spiritually and live a spiritual program of action, I can find in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cherry went on to say that he himself was going to get into all of that outside literature just as soon as he mastered the big book. And as you probably suspect, Cherry never mastered the Big Books, nor have I. Or I suspect none of us have ever mastered the Book. book. That thing is so chock full of wonderful, wonderful directions. And that's what saved my life was just simply following the directions in the big book. Probably the biggest gift God ever gave me, the one that allowed me to get sober and allows me to stay sober today was was the gift of knowing that my behavior is the reality. And that if I am to have a spiritual life, if I'm to live in a spiritual program of action, I can't do it sequestered in my room with a stack act of spiritual books. I can't do it by praying unceasingly. Now, all those things are great and they prepare me for what I think really is a spiritual life. And I think a spiritual life is being of use and help to God's other children you know I don't have any tangible direct contact with God and then don't know anybody does have any tangible direct with God as far as serving God I can't imagine what it is that god needs that i said that god doesn't have and needs me to supply except one thing and that is serving god's other kids and to me when when i have behaved correctly until my mind is right when i see you i see god and that's the only time that i really can see god you are the form that god has for me and i believe that anything that i do to my sister two or four my sisters or brothers that i due to god and poor god so that is the way that i believe a spiritual life my spiritual life has to be based is to quit making it all about me another thing about seeking to live a spiritual program of action one of the biggest enemies or of the biggest obstacles to that for me is my big deals. Cherry told me that I had a disease of big deals, that anything that my ego could make about me, I would blow it up into a great big deal. In my life, I thought big deals were good. I thought having big deals was what life want to be about. But Jerry explained to me that the truth is anytime I make a big deal out of anything that is not God or the Twelve Steps, what I'm really making a big deal and of is me. You know the very same thing can happen to you and me and it's not a big when it happens to you but it's a big deal when it happens to me. And big deals absolutely cripple me. It's awfully hard for me to behave or feel spiritual when I'm in the midst of one of my big deals. And over the years, I've been blessed with knowing a lot of really successful people. People who were widely recognized as being very, very spiritually successful or accomplished. I've known people that have made a world of money and great impacts on economic things with what they did. And you know all those people who have been highly successful. I really don't remember one of them ever having a big deal. And that's true in the material realm as well as the spiritual. The ... I'm a lawyer, it's my profession, had a couple three years off for bad behavior back before I got sober, but other than that, I've been a lawyer for 52 years. But I've known some really high level, you know, nationally prominent successful loggers. And those folks never have a big deal. It doesn't make any difference how many zeros is on it. It doesn t make any different what's dependent on the client's life or whatever. ever it's not a big deal they're important deals they're serious deals the deals that require our you know our utmost attention and effort but to them they approach it they approach a death penalty murder case with the same angle of approach and that's my my favorite definition of attitude, by the way. I'm going to take a side trip and talk about that because that was a huge turning point for me. But let me finish on the lawyers. The folks that are really, really successful, they just take the next stitch. It doesn't make any difference what's at stake. It does change what the next stage is and they just calmly take the next stitch. On the other hand, there used to be half a dozen lawyers who would hang around police court in Louisville trying to snag $10 or $20 from somebody on a traffic ticket and I knew those guys really well. I loved them. I was over in the courts about every day in that period or every day of that period and some Some of them rode bicycles down to the courthouse. Some of em took the bus wearing old suits with the rear end so afraid you could practically see through it, but sweet guys. And I could walk in that courthhouse any morning and call one of them aside and ask them what was going on, and they would be eaten up with big deals. Bottom line for me is big deals cripple me. They cripple me spiritually. They crippled me professionally, economically. They cripples me relationship wise because when I've got big deals going on. I'm not a very good husband, father, sponsor, friend. Friend, I'm distracted. My back is broken by my own ego by blowing it up way beyond its proportion. But anyway, returning to angle of approach and this really, really has helped me to live a spiritual program of action. In early sobriety, as I suspect all of us, I heard an awful lot about my attitude that I needed to change my attitude that I was going to get drunk if I didn't change my attitude and I needed to have an attitude of gratitude well by that time I really had gotten to the point where I wanted to live and I wanted to try to get this thing so I tried every way I knew you know i'd meditate i'd pray i'd make lists i'd do little inventories i even got a little outside counseling about adjusting my attitude and finally cherry presented me with an old dictionary that was published in the 1930s and told me to look up the word attitude. And I was intellectually insulted, of course, but I looked up the world and the word Attitude. And the first definition had nothing to do with what I had thought Attitude absolutely was. It had nothing to do with my mindset with regard to something. It had nothing to do with the way I felt about something. It was a definition from geometry and navigation. It was angle of approach. And folks, that was like turning the light on in the dark room. It changed everything because I realized Realized. Love that word, realized. That means I came into reality inside me so different from no one. But I began to realize that my angle of approach toward anyone or anything is not the way I think, feel, and believe about it. My angle of approach toward anything or anyone is the way i behave toward it so the absolute magic of that was that instantly my attitude went from the way I am my mindset my emotions over which I have no immediate control to my behavior over which one stitch at a time, I have absolute control. So that was magic of knowing that I could indeed change my attitude at the drop of a hat any time. And of course there's some magic with all those things like that. And when I behave with a proper angle of approach toward anybody or anything, my mind generally straightens out. But I honestly have reached a point where that's not all that important to me, whether my mind straightens out or not, because I know that's never going to be the case. That's not ever going to leave a footprint on reality. I know that the world has never given a hoot what goes through the old crazy picture showing back in my head. Their judgment of their opinion of me is based 100% on my behavior. And I believe God evaluates me the exact same way. You know, think that through. If God is the kind of entity that would put something unbidden, involuntarily in our heads and hearts and then smack the crap out of us because it was there, we might as well shut the meeting down and just go get drunk or something because we're all screwed if God is of that nature. no I believe the most spiritual I ever get I believe that highest level of living a spiritual program of action is when I take that next stitch where the divine spark tells me to take and when I talk about the divine sparkle I'm talking about something that has many names conscience, moral compass, better angels. Conventional Christians often call it the Holy Spirit but by whatever name is that tiny little piece of God that I believe is in every single one of us that knows only in the absolute right now our own next action. My God indeed lights my path, but my God lights my paths with a pin light for each single step, never once with a floodlight for me to see 100 yards down the road. And I don't need to be distracting myself from what I can do, which is that next stitch in the proper place. Worrying about what's going to happen with stitches 8, 10, 32 down the line. Need to just do that. But, at any rate, that definition of attitude has absolutely changed my life and changes my life today. Give you an example of that working in my life, about 15 years ago I picked up sponsee and that's is very troubled bless his heart he has some disorder that I suspect is at least some little bit of autism and behavior problems and often what do you mean I can't make sense of what's being said And he has had it about once every six months, giving me a terrible cussing. Just terrible cushing. And I was really busy in the early 15 years ago. And I bet I practiced my speech of telling him I wasn't going to tell him he was the first one but that I was gonna give when I fired my first sponsee because I've never fared a sponsee and have no plans to fare one. But I thought I needed to get out from under the stress that this was causing me. And besides, I was thinking, I don't know anything about mental illness. I don' t have any credentials on mental illness and I'm 60. Then I was in my 60s and I am 60 years old and I've got all these responsibilities. I can't be babysitting this thing, but I never could get it to feel right. Just never could. So what I did, I started behaving like I had absolutely embraced this fellow. level. I started really seeking to give my entire interest, attention and love to him. I started trying as Dr. Paul says in his story, I started to focus my magic magnifying man on the good and the humor that was in him. And I kept on doing that and it wasn't long before I loved that guy so much and still do today that I wouldn't take anything from my friendship with that fellow. And it's all due to the fact that I altered my angle of approach. I altered my behavior toward that sponsee and it performed miracles in every area of life. You know, if I take the angular approach into my human relations and I bet I've prayed 20 times since this meeting started to give you folks my entire interest attention and love and to lay aside whether you guys think I look good up here and whether I'm impressing people whether I'm dropping spiritual gems for you all all the time, but seeking to be of help to you, to somehow love, comfort and understand you. And when I do that, and I have to do it over and over and again, that's where persistence comes in as being so important to me. The only thing I've done perfectly since April 9th in 1981 is not put a drink in me. Everything else has been a matter of taking a couple of stitches in the right place, getting knocked over by some form of self-will. Getting up, dusting myself off, saying, oops, mom, dad, I'm sorry, I screwed up. Taking another couple of switches in the wrong place, get knocked over again. And I'm talking about a process that doesn't quite average 50 to 100 times today. day. But in the early years of trying to live that way, it certainly did happen 50 to 100 times a day. And I thought every time that happened, it was an interruption of my spiritual growth. But I've come to know or believe that that process of failure, asking for forgiveness and correction is the only spiritual growth of which I am capable and based on the blessings that my God has showered on me in sobriety seems like to me God is pretty pleased with our persistence it's amazing if I just take as a keynote note of my day persistence and courtesy if i don't think about another spiritual principle the entire day the odds are i'm going to have a pretty good day at the end of that day i'm gonna look back and say you know i didn't do all that bad on the spiritual program of action action today. I want to talk a little bit about how Steps 6 and 7 made such a huge difference in my life, and they are right in the middle of the spiritual program of action for me today. They went from neglected steps in my life for the first nine years I was sober to pretty well the cornerstone of my life, for the last 30 years. But after I'd done my fourth and fifth step, I formed a picture of what I thought a spiritual dawn ought to be like i know now it was a self-determined objective but i didn't know that for nine years and after i'd done that fifth step i went back to my attic i would have my very own attic by that time i was about eight months sober i think uh and um i didn t have wasn't a shelf in the place so i got the big laid the big book up on the bed took it down off the bed because the book says we took the book and big book says, we took this book down from the shelf. So I took it off the bed, looked at my Timex watch and I spent exactly one hour going through what I had done on steps one through five. And I had no illusions that I was summa cum laude, but it looked like I'd probably gotten over the bar. So I got down on my knees and I said that seven-step prayer. And I believed with all my heart in the best of faith that that was the point where, with God's help, I went to work on me to make me into what I had decided a spiritual don ought to be. And I flew that way for nine years until May of 1990. And I didn't know what was wrong because, you see, I didn' t have any bad objectives. The two main things that were just killing me were relationships with women and financial chaos. And my objectives were good. I didn''t want a harem. I wanted a monogamous, spiritually-based relationship that a woman and I could comfortably go through life together all on one. With regard to money, I didn't want to be rich. I never really wanted to be richer, and I still didn't then. But I wanted the craziness to start. Well, I had to restart my law practice after losing everything. A couple of years after I got sober, I got my law license back and came back to Louisville to try to make a law practice. It was working pretty good, pretty well. I was making money. I had been stuck up in front of 2,000 people to tell my story when I was 22 months over and they taped it and they sent it everywhere and people started asking me to speak all around everywhere and people started asking me to be their sponsor. My daughter who I did not see for over three years during my hitting bottom in early sobriety same month that I gave that talk I saw her for the first time. She moved in with me two months later and lived with me throughout her high school year. So everything was great, except those two things were killing me. And what I would do, I would use the best tools. I would used prayer, steps, sponsors, meetings, outside counseling. And I would slam whatever character defect was making my self-centered butt uncomfortable up against the wall and say, come here, God, give me a little help and we'll get rid of this thing. And God never showed up once. And I had no idea what was wrong. Well, something happened in May of 1990, which caused me to reassess 6 and 7 and to begin to realize, although I knew every word of the less than half a page that the big book devotes to 6 and and seven. I began to realize that I had missed about all the votes on six and seven. First one I'd missed doesn't say anything in there about me working on any character defects with or without God's help. Talks about God removing the character defects, and the only action we need to take is to lay them before forward, God, and say, Mom, Dad, I'm stumped. You know, I don't know what needs to be taken away. I don'T know when it needs to take it away, and God knows I DON'T know how to take it way, but I'M going to try to behave like a little child who trusts you, and I'M GOING TO TRY TO JUST TAKE THAT NEXT STITCH IN THE RIGHT PLACE AND and let you lead me where I need to be led. And another thing that I had wrong was what I thought my problem with perfection is. I thought the problem was my inability to attain it. And I certainly am unable to attain it, but that's never really mattered. My problems deeper than that. My problem with Perfection is I can't recognize it. I wouldn't know perfection if it came right through here on a motor scooter. I'm 76, been sober 39 years. If God said, Don, tell me who and what you need to be for the time you've got left on this earth, I'd have no idea. It'd be like a blind dog in a butcher shop. Next thing I had wrong, seven-step prayer doesn't ask God to remove all my defects of character. It certainly doesn't ask God to remove the ones that are making my self-centered butt uncomfortable and embarrassing me, nor does it ask God to remove those that I think are inconsistent with what a spiritual don ought to be. It asks God to only remove the defects of character that stand in the way of my usefulness to God and my fellows. us. And folks, this idea is at the very heart of a spiritual program of action for me. If I try to do all this for myself, to make myself sober and happy and spiritual, I may stay sober and I may have a pretty good life, but I'm going to miss the real, real magic. If i'm gonna really find man, the real magic. I've got to be doing this for you, not for me. Sure, I've gotta behave properly. I've GOT TO BEHAVE PROPERLY. I've Got To Take... I've Gotta Behave In Such A Way As To Position Me To Be A Channel For God. And That Behavior One Stitch At A Time Is Up To Me. I Either Follow The Divine Spark or i let my fear or greed lust or something knock me off of that and i start off on the wrong on the right path but um and at any rate it's not just six and seven the idea that our real purpose is not us being sober spiritual and happy is not limited to six Six and seven, it is the span of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Third step prayer, take away my difficulties. Not so I can be sober and spiritual and happy, but take away mine. Take away my difficultities that they might bear witness to God's power, love, and way of life. Steps eight and nine, all about the practical matter of cleaning up our past and putting our lives in order. Look on page 77. It clearly says, yes, we are doing that. But that is not our real purpose. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and those around us. And it's in the book many, many more times. That's the objective here. The objective is to find a power greater than ourselves who will solve our problems and who will fit us to be of service to another human being. And when I try to live that way and stumble in that direction, and accepting by the way, I believe I get closer to living a spiritual program of action. when I accept that the only glimpse of God's will I'm ever going to get is in the absolute right now for my own next action. See, you and I believe that we know God's will for five seconds from now. We believe that I'm going to be running my mouth now. It's going to think, good God, is he going to shut up on time? But the truth is Because we could spend the rest of the day talking about things that would absolutely change God's will for five seconds from now. And they range from technical difficulties to a nuclear attack and everything in between. And yet I want to study about God's Will for next Tuesday and 10 years from now, only glimpse I get into right now. And the only power I have is over that next action. That's the only Power I've ever had and the only Power that I will ever have. Now, the Divine Sparks Direction for that action factors in probabilities. It factors in my background, my experience, my education. It factors all of that. But as far as my actual Power, hour it's over that next stitch now there are probabilities of what will happen because of that next stage but i never have a guarantee it's like letting an arrow go from above i can aim it carefully and aim it just at the right spot but i don't know what the wind's going to do i lose total control with that arrow when i let it go and at any given time I am either the felon who accepts those limits on his true knowledge of God's will, or I am an ant on a log floating down the river thinking I'm steering the log. driving myself crazy running back and forth ignoring the little ant crap that I could and should be doing trying to do something that's just totally and completely beyond me steering along and it's not very hard to see in which of those states of angles of approach a person's going to be more comfortable and more effective and more able to be helpful to their fellows it's the one that accepts that the reality is right now god is only in the right now i've got a dear sponsor who says that if he goes into the future god says have a big time leon i'll be here when you get back same thing if we go into the past uh if i go into the past or future if i'm going to the past i'll find dragons if i i go under the future i'll i'll found monsters because i'll go without my armor i'll or without my god but at any rate when i stay in the moment when i seek to love comfort and understand my fellows when i speak to give whomever or whatever is directly in front of me my entire interest attention and love when i accept all my limitations when i I accept that I can't deliver the message to anybody. Thank God for the word carry in the 12th step. If that word had been delivered, it would be an impossible order. And I need to understand that the delivery of the message is up to God and the other person. My job is to be the quiet, loving messenger by carrying the message. And I carry a message every minute of every day. We all do. And I want to seek to have a demeanor that will invite people to bring their problems to me rather than repel them. I want To Seek to be an example of God and the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous working in my life. I want to be kind of a little tiny billboard of, hey, Alcoholics Anonymous works. AlcoholicsAnonymous is a happy place. It's a totally open-armed and welcoming place. And we in AlcoholicsAnalymous love you. and when I'm able to succeed in that angle of approach I probably am pretty close to a spiritual program of action I love you all and I thank you all so much for having me especially Al thank you, God bless and have a wonderful day enjoy the rest of the conference