The Bloated Nothingness of Self and the Way Out – Tim M.

with that i will um the topic of tonight's meeting is working step 12 with the sponsee and uh tim will share anything between 30 30 and 45 minutes on the topic after which the floor will be opened for questions rather than the typical sharing and with that I want to hand over to tim thanks uh tim alcoholic uh alistair can you hear me properly okay good i just changed my audio setup so i needed to check uh well this is a big topic uh now the thing is i haven't i specifically haven't planned this because it's too big a topic to do an outline of um and there's no need to because i you know it doesn't need to be squeezed into one week so we can we can do this at whatever pace suits people but what i am gonna do is come at this systematically so that we know what we've covered um and where i'd start off is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps uh now that doesn't look like it's something you can take someone through it's supposed to happen automatically as the result of doing the steps except it doesn't always happen now don't tell anyone this will frighten all the newcomers but sometimes you get to step 12 and oh there's there are some pieces missing i'll tell you some experiences that i had um i think i did have a spiritual experience the first time around uh the test this is the test if you suddenly discover you really want to help people even though you don't like people that's a if you like people already you can't really test it because you want you wanted to help people you're but if really people are not your thing and you discover yourself feeling and not even wanting to but feeling this overwhelming obligation to not run away after the meeting if there's someone suffering in the meeting you just you feel you feel this like magnetic pull that it's the right thing to do to go up to them to offer them your number you're looking around automatically at the end of the meeting for who's about to run off if you're going for fellowship half of you you've got one eye looking at where you're go in the other eye looking at who's in the room who's feeling left out who might want to be invited along it happened automatically um now uh i won't do the full history of my first 15 years in in recovery um but i did a very a much more thorough round of steps when i was about 15 years sober and the same thing happened when i completed this is the interesting thing it wasn't when i Was halfway through it man's it was when i completed the last amend there was this rather overwhelming shift and the same thing i went to me i went into a meeting and my perception of the meeting and the overwhelming kind of uh groaning need for help in aggregate of the people in the room was was really struck me so a spiritual experience is not feeling all la-di-da and going through the you know tripping through the two lips it's it's awakening well i think i've lost all these yeah we've lost seats here okay i think I've got you back can you go you've got me back good um it's this it's this overwhelming sense of responsibility and connection with other people you feel what is going on around you and that's why you have to do something about it you have you develop automatically an empathy for what people are experiencing uh and you can't just be an island i don't want to be political about this but noam chomps is a Is it Memchomsky or is it someone else who says reality skews left? Because once you become aware of how people in other parts of the world or in your own country are suffering, you've got to have a very hard heart indeed to turn a completely blind eye to it. So the more in touch with the reality you are, the more you're aware of exactly what you do about that. That's a political question. But the awareness that there is that there was need out there. And I think this should happen automatically, but bemusingly it doesn't. And also this fails to happen, I'm afraid, on a fairly regular basis. Now, it doesn'T mean you just throw the baby out with the bathwater at this point. So, well, you know, bugger that. Sometimes a few things need to happen. um sometimes people need to have a second surrender in recovery so what okay so what happens a lot and i did this in some ways over the first eight years is you think now i've got my marbles back uh you know aa is very very good it's got me sober and it's made me a marginally nicer personal or at least less disagreeable person uh there's the opportunity to go and make something of myself in the world and so i i focused very heavily on my career um in my first eight years and so my concern for that the initial overwhelming concern for other people faded as i became re-interested in my own affairs and what brought me back to the table really um at around nine ten years back to the aa table was the failure of that system so sometimes people get to step 12 and there's a bit of a sort of uh it's a little bit of a damp squid so what's supposed to have happened hasn't happened and sometimes you need to wait for life to do to to fill in the missing piece and it's it will either be adversity or unresolved very deep conflicts which come to the surface and make themselves felt or people going all out with a life on self-will which then fails and then they crash and then now you're interested now you really give yourself to the path so often I think it's like with with fairy lights the christmas lights and the i think the new ones are different but the old ones from when i was a child um if there was one bulb in the chain which didn't work the whole chain didn't work so you had to go and test each little bulb one by one and then when you found the right bulb and twisted it the whole shame lit up and i think it can be like that with step 12 that if you get if uh you get there and someone hasn't fully woken up it's not because the whole thing is dead in the water it's because there are a couple of bulbs that need um uh twisting there are also some um basic points which come out of the earlier steps which sometimes people understand them intellectually but it hasn't gone all the way through and it can take a while for it to click and the two in particular are i remember a friend of mine in the middle of step four and five he said his big realization it was he had a he had an nemesis it's a good word he not just an enemy not just someone that got up his nose but a nemesist at work and he was doing the inventory in step five on the nemesis at work and he said he said my realization was this oh i'm the arsehole i have no idea i was the arSEHOLE so suddenly realizing that i'm the arSHOLE that's a spiritual experience um sometimes people get to step 12 and that's not there yet the other thing is uh now people work on this at different speeds and get this point at different speed and this is something which runs so counter to the way the world operates people are entirely forgivable for not getting this point especially even in aa this this is not always well understood in AA that I never react to a situation. I'm only ever reacting to the story that I'm telling myself about the situation and the story that I am telling myself is generated by algorithms programmed into me when I was about six and and the the invisible bit of my brain the bit under the bonnet is processing situations that occur around me using old algorithms and churning basically churning out a story where I'm innocent and everybody else is guilty and it is a world of woe and they need to be destroyed that's the basic plot and even though you're suffering you know as as um anika jawa says that you're still the hero of the dream you know what even though it's a nightmare it's still all about you so it's deadly because it's so attractive uh and so sometimes that lesson that i'm creating my own suffering um uh hasn't got through uh not fully so it's understood intellectually but it's not there all the way down um and also another thing people can be forgiven for thinking is because it's so widespread in the in the various fellowships and then society as a whole once you've discovered all of these problems and psychological difficulties you have to sort of do something with them and my experience is you don't once you know what the problem is from the first 11 steps the job is then to abandon self stop being a human shield for your own ego and get out of the way And honestly, I think that therapy and things like that have been great for helping me get into touch with what's actually going on, not providing solutions, but helping to thaw me out and to sensitize me, to stop me running on autopilot and to get me to see what is actually going on but then the steps do something with that analyze that systematically and i think that the the real awakening in beginning of step 12 is the realization is um all of that stuff that i've uncovered and discovered needs to be discarded i don't need to do anything with it it's the as my sponsor says the bloated nothingness of self and the way i do that is by by um getting involved in service now once people understand that the only solution the only way out is the only Way to heal is to throw yourself completely unreservedly into a life of service and it's a sandwich the the bottom of the sandwich is a slice of bread which is looking after yourself so you've got to look after yourself physically and and spiritually and and Tim we've lost you again right I'm back can you hear me again okay so um once you realize that the solution involves service as I don't know how far I got into the sandwich analogy bottom layer bread looking after yourself if you don't have the bottom layer the filling goes everywhere so you've got to have a bottom layer uh which is looking after yourself and then you've got the filling and thenyou've got the top layer the top level of bread which is is you know enjoying the world having a bit of fun but the the key element of the sandwich the bread is just the vehicle the filling is being of service uh people the service is hard so i only did it because i realized it was the only way out uh so sometimes there's a tedious process when the first first nine steps are completed there's a tedious process of people coming to the realization that service is the only way out and you don't have to like it you just have to recognize it there's a difference between liking it and recognizing it you just have to recognize it and do it and then you discover all of the well I discovered all of these emotional difficulties gradually melt away because you can't be bothered you haven't got time you spend enough time you spent enough time away from something that when you come back to it you realize you see it for what it is but you need the time away to see if what it is and i think that's what service does so if someone if there hasn't been a kind of loud pop in step 12 beginning of step 12 where the person wakes up and is just desperate to be of service if that hasn't happened if you wait life will present the circumstances where the person all of the other options are knocked on the head one by one by once one until that's the only one that's left when that when service is the only option that's left it lights up somehow so you you stick you stick with people you don't draw if they're not sort of super interested in service you don'T drop them you you keep them on board as long as they're willing to be on board and hope that life does the job that you're unable to do um and eventually everyone gets it sometimes quickly sometimes slowly um and sometimes other obsessions or compulsions the great persuader talks about alcohol being the great pursuader and i think other obs sessions or compulsion compulsions what clancy refers to as the the obsessions of the mind he doesn't go into detail but you know what he means um everyone's got their own so uh having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps We tried to carry this message to other alcoholics. So how do you sponsor someone through that? Well, first of all, you've got to understand what the what that actually means carrying the message. There are two. So there are two types of service. This service, which is the direct carrying of the message and then this service, which enables the carrying of the message so the direct carrying the message will be sponsorship and sharing in the meetings and talking to susan and clive after the meeting and going to rehabs going to treatment centers doing encounters with alcoholics and in the world outside then anything that's enabled service is all the service structure stuff running a group and also talks to professionals which enables the message to be carried sometimes directly sometimes indirectly now uh the first thing to make clear is that although the second type the service which enables The Message To Be Carried is terribly important it's not the high octane stuff it's Not The Good Gear so it does get you out of yourself but this the but it's administrative largely um it's sponsoring other people who have similar psychological problems to you but you can see how ridiculous they are in someone else whereas they seem so important in oneself and real and you see it in someone also you think oh they're completely nuts therefore i must be completely nuts and things melt away uh the second thing that happens when you see people and this is why sponsorship is simple you you see People who've done the most appalling things but they're the same appalling Things that you've done and you look at them um what was the phrase that someone used the other day the um the infantile charm of the hapless so you see this poor old soul you know wandering through the world messing things up and hurting people but you see the sort of innocent child who's doing it you don't see this evil monster you see his poor creature who's condemned by whatever is going on inside them to behave this way and then you think oh my god I'm like that so I'm not the monster that I thought just because you are not your own behavior uh and there's a story which is very long which um is uh it's one of the Baal Shem Tov stories where the punch line is when you hear your own story told back to you then you're healed and I think that's why we sponsor other people and then so the most useful thing that someone who is let's say one year sober two years over three years sober and new to step 12 but still full of psychological maladjustments the most usual thing they can do is sponsor other people and see their own maladjustment reflected in the people who are attracted to them that will do a thousand times more good than any wise words that you can pass down the tubes so whenever they come to you you pick them up you turn them round you wind up the key in their back and you push them in the direction of sponsoring other people it's it's the now one has to engage with the problems and the psychological stuff a little bit but it's about 10 percent of the deal it's got to be 90 action 10 psychological you know unpicking um so you point them in the direction of helping other people and uh but what do I encourage people to do some people naturally attract sponsees I've talked about my friend Melody uh I think she had a homing beacon installed in her whenever wherever she went there was this you know the character is it character the character Linus in Peanuts who's got the blanket and all the flies follow him wherever he goes she was like that but with sponsees and little and like sort of wet the waifs and strays wherever you wherever melody went there were these people following her in various degrees of mental breakdown pig pens evan says not linus um and and so some people have just got the personality that attracts people in trouble uh and basically people who are very very kind um another character type which attracts people is people who are sort of disciplined and structured and have some um uh or apparent authority if you're if you've got one of these two character types then you're lucky so people will will run after you for sponsorship um if you don't particularly if you do not sort of exude lots of motherly motherly warmth uh and you're not like sort of clear sergeant major type then um neither which are particularly you know admirable qualities you either have them or you don't then you might have to work a bit harder and there have also been times when I've I generally haven't had a huge amount of trouble finding sponsors but there have been times When I have so I just pass on what I did I made myself omnipresent in local meetings I just went to very large numbers of meetings got there early shared a lot and stayed late and eventually something sticks but I made it my mission every day I treated it as the most important thing I did every day was to get to a meeting get there early talk to people talk to as many people as possible get numbers exchange numbers um so if you haven't got sponsor if the sponsor hasn't got sponsors they can be putting all the time that would be going into sponsorship into placing themselves in a situation where they might acquire sponsors and sometimes sponsorship is misunderstood one doesn't have to have the formal title of sponsor to be sponsoring someone and you can be sponsoring so i remember saying to my sponsor many years ago about x someone I said I don't know if I should stop sponsoring him he said you haven't sponsored him for years just because you're you're, you know, if they're sort of someone held up, youknow, a baseball bat above them in a dark alley and said who's your sponsor if your name would, younow, creak out of their mouth it doesn't mean you're actually sponsoring them it just means you're the brass plate so often people worry that they haven't got enough sponsees maybe they've got one or two or no sponsee's but they're talking to a lot of people and helping a lot if not in form so always make clear to people that they're doing that the point here is to be making the effort you get the points for effort not for the it's not like you know the first world war one planes where they sort of stamped the enemy aircraft they'd shot down on the side of the on the aircraft it's not about collecting numbers of people um or accumulating a large number it is about collecting their telephone numbers but it's also what it talks about my sponsor is very strong on this he he says he talks about uh intensive work with uh sponsees uh from page 89 and also it talks about on page 19 most of us many of us spend much of our or most of our spend much more free time engaging the kind of work we're going to describe so although it's got to be extensive time wise the real value comes from it being intensive which means being super present for it and super engaged um also the other thing if if you're sponsoring a bunch of people and you've got sponsees who are just starting their sponsorship journey don't expect them to hit the ground running like instantly getting a lot of sponsee's often people who are very new to this it takes a long time before they get the first one that takes so they may have to spend you know six months to a year of getting you know no one gets beyond two days or four days or a week or two weeks and and lots of people who are very very iffy about aa are most likely to gravitate for sponsorship to people who aren't just at the beginning of the journey and they're often the ones they can relate to the most so naturally people who are new at sponsorship are going to get the sponsors who are least likely to stick whereas if you've been around for a while you're most likely to get people who already know what they want so they're going to someone who's got a longer track record but the main thing is put the time that people should be encouraged put the time and put the effort in and somehow it will if you it's lord kitchener if i dare i'm not sure you're allowed to quote people from with the word lord in front of them anymore they're supposed to pull their statues down i think but anyway lord kitchen has said something to the effect of if you don't let up in your fight with the enemy if you don't let up eventually I if you don't cave they'll have to cave if you don't surrender they'll Have to Surrender someone's going to have to surrender and how this applies is if you if you desperately want if you treat it as the number one priority I must I want to be useful to God and to other people eventually it will click if you hold yourself up against that and you pay attention you pray you meditate you talk to people the blocks will be removed one by one and then it will flow and it's rather like um uh it's like a dam or something where there's one last piece in place once that last piece is removed the whole dam collapses so sometimes people are frustrated because they haven't got enough sponsees or they've only got one sponsee and they've actually removed nine of the blocks but there's the 10th block that still has to go when the 10TH block goes the whole thing starts to flow automatically what you can do as well is encourage your sponsees to work with each other so you get sponsee a pre-processor chapter of the book with sponseeb so that sponseb is getting practice on how to talk someone through part of thebook so that means the work gets shared around so it doesn't it's not like because you can't have this turn into a ponzi scheme where everything kind of goes up it goes up the the structure um uh the the work should be shared out amongst all the people in the group pretty equally because everyone needs to be useful so you can't keep that's why i always get sponsors to work with each other and that's super helpful because people get to practice without having like the full responsibility of a sponsor um i think that's the main thing i want to say about sponsorship or uh about sponsoring someone with like the beginnings of sponsorship i think there's more i'm going to make a note of this um actually why not i was going to go on service but there's there's a couple more things to say about um how to sponsor someone through their sponsorship of other people i think about 90 percent of my calls to my sponsor over the past 10 years have been how to handle a sponsee in response to which i'm tearing my hair out and i won't say because of which in response to which I'm the one that has the problem when I've got a problem with the sponsees it's not their problem they're not doing it they're just being themselves I'm just having a reaction because of a pre-existing psychological maladjustment which has come to the surface because of this person in front of me so it's not about that it's about me um and i think the real the real um gold in sponsoring other people is helping them sponsor other people helping them troubleshoot sponsees they're either having this massive emotional reaction to or seem to be getting nowhere with and there you've got to have you know very minute discussion so exactly what is going on what are they reported to you and it's it's not breaking confidences it can be done perfectly anonymously um you know i've got a sponsor who i'm talking to someone who and you don't you don'T find out who they are so it's sticking to principles not personalities but that's how you figure something out you don't learn how to sponsor people in the abstract you you that the the you know you know the way in german they you they have all of these words their phrases they've acquired from english or they think they're required from english no english person uses them so a projector is called a beamer and a mobile phone is called handy and in germ if you go to any sort of german hr thing they used to work in germany and they they use this phrase learning by doing and of course now i've never heard anyone in this country say learning bydoing but the germans have picked this up and think that's something that we so there is very very good this learning by do even uh so but this is per se it's very useful because this is how you learn how to sponsor people by sponsoring other people and then running to your sponsor saying i want to push this person down the stairs or they want to push me down the steps what do we do next uh how do how do we not kill each other should i continue sponsoring this person you know or they've called with the same problem 18 times in a row i don't know what to say that's where the real benefit happens um and my sponsor who's annoying uh says things like uh what is the gift that you are waiting to unwrap in this person who is being presented to you i mean just a horrible question i don't want to know that i want to know what i can say so i can fix the situation i don'T WANT TO LOOK INSIDE AND SAY WHAT YOU KNOW What's the gift that I'm unwrapping him? And the other thing is, whoever is being attracted to you is not by accident. There is a clear if you want evidence that the universe has some kind of structured system, you watch who gets attracted toyou as a sponsor and the people that are attracted to they really are attracted because because you're vibrating on the same wavelength somehow so something unresolved in you is resonating with something unrésolved in them which is why they've come to you and then you get to work through the stuff you haven't resolved in you through by trying to help them and um i can't i've gone through so many different phases of sponsees um I think I may be going through an angry young man phase I haven't had one of those for a long time it's one of the ones that comes around the mountain occasionally um um uh I went through a long phase of very very distraught women between 55 and 75 by the time I figured out how to sponsor a very distRAWT woman who'd been in recovery 20 30 40 years between 20 you know between 55 and 75 by the time and very difficult by the time I figured it out once I figured it out and the last person in that category I kind of we it was working and it resolved itself I was like right I can handle this type of sponsee now do you think anyone in that category has asked me since then no so this is it's like a computer game once you complete the level you don't get to do that level again it's really annoying you'd think you'd have a period where you get to practice the thing you've learned how to do but no you get sent an entirely new category of person or as I say comes around the mountain more than once so you'll get to practise on whatever the category is again it looks it feels so like there is a curriculum here and i think there is it's whatever is at the top of your consciousness which needs dealing with is going to manifest whether you like it or not in the people around you um because as earl purdy says the reason you're attracted you know you're attractive to situations is because you've projected part of yourself out there and you'll say what you're seeing in there is what you'll see inside and that's why you're attracting you can't get away from it because it's you you can't get away from uh listen to the recording if that didn't sink in straight away it took a while for me as well um so i think sponsorship is the really interesting thing the other just so we can park the other topics um there's the question of how to sponsor someone through the traditions and the concepts but the short version of which is don't just they're read the stuff um how to sponsor someone with the group and service structure and then um how to sponsor some one with problems in other areas uh so those are the topics to park um if alistair you can make a little note of that but i think i'm pretty much done um so i don't know if you want to see if there are any questions thank you very much tim um the meeting is now open for questions for tim which can be done by the raised hand function in zoom or you can message me through the chat function and i will ask him directly if all else fails just wave at the camera and i'll try to come to you in turn um and we do try to close around the hour mark but We're not particularly strict about that. And with that, I'll open it up for questions. James. Thank you. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for that presentation. And my question is, do you have any suggestions for when sponsors are there at the point where they're ready to be available to sponsor others? But there's resistance and it's not so much because they don't maybe they don'T want to, but it's resistance of the whole oh I'm I don't feel ready I'm not well enough I don'T I DON'T what am I supposed to do have you got any um suggestions for how to respond to that please yeah okay so sponsoring other people is like a sort of training program for yourself uh so it's not the thing that you do when you graduate it is the training program and I've not graduated I mean, even in the last six months, I've had situations where things have got have come in below the radar and I haven't figured out until I'm like excessively engaged. So you never get you never take the first hundred people you sponsor are definitely the hardest. It starts to ease up significantly after 300. Let me just say there's that prospect. So there is hope. There is hope here. Brian, my old sponsor, Brian says the first 20 years are the worst. So it's you're never going to stop learning. So I'm not ready. I'm I can do it, but I'm nicht ready for it because you don't know who you don' t know who's going to call next. And each person is entirely new situation. It's not painting by numbers this. So no one's ready. But it's rather like a sort of wartime situation. right you've never been an air raid warden well i'm afraid we've got incoming we've got an incoming Luftwaffe and we need to do something about it so you're going to be the no one was trained to be air raid Wardens before they had air raids they had to they had to learn it on the job and i think it's like that with sponsorship there is no way as i swimming as well you you can't really learn swimming um in a in a um you know from from a book you know planking on a sort of chair or something you just have to get in the water um in computer courses they used to they used they usedと have to say this to people you can't break it by pressing a button so if you pressed your sponsees buttons you haven't broken them the buttons were already there and they're being pressed all day long you're just one of a stream of people pressing those buttons all you're seeing is you pressing them you're not seeing all the other people now one one should aim to be kind and temperate and moderate and so on but um it doesn't matter if you leak uh because you're you're non-we're not professionals so it's okay to be a human God, the people who have sponsors and other old times who've leaped on me. I've exasperated. If you go to someone's house when you're two weeks sober at eleven thirty at night and beg to be let in, you will exasPERATE them just in case you haven't tried. And it was right for them to be exASPERATED and to let that show, because I was then learning how people, ordinary human beings respond to my behaviour, professionals will keep a a facade up and won't show it so people don't get to experience the consequences of them dicking professionals around because the professional has to remain professional one of the amazing things about sponsorship is you get to see the human reaction to your engagement with them so you don't have to be you don'T have to BE like super poised and professional no you have to be yourself now obviously this is a journey um I've some people are naturally much nicer than me it's taken I mean this is after 28 years work so you can imagine what I was like when I started off um uh you don't have to feel like super nice and pleasant and loved you haveと be on a journey towards being more pleasant and moderate and temperate and genial and approachable and all of those things but you don't have to be fixed in other words to sponsor people um um tom weston says if everyone in his first meeting had been serene pleasant vegetarian joggers he wouldn't have gone back so um maybe it's the humanity and the spikiness and the fact that if you're if you still as someone else says pardon my french here if you'll still all piss and vinegar that might be those might be characteristics which the person can relate to they couldn't i remember going to ask someone to sponsor me i'd like eight years sober and he was so nice and he Was so placid and peaceful and he wasn't organist probably played really quietly and I've he freaked me out I wanted someone with a bit of punch and pizzazz to someone with an edge so if your sponsor you still got an edge good um as for you know well I'm still effed up what do I have to offer um okay so your job uh there are different types sponsors for different purposes so um my sponsor specializes in doing profound psychological rearrangements are very messed up people but he that's his personal deal he's good at that so he does that other people their job is to show them mechanics this is where you go every day this is what you do this is how you share at a meeting this is what this bit in the book means this is what the complete no psychological stuff no getting in there to the detail just showing them the practical ropes so uh there's a great line in chapter seven where it says having had the experience yourself the experience of the 12 steps having had the experience you can be a much practical use to the other person so whatever experience the person has can be deployed in the sponsorship and it doesn't matter if you're not great at like unraveling psychological doodars send them to someone who's good at that for those types of topics but there's there's whatever the person has learned they can pass on so somewhat I don't think people need be frightened about it and what you can tell him is if you are frightened of sponsoring someone because you don't know how you're going to respond to a particular thing they throw at you all you do is you get them to write on a piece of paper above the chair where they sit and take sponsor e-calls um i'm gonna think about how to respond to that i'll call you back later and then they get to call you as their sponsor to say they've just said this what do i say next and then you tell them what to say nextand then they go and say the thing you told them to say and then five minutes later that they've had to do the same thing i'm going to have to call you back and then this goes back and forth gradually people so people can always press the pause button and retreat and come back for further information um by the way if you're ever talking to someone they say i'm gonna need to call me back later it's because they need to call their sponsor probably so you've just thrown them a curveball so you know kudos to you um i think we should get points for making our sponsors talk to their own sponsors that there should be we run chips for length of sobriety you know how many times this week have you caused your sponsor to pause a call halfway through to like regain their composure or go and have a you know some white bread to calm them down um so so there's nothing to be there's nothing to be frightened of and if it doesn't work out i mean the sponsee if it's not working for the sponcee like the grand sponsey the grand sponsor will figure that out and go somewhere else and if your sponsor if i mean sometimes you know there's a great line have the grace to know when you're out of your depth sometimes i've had sponsors where i'm just out of my death or i'm like i kick him upstairs to joe or to someone else i just can't i can't deal with it i don't know i don'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY I DON'T KNOW what TO DO um so your sponsee if it gets too psychologically fraught and entangled can step away from it so there's no risk as clancy says there is no such thing as dictatorship sponsorship because as soon as the sponsees says they're done the dictatorship is over there's no there's no reprisal and often when you've got a tangled situation which doesn't work I'm getting better at this I'm not as good as I should be let go now because though I can't tell you how often I've really struggled with a sponsee and it's so embarrassing they go to someone you think my god they've gone to them for sponsorship and now they get sober now they get well from being told what I don't know what they're being taught but it worked and all you know the aggregate wisdom that i had to offer did nothing useless and they go to some charlie it tells them to not to drink and go to meetings and to trust god and suddenly they're fixed so if it's not working maybe it's Not Meant to Work just try someone else there's always there's Always Plenty More and it's NOT any this is where i think we all work out our psychological quirks in sponsorship because if something goes super wrong there's no harm you don't want to be working out those quirks in intimate relationships or relationships with colleagues or bosses because if you mess that up you're really messing stuff up whereas you can mess up stuff in sponsorship and people kind of bounce like dough they bounce back into shape as long as they're going to you know a hundred thousand meetings um i think that was something else i've forgotten but if it wants to come back it'll come back so if we sit through any other questions thanks tim thanks tim uh sarah rifka you have the question um yeah hi thanks uh thanks alistair thanks tim i have a question um i've had the experience where a sponsee calls me up and tells me a story about something that happened and then says to me how do you think i handled that and i i used to answer the question and then lately i've been feeling like there's something wrong with that um i shouldn't really be giving an evaluation afterwards or maybe i should be i feel like it's a game but i'm not sure uh do you have any thoughts about that yeah that's a That's a really good. That's a really good question. Okay. It can be a set-up, but it's not always a set up. There's a legitimate situation in which that occurs and a not so legitimate situation. Where it occurs legitimately, sometimes people are just faced with a situation suddenly. You just have to respond. And they're performing due diligence as lawyers would say they're making sure that what they did was was fine and to learn from it to maybe react better or differently next time but very often this occurs in a pattern where what someone is doing they're doing what they want to do they don't want to run it past a sponsor they don'T want to check it against the principles of the program they want TO do what they want to do and heaven forbid, they should pray. But what they want to doing is do what they wanna do. And then they want to get retroactive co signature or papal blessing, papal dispensation where you say, well, it wasn't ideal, but I forgive you and all that. They want to come clean and be forgiven. So often there's a psychological angle this is very close to the question where they say um i've decided to dot dot dot what do you think and that one i've stopped answering i'll say i'll talk about this but only if you undo your decision and are willing to go back and look at this have you really made your decision or are you just considering it if they said no i've made the decision i'm just curious what you think i won't i won'T give a view so you have to ask me much earlier in the process when you're still identifying if there's even a problem to solve because for a decision to be made you've got to have a situation which calls for a response you've got to identify what the options are you've got to weigh them up and then between those options you make the decision if they're bringing you in that late in the process the problem is that uh they're not letting you play with a full deck of cards because if you're really going to assess the situation you have to assess whether there's a problem that needs to be solved what are the options have you missed some have you got an option which shouldn't be on the list have you do you know i mean you're not being you i think one should be brought into these things i don't go to my sponsor saying i've decide to do this i say right this is the situation i'm presented with um these are my thoughts about how i could handle it but the whole thing is up for grabs so i think with situations to deal with i think that either the whole situation is up voor grabs or the thing is is none of my business but i've one's got to be able to look at all aspects of it because otherwise what happens is you're painted into a corner where um you're it's also the the the framing of the question so the question that they pose often gives you two two possibilities both of which are disagreeable or inappropriate or not in accordance with the program and the sponsor wants you to pick between the two whereas it's a it's of the variety um well I've robbed a bank um I was just in the middle of like putting banknotes in the uh in the in my in my duffel bag and we can hear sirens and the question is you know do I go into the vault and lock it behind me or do I take one of the bank tellers hostage which of these two do you think would and they've painted you into a corner you know you can't assess this situation as the question is why are you robbing a bank in the first place but they've already presupposed that they're already there um so so i don't think it's valuable for me to comment on situations where the horse has already bolted you want to you want to be brought in as someone to give inputs whilst the horse is still in the stable so uh but so that's a very long way of answering your question generally uh no i don't think one should get involved in your instinct is right but occasionally there's a legitimate reason why one might want to give input in that situation thanks tim uh anyone else with a question for Tim. James. Hi, thanks, Tim. I think this is going to be one of these. Is it not the case that parliamentary questions? The situation I'm. I'm thinking of is out here in the in the sticks where there's no daylight, as you can see. um a lot of the meetings are kind of generic in nature it's not like there are a mass of meetings and a few sort of good sharp ones and that's where people gravitate um they're all a bit a bit generic and i've i've picked up people to sponsor over the years through those through those meetings and there's a fair old attrition rate if you get them sober in the first place uh you get into step five and they kind of disappear at that point they might make a few amends and disappear at that point very few of them in my observation go on to sponsor although lots of them seem to seem to wind up running meetings and and that's their that's the form of um their form of service and it struck me recently i it struck мне quite forcibly the little word or in in in the first paragraph of the chapter two agnostics that we're dealing with a mixed population here um and about half the population I would have said um are people who've not got the full deck of cards when it comes to alcoholism they've got one part of problem or another part of problem but they haven't got the whole thing as I did you know I couldn't stop myself from drinking once I'd started and I couldn'T stop myself in starting as opposed to all so I've sponsored a fair number of people who I think with hindsight didn't really need to be sponsored because they had the capacity to recover by non-spiritual means to a certain degree, and that's exactly what they've done. So the sponsorship process, going through the steps, as it were, has been overlaid onto that as a sort of bonus feature, I suppose. I don't think it's done any harm, but I'm not convinced it's been the best use of my time. Have you come across that distinction yourself in your extensive sponsorship life um how does one spot the difference and does it really matter anyway that's a wonderful question um okay so i think a lot of people work the steps as a psychological social and material program and they do the same instructions as you as you and i do exactly the same but the angle is different the purpose of it is not to be released from the matrix it's to get on better in the world and there's nothing wrong with that it's not bad it's just it's different and now I'm the jury is out for me on the question of reincarnation however however i think some people on this journey on this journey through the material plane their job is to be totally involved in the material plain on this route through other people are so done with materialism but are weirdly here for some reason and are in just the most awful psychic pain until such point that they release themselves from themselves and find a way of being a channel for the higher power in the world and that's that's why one is on the plane and maybe there are lots of progressions one goes through um so i've known a lot of people in my early meetings the people who were well psychologically and socially and spiritually and all those things fell into two groups group number one is people who were a mess when they got to aa but basically sourced themselves and had great lives and yachts and they set up companies and they're basically that's great for them and they love it they're happy and it what it genuinely works it's not fool's gold they've got gold and then there are the kind of freaked out psychologically maladjusted psychos like me now if you're sponsored by the wrong type if you'll one of the psychos that like me that needs the spiritual awakening and the complete release from the material world a sponsor who's of the first type is like a chocolate teapot they do not know what to do with you that they just don't get it you do the steps in a in a psychological social and material way and you're just as crazy as you were before and they don't understand why but the curious thing is it can work the other way around so i've had a lot of sponsees over of the years who I gave them a spiritual program with practical instructions but for them it was a psychological social and material program and they're out in the world they're doing stuff and they most of them still go to meetings and as you say run meetings and do bit of service sponsor a couple of people blah blah blah and they are on a completely different that their experience of the world is very very different than mine um and you asked and that's fine now you asked is it worth sponsoring absolutely weirdly it works that way around but not the other way around um in my experience uh because otherwise they're going to die of alcoholism drag you know scores of people into hell with them as they do it so it's always worth it you know that it's the if someone stays sober it's a benefit for thousands of people over the course of their life so of course it's it's also and certainly i am not the person to judge if someone comes to me for help i give them the help or help them find someone who's suitable for them sometimes that's the job i don't take everyone that asks me to sponsor them um but don't try and force it force the spiritual stuff on people who just don't want it if they want to go another path you haven't failed my sponsor says your job is to is to take them for it's like a relay race you're taking them you're accompanying them on this stretch of the race and then someone else or some other situation is going to take them take them further um the biggest difficulty and this is a common one is you've got someone in category b who thinks they're in category a in other words you've Got someone who is who need desperately needs a spiritual solution and material solution and they throw all the psychological, social and material stuff at it and it doesn't work and they're still in the same psyche although I seem to be back How much have you lost? The last 20 seconds perhaps The problem is if someone's in category B yeah okay so it's like people are trying to uh someone whose problem is essentially spiritual in other words it's their position in the universe they're at the center they need to be the servant of the higher power but it's trying to tackle the problems from a psychological social material point of view now it doesn't mean that there aren't psychological and social material problems to solve but it means that that's not the prime focus uh but there all you can do is say i think the solution here is spiritual and hope they they get it hope that they get so there's one last thing um my sponsors uh my sponsor his daughter is in aa and uh she had in in in rural semi-rural texas had a sponsor who was a um harley davidson riding uh lesbian so not your usual profile of a sort of texan female sponsor and someone said you've got the wrong sponsor little missy and she said yeah but i've gotthe right higher power so whatever force brings two people together you have to figure out the higher powers working through it somehow so the weirdest matches seem to work i where we're at eight o'clock and root's got a question so maybe we can bring rupin yes yeah thanks tim thanks for the um presentation um i'm working with three sponsors up and wearing and i'm finding that having got three steps one to three it's like um well i'm not hurting cats but it seems to dissipate in step four and five and it's one of the experience in terms of you know the roles you've played or you found effective do you just let them go their own pace and let them come back or do you try to set some structure what do you do very very simply uh step four is a learning experience so first of all you're doing your step four but secondly you're learning how to do a step four and the insights operate cumulatively and they overturn your whole perception and experience of the world when it's working and now the reason I say that is because if you were learning Japanese you'd have to put in a couple of hours a day otherwise if you just did an hour a week you'd spend the whole hour trying to regain what you'd learned the previous time and you wouldn't have any time to build on it so you go around in circles and don't learn anything and it's the same with step four if you're bailing out a boat there's still water coming in at the bottom if you're only bailing out very very slowly the water is going to come in faster than you're bailing out and then they feel that they're just getting worse which they indeed are so I think before I let people start step four i say are you willing to put one hour a day during weekdays two hours a day or more at weekends into this into writing running it past other people i get them to do daily daily work run the daily work past someone else before they run it past me so that they're kind of it's kind of pre-processed that they've got worked the kinks out of it and so they're doing it as a team effort between you and them and two or three confidants who are further ahead in the program and that team effort seems to give people the encouragement and the support they need to get through it because it's really hard, it's like sending them off into the night to just do the step four and hope they come back. They just won't come back so since I put the structure in place almost no one flakes out during step four but it's the daily structure, commitment before you start, daily structure break it down into tiny bite-sized pieces every day they read out what they wrote the day before so you can be making sure they're getting it right they're giving stuff out of their system they're not building up this huge backlog of stuff and they're running it past someone else which means they're get rid of the guilt as they go they're going to run out of shame as they go they getting rid of embarrassment them making friends they getting trained on the technical side by other people not just you are you stop being the only person that going to your less than authority figure just one in a chain of people i talk to all of these things to contract contrive to making it easier for them to do the work uh and you'll get i think you get fewer dropouts if if you do that okay thanks thanks tim and uh it's a appropriate point um to um i have uh just yeah for everyone i've just dropped into the chat the uh google drive with the previous recordings If you want to copy that link. And with that, I think we'll end the meeting back to Tim to ask him to close with the serenity prayers. Thanks. Would you please join me in the serENITY prayer? God, grant me the serEnity. Accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Thanks, Tim. Bye bye. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks.