Step 5 and the Behaviors He Finally Distinguished From His Identity – John C.

Let us welcome John C., who is going to share on the topic of expanding God consciousness for us today. Sorry, you're muted. One second. There we go. How's that? Yeah. Okay. So thank you very much for the invitation to join you today. I'm excited to be here. The first thing I'd like to share with you is your inclusivity of welcoming people. I really admire that, that although we may have different methods in our addiction and many people who are addicted or addicted to more than one thing, the welcoming message that we all can learn from each other myself I never took any cocaine in my life but I sure understand addiction I understand I could replace alcohol with food or with relationships or with work or with exercise something that I would would normally grow of tolerance to try to eliminate some pain in my life. And believe me, when I say this to you, I've had many addictions over my lifetime. And some I'm successful at and some I've not so successful at. My topic today is something that's near and dear to my heart and that is expanding god's consciousness and i'll tell you why when i when i came to alcoholics anonymous what happened with me i'm sure with many of you as well that i hit rock bottom i just didn't know what i could do about my life it was a mess And I like to think of it as a bankruptcy, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual. And I came in with this and I'd learned this by the way after I came into AA that I was deeply restless, irritable and discontented. now that's Dr. Silkworth's words in the doctor's opinion and that hit me straight because although I may not have been conscious of it prior to coming in I was restless nothing seems to be good enough I've always wanted more of something that. I wanted to be, if I was in one place, I wanted to be in another place. If I was working, I'd rather be at home and if I was at home, I rather be working. If i was on vacation, I would prefer to be at my home. So it was just this mixed up way of I was experiencing my life and it was like a loop. poop. I didn't see how I could get out of it. And as I come to a decision to do something about my drinking, I come realize that yeah, I have suffered this pain of more. And when I came in and I like to point out this when I speak. It's interesting that Dr. Silkworth mentions those three words. And I like to think of them as they're umbrella words. In other words, what I was trying to do was do a full-throated control of my life. That's why I was anxious. That is why I, I was discontented and unhappy because I wanted to control more of my which didn't seem to happen. I didn't have control. But I point out the sequence here because it's so very important to understand. So I was restless, irritable and discontent. Then I sought comfort and ease. So, I wasn't seeking comfort and ease in the beginning. I was trying to fix a problem that I wasnít totally aware that i had and my choice was to use or use this substitute called alcohol to numb the feelings that i was having and with any addiction in the short term it works well it did give me that kind of freedom of comfort and ease but addiction what it does it comes back and bites you I don't stay in the same place. My tolerance grew, in other words. I had to have more of it. And then finally after having more of that, I like to think of crossing this invisible line that I used alcohol completely to adjust the way I was experiencing my life. Now there's a few things I'd like to say here and I think they're so very important. and I only have 35 minutes to be with you. So, I'm going to delete a bunch of things, but at the same time, I want you to know something that out in Bill Wilson's wisdom, he introduced this idea of powerlessness and power. Now think about that. It's kind of a paradoxical thing. In order for me to have power, I have to give up power. power. So in order for me to acknowledge that I'm powerless gives room to the fact that I can receive power from outside of myself. Now, who in the world would not want more power? I think that's completely something that we would all appreciate. If I had more power I'll be able to do the things I really want to do in my life accomplish what i did is in my deepest heart to accomplish and what stops me from doing it is this limited power which i which we would call self-will self will is like a muscle it tires over time that's why i can go on a diet on monday morning and by afternoon i'm having a cookie i had discipline in the beginning but over time the self-willed tires. So although self-will does provide some power, over the long term it's not very helpful. So this idea of powerlessness and power. Powerlessness of what? Well for me it was alcohol. But then I went on to talk a little bit about the unmanageability of my life and when I came in I thought the alcohol caused the unmanageability of my life now i'd 180 degrees from that today i was trying to control or provide power in areas of my life that i had no power over and you have to understand the stress and anxiety that causes when i'm trying to fix something that i can't fix And you use a metaphor like if you want to stop a headache, stop banging your head against the wall because banging the head against the wall is going to promote a headache. Well, I was banging my head against a wall trying to do things that I had no ability to do or no capability to do. So I believe the alcohol is not the cause of my unmanageability, that my unMANAGEABILITY was my perspective in living life, how I was experiencing my life, what I was trying to do and trying to push my way through in order to achieve the things that that my ego was trying to tell me that I needed to achieve. Now, that's a big thing to come to realize. And we say that in serenity prayers, we accept the things we cannot change. All of a sudden, we're on another journey when we start to accept things that we realize we have no control over. And we often talk about three main places and that is people, places, and things. I can't change you. You can't change me. I can change the circumstances that are in front of me, I need to accept them to begin to understand how I can move through it and things meaning just things at large. So I had to learn how to distinguish those two things. And I'll tell you what happens When I learned to accept these things, when I began to understand the clarity of the question, can I control this or can I not control it? All of a sudden there's a relief. I had less anxiety, less restlessness, less irritability and less discontent. Just that one factor. But we're not left there in this hopeless idea that, can I achieve something in my life without the use of my addiction? I tried quit drinking many times and it was not successful at it. And it's amazing that I had this learned helplessness that I was able to get through eventually eventually, because I was seeing other people in the program that were successful. And I started asking myself some better questions like they can do it, so can I. There's the evidence out in front of me. I can remember the first night I was 23 years old when I walked into AA. My first impression was the idea of hope and that I wasn't looking for hope but that's what I got and the hope was that all these people in this room appeared to be happy and living without alcohol so you can imagine that now I had a pathway I could follow if I chose to what the wisdom and the shoulders of of people that went before me, I could move towards having a successful life. Now here's the bonus. I then can create something of a belief that there is a power greater than myself that's going to restore me to wholeness. Now this is where it's kind of interesting. interesting. Many of us come in a program like this and many of us have limited or no belief at all. You know, we've been burned by religion or we have certain prejudice towards it or bad experiences. All legitimate, by the way. But what we did when we had those prejudices that prevent us from having power to accomplish the things that are deeply in our desire to accomplish. So it's like I'm taking the poison I want you to have, you see? So I had to let go of these prejudices and conclusions about what does it mean to have a higher power? What am I ready to put aside in terms of religion or conclusions that will help Help me move forward with power." And I love this idea. So I can create a belief system, which we all have by the way, we create belief systems all the time if I'm willing to let go of my particular stand. So was I willing? Well, slowly at first or maybe not even at all. but over time what happens is that began to see where i wasn't able to do the things that i deeply deeply wanted to do and i was pushing aside this idea of a higher power because of previous prejudices i had and to me i like it today as as i'm in i'm on the ocean drowning morning, and somebody on the boat is throwing me a life preserver, and I'm throwing it back because I don't like the color or because I was hit in the head with a life preserver as a child. No, I don t want that. Meanwhile, I m struggling to stay alive. When you put it in that terms, we can believe that this has become intensely practical. practical. It's not airy. It is not some sort of, well, around here we would call it a California kind of Pollyanna kind of thing. No, it's not that. This is intensely practical. And fortunately, we get to create this belief. Well, how do we do that? Well, Well, we make a decision. Now I love this idea of decision because it's a word that is watered down. We use the word decision that's contrary to the meaning of the word. So for instance, I'm going to go for a movie today. Now or later I change my mind because right now we're getting a little dusting of snow snow here, so I don't feel like going to meeting. Well, I never really made that as a decision. I thought I wanted to go to the meeting, but I didn't make a decision and I'll tell you the reason behind the word. The word to decide C-I-D-E comes from a family of words. Suicide, homicide, genocide, pesticide, genocide. And it means to kill off any other options. You see, when we make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, we cut off or we kill off, any other option. And if you're willing to take that stand, and not that you you have to be perfect to it. You do not, because we will all fail. But the moment we realize we've taken the will back and what that sounds like, looks like, we then can say, I turn that will back to you, God. Believing that whatever I'm going through, that A, I can get through, through that I will be better at the other end of it and that I have a source of power that will have me go through it without me trying because it's hard uh using my own effort my own self-will kind of trudging my way through no there's another way here that way is is allowing allowing this decision to take place in my life now I'm a bit of a wordsmith we're talking about turning my will over what does it really mean what does that mean well it means that one definition of will is is causing can i possibly believe that god is causing me to move in a particular direction see this is how i'm starting to expand and deepen my belief in this higher power i'm staring to turn my life over i'm starring to and this is a big word trust trust that whatever I'm going through is to my benefit even though I don't want it I'm not comfortable with it or maybe it's even giving me pain but to be grateful for those things because I know I'm building character see before what I would do I would run to alcohol to relieve the pain today i experience the pain knowing that there's some spiritual benefit something for me to learn as a result of going through that pain so how does one begin to start a belief system where there's no belief or worse not believing that a god or a higher power exists Well, as we continue to follow this idea of, am I going to have God cause me that… and I like to put it this way. God is like, to me, the wind. If I can walk into the wind, I'm going to find the walk is hard. You know, you can imagine a wind coming at you and you're trying to walk through it. that's me without a higher power life is hard life is difficult and i have to use everything i have that keep moving versus the wind at your back moving you directing you causing you to do the things which i call this with in our sacred identity you see i don't mix up anymore that i'm a bad person or i have a i have weaknesses yes those are behavioral things but that's not who i am i am not my disease by the way i am someone separate from the disease disease. I have the disease, I am not the disease." Now that may sound simple, but in our language and our internal self-talk we're talking oftentimes that we are the disease. That we are bad, that we ARE weak. And what is underneath the heart of a human being is a sacred identity something that we replaced on this earth for to achieve to accomplish to live with purpose and what the 12 steps does is has us uncover those things and we begin to see who we really are maybe sometime in your lifetime or maybe i continue to say this but it's like i have to reintroduce myself to me because i'm not familiar with those qualities see i put all these life's experiences and conclusions and judgments i have that distances myself from my sacred identity but because i've started to have a belief system system, that there is a higher power that will cause me to be the person that I was always meant to be prior to my addiction now can be achieved if I allow it. Now, that sounds pretty simple, but I think it's one of the hardest things that I had to learn allowing surrendering say things like thy will be done thank you i'm grateful for see these are the words that are that helps us deepen and strengthen this belief system which we have have so what is it you know examine for yourselves even if you get when you get off this call why were you using uh cocaine what was it you're trying to achieve and sometimes when we come up we just want to avoid stuff but there's another side of it too where we were actually trying to get to someplace. What is it? What is that, that we were trying to achieve? Because we can have it in sobriety. We can have with an advocate at our side, this higher power. And I like to think of this as the educational varieties William James wrote, one of Bill Wilson's favorite books. Some of us get it very quickly, like Wilson's hospital experience of light and wind, and some of us have an educational variety over time. Now, I have to say to you that I have my educational over time. I don't know why. It's not up for me to know why, it's just that's the way it happened for me and it probably has something to do with my reluctance to allow. This flies in the face of the ego. The ego doesn't want to do that. What does the ego want? the ego wants to control. The ego wants to be the center of attention. The ego wants to sit in the king's throne or the queen's throne and when it gets threatened there's all kinds of things that happen in the mind and what we're doing and what we're suggesting you do if you choose to do it is we're saying to the ego yes you're part of me not that you're bad but you have to be managed i have a power greater than myself that i'm going to refer to before i refer to you and i begin to discern or to separate or trying to understand the experience i'm having and what it is i'm trying to achieve Now, I can tell you this. This is the miracle of our fellowships. The miracle is how does one like me struggle to stay sober week after week after week? Good intentions. I know the difference between right and wrong, but I just couldn't stay sober. And then one magical moment, and it's a magical moment. It's a mystery. It's miracle that that was taking away from me because I know that if I tried to do it on my own with self-will, the result would have been the same as it always had been. I'd go back drinking, but this time this is different. This time, the compulsion, obsession over alcohol was removed. Now you think about that, and we hear it all the time. You hear it in meetings, you hear it in the sharing of people, you hear it just general conversations of people who are in recovery. They have years and years and years of sobriety or abstinence that cannot be explained. That's power, that's power. Now if this higher power can give me that which it has, what else if I employ this power could have happened in my life? And I like to think of it as a metaphor this way. Every morning when I wake up, it's like me me waking up as a master artist and my canvas is blank. And what can you do with a blank canvas as a Master Artist? You could do anything, everything. It's up to me. This is what God has provided me every morning to start working on my masterpiece for the day how am I going to show up how am i going to relate to other people how am I going be responsible who am I gonna reach out to what is it that in my heart to achieve today that needs to be addressed How can I be responsible? See, these are questions that I avoided for many years. It seemed too painful for me. I was afraid. I felt incapable. But once we open up this box, this sacred identity, we begin to see things in ourselves that we maybe have forgotten or we never even acknowledge that we have it. And it comes across in our stories, doesn't it? So you may not know it at this moment yourself, but what you may hear is someone else is going to give their experience about these opening up of the sacred identity. Then that's going to have you start to examine yours. We want to be careful not to shut that out. We want to be curious about it. We don't want to conclude quickly, like that's okay for them, but they don't know me and I'm not good enough for that. No, no, no. We are entering in learning. We're not entering in conclusions that we thought about ourselves. We're opening up something brand brand new maybe. See, this is what it means. So what I hope you're hearing that over time this belief system grows and strengthen with the more time I spend with it. It doesn't happen unconsciously or organically. That happens with intention. intention. So we go, what we have to do is get rid of the past that's emotionally tied to us in a fourth step, fifth step. And what we do is that we acknowledge the behaviors, not our identity, distinguish that, right? So you say I'm angry. Well, no, you're not. You are not anger. You may have anger, but that's not who you are. This is the beginning of opening up to sacred identity, to know that there's something there other than what we think or conclude. And just allow this to kind of open up and begin to look at what are you good at? What interests do you have? What moves you? In your mind's eye, start using this constructive imagination to be the person that's in your heart to be. So we continue on our journey and what happens is that we go through steps six and seven. We allow God to say, hey, here's my defects of character. You know what? I just give them to you." Now that doesn't mean I don't have responsibility for them. I do have responsibility, but I am listening to or wanting to learn about what it is that God wants me to achieve with whatever that's in front of me. So I no longer conclude them bad. I'm not looking for right or wrong. wrong, I'm just looking for the experience of it and how I can improve on it. You see, going back to page 23 with the big book, we talk about this idea that the main problem for an alcoholic centers in his mind or her mind. It centers in our processes and our thinking, our perspective. Our perspective, thank God, can be changed. changed. We don't inherit it and have to keep it. We can alter it. We begin to ask ourselves some better questions. Not if I can do it, but how I could do it. One word or I don't have that and add a yet. You see? Just one word. I don t have that that yet, which opens up the possibility that it can happen with me. That once we open up that door, what we're going to learn is that maybe you do have it and maybe it's been hiding on you or has been buried under the way in which we're thinking. And this is the beautiful thing about AA or CA or any of the recovery groups, that we We start to see ourselves, not necessarily as an addict in the sense of our humanity, but we begin to see yourselves as divine. Each of us have been gifted this idea of divine. So how do we explore this? How do we keep growing with this? Well, we use prayer and meditation. We'd spend time with the relationship of this higher power. Not transactionally, by the way, oh please give me this, give me that, give me that. No, no. Just being with, sitting beside, praying, thank you, what you're grateful for, saying saying to God, you know what? Thank you for giving me this experience. Let's face it, none of us wanted to become an addict. I mean, there's no glory in it. It is not something that you would write down and say, well, I'm going to become an addict because I think it's great. No, no, of course not. But having going through Through that experience and coming out the other side of it, we begin to see the value that we have for other people. I can't tell you why I became an alcoholic, but I can tell you this. After 53 years being in the program, I can render value to other people, it's as if this is made for me and i'm grateful that i went through it and i am grateful for the fact that god has given me the gifts of which he has given so prayer and meditation prayer and meditation this is how we develop and then we work with other people you see we start working working with other people because all of this doesn't matter friends unless you work with other people in other words you can't have it for yourself and expect it to be real now if you're new how do you work With Someone Else well at meetings we do service work you may read the uh the steps or traditions or whatever it is that's in the habit of doing you provide yourself with service. And if you find it difficult to do, the greater the reward that you're going to get. So you don't have to wait to be in service. You can do it as quickly as you want to be able to do it. Now, as you mature and begin through the steps and so on, you may want to consider being a sponsor of other people, to take them through what you've gone through. Not your opinions, but to share your experiences with them so that gives them light to confidently walk the path in which they're walking. I don't know of any greater gift that I could provide in this world than that privilege. just to watch and see people grow maybe i had nothing to do with it but maybe i had some involvement in it but to be a part of that experience is a miracle i am asked sometimes why at 53 years they're still here and i'm here because of that i'm hear because whatever i can provide i am willing to do I'm here to share whatever experiences I have as a result of working the 12 steps. And I just want you folks to know that you're capable as well. So I appreciate your generous listening. I appreciate so much that you invited me here to share with you, and hopefully there's something there that you can take home and mull over. OVER. BACK TO YOU, CHAIRBERRY.