Bill T. at the FOTS Toronto Step 11 – 2021

Hey everybody, I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic. The reason I said yes to Teresa is it's never good to piss off Teresa. No good reason to do that. So we get to talk about the 11 step, or we get to talk spiritual condition. It's my favorite subject. And one of the things about Alcoholics Anonymous is there's an immense amount of wisdom in AA. And what wisdom is to me, one of the best definitions I've heard of it is experience primarily combined with enough intellect to be able to express the experience. and alcoholics anonymous are storytellers we're always talking about ourselves some people might think that's self-centeredness but in aa when somebody comes to us what do we do we tell them our story they tell us their story and then we respond with yeah me too or not quite like that we tell our story and we talk about experience and there's a lot of experience today we have a lot of opinions i personally absolutely adore my opinions i think i'm right when i form one and i'm more than willing to express my opinion to you and if i if i do that well it's when i'm doing it from experience this is what happened to me and this is what i think happened and i've been sober since march the 27th 1985 which and i am very impressed by that that is a long damn time that is officially a long time and my opinions have changed over the years and i've been around long enough to where i can look back and see the phases that i've gone through now it's my contention based upon experience that really what's happening to us when we get sober is that we're growing up that our primary problem is is that were emotionally immature now some people love to talk about a thing that they call alcoholic thinking as if there is such a thing like we got special thinking right i just don't think we're that special i just think that we got loaded somewhere in middle school and we stayed that way for a long period of time and then we get sober and we missed a lot of the lessons we just missed a lot you know i i started drinking seriously probably around 14 or 15 years old where you really go after it then you get a little bit older and you can get it all the time and then i just did it really hard for a little over 20 years now that'll leave a scar and uh when i got here i was 37 years old and on a good day i probably had the emotional development of a 16 year old and this kid was not an honor student he's not the one that's mature beyond his years you know he's now well balanced he's got a bit of anger you know he's afraid but he doesn't even know that he just covers it up with a lot of anger and i'm big i'm six foot five and i i look like i'm grown up and i can be intimidating and i don't smile much i think i'm a badass but i don t think i've ever won a fight that i can remember you know but but i've got this demeanor i've got this thing now my story in a nutshell just to get it off the table is i was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy and i rarely went to the beach my motorcycle rarely ran and i was afraid to fight but i looked really good i had a chrome nazi helmet for a hat and a primary chain for a belt and black greasy levi's big black boots with chains around them i've got tattoos all over me but i had a clip on earring because i didn't want to hurt myself my biker nickname was horny i have it tattooed here on my arm and it's misspelled it's h-o-r-n-e-y hornay with an exclamation mark for emphasis so that there you go right there you go like a lot of us i was a phony i was a wannabe i was the pretender and do you know that at the time not really it seems real you know and uh at 22 i end up in a mental institution a couple of times you know i needed a rest i got married had a couple of kids and i wasn't coming home to that family and they were on welfare i mean it was a short party short party i mean we all talk about like we're we're party people well how many people were at the last party you were at before you got sober probably not many you know i mean we're not partying we're just trying to survive right it's alcoholism it's not partied um so i come in i'm on my second marriage i got a second set of two kids at the time i got sober my daughter was three years old and my little son was four months old and i and i i made that cry for help and i ended up at alcoholics anonymous the world's aftercare program right so i'm in aaa i mean all the insurance monies run out they're all done gestalting and rolting and primal screaming and i end up with you you know and in alcoholics anonymous the inmates are running the asylum you know we are the counselors the recovery program i was in they made me wear a sign around my neck i had to make the sign we made it in crafts and it said i am not a counselor because evidently there was some confusion about that then i walk into aa where we are the counselors aren't we people come and ask us for help you got to kind of look at who you're talking to when you ask for help around here you know i mean uh you know two things happen to me when i walk into a that are just pure luck one is i just liked it not everybody's story i got the joke right away i mean i was hurt and i was damaged but i heard the laughter and uh and i remember standing in the back of the room of that first meeting and it was a crazy meeting it was friday night at the ilano club and everybody's dressed up trying to hook up right that's what's going on it was not what i was expecting all the harleys were parked out front which was kind of intriguing and uh and i stood there was no room left in there that all the seats were taken i got there right on time and uh then i'm standing in the back of the room and they start hooting and hollering the nicknames are flying around you know their friends would get up to share at the podium and they'd holler adam and hoot adam and and it was funny it was just funny and i drove home that night and i said to myself you know this may not be so bad maybe this is where i belong and i went back the next day because i was just curious and then the second thing happened because i knew i was going to drink again i'd always drank i'd never been sober for 30 days since i was 14 or 15 years old that's a shock to the system you know sober is uncomfortable they've taken away my medication i'm uncomfortable i'm the guy that walks in the room and if you're looking at me it's what the hell are you looking at and if don't look at me i'm heartbroken and there's nothing in between there's not like levels of emotional striations you know it's just the switch is either on or off it's on and off like that and uh and i don't i know none of this this is all hindsight you know and the second thing happened is i asked a man to help me and he actually did which doesn't always happen he gave me an assignment right off the first night he said go home and read the doctor's opinion make notes in the margin of what you agree with and what you don't be at my house thursday at five o'clock and we'll discuss it so we talk about bottoms here that we have to hit a bottom if you've been around a while you realize that there's a second surrender and then they don't tell you about the third one and the fourth one and the fifth one and it's been a series of surrenders a series of being pummeled into submission and i believe today what i believe about the bottom what the bottom is is for a moment for for a short period of time the ego collapses for whatever reason it stops defending itself because the purpose of the ego and everybody has one every human creature has an ego it presents itself at about two and a half years soul. And its job is to create separation. It judges, it does all that stuff. There's a me and a you. There is a subject and an object. And I interact with that. And the ego will defend its position. And for us, I think what happens is that falls apart. We hit that bottom, whatever happens, whatever our personal story is, and we follow some directions. Now, when this guy told me gave me that assignment i can't explain why i did what he told me i never did what people told me I'm that guy right and uh and i went home and i read my assignment and i showed up at the stranger's house thursday at five o'clock was i uncomfortable you bet i was uncomfortable this was weird to me you know but i evidently i'd run out of options and i did it and i showed up there and he didn't trust me that i'd read it and he had me sit there and read it to him out loud one more in a long line of humiliations you know now i didn't know this but what he was doing with me is he was committing a very intimate act i was a stranger to him as well he was six years sober right which is an interminably long time when you've got 30 days you know i mean it looked like he knew everybody he's a very friendly outgoing kind of a guy you know and he's still the same way today i've had the same sponsor for 36 years i should have fired him several times but he needs me now right yeah i make him look good and uh and in this session with this guy this intimate act of sitting there reading the book with him he asked me a few questions and he asked him the first question he asked me or one of the first questions was do you believe that you're powerless over drugs and alcohol like it describes in the doctor's opinion there's four or five different alcoholics in there and he asks me which one are you you know or a combination of the two and i picked one and he says you're in the book right there you are he said this book isn't written to you it's about you you should be able to identify yourself with it and you've told me that you you see yourself good you're on the road you're on the path we're talking about the first step so it says in that book when you read on a little further on somewhere in there in that 11th step it says the only thing that's going to save us the only thing that's going to keep us sober and more even more so than that give us a positive life maybe with some purpose in it some healthy relationships you know i mean a real life the only think that's gonna do that is our spiritual condition and we read appendix two today where it talks about that spiritual experience well evidently there's a spiritual condition and i need one of those that seems to be something i'm missing right and more importantly is the maintenance of that spiritual condition now this was the beginning of that process sitting with this guy reading the book having those conversations now each week i went to this man's house and we read another chapter in the book now this bottom where the ego collapses there's a bit of a window there so when you're working with somebody new you want to kind of jump on it because that window is going to close and if you've been around a while you've experienced that you know like we surrender it and then we take it back we have different cute ways of describing how we try to take back control of our lives because at death we do not believe that we're powerless this concept of powerlessness is huge now early on they told us that it's just over drugs and alcohol because they didn't want us to run screaming down the street now i've discovered that i have yet to find anything that i seem to have any power over at all i mean i talked to you incessantly about how if you were just a little bit different the two of us would be a hell of a lot happier and you absolutely insist upon living your own life and it pisses me off at my core you know lately i've lost complete control over the geopolitical situation in the world if you've noticed it's a mess and it needs to be different in order for me to be okay and it's not and i suffer right about four months ago i turned off the television news completely for a while i had a couple of slips and it has been a long time now i've got i think i'm clean of that for several months now man i just can't watch the anymore you know because i'm not emotionally capable of handling it i get upset i get angry Lenny VerMaas , Ph.D.: Right and I don't live in that world, you can argue that point that we all live in a political structure but that's not my world. Lenny Vergara, Ph. D.: i'm an A guy you know I go to alcoholics anonymous they work with others, I do that on my social life is all surrounded by it i've never drifted away in 36 years you know. i find that remarkable it's not everybody's story i've never drifted away you know i've done it at various levels you know that one time i was leaving the ilano club pissed off something had happened and i'm pissed off and the hell with these people i'm out of here and i went walking across the parking lot and i had that moment where i stopped in the middle of the parking lot and I said to myself where are you going bill it's kind of sad actually there's nowhere for me to go you know where am i gonna go i'm not gonna go to the bar i i really have no desire to go to the bar anymore really i really don't you know i mean when early on you kind of kind of miss the camaraderie well i found that camaraderi here in the coffee bar at the elano club or in a meeting or out in the parking lot or over at my house you know there's a lot of camarader here but where am I going to go and I turned around and walked back in the room and it was that was not a pleasant experience because i was angry with you and uh another thing is the fellowship of aa is something to be survived it's like this is the character defect center of the known universe you know we're all in here growing up together trying to figure out how to have relationships and you are guaranteed to piss me off you know you'll hit on my wife you'll borrow money from me and won't pay it back you know i'll give you a job and you'll do a shitty job and somehow it'll be my fault right now all of that has happened to me all of that is happening now if you're doing some other stuff the fellowship can be like a warm blanket you know uh february of 2017 i had a liver transplant i almost died and you were there in droves showing up to the hospital saying inappropriate stuff you know and making the nurses laugh and I tell you when you're at the liver department of Cedars-Sinai when you are in the liver Department they never once asked who these people were they know who you are they've had a lot of experience with AA people in the Liver Department you know and and you carried me through that experience I've never had to do anything alone around here and probably much like you when i showed up here i was alone you know there were not many people left in my life so this spiritual condition thing that we're trying to develop you know the process of the 12 step the first pillar of that is powerlessness are you or aren't you like one of the quotes in the book is you know god either is or he isn't well i would ask a deeper question you're either powerless or you're not right if you can really grab people talk a lot about acceptance in aa and what i believe about that is if if i really get how powerless i am at a visceral or gut level acceptance just happens i don't have to work on acceptance i have to worked on whether i'm powerless or not because the way i live my life i think the way most of us do really is that evidently things outside myself need to be different in order for me to be okay if you watched me from yet that's what it would look like and those things don't change and i'm not okay then if i really get how powerless i am i can accept things i don't like i don't expect them to be different i just i don t like them but i don' t have any argument with the fact that they exist because there it is so in life there's pain right things happen people die people break up with us we lose our jobs stuff happens you know we get hit by a car you know i mean any number of things life is inherently dangerous there's the illusion of security life is always dangerous you know when you get older you really feel that you know it's like dangerous you go for a walk and god i hope i don't fall down you know because getting up is an issue for me you know what's like so you just get more careful you know like this pandemic everybody's talking about how life is it's always dangerous there's always a goddamn pandemic going on you know it's always scary so the next logical thought progression if i do this powerless thing is i need to align myself or go find some power right because i don't have any so the second step becomes operational then doesn't it i need to be restored to sanity i come to believe now i don'T even have to believe in it you know i mean whole problem with god really is if you have a problem with God like most of us do at some level even if we believe in God we have a Problem with it right you know what what's the problem is is we create a God and then don't believe in it and our sponsors say things to us like well I don't believe in the God you don't Believe in either and remember you remember having that conversation i remember leaving his house going what because you know the truth of that when you guess that's exactly what's going on and to me what the god thing is is an experience and we screw up the experience with concepts because we're dogma creating machines we want to understand you know and some of the people i listen to when i read talk about the mystery it's a mystery you know there's an understanding that transcends the intellect it's more of a gut level kind of i get it you know and aa does a beautiful job of not having any dogma around that you know it's god as you understand god you don't even have to use the god word it's a medieval term anyway you know it's mystery it's just a mystery and it will remain that way alan watts said one of the most powerful things that i've ever this is beautiful and i misquote him but i like the way i quote it and essentially what he says is true faith is not knowing and having that be okay now i've always thought that what faith is is i have a belief mechanism that i have faith is correct and that belief mechanism answers these questions like we have fear of death the ego fears dying because it can't imagine itself not existing you know so it's the one that carries within it all the fear you know so i have a belief mechanism that answers he said someday i'll enter a realm and then everything will be peaceful and the lion will lay down with the lamb and all of that stuff watch is saying something more powerful watts is saying is having no belief mechanism at all and having faith that's okay right that all is well no matter what i think no matter what judgment i lay on it they asked the dalai lama what's the ultimate spiritual truth he said all as well then he pauses like he does you know so that you absorb that and he says it very slowly again because you don't really believe it all is today that's kind of hard but i believe that i have faith that's true i think it is everything is exactly as it is it couldn't possibly be any different than it is and in nature when you look out in the world there's no morality in nature doesn't exist we create the morality we make the determination of this is good and that's bad and that literally doesn't things just simply are and we label them right and wrong and if you go from culture to culture what you might consider wrong another culture says yeah it's just fine i mean so what do you do with all that you know isn't that the struggle that we have you know that's the struggle i have i mean i talk about this stuff it doesn't mean i've got it nailed down it's like you know but it's helped some of this has really helped me so if the second step like okay a logical thought progression i need and there are lots of powers that are greater than me lots of power and one of those powers that is that i experience all the time that's greater than me is alcoholics anonymous you know i walk in the room the room your meetings are coming back live now my home group is a hybrid meeting but we're back in the Room together right and at first it was kind of odd and weird we were all happy to be back together but you know we don't want to touch each other and stuff and within 15 minutes we're slobbering on each other and stuff it's just you know you can't you can help it you know I mean I used to shoot battery acid you know and now i'm afraid of you you know you know but you can feel the energy in the room can't you i feel it you know i feel like here in zoom but when we get you know at first it was difficult but then i was able to extract it through the computer screen you know i feel you you know and all through it people been sneaking into my backyard we smoke cigars and talk about stuff you know on and we socially distance but i can't live without you really you know i really but that's a power greater than me alcoholics anonymous i think is a good god it's good to have faith and belief in that and i don't have faith in aa anymore i believe in it because i've watched it work i see it work all the time all the time in my life and i recognize it in you and then through that i recognize that in myself i have been transformed so if i can do the first the second step the third step becomes operational now that's interesting because it says that we're going to make a decision to turn our life and roll over to clearly what already has it anyway i think it was nice of them to lead us to believe that we actually have some say in the map well i've been withholding myself from the totality of all things long enough i'm going to acquiesce now and allow you to take me thank you very much where's my trophy you know here we have these long windy discussions about the difference between my will and god's will my little ego that presented itself about two and a half years old that's when it presents itself right it loves the idea of us having a battle of wills with the power that drives the entire universe and we're worried about i wonder what god's will is for me you know what god will is what's happening right now i mean well what else could it possibly be and and how can i possibly have a will that's separate from that right that works for me okay and the next step you know what's like this life and will what's it talking about in the third step it's the fourth step isn't it the end result of living a life with seeming power resentment fear and broken sexual relationships that's what i bring to you that's I carry in with you that's going around in my head all the time you know now you've taken away the medication and it presents itself. It's six months sober, I did that fourth, they did a four step and then I did a fifth step with my sponsor, agonized over for about a month or so if I remember. And I sat on the beach with him and I read this fifth step to him. And I had one of those experiences that we talked about here, right? I had One of those weird experiences. No big flash in the sky, no voice or anything like that. When I went home after that, I thought about the guy that walked through my front door today compared to the guy who walked through it six months ago and it hit me. My God, it's going to be like this now. The old life evidently is over, whatever that was. And I was six months sober. That's incredible. I've never been six months sober, and so far so good. And what's the lesson? What's the second pillar in spiritual condition that we get out of the inventory process? I have to stop blaming other people and institutions for my problems. High school is over. I have own it now. this is going to take a few years to do to accomplish but the door opens and if you surround yourself like i did fortunately just luckily with some pretty healthy people in aa even your peer group that you're getting sober with they will help you stop the blaming you know they will say bill you got to stop the whining dude we're tired of hearing it you know i mean on my first inventory was the entire federal government specifically the department of motor vehicles who the hell are they to tell me whether i can drive or not you know it's like that now that's a major part of my personality the people i hate that i blame the events that have happened to me you know that's a large part of what i talk about and what the why i am the way i am my justification for my bad behavior is all centered around that and this is the beginning of the second pillar of stopping the blaming if you need to be different in order for me to be okay that is never going to happen right there's no hope for me does that mean those people i'm blaming are innocent no not at all you know i don't know of many people that are innocent of anything you know but i have to stop the blaming i can't keep hanging on to that or i'm never going to advance and move on now that fourth column of the resentment list what are my faults and mistakes there's a good list of character defects you know my sponsor helped me fill in that column because the first one we do it's difficult to do the one i did at 10 years sober was much more it was much deeper you know because i knew then that it wasn't their fault i knew that i knew i had faults and mistakes in some cases i even had i played a part in that stuff so these are my character defects now you don't really have to make a list of them because now that you're not blaming they will come and visit you with alarming regularity and now they're going to have to be dealt with overnight you know we humbly ask right in the sixth step you know when we become willing in the sixth step we just don't humbly ask you know i'm not gonna i don't normally ask for anything you know even early on when you know you're making yourself pray because that's what everybody else is doing another thing about the third step you have a guy i'm reading the book with a guy right and i said are you ready to do the third steps and he goes no i go why not because i have a problem with god i look right at him and i go me too let's pray all right the wind kind of goes out of the argument at that point then the next thing he says this has happened a couple of times is really good next thing she says well i don't even believe in god i look right at them and i say nobody really does we're all just whistling in the dark hoping for the best man so let's pray because the reason you don't want to do this is because you don t want to do the inventory and the reason y ou don't wanna do the inventories since it's closer to the ninth step and you're never gonna pay back the money you know and i'm not gonna sit there and have a long windy to try to talk you into believing in god you know and uh i've tried but i don't my heart's not in it because i don t know that i really believe in it either based upon this belief thing that we're talking about have i experienced it oh yeah absolutely i just try not to get into the labeling business you know so what you're going to argue with me about how you don't believe in god to me that discussion is kind of boring actually you know and i know you're new so i'll entertain it a little bit but there's no way i'm gonna talk you into it anyway my best hope for you is if you stick around long enough it'll come and visit you and then you can label it with whatever makes you feel comfortable another great beauty of alcoholics anonymous you know like some people say well if you don't have a god you can use mine you know well there's another one that's another what all of that just says just shut up and keep reading you know let's just let's see what happens next you know and uh so then we get to the ninth step and these people i've been blaming you want me to go say that i'm sorry i am not doing that man that makes no sense to me and i'm afraid to do it i don't want to see those people ever again i don't want to see that my friend steve lamb says you know i know it's their money but i've been hanging on to it for a long time it seems like it's mine now can't we just let bygones be bygons you know really i've had a couple of conversations with catholic priests one sober one not so much sober that said that you know you people in aa have figured this out i mean people are constantly confessing to me all the time about their sins but nothing seems to change you talk about you go make amends you clean it up man that's like yes that's why the fellowship's relatively small that's a hard one but i go do it right i do it i did it you know the ego hadn't sufficiently returned enough you know within my first year i was starting to make amends no what happens when you make amens when you go look somebody in the eye that you don't ever want to see again and you say the words that need to be said when you talk turn and walk away from that experience you are changed right then and there no waiting it's called a cathartic experience that will change me as a person the act of doing that some of the things i like that you hear we used to hear around a lot was you know you've been your own worst enemy put yourself at the top of the amends list that'll pretty much kill you now if you really want to make amends to yourself put it at the bottom of the list by the time you get there you'll have some self-esteem that's what happened to me and i started making amends i'm going around the ilano club bragging about it like i'm a badass man i've actually done it how about you you know the old biker in me you know it's like you know and i was in a right wing badass my home group is hermosa beach men stag and we have a flag and it says work the steps or die dot dot dot and the dot dot dot is mother effort you know i mean it's like you know my sponsor changed it he says work the steps and live it's a better term you know but we i was in a group and still am in that same group that really believes in sponsorship and working the steps and making amends and that's what we share about all the time i mean there's a real deep core like i sit in a room with my sponsor before he moved away he was there and his sponsor was there then me and guys i sponsored the guys they sponsored the guy's day sponsor and the guys you know now people come up to me and say you're my great great great grand sponsor i tell them shut up i'm not that old man you know and uh but you can feel that energy in the room that's part of the energy i feel when you're around it like i lead retreats a lot you get around a real tight group of guys that really know each other you know and you can feel that energy you know when you're in a room when you're a room with people like that you're In a Room With People That Are Conscious Of The Fact That Their Life Has Been Saved And You Can Feel That Energy You Can Feel That You Know The Transparency And The Honesty So What's The Big Lesson In The Ninth Step The Third Pillar Of Spiritual Condition Nothing Is Personal but boy, it sure seems personal, doesn't it? You know, we've got some stories that are really personal. But I'm here to report to you, nothing is personal. I heard a speaker one time not long ago, he says, "'My God, I was so completely wrong.'" And I relate to that. "'I was so wrong. "'Nobody was doing anything to me. "'People are just doing what they do and i happen to be in the blast radius of their behavior and sometimes in my story you're in the blast-radius of my behavior am i doing it to you i'm just doing it and you're just the next victim in line first of men's big amends i had to make was to my father and after that i started looking him at him as a person rather than some character i got out of a tv show about what fathers are supposed to be and i realized he was just being who he was he wasn't doing it plus he didn't do anything really that bad i i had overreacted to the thing the worst thing he did to me was ignore me he didn t rape me or beat me or anything like that i don't have that story but i've been around people that do have that story and the realization when you realize yes you were a victim how long do you want to remain that way you know and this doesn't mean we don't need professional help i'm not saying that i'm just saying that this third one that nothing is personal is a key component of spiritual condition in any mystical path that you follow teaches this they all talk about powerlessness they all talked about nothing as personal that things just are they all talk about that and there's different voices out there and some of them you can hear and some of them you can't but it's all about that now when these three things come together i'm powerless i can't blame anymore and nothing is personal what that is is the collapse of the egoic structure of who i think i am i mean this is not a happy experience this can be extremely difficult you know i mean carrying around the bill c personality is a hell of a load you know of who this guy thinks he is and how he's supposed to be treated oh that's that's a tough job it's a heavy load and this begins to collapse now one through nine is about ten percent of the program it's not the work it's the bare minimum it's sober 101 it's the first semester it's just the work that we have to do to get ourselves ready to do the real work on this spiritual path that we're on 10 11 and 12 are 90 percent of the program that's where the work is right and 10 is the fourth pillar of spiritual condition self-awareness as compared to self-obsession big difference big difference now self-awareness without humor is depression and aa does a excellent job at helping us laugh at who we think we are right those of us have been around a while there's people that have come up and said some real hard shit to us and we thought they were assholes and they're just trying to help us see man they're just trying to help us see you know i had a guy i was 60 some years old this guy that i really look up to and hey patted me on the head and said you're coming along pretty good kid i was pleased to hear him say that as an acknowledgement that maybe i'm okay now you know because it's been a long road i mean everybody gets to wear the clown suit right i keep mine in the closet i dust it off every once so often i haven't been putting it on much lately but i'm sure it'll come back on because all of us i mean the chances of us growing up and looking good are really slim because we're a little late you know i mean i escorted off his soccer field for going after a referee in a game full of nine-year-olds and i was seven eight years sober or something you know it's rough when you have to walk back out there and make amends to everybody i was coaching a bunch of nine-year-olds one time in this middle school and and i parked my harley in the basketball course because i'm a badass right and i'm coaching these kids are getting beat like six to nothing at the half and i gave them a lecture at the have about you need to have some personal pride here you got to start knocking people over or something you can't just let him beat you like that you know this will scar you for life mr cleveland said we could hurt people you know and they would go back out there and they'd get a few more goals scored against them and i just left him i just walked off the field jumped on my harley and burned rubber through the basketball courts right because i'm a badass and i roar on down the street and i run out of gas this is one of those spiritual experiences right you know it's really hard to look cool when you're walking down the streets with your big leather jacket your helmet in your hand and i get back to my house and i called my sponsor for emergency counseling right and i told him what happened he said bill it's children's sports you know and i actually said to him you don't understand right i've had to make amends for all this it's difficult it's embarrassing right i'd have people actually say to me bill why don't you just cut it out we're sorry we're tired of hearing you say you're sorry you know just cut it out yeah the tenth step is about making amends in the present moment i get it now i get i know it's me i get whenever i'm disturbed it's always me i'm starting to get that now so when i step on your foot i turn around and i say i'm sorry i don't have to go down to the club and share at the noon meeting write three pages of inventory talk to my sponsor track you down three weeks later and say i'm sorry i don't have to do that anymore i get it now i can just say i am sorry i shouldn't have said that to you i'm sorry i treated you that way you know whatever it is you know i get it now so self-awareness doesn't mean that the behavior changes you can just see it now and there's going to be a long period of adjustment that comes along right 10 and 11 are tied they're joined at the hip 11 actually talks about the daily review how am i doing what's it looking like you know how did i do today did i piss anybody off do i owe an amends but also my sponsor loves to say that you can't stay sober on 11 and a half steps that meditation is in the step you've got to do it right it's part of the deal and here's benefit of meditation as i understand in meditation i can sit quietly in a comfortable position seems to help if your back's straight but just be comfortable and breathe take three three or four big deep cleansing breaths get some oxygen to the brain especially if you're in stress that alone will help because when we're in stressful we're upset when we are angry we're shallow breathing and we don't get enough oxygen we're tight so the breathing alone will help and then just focus on the breath coming in and out of your nose focus on it focus your mind on the breathe coming in out of you nose and the ego does not like being in the present moment there's nothing for it to do right it wants to be in the future or in the past where it can work on stuff and that's just the human experience there's nothing aberrated about everybody has now some of us have it worse than others people will say to me i can't quiet my mind to meditate first question you ask him have you made the amends have you maybe a minute because maybe it'll slow things down when you've actually cleaned up the past but the highest spiritual being on earth if he can quiet his mind for three or four seconds that's pretty good it's always working but there's tools you can use to focus it so the mind the ego will wander away from the breath and you notice that it has wandered away and you gently bring it back to the breath this is a game-changing experience this is absolute conclusive proof that who i am is not my thinking mind if it was i couldn't catch it this changes everything right i mean there's people in aa doing inventory after inventory after inventory after inventories aren't you sick of yourself yet i'm just sick of me you know i mean working on me now that i understand this i can stop working on myself i'm not going to be able to work on myself i'm feeding the beast it's not about working we're as powerless over ourselves as we are anything outside of ourselves i cannot fix me it's not going to but i can be awake i can be aware i can see what's going on and in that site things will change because there's no energy behind the bad behavior anymore it might continue on but it's slowly going to die off but it's for me it has not happened overnight but i tell you this see the ego is not trying to kill us you hear people say like that my ego is out to get no it's not it needs us for transportation you know it's not trying to kill us it's not the enemy it's flat and two-dimensional it creates nothing it just takes credit for shit it takes the past and projects it into the future over and over and over and again it creates a persona that we can then have to justify and work on and be that way and dress a certain way and look a certain way and sound a certain ways so that will be accepted and i can report to you in my life today your opinion of me says more about who you are than it does me and the reverse is true my opinion of you says more About Me Than It Does You and I get that now I don't need you to validate I would prefer that you liked me and respected me and looked up to me I would like that and my ego loves it you know I mean right now it's saying to me look at little bill being the center of attention again isn't he cute right you ever heard a speaker get up and say i hate doing this i'm the only one looking this way there's too much ego in it don't believe him we love this or we wouldn't do it um you're all sitting quietly and i'm talking what's not to like right so why pretend that's not true right because evidently there's not enough attention in the universe to satisfy me but i get a lot of attention the problem is why do i think more than i need more than I'm getting that there's something you can deal with but to expect that I'm going to be different and quiet and demure and sitting quietly over in the corner while everybody else dances that's just not my nature i'm just not like that and i see that today and i can love myself like that i get a kick out of who i think i am you know it's like and i think there's a little there's more clarity on it that i think that's what we're looking for isn't it because all i'm looking for in meditation i just want to be peaceful i'm not even looking for happiness sometimes happiness happens but it's fleeting i just want to be peaceful i want to stop the struggle the final thing is the 12th step this is the mechanism that brings all this about that i'm talking about this is a mechanism that aa uses this particular spiritual path to bring about all of this awareness the most important fifth step you'll be involved in is the first one you listen to should everybody sponsor people there's nothing else to do everything else is an activity that's the reason you're here it's the reason i'm here i believe it's same as true for you i hear people say well you know i don't sponsor people i do other things like what what other things could you possibly do that would have the impact of what that man did for me when he sat there in his living room and sat with a stranger and he's been doing that for 42 years i've been doing it for 36 i do it on zoom now you read a page and i read a page you read if i have to read war fever ran high in that new england town one more goddamn time i think i'm gonna blow my head off i used to think that i was the teacher and you were the student and then i realized you've always been the teacher i can't do this without you this god thing lives in the space between you and me and the closer i am to you the closer i am to you that is all that there is to do around here you want to stay in the book and the inventory will sponsor people you're always reading it you're and he sends me you some years ago i started doing fifth steps with some of the guys i sponsored in order to break down the hierarchy thing to break this part of the persona for the first 10 years i was sober i was trying to make a name for myself in an anonymous organization now you can actually pull that off right you can get into the hierarchy you know what happens when you get into The Hierarchy because I'm in The Hierarchy you know What Happens there's a bunch of people they're in The hierarchy and you're working really hard to get in there and they're looking at you smiling but you know why they're smiling because they know you think there's A Hierarchy and they they're it and then when you show up there you realize they're the first thing to tell you is there's no goddamn Hierarchy Cleveland you know we're all in this together man it's all us but the ego i need to strive i need to achieve i need and then after a period of time that begins to fade away now what happened in the final pillar of spiritual condition is compassion and what is it that's missing the primary thing that's missing in selfish and self-centered people empathy compassion i can't feel you the only time i feel you is when i'm concerned about how you feel is when how you feel impacts me now what happened in that first 10 years irrespective of what my motivation was i fell in love with you just the act of doing it breaks it down and i don't know that i don t have compassion i can see my character defects but what about the parts of me that are missing that's a bigger problem than the character defects that are obvious and the missing thing was compassion i have no compassion and then i fell in love with you and i started really worrying about you and i started caring about you and you got really close to me and i fell in love with you i mean passionately i mean there's people i've had relations the most important thing in my life now is the relationships i have in my life i'm capable of empathy today i'm capable of intimacy and i'm not talking about sex sex can be a celebration of intimacy in a relationship but it's not the intimacy when i had the liver disease was hitting me bad i lost my libido my wife looked that up and we had a very active sex life she looked that out but she's one of the aspects of liver diseases you lose your libido and she came to me and she said i know what's going on and please it's okay with me but please don't stop loving me don't start touching me don' stop caring for me isn't that something isn't it something i'll never forget that and now my job whenever she makes a meal i have to kiss her it's mandatory you know and i rub her feet she had to teach me how to rub her feed you know she had teach me how to love her and i do that today and i'm closer to her than i've ever been to anybody in my life but there's a lot of people in my life today that i'm very very intimate with and very close with and i know my time is up and i'll leave you with this final thought they say around here you got to give it away to keep it no you have to give in a way to even get it that's how you get it thank you very much