Bondage of Self and Service – Workshop Came to Believe – Part 2 of 2 – Local AA Speakers

Anybody have anything? If I've got something in my experience, I'll be glad to share it with you. Anybody have anything? Yeah. Thanks. My name is Curtis. I'm an alcoholic. Curtis. You get to that point where the plans and design are coming back in. You're bringing back that self-reliance and self-will. Do you go through a process where it's acceptance of you're the imperfect human being and you're an alcoholic? Or do you take that action and call another alcoholic and pray? what do you do when you start taking that stuff back self-reliance it usually doesn't happen until probably 8am I step 10 11 and 12 my view my experience is that they're together the three of them together it's like a three-legged stool keeps me out of running the universe but I noticed something if I'm not diligently trying to carry out that decision in step 3 by helping God's kids and not doing 12-step work and I indulge self for too long man, I get whacked there's a in the section in the book on step 12 It says something, an interesting thing. And I was sober a long time, probably close to 20 years before I got it. It says we must constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show. And I'm sober a lot of time and I'm reading it and I think to myself, why do they say constantly remind? Oh, because I'm constantly trying to run the show, It is my nature to play God. And how do I do it? I get up in here, in the control center where I like to run the universe up in hier. I've got to constantly remind myself I'm no longer running the show. Who can I help? The book says we turn our attention to who we might help. Anybody else? Chris? Um, have you had any experiences in your sobriety, not, you know, past say five or 10 years where you've gone through periods where no matter what actions you're taking, you just don't feel the connection to a higher power and you're staying sober. You're doing all this stuff. And I'm going to couple with another question. You alluded to running away from your alcoholism by going to 15 meetings a week or activity. Have you ever experienced that also later on in sobriety where you're doing ceaseless activity, but it's not tethered to spirituality and so forth? Yeah, I've gone through that a lot. I just, I'm kind of in a period right now where I was just talking to a very good friend of mine where I don't know what this is about. I find myself hesitant to pray. And it's not that I don'T believe in God. It's not, but I, for 20, over 26 years, I tell you, I rolled out of bed every morning, never missed a morning and I'd pray before I did anything. I mean, now sometimes I'm up and I'm looking at the stock market or I'll be up for an hour and realize, my God, I haven't prayed. And that's scary to me. And I don't know because it's not, and I're not in a bad spot as a result of it. And then there have been other times in my sobriety praying fervently every day and it's like I feel like I'm praying to the air. Like I'm not connecting with anything consciously. And I think that they're one of the great, I'm not a Catholic anymore, even though I was raised Catholic. But there's some interesting stuff that they talk about. And there's a, I think it's Teresa of Avalon, who was one of The Great Saints, I guess, of the Catholic Church. She went through a period of over two decades of desolation where she would pray and not just vacantly without any sense of connection, without any feeling of God's presence. But she never stopped. And then it turned around on a bit. She was in that desolaci�n for a long time. But she's not an alcoholic. Most alcoholics, you know, we want four prayers. Where's the reward? I mean, you know how we are. We're the instant gratification people. All right, God, where are you? You know what I mean? I'm going to talk about a great song. Has your concept of God changed since you decided to enter? How did that process go? Has my concept changed? God, it changes all the time. I'm always a little hesitant to talk about my concept of God because it's such a subjective thing and I'll talk about it a little bit the reason I think it's subjective is that all of us could go out tomorrow night and sit on a hilltop and watch the most beautiful sunset we've ever seen and then go out and try to tell people what we saw and you'd hear as many different versions of what is here because it's an experiential thing. It's hard to put it into words because it is in here. But my concept of God has gone from out here, something vague and mysterious in the universe to something that is inside me but it's inside you and it's outside everything. And I'll tell you a little story, a parable that I really like. This really, I get this. To some of you it might sound a little far out. That's why I'm so hesitant to talk about this stuff. There's a Hindu, the Hindu view of creation sort of fits my deal. And they have this story of creation unlike the Judeo-Christian story that we all grew up with, you know, where God created the heaven and the earth in seven days and Adam and Eve and all that other stuff. Well, their view is that God existed unto himself with nothing else, timelessly for eons. And he kind of got bored, sort of. And He decided to create this cosmic game. And the game was that He would break Himself up into an infinite number of parts and give all the parts amnesia. And then the game is which parts are going to realize that they're not separate, that they are to our God. Which parts are gonna claim their inheritance and the Hindus call that enlightenment when it just, we call it an awakening. Because if you sponsor, I've talked to a lot of people, I think we all have this experience. If you sponsor a lot guys over the years and you listen to fifth steps, you start to get it. I start to fall in love with you, but it's not really you. What is it? I start the fall in love with a me that is in you. As Einstein said, he thought the great illusion of mankind was that there's more than one of us here. You hear enough fifth steps and you get it's the same guy. It's the saying guy. I mean, I haven't heard anything new in a fifth step. And for decades, I mean, I want to hear something. I have hope every time I listen to one, you know. There's a hope, you Know. Oh, maybe this time it will be something interesting like visqueen baby oil, a vibrating lawn rake and chunky peanut butter. But no, it's always the same pathetic stuff. You know, it is always the empty, lonely, vacant, scared person trying to shore their life up and protect themselves, stepping on the toes of everybody around them. I've never heard anything new since the beginning. And on a good day, I really get that you're God. And everything is just exactly the way it is. I have no opinions. On a bad day, you're an idiot. I think you were first I don't know if you experienced it but have you gotten into depression and been depressed since you've been in the program and if so how do you see that my first couple years of sobriety I suffered a lot from depression and what saved me is I did a lot of tall stuff when I, in my between four and five years of sobriety I went back through the steps and I hadn't suffered for depression in a lot of years after that and then in my 19th year I got depressed I started sinking back into that abyss again and what had happened to me and I didn't understand it I could see it in hindsight is that I became very successful in a lot of areas. Financially, I made a lot of money. I had a lot of material stuff. I had quite a lot of prestige. I was flying around the world. I had beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I was buying every... I had the kind of life I'd just get a whim and just go buy an $80,000 car and pay cash for it. I Had That Kind Of Lifestyle. And I started getting really sick. And I didn't know what was wrong because I'm still going to meetings. And I sponsor guys and I do doing some service and stuff. And I don't know why. I didn' t know what wa s wrong. And what was wrong is that somehow, subtly, incrementally, my primary purpose got shifted away from helping other alcoholics and got shifted back onto me. And I had become my primary focus. Now, I don't even know how that happened. It wasn't a conscious journey. I think it happens incrementally, slowly, until the next thing I know, I am dying spiritually in the middle of an abundant life. And it's bad. And you know something? And some of you know this from your own experience. No matter how good it is out here, if it ain't good in here, I'm telling you, it ain�t no good. It ain�t not good. And I was in a bad spot. And a guy in AA, he hit me with it. He told me that's what he exactly says. He says, yeah, you go to a lot of meetings around your mouth. He says I don't think your primary purpose is helping people anymore. I think your primarily purpose is you. He said that to me. You know they say the truth will set you free but I'll tell you to mess your day up first. But he was right. He was absolutely on the money. He was right and my life would become about my finances, my company, my job, my house, me, me I became a lousy sponsor for a while here's the kind of guy I became if you it was so wrapped up in all this in my company and all this other stuff that if a guy I sponsored came to me and said I really need to talk to you I'd just stand there and he'd be talking it's like I don't say it but I'm kind of feeling like hurry up so I can get back to the important thing me right and i don't even know i'm i don'T EVEN GET IT THAT I'VE BECOME LIKE THAT BUT THAT'S WHAT HAD HAPPENED AND THAT SNAPPED ME AND I JUST TELL YOU I WENT BACK TO JUST I PUT EVERYTHING I SAID I IN MYSELF I SAid I DON'T CARE IF I LOSE MY COMPANY I DONT CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME I'M JUST I'M DOING WHAT I NEED TO DO WITHIN A COUPLE DAYS I GOT NEW GUYS IN THE CAR I'M TURNING THE VOLUME UP ON MY ON MY COMMITMENTS I'M I went from one, I slacked off from two back to one hospital institution meeting. Now I'm going to three or four. I'm doing 12-step work. I'm gone out with central office on the calls. You know, I'm back on fire again. Bill Wilson was a depressive alcoholic of my type. And I went to, you know, there's this mystery that people talk about. Well, as you know, it happened to Bill Wilson. He's sober a number of years. He got really suicidally depressed. As if it just happened to him. It didn't just happen to him I went to Stepping Stones on a couple occasions. I sat in the house that Bill Wilson lived in and I sat there and I got it what had happened to me because I could picture it happening to me. Now here's Bill Wilson sober a couple years. He has a wife that he owes big time. She supported him I mean, he's never given her a place to live. They went through a period where they were sleeping on people's couches in AA. They lost Clinton Street. And they have an opportunity to get really their dream house, their dreamhouse. And how could Bill coming from behind deny Lois that? It's a beautiful house. And back in those days it was way out in the middle of nowhere, way out of the country, upstate New York. And here's Bill Wilson, a guy who's on fire with a purpose down at the Calvary Chapel Mission, down on Skid Row, at the office, at The 24th Street Club in New York as the new guys come in. He's hands-on working with newcomers daily. And all of a sudden he's out in the middle of nowhere, a place that really was like a half day, almost a long journey to get back into the trenches. and he never lost contact but you know the kind of contact Bill started having people would come to see him kind of like they visit the Pope right and I could picture myself I'd been depressed too because the thing that vitalizes my spirit now I'm not I go from a daily thing isn't it weird that Bill in his story for he he prophesied that he said something that hadn't happened this is and he wrote that his story was written before he ever hit those big depressions but he says in his story that unless the alcoholic will expand his spiritual life through self-sacrifice and constant work with others he'll never survive the certain trials and low spots ahead meaning they're coming that they hadn't hit him yet when he wrote that. They hit him later, and he got off it. I pictured years ago, I was going to buy, the first time I ever went over to Maui, I fell in love with it. I went to the backside of the island, this most beautiful place I'd ever been called Hana. Some of you may have been there. And I'm thinking, man, I'm going to pay for it. I'm not going to go to buy a house on the beach. This will be great. I'll just be in paradise. And I'll tell you, I would have died there. I'd have died in the middle of paradise because I'd got sick in here because there wouldn't have been a... I'd be trying to 12-step goats or something. You know, I don't know what I would've done. But I'd been in a bad spot. One meeting a week, and half the people there, if you've ever been to the meeting, half the People there are smoking pot. I mean, I'd have died there. I mean... I'd had died. Right in the middle of paradise. And I... I believe, and I don't know this to be true, but I tell you, I sat in stepping stones at Bill Wilson's house and I could picture myself sinking into a deep self-imposed depression because it's all about me now. Right? I could imagine that. I could... What did he have to relieve him of the bondage of self, really? not Lois you know not the employees at the general service office I could man I was there I could imagine that anyway who was you hi Tom I struggle with having a conscious contact with my heart and I find when I go to AA which I go to a lot of that is where I become the most conscious upon that. How do you do it outside of the AAV? Not as well. I'm with you. If I go to a meeting in the right frame of mind, 10, 11, and 12, it happens to me in the meeting because I'll hear you share about your struggles with self-centered fear or resentments or judgments and I'll be sitting there thinking oh my God, I'm doing that I wasn't even cognizant until I heard you talk about it I've been doing that all morning or I'll hear you talk about God and your relationship with God and I realize man, I got disconnected here and I will start to turn my consciousness in His direction again and then there's always the vehicle, I've never been to a meeting where there's not a vehicle to be of service nothing else, just going up to the newest guy after the meeting and just cut into him, talk to him a little bit. I know we practice these principles of all our affairs, but there's... I tried churches in sobriety. First of all, they don't let me share, which I'd never like to mention. But seriously, there's not... They're really... If I'm closest to God, and this is really my experience when I'm helping his kids, there's not a place on the planet more divinely crafted for me to be connected to God than an alcoholic synonymous. My whole life, all the horrible stuff I've gone through, drunk or sober, has crafted me to Be ultimately available and of service in AA. I can't be of service as effectively in a church or a civic organization as I can be an alcoholic cynonymous. That doesn't mean that I can'T be helpful in the community and do those things. but I'm not going to get the deal I get here anywhere else really. I can't, I mean my whole life is to bring me to this point right here Hey Hank First, have you ever had the experience where you're sitting in meetings and wondering, maybe there's no God, maybe it's just AA that's doing this and then not wanting to think that way and then secondly whereas you've gone off on a tangent and picked up 50 different kinds of books and the next thing you know you weren't confused and you would have been sorry. It's not a good question. How much time do we have? Well, I had a guy I think we all go through those periods of doubting stuff and questioning stuff. I had this guy I had that guy come up and ask me to sponsor him years ago, a bright guy. I mean, very intelligent. Probably IQ of 180, I imagine. Very schooled, a lot of degrees. Smart guy. And I'm working with him and he says to me one day, he says, are you open-minded? I said, well, I try to be, I think. I don't know why. What's on your mind? He said, I was just wondering if you were open- minded enough to consider that maybe God's really not done any of this for you. You keep saying it is. Could you consider the possibility that maybe there isn't a God and it's just your believing that has conned yourself into a new way of life and that's really what's behind it? He said, are you open-minded enough to consider that? And I thought... And I had funny thoughts a little bit along this line. Not exactly, but a littlebit. And I though, you know something? You might be right. you might very well absolutely be right. And I might get to the end of my life and find out it was all an illusion, there's nothing there, that it was just an illusion. But I'll tell you something. On the square, I would rather live my life with this illusion than go back into that desperation and desolation of dying. I would better live my own life because I would never have the illusion because this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And reading all the other books, I've done that I became a therapist a counselor at one point I read everything from Ram Dass to Alan Watts, Jake Krishnamurthy I mean I just went crazy I tried a whole bunch of stuff and there's I'll tell you a little story I heard this right at the time that I'm coming back full circle after trying a whole bunch of stuff in AA and being vacant and I came back to the steps and I come back to doing just AA and surrendering myself completely to this program and stopping all the other crap. And here's the story I was working for a guy and I was not a good employee it's not that I am not a great employee I just so easily know how they are not doing it right you know and this guy gives me a set of tapes to listen to not aa tapes it's not a it's a set of motivational tapes by a guy named earl height earl earl nightingale called lead the field and there's a story on this tape that earl starts telling it on the tape and he says it's true and the story is about this guy who grows up in south africa and he back in the 1800s And he inherits this ranch from his father. And it's a nice ranch. I mean, it's not a mega rich ranch, but it's a good living, good deal. But he inherts it at the time when the diamond boom is going on in South Africa. And so he's hearing these stories of these guys becoming Bill Gates rich like overnight. And the more he hears the stories of their abundance, the more dissatisfied he becomes with what he's got. Now, we all kind of get that. You know what I mean? I'm the kind of guy who can buy a custom Harley Davidson. I only get four blocks. I see one that's nicer. You know, I'm that kind of man. I'm not that kindof guy, right? So he gets dissatisfied and he gets more and more depressed over not being this mega rich guy until he finally sells his ranch. Takes the proceeds from the sale and he invests it in equipment to go out into the bush obsessed with striking it rich. But he spends his whole life out there, and he never does strike it rich. And he dies bitter, broke, and alone. As a matter of fact, a guy just showed me an account where there's one account where he threw himself into the ocean and committed suicide eventually. I don't know which account, Earl's account or this other account is true, but he came to a bad end. And it came to pass that this ranch that he sold to these developers one day, And Earl's telling a story about how they're moving these rocks, clearing some land. And they find these unusual rocks. They don't know what they are. And they take them down. They find out that they're diamonds, raw, uncut diamonds in the rough. And it comes to pass that this ranch is the largest diamond deposit ever recorded in South Africa. And these two brothers all of a sudden are two of the richest men on the planet. And one day they're just trying to decide what to name this company now that they've had to put into place to mine and cut and market these diamonds. And the one guy says to the other, well, let's name it after that poor son of a bitch that we bought the ranch from. What was his name? And the other guy says, oh, his name was De Beers, wasn't it? And I'm reading this story, and I'm thinking, I'm that idiot, right? I'm looking everywhere else. And in the beginning of every meeting that I ever went to, these are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. Oh yeah, that's nice, but I'm going to go over here and do this. These are the Steps We Took which are Suggested as a Program of Recovery. That's good, but i think i need a new relationship. These are The Steps we Took which Are SuggestED as a PROgram of Recovery I'm going to chant in Nam-ni-yoho-renge-kyo with the Buddhists. These are the steps we took, right? I'm a knucklehead. It's right there. I don't have to look out here. God's already given me absolutely everything I need for my complete fulfillment as a person with this malady of the spirit called alcoholism. It's always been right there in front of me all along. We've got to end it? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening.