2nd March Through the Steps Workshop – Part 7 of 5 – 2022 – Chris S.

All right, and as we pass the basket, I'm going to have my friend Darren come up and read something before we begin. All right. Darren. Thank you, Ted. I get classified as a friend. Darren, alcoholic. Step six and seven. We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We were a prey to misery and depression. We couldn'T make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn' t seem to be of real help to other people. Was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was. when we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe. We had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God idea did. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you Alright, and to introduce our speaker on six and seven it's going to be Chris it's really an honor to have Chris here for sure he's uh definitely and it's an honor because he's helpful to a lot of good friends of mine um he's gotten he came very close over the last i guess year and a half with good friends of mine who mean a lot to me um and i don't when i was before i moved to delaware i'm my sponsor in california i don'T know i know now why he told me to do this but he said if you ever feel a certain way or if you have any questions ask the person that you want to add like you ask the person at a meeting like go to him and ask them what you wantto ask them and i've done it with jack i've done it with a couple people here and there was a night that i was doing a zoom meeting and i saw that chris was on and i don't i mean i put these people on pedestals and it's just the truth like guys i listened to and uh so there wasa break real quick or someone wanted to share and i alcoholically looked to see if chris wasn't on and he left and i was like oh what's up and uh so i reached out to him after the meeting i waslike hey man what's how you doing uh you don't know me but i just wanted to know did i say something to he said no man i had a home group meeting but but i needed i needed a follow-up question so i said hey i was like so how you know i get asked to do this a lot so how would i how could i become a more effective communicator it's a very similar conversation i've had with jack um and he gave me some good some good tips which is stuff i had heard before and then the next morning i hook up and it was like 45 uh text messages of talks to listen to and to be honest I mean that's that kind of stuff that has made me incredibly useful so I'm grateful for you and I'm thankful that you came to be here with us today so with that we give you Chris on step six and seven Chris alcoholic what a great couple days this has been I've absolutely loved every single talk you know it's had monstrous amounts of depth and weight. And, you know, there's a spirit in this room, too, that I really appreciate. You know, we're all struggling to recover from alcoholism. You know? We're all heading in the same direction. And when you think about where we all came from, imagine if we were all still drinking. there wouldn't be enough cop cars, you know? So I'm really grateful that we're sober and you know, we're all hanging in there. You know, I'm going to start with a bizarre reading because I feel like it. And this is from page 139. It's To the Employer. This was the Hank Parker's chapter, right? And he's talking about, all right, you want to try to be helpful to the alcoholic in your organization, you know? And he's giving you some tips and he's giving you Some advice. And he says this, when dealing with an alcoholic, there may be a natural annoyance that a man can be so weak, stupid and irresponsible. Even when you understand the malady better, you may feel this feeling rising. Now, I have been perceived, believe it or not, in the past as weak, stupid, and irresponsible by most of the people that were close to me. It just, that would just happen, right? But I wouldn't feel weak, stupid and irresponsible I would act weak stupid and irresponsible but you know my ego wouldn't allow me to take credit for being weak stupid and irresponsible but as I started to work with other alcoholics as I started to sponsor people I started to think this idiot is weak stupid and irresponsible right so so so there's a lot of growing that happens in alcoholics anonymous you know i don't i really don't feel that way anymore i know i know about i know about what we're up against we're upper against alcoholism and it's somebody that we're you know we're working with gonna come off as weak stupid and irresponsible? Yes. But are they really? I don't believe that. I believe alcoholism is a condition. That's what I believe it is. And I believe as part of that condition is an extraordinarily extraordinarily difficult relationship with self and that's part, that's an aspect of the illness and you know I'll be working with a new person and you know I will, you know, I'll being taken aback at some of the behavior or some of the thoughts that are coming out of their head and once more I'll remember you know really what we're up against. Alcoholism is cunning, powerful and very baffling. It's an enormously impactful condition to have. Nine out of ten alcoholics die from alcoholism you know we're going to die with alcoholism but hopefully we're not going to die from it and you know, we're a lucky small percentage of people that's afflicted with this. You know we got a chance to pay attention to the things that we need to pay attention to and do our job as Alcoholics Anonymous members now I'm gonna do another couple of readings that have little or nothing to do with six and seven and I'm gonna I'm going to give you the bad news first you know if you're new you'll see this is bad news unless each AA member this is from page 174. Bill hid this in Tradition 9. He really was careful about who was going to be seeing this. It says, unless each AA member follows to the best of their ability our suggested 12 steps to recovery, they almost certainly sign their own death warrant. Uh-oh. I mean, think about that. That's serious, right? That means we need to be doing our job with these 12 steps, or we're not expected to stay sober. We're signing our own death warrant. And then it says, this is my favorite part, it says their drunkenness and disillusion are not penalties inflicted by people in authority. They result from their personal disobedience to spiritual principles. I know in my heart, if I get drunk again, it's going to be directly related to my personal disobedience to spiritual principles. Don't you feel somewhere in your heart that that's true? You know, I want to say I got drunk because she left, but I got drunk when she showed up. I want to say I got drunk because I lost my job, but I got drunk when I got promoted. It's not causal in that way. It's attached to my relationship with spiritual principles. Now that's the bad news. Here's the good news. This is from the forward to the 12 and 12. 12 by 12. A.A.'s 12 steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. It's my favorite paragraph in any of the literature. So let's unpack that a little bit. The 12 steps or a group or principles that are spiritual. These are spiritual principles. The 12-step exercises come from spiritual traditions that come from religious traditions, and they've been around a gazillion years. And that's what our principles are. And if we practice these as a way of life, they'll expel the obsession to drink. They'll keep us safe and protected from the next drink, which I would say is important if you're in this room. And enable me to become happily and usefully whole. That's the brass ring. I'd do it if it just kept away the booze. But it not only keeps away the boos, it enables me to becomes happily and usefully whole with a W. That's what I always wanted to be. I always want to be happy, you know? I feel like crap, I'm gonna buy a gallon of vodka, you now? That'll make me happy. I always wanna be happy. Useful? You know, I am going to get some cocaine and then you know, I am gonna go to work and I will work twice as hard! Always wanted to useful. But I was operating from self, which is really, that's the wrong platform to be coming from. If I practice these 12 steps as a way of life, I'll be happily and usefully whole and the alcohol problem will be removed. I believe I've been released from alcohol. I don't believe I quit I believe I was released and the things that I do in Alcoholics Anonymous and the spiritual principles that I engage in very imperfectly and try to practice that's an expression of my gratitude from the release you know, I don'T do these things to stay sober I'm sober i've been released i do these things out of an expression of of gratitude you know i've been reconnected to you i've ben reconnected to god and i'm happy and i am useful and i feel whole You know, before I even started drinking and when I was drinking, I didn't feel whole. There was something drastic that was missing. Sometimes I couldn't even describe what was missing and what I didn'T have and what felt empty in me. But I wasn't whole. You know? Today, I'm whole. I just don't need a lot. You know, I'm pretty cool just motoring through life. And that leads me. I want to start on a paragraph. The paragraph before the big book moves us into steps six and seven. Because I see this today as a true contemplative spiritual exercise that I missed the first half a dozen times I went through the steps. I missed this. You know, I'm impatient. You know I want to get on with it. I want check the box and I miss this and I think it's very, very important and it's the returning home exercise, okay? Returning home we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour carefully reviewing what we have done. We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. When it says we, thank God, we is us. Self is a condition. But when it says We, it means you. So that's a prayer directive. We're supposed to say that prayer. Taking this book down from our shelf, we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps. Carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask if we've omitted anything for we're building an arch through which we shall walk free. now now i'm supposed to go into an hour's worth of quiet contemplation about the details of the first five steps i'm suppose to go over them suppose it asked myself is there anything i've left out you know i don't you know is every single stone overturned have i done my job with this stuff you know so how i do that is every time i go through the steps i re-examine step one you know I've re-examined step one if I put alcohol into my body right now do I know what would happen I know one thing that would happen my body would want more alcohol you know I look at the obsession of the mind you know it am I able using my own willpower able to stay away from alcohol by deciding to. My whole life's experience shows me that no, I can't deciding not to drink is a good thing but it's not going to keep me from drinking. So I look at that, I look at the manageability of my life. What am I trying to manage? It's really funny You know, I've done inventory with a billion people. And I got to tell you, it's always work. It's always family. And it's Always relationships that show up in the four-step inventory. And that's always the stuff that we're trying to manage. You know? So I look at it. Is my life truly only manageable by seeking direction and power from God? I need to look at that. Am I willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity? I need the power of God and I need you to look at that and today I can actually say I'm not willing to believe, I know, I know there'sa power greater than myself. I may not know every aspect of that power, I may be able to describe that power adequately to you if you ask me what God is but I know because I've got an experience with God I've got an experience with god doing for me what I could not do for myself so I look at that step two and I also looks look over step three again did I make a decision to turn my will in my life over to the care of God did I made that decision did I mean it you know did I mean was it just lip service was it just me doing the prayer or was it a real decision to move forward with this body of work, you know, was that really what my decision was? And then I look over the fourth step. Have I left out any resentments? Am I worried that if I put a resentment down, my sponsor's going to make me make amends to the son of a bitch? You know, have I left that one out? Oops! You know? Am i really being honest with this inventory? Have I really shared everything? did i share tallahassee 77 with my sponsor you know the thing that i swore i would never tell anybody ever you know have i been honest with my supporter or someone about that and and then it basically says if we can answer to our satisfaction if we get answer what to our satisfaction that we've gone into contemplation and we've looked over the first five steps And we can say, yes, we've actually done the best that we can do at whatever state of mind we are at the time. We've done the Best that we we can go. I can I can say yes. So if I answer to my satisfaction, then we look at step six. We've emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Willingness is everything. Step six is like the whole ball of wax. It really is. I need to become willing to look at my alcoholism and admit to my alcoholismo. I needto become willing to lookat the possibility of a power greater than myself solving my problem. I needtocome willing to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I need tocomewilling to do a four-step inventory. I needdocomewilling to doa fifth step. You know, so willingness has been a part of all five of these first proposals and it's a part of all the rest of them too. You know? And what is my willingness based on? What is my willingness based upon? My willingness has to go back to step one. It has to go back to powerlessness. It has to go back to alcohol. Alcoholism is a progressively fatal illness. I've got to attach it back to that you know for for me to be willing these steps aren't something I was just about to do before I showed up here you know they go counter to everything that I've believed about myself they're they're clumsy they're uncomfortable they're you know they may not be necessary in my case have you ever said that about a step raise your hand I know everybody you know I know what that step is I know who you're talking about but I don't think that would be necessary in my case gotta be willing to do it even if it's not necessary in your case you know how you become an AA member in good standing in Alcoholics Anonymous when your sponsor tells you to do something that's stupid and won't be necessary in yourcase you do it that's how you become uh an alcoholics anonymous member in good standing are we now ready to get let god remove from us all the things that we've admitted are objectionable now when i first looked at this step right i thought i thought you know this is kind of a cop-out you know just give it to god you know let god move it you know don't i have to get character defects for dummies you know or something don't isn't there like a whole lot of whole lot work you know that's gonna and and you know i i don't believe i don' t believe that then it goes uh you know can he now take them all every one if we still cling to something we will not let go we ask god to help us be willing so i don''t know about you but there were some things I didn't want to let go of, you know? Like if you want me to let go of lust, I may never get laid again if I do that. You know, hold on a minute. So there's some things that I have to pray for the willingness. When ready, we say something like this. My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me good in bed. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. So looking really closely at this prayer, this isn't a prayer, you know, this Isn't a self-prayer. You know, you can buy all the self books that are out there. Go to the self-help section. Oh my God, you Without alcoholics, there wouldn't be all those books. There's self-help books. This isn't a self-prayer. I remember one time my sponsor showed up at my house. It was the first time he came unannounced. Have you ever had a sponsor show up at your house unannoused? Hey, Phil. We go up to my room and I've got books. I've used to read in blackouts. you know it was it was good because you could read the same book a lot but but you know I go and he's looking through my books you know he's like one of those sponsors that wants to you know like pry and he goes Chris man you got a lot of self help books here you got all this stuff you got to get a lot of self-help books he goes can I ask you a question I go, sure. He goes, where's your Help Others books? And I go uh I'm unfamiliar with that category Phil. Where would you find those in the Barnes and Noble? Isn't that just like us? I read everything. The Joy of Resentment How to Win Friends and Influence People Through Tyranny I had them all. I'm okay, you're really screwed up. I had every one of those books. And you know what they would do? They would make me feel a little warm and fuzzy and kind of comfortable for about five minutes until my self was just bulldozed over any concepts that I gained intellectually. They were never of any help. so it's so so this prayer is about fitting me to be here's the thing I truly believe this today I believe that these steps and the spiritual awakening that's resultant from these steps does not make me a perfect person it does not render me perfect and I'm glad of that okay Anybody in here ever have a perfect person show up at your house? You know what I mean? Like, make you look bad. You know, like, you should be more like Harry. He's going to law school and he's got a nice girl. You know? Screw Harry. I hate Harry. So, so I'm glad it's not going to make me perfect. You know sometimes our imperfections is what makes us lovable. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. You know what this stuff renders me? It renders me useful. Some of the character defects that I became released from early on were the ones that were blocking off from me being able to communicate and be helpful to you. Those were the ones that we're the first to go out the window. Do I have some character defects that are still hanging on yeah of course i think i think most if not all all of us do but enough of these character defects have have been released uh for me to be really really useful today and and the thing about going to god with this listen to this it says it says this grant me strength as i go out from here to do your bidding amen we have then completed step seven period end of statement we've completed step seven by saying this prayer i thought that was kind of an irresponsible thing too okay well i've just thrown it at god god here's all the crap you know see you later you know isn't there like tons of stuff i need to do nope and and so i've given this to god why because there's nothing else that's why that's what i'm saying that's right that's why there's nothing else i can't change this stuff you know i'm prey to misery and depression and self-centered fear and anxiety. I'm prey to that stuff. Someone was talking about being prey to that stuff, right? If I could have done a better job, I would have. I believe this today. I believe this today, that I'm not responsible for all this stuff, but I must be accountable for it. If I'm driven by alcoholism, if I'm driven from self-will, if I'm powerless over alcohol, what else could I have done but what I did? But I need to be accountable. And it starts right after it says we've then completed step seven, it starts to move us into the accountability that I feel is the real change agent for us as going concerns. I really do. You know, it's a crazy thing. You know, I've heard some examples. I'm going to share them with you now. They're not mine, but you know how we steal in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not really stealing, it'S borrowing. So I borrowed a couple of things. And one of the things I borrowed is this. All right, let's say you're really serious about this character defect stuff. You know, you want to be useful. You want these character defects to be removed. Here's what I would like you to do. I would like you go to ten of the people that know you the best. Ten of the people that really know you're the best family, close friends, bosses and I want you to go to them and hand them a notebook and a pen and say I'm involved in a spiritual program, and it's life or death. This really, really is really important. You know, and for you to be really, really honest with me is going to be really important to whether I survive this thing I'm going through. I would like you to list out every single character defect that you see showing up in me. There's not a one of us in here that's going to do that. okay, so what I'm trying to say is we don't even want to know sometimes what our character defects are, let alone, you know, so why are we going to God? Why are we Going to God because of stuff, of stuff like that. You know what I mean? Here's another one. I got this one from, I got to serve for, I think at the power of now. So little Joey is, you Know, 12 years old, right? he's on a baseball team and he starts to get he's got a big game tomorrow he starts Toothache now what his experience is when he goes to his mother and he says mom I've got a toothache she grinds up some aspirin gives him some aspirine it takes away the pain and that's good but he doesn't do that what he does is he waits for it to go away it'll go away it'll go away. And as the day and the night progresses, it starts to get worse. And he goes to bed just hoping it's... Finally, he wakes up in the middle of the night. He can't take it anymore. He goes into his mother. He goes, Mom, I got a toothache. And she grinds up the aspirin. She gives it to him. And, and he's able to go back to bed. Why did he wait? Well, he waited because he knows, yeah, she'll grind up the aspirin and give it to him and his toothache will go away. But tomorrow there's going to be an appointment with Dr. Mengele, the dentist. And he's goingto go to this dentist and there's gonna be a big bucket for the blood and a needle about this long and a drill that's gonna smoke and there're gonna be all this pain and he's gonna walk out with a straight first year and you won't be able to talk. You know, all he wanted was the pain to stop you know he didn't want his tooth to be perfect and he's going to walk out with perfect teeth after he goes to the dentist so many of us are like that you know we don't want we don'T want the perfection of God's vision for us we just want the pain to stop you know and this particular step is is is taking care of that problem we're asking God in you know in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous they would make a third step decision right and and we thought well before we took this step it says in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and and there was also some mention earlier on about you know how how significant a decision this was especially in the early days and it's because when you when you ask god to take direction and control of your life and your thoughts and all this stuff there's no going back from that you know what i mean you've invited god in god's gonna come in there'sno going back for me i hear all the time in alcoholics anonymous i gave my will i took my will back. There's no taking it back when you do the third step. There is no taking it back. If you drink after you have done a third step, it's part of that third step decision and part of what you are going to need to experience. There are no going back from that third set. That's why we think well about it. We've invited God in and now God has to be part of this experience you know God has to be front and center in everything in this Alcoholics Anonymous experience why because there's nothing else we're beyond human aid you know we're beyond human ed so so step six and step seven they talk about humility Bill Wilson as he matured he was maybe 4 or 5 years sober when the big book was written and he was 15 or 20 years sober when 12 and 12 was written by the time he started penning the stuff in 12 and 12 he was talking a lot about humility humility as I see it everybody's got a different definition of it right? Humility as I see it is an accurate self-appraisal, something I could not do before I experienced recovery. You know, I would always get it wrong. I would Always be worse than you or better than you. You Know, I never had an accurate perception of where, you know, what kind of a role I'm playing on this on this planet. I just didn't. But with the awakened in spirit sometimes uh you know we we can see things clearly and and part of that is an experience of humility and i believe humility is you know being able to accurately appraise you know where where we fit into the puzzle the puzzle of life you know i'm gonna um i had a i had a guy who was very important to me i know he's very important to peter and a lot of us in here uh his name was mark houston and in some of his uh in some of his workshops he would use this book when he got to step six and step seven because a lot of times i think it's helpful it's i don't know it's necessary but it's hopeful for us to recognize you know the real problem the the more we understand the problem when i showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous I was working on the wrong problem. I was basing my whole AlcoholicsAnonymous experience on separating myself from vodka, doing it myself and that was working upon the wrong problem the wrong problem was I had alcoholism I had toxic selfishness and self-centeredness and I'm working an AA program based on separation of alcohol, separation from alcohol so if you work on the wrong problem, sometimes, you know, it's not good. So I'll tell you a little bit about this book. St. Augustine, he lived, I think, in the 400s. So that would be, what, 1600 years ago? Jack, you even know the math? You know, a long time ago. He's an old geezer by now. And what he was, was he was one of the desert fathers. There was these mystics back in the day. And what they would do is they would renounce everything and they would go out into the desert where they couldn't be, you know, influenced by the debauchery of the day, you know. And they would set up like a spiritual encampment somewhere where they could, you know., go deep in, really try to get an experience and a connection to God. They were the mystics and the desert fathers. And this guy, St. Augustine, started this, it would look like a commune to us today, but he started this group of people out in the desert, right? And he had a lot of sponsees, okay? He was like the religious leader and he had all these guys that were coming, you know, just like somebody that's sponsoring 50 guys. And they were misbehaving. Can you imagine? they were causing trouble anybody in here sponsored 10 or more people you know exactly what I'm talking about there's like mass misbehavior and so so what he did was he put uh he put together a bunch of stuff in in a prayer book and basically what it was was it was spiritual exercises for for his sponsees to take so that they could recognize what kind of horse's asses they were. And why I like this book is because it identifies about 30 character defects, and then it gives a really accurate description of what those character defects are. I'll just read a couple. All right, pride. You know, when I say pride, something will pop into your head. This is how he describes pride. pride is putting self in the place of god as the center and objective of our life or of some department thereof it is the refusal to recognize our status status as creatures dependent on god for our existence and placed by him in a specific relationship to the rest of his creation that's a that's a cool description you know and was I operating opposite of that? You're darn right. I'll read a couple more envy is dissatisfaction with our place in God's order of creation manifested in begrudging his gifts and vocation to others arrogance insisting that others conform to our wishes, recognize our leadership accept our own estimate of our worth being overbearing argumentative opinionated and obstinate anybody guilty of anything? yeah so if I could have done better I would have you know what I mean? God please help so so the whole process of Alcoholics Anonymous you know that it helped me so much really looking as deeply as I could into the history of Alcoholic Anonymous what really were Bob and Bill and all these guys what were they really doing you know where did they come from It really helped me because they went from self-dependence to God dependence. They knew that was going to be the solution. You know, one of the books Bill read and was really, really influenced by was their Varieties of Religious Experience. That was a book that was written in 1901 or something, you know, and it's tough going through. So if you've got less than a year, let your sponsor give you a synopsis. Because it's rough. It's rough, 45 feet long sentences and stuff. But I just recently went through it again. I tried to read it with like two years. And it was just, you know how alcoholics read? They'll actually be reading and thinking about something else. And what did you just read? I don't know. You actually did read it, but you were thinking about the Mets or something. So I really tried to concentrate and I tried to get through this just in the last year. And it's interesting. Chapters 9 through 11 deal with people like us. And there was an example in this book that I think Bill Wilson was very much inspired by. And it was this preacher called Billy Sunday. and Billy Sunday was this preacher in the mid-1800s who'd do the tent revival things and he specifically went after drunks. He went after drugs and he'd bring you up and you'd declare your faith in God and you do the whole like Billy Graham crusade-esque kind of a thing and then hang with him for a while and he was producing a lot of recoveries from alcoholism. The Oxford Group, the Oxford Group was the same kind of thing. The Oxford group was a group of people who took first century Christian spiritual principles and tried to live them, you know, really, really tried to leave them. And they weren't a church, so to speak. They were more of like a group OF people who decided okay we're going to go through the steps together it was kind of like that you know and and and these and these people from the Oxford group would would do things like uh witness they would they would do restitution they would due surrender and there were all these principles in the Oxford Group that brought about a lot of recoveries here's the funny thing There were tons of recoveries in the Oxford group before Bill Wilson got sober. Bill Wilson isn't even the first person to write a book about recovering from alcoholism who was in the Oscar group. I know of at least three, and the titles are great. The Big Bender, I Was a Pagan, For Sinners Only. You can find these books. They were books written by Oxford group members that show examples of people who have recovered from alcoholism by turning their will and their life over to the care of God. This wasn't a brand new idea, this Alcoholics Anonymous thing. They tried to figure out what worked. There were psychological ways, non-religious psychological ways that were being practiced back then. And there's a great book. It's called The Common Sense of Drinking. and it would be like rational recovery is today or something right you know not a lot of god in the common sense of drinking it's dumb to drink okay the common science of drinking you know anybody that's gotten sober off of that book you know why are we why are we going to god because there's nothing else there really really is nothing else you know i don't have anything more i can share on step six and seven without just starting to blither so you know what i'm going to do i'm gonna cut this off and i want to thank everybody for everybody for being here this has really been a fun weekend for me you know uh god bless all of you and and i'll leave with this. If your sponsor asks you to do something stupid that's not going to be necessary for you, what are you gonna do? Do it! Thank you. All right thank you Chris and I'll be back at four o'clock so you have a half hour.