Compliance and Surrender – Emotional Sobriety – Part 3 of 6 – Sandy B.

or photocopies of really old pamphlets i highly suggest that you save these and you xerox and make more copies for your friends or sponsees because usually you now just buy it in a book or a packet but these little old old hazelton things are not in circulation haven't been for a long time somebody just happened to give me the four of them and photocopping them individually like this, it saves a lot of paper. It saves a lot of time. You don't have to buy the book. So these are great tools. So hang on to your little compliance versus surrender and ego factors. Okay, we're going to open up into page three and we're gonna look at the first of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps. So that second paragraph there reads we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable the second word is admitted which in many ways is a blood brother of acceptance although many in aa meeting has been devoted to quibbling about the difference between admit and accept time and time again slips are explained on the basis that the one who slips has not truly accepted his alcoholism so we want to see that these two words admitting and accepting are also in conjunction with compliance and surrender and harry saying that admitting is the blood brother to accepting but it's not the same thing they're in somewhat of a relation but not in the right relation the word accept thus appears quite regularly in speech and writing but never is there much discussion of how acceptance comes about the usual the usual explanation is that if the doctor is accepting the patient will be so too that's like saying if the sponsor is accepting the sponsee will be ha we have seen that okay this doesn't work that way okay in in in case of failure the therapist is held responsible just as parents are for their children. To suppose that acceptance is caught by contagion is a pretty thought. I can't sneeze this program on you. I cannot sneeze anything on you, you cannot catch it through contagion, you cannot get it through osmosis, you can not get it with loitering with the intent to recover. You have got to come in here and roll up your sleeves. We all have to do things. This is an individual program with an individual application. I could speak up here all day long but if each alcoholic isn't having their own inner experience with the words with the dialogue with the feeling of accepting and admitting then once again it's just more intellectual blah blah blah blah blah so um to suppose that acceptance is caught by contagion is a pretty thought it is not however likely to stimulate much understanding of the individual psychodynamics It is not even merely to point the finger elsewhere. There is need, therefore, to discuss the dynamics of acceptance in the individual. Acceptance appears to be a state of mind in which the individual accepts rather than rejects or resists. So acceptance for me is the same as surrender, is the sameness having an open mind, is the Sameness live and let live being in the moment. He is able to take things in and to go along with, to cooperate, and to be receptive. Contrary-wise, he is not argumentative, quarrelsome, irritable, or contentious. For the time being, at any rate, the hostile, negative, aggressive elements are in bands and we have a much pleasanter human being to deal with. Acceptance as a state of mind has many highly admirable qualities as well as useful ones some measure of it is greatly to be desired its attainment as an inner state of mind is never easy you know and so i i don't have to um try to demonstrate some place i'm not at it's not always easy you Know I can let people know even i'm in untreated alcoholism or i'm Not accepting of something there's a disturbance inside i can see it i can recognize it. I don't have to deny that it's there. The most important part is self-awareness and recognition. It is necessary to point out that no one can tell himself or force himself wholeheartedly to accept anything. One must have a feeling, a conviction. Otherwise the acceptance is not wholehearted but half-hearted with a large element of lip service. When Thiebaud says wholehearted for me he's really talking about the subconscious mind and where god resides i feel it when i've accepted something it's okay i feel the bad news and it's going to be all right i can accept it so-and-so is not going tobe around anymore i didn't get the thing it's not going to go my way i can accept it there's a real inner feeling element that we want to discuss over and over there is a string of words which describe half-hearted acceptance Submission, resignation, yielding, compliance, acknowledgement, concession, and so forth. And so I can put a Band-Aid on something and I can yeah, yeah, ja, ja agree with it. I can admit it, yeah right. But there's not a real acceptance. And so with my mind and with my intellect it may look like I've accepted something but deep down within that queen monarch is still very much percolating. Most people regard non-acceptance as a sign of willful refusal. This bypasses all current knowledge of the unconscious elements in resistance and will powers. Others better informed about those attributes avoid the use of such a phrase as willful refusal. They know that it is largely unconscious attitudes and feelings that determine the conscious thinking and hence do not suppose that resistance can be given up by an act of will on the part of conscious mind. And how many times I've said, I need to stop this behavior, but I can't. I'm so conscious of it. I gotta stop hanging around this person. I've got to stop doing this thing. I got to stop thinking this way. This has got to stopped being conscious of. It still is just in admit admitting. The acceptance is when everything is released, the helium's taken out of the balloon and I can actually vibrate at a higher frequency and work with God because there's no muscle, there's No Sword, there's NO Shield. I'm not out fighting it anymore. The Acceptance is it's a pink cloud in an open space and it can be lived every moment of every day. Don't get me wrong. Really we can have this for the rest of our life if we go for this one moment at a time. so let's see let's go over to page five what was not clearly appreciated is the fact that a state of reasonableness or acceptance or receptivity has an emotional origin which rises from exactly the same source as does the resistance and the forces which predominantly contribute to our being willing namely the unconscious unless the unconscious has within it the capacity to accept The conscious mind can only tell itself that it should accept. But by so doing, it cannot bring about the acceptance in the unconscious, which continues with its non-accepting and resenting attitudes. And like I said, I've got to stop eating the chocolate cake. I've Got to Stop Cussing. I've GOT TO STOP STEALING STAMPS FROM MY BOSS'S DRAWER. I'VE GOT TO STOP ACTING A CERTAIN WAY. BUT I CAN'T DO IT. I mean well, but I can't do well. When the ego is large and in charge and I'm an untreated alcoholism, all bets are off. I can make all kinds of promises. I can swear this is the last day and the last time, but I can't stop it because the unconquerable ego is so strong with its recovering powers. So then it says, this is a really important point where it says the result is a house divided against itself. The conscious mind sees all the reasons for acceptance while the unconscious mind says, but I won't accept. Wholehearted acceptance under such conditions is impossible. Experience has proved that in the alcoholic, a half-hearted reaction does not maintain sobriety for very long. The inner doubts all too soon take over. The alcoholic who stays dry must be wholehearted. Here we meet a complication. People accept the necessity of being wholehearted about alcoholism, but not about everything else. They are determined to maintain their capacity for resistance. They fear the fact that if they become total acceptors, they will have no ability whatsoever to resist and will become pushovers. And in step two it says, If I keep on turning my will and my life over what will become of me, I'll look like the hole in the donut. The ego doesn't want to become the hole and the donut or it says I'll be a pushover. It says I'm going to be a doormat. No, I won't. God gives me incredible courage to change the things I can. And sometimes God's will for me is to absolutely say something, not to just walk away and practice the restraint of pen and tongue. Sometimes God's Will is for me to say, you know, this isn't okay and I'm feeling really uncomfortable and I can't stay in this situation anymore. Thank you very much. And other times it's to walk away. Most of the time I have three choices. I can accept whatever situation is going on and accept it wholeheartedly and if I can't, I can either do something to change it by saying something or a maneuver or I leave but again, every situation has three remedies I stay and accept it I get the heck out of there or I do something all of those maneuvers can be practiced with a power greater than self sometimes God's very forceful and powerful and sometimes I can say a really strong no and be completely centered in humility but a no that means no is no And on the inside, if you hooked me up to electrodes, nothing's beeping and nothing's going on. Just the no is a very, very clear no. Such fears of passivity are supported not only by conscious logic but also by deep unconscious sources which cannot be dealt with in this present paper. Powerful forces are aligned against acceptance, which is the ego that we just discussed earlier. producing in the individual extreme conflict which must be resolved if the capacity for acceptance is ever to be developed that's why the ego factors have to be looked at first and then we'll look at compliance versus surrender because i want to see how the ego operates and how it speaks to me with great authority and how it has opinions if i don't know what that is first then compliance versus Surrender might be a whole lot more chatting but because we just went into that in some kind of depth hopefully we all have a little more of a healthy relationship with the ego and have a better magnifying glass on looking at it top of page six we are thus confronted with the question what does produce wholehearted acceptance my answer is as before a surrender but surrender is a step not easily taken by human beings in recent years because of my special interest in the phenomena of surrender, I have become aware of another conscious and unconscious phenomena, namely compliance, which is basically partial acceptance or partial surrender, and which often serves as a block to the real surrender. The remainder of this paper will concern itself with that reaction and how it throws light on the handling of patients, particularly alcoholics compliance needs careful definition it means agreeing with it means going along with but in no way implies enthusiastic wholehearted assent and approval so it's a counterfeit surrender it's phony it's yeah i get it right dude i agree we should do that i freaking hate you too you a-hole you know if there's a lie behind it i don't really mean it yeah i know oh, I really do have to stop. You're right, I've got to stop that. And I don't have any intention of stopping. I can't be stopped. I don' t want to be stopped So I want to see for my own self where I'm still admitting things and not accepting things where I' m still complying in my program today where I am not going after a wholehearted search and relationship for God and for us it's our character defects at this point It's not the bottle I don''t think that anybody today is really struggling with a physical craving for alcohol and if you are i pray for you and i hope that that gets lifted but we are struggling for all kinds of other dilemmas you know pick your poison whatever it is and let's go after these things and see where the ego and the the subconscious mind has so many ideas of why we can't get rid of this you know i was just talking to somebody earlier about a surrender and she told me that her subconscious mind says but if i surrender and I have a relationship with God, what if I just float away into nirvana-ville and I can't be grounded and centered here? See, the ego will tell us anything in order to keep us down here in this third dimensional world. It'll even tell us, dude, you're going to float away too far. You're going become the hole in the donut. You're gonna become nothingness. But once I have a real experience with God the nothingness is just so magical. It feels like everything. There's an incredible amount of wisdom in the nothingess. I start to really know how to handle situations. I startto really speak from the heart. I starttoreally have experiences with people. The green on the trees looks greener. Things are more beautiful. I can accept my life in the moment that I'm in. So there is a willingness to go along, but at the same time, there are some sort of inner reservations which make that willingness somewhat thin and watery. It does not take much to overthrow this kind of willingness. the existence of this attitude will probably appear appear as neither strange nor new nor is it until one begins to see how it operates in the unconscious so now we're going to go over to page seven and that paragraph that says one of the first things to recognize is the fact that the presence of compliance blocks the capacity for true acceptance since compliance is a form of acceptance, every time the individual is faced with the need to accept something, he falls back into compliance, which serves for the moment. The individual constantly believing that he has accepted it, but since he has no real capacity to accept, he soon swings to the other direction. His seeming acceptance a thing of the past. In other words, the best an inwardly complying person can do toward acceptance is to comply. During treatment, the patient regularly is surprised to learn that his previous tendency to agree in order to be agreeable was merely a lot of compliance without genuine capacity to accept. And again, the most important part here is not these words. It's the inner feeling of have I accepted that I still have untreated alcoholism? Have I accepted that I have an infantile ego? Have I accept it that I have a devastating weakness? Have I excepted that it has consequences? Have I expected that the main part of the disease centers in my unconscious mind? Have I expected that I got to get down God into where the disease are or I'm not going to be relieved from the bondage of self. It's not the words it's the feeling. I want to go for more We'll turn the page here and we'll look at compliance and alcoholism it is now possible to link compliance with the problem of alcoholism and also to the theory of surrender. The link between alcoholism and compliance has already been shown in the alcoholic's repeated vows that he would never take another drink, vows which go by the board because of the inner ability to do more than comply. The presence of a strong vein of unconscious compliance in the alcoholic can be demonstrated in other ways. Alcoholics are a notably pleasant and agreeable group with a marked tendency to say yes when approached directly. They claim they want to be well-liked, hence their willingness to promise anything. Yet, and here the other side of compliance reaction is manifest. They balk at the showdown. What Harry Thiebaud is saying here is that I want to be liked and I go along with anything. Most of us don't speak our mind. I guess I could use a psychological term of passive-aggressive, that I don't know how to just be truthful. Sure, yeah, we'll go along, or yeah, let's make a date, or let's do this, or let'S do that, you know, or I'll take the coffee commitment, or I'LL give you a ride. But when it really comes down to it, very few of us can really show up and suit up. So they balk at the showdown and are ever likely to renege on their original promises. As another illustration, they are keen to go to a show, buy tickets in advance, and then on the night of the performance wish they had never had the idea. Characteristically, one man always calls up at the last moment for a date knowing that if he had made the engagement in advance his present wish would later appear as a must which he had to live up to. He, like so many of his kind, has to do things on the spur of the moment. You know how true that is for me? I don't want to make plans. I don'T want to be committed to anything. That is alcoholism in all of its blazing glory. Healthy-minded people like to plan in advance and like to have a little healthy bit of a blueprint. And you know, if I can't do things at the spur of the movement or if I cannot change my mind, I DON'T want it. And again, those are the underpinnings of the inability to accept frustration of the queen and that monarchy not wanting to be stopped, not wanting To Be Told What To Do. Even if it was my idea that we're going to the fair on Sunday, Saturday night I all of a sudden think, I don't want to go to the faire with you. How many times have I found myself in that position? And even seeing it doesn't mean that I'm going to surrender to it or be able to fix it. Seeing it and looking at the underpinnings of the unconscious mind still doesn't mean that the thing is lifted it's only the first part that self-reflection and catching the mouse in the house is only the First Part I see there's a mouse in the house but how are we going to get the decon in there to get it out so let's see this last sentence on the bottom of nine the AA speaker does not follow through to state that formerly all he had been doing was complying if he if asked he nods his head in vigorous assent saying that's exactly what i was doing okay now go down to on page 10 it is now possible to see the unsurping dog-in-a-manger role of compliance as long as compliance is functioning there is halfway but never a total surrender but the halfway surrender and acceptance serving as it does to quell the fighting temporarily deceives both the individual and the onlooker, neither of whom is able to detect the unconscious compliance in the reaction of a parent yielding. So I can even see it in somebody who agrees, yeah, you know, I really want to work with you, you Know, I'm going to call you every day. And I might even be thinking, well, they're totally surrendered, they mean it, but they're complying. And the next day, they don't dial my number. You know, it's hidden way down in there, we can both just be agreeing and agreeing and agreeing and saying all these agreeing words and nobody's agreeing to anything at all. There's no surrender involved. Okay, the half-surrender. Let's see. It is only when a real surrender occurs that compliance is knocked out of the picture, freeing the individual for a sense of wholehearted responses, including in the alcoholic his acceptance of his illness and of his need to do something constructive about it. enough has been said it would seem to show the significance and importance of understanding the relationship between compliance and the ability to surrender and accept they are in complete opposition as long as the former control controls reactions there can be no wholehearted acceptance only the half-hearted kind can be admitted admittedly not sufficient results of real value can only come about when the compliant reactions have been successfully dissipated and then the last paragraph on 11 is this is a long and rather circuitous route to the point of this paper namely that surrender is essential to wholehearted acceptance and that unconscious compliance which is a halfway surrender can be a vital block to a genuine surrender that's why often I'll see old timers or people that are so stuck in AA and I'll think that thought of, God, they almost should drink again because they've hit a new bottom and find a real surrender. That's a very harsh statement, but for some people it's the greatest thing that can happen. Like bring on some pain enough to force a surrender, enough to allow for an open space where the ego is knocked out of the driver's seat. There's no more complying and it's like, oh my God, I don't know anything and I'm so teachable. Can somebody just show me? Please, God, can I have a new experience in the day that I'm in? A new experience like no other experience before. Make my sobriety and my recovery fresh again, always fresh. So it was then pointed out that alcoholics vital block to a genuine surrender. but it is then pointed out that alcoholics frequently show marked unconscious compliant trends which not only help to explain some puzzling aspects of their behavior but also account for their frequent inability to respond meaningfully to treatment so often you see people in rehabs and they don't want to be there the boyfriend sent them the girlfriend sent them the parent sent them it's time for a meeting i'm sleeping i'm tired you know you're supposed to be here two weeks i've been here 10 days i'm ready to go home you know the help for these people is very slim and so often we see you know just spin dry places in these rehabs it just makes so much money on us as hopeless alcoholics and i'm sure that most places don't even talk about surrender and compliance i think that if this message was presented to a newcomer there might be more help we might be able to raise the bottom. And instead of 2% ever getting a five-year cake, there might be more because this information when presented properly can scare, can really scare somebody, can scare you enough to go, oh my God, I'm on my muscle. I'm doing what they're saying is going to send me back to drinking. I'm not going for this thing. And sometimes fear can be a great motivator. Whatever kind of humiliation we can use to block the knock the ego out great you know bring it on so these considerations have been presented in the hope that others also may find that a recognition of the processes of surrender acceptance and compliance can be a source of help in tackling the alcoholic psychotherapeutically Now, interestingly enough, I mean, this is like 12 and 12, Bill Wilson, step one, amazing. This is where it all ties together. Now I've taken the sponsee through the Tebow papers, the ego factors, and compliance versus surrender, and we look at step one and it says, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. and Bill starts that first paragraph with, who cares to admit? Complete defeat. Practically no one of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It's truly awful to admit that glass in hand I warp my mind into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove it from me. He starts out with admit. He knows it's a counterfeit surrender the bottom paragraph on page 21 says we know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins aa unless he first accepts his devastating weakness and all its consequences and i see the literature so beautifully here and this is the kind of stuff that's just gotten lost in aa and it's real aa heritage there's no coincidence that bill uses admit and accept on the first page. And that Harry Thiebaud gets way into compliance versus surrender and admitting and accepting. So it is all over the literature. And this is AA historical literature. It's the foundation of what we came out of. And again, it so often gets diluted. So for me, the whole program begins to just tie together as I take the ego, I take compliance versus surrender. Now I've done step zero, and I go right into step one, and I start to talk about the unmanageable life with the sponsee, and I started to show where my instincts, every natural instinct still cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness and what am I admitting and what are my accepting? And step one finally begins to come to life. It's not about alcohol anymore. Today it's about emotional sobriety. What am I admitting and what am I accepting? As I see the unmanageable life and the ego factors and the compliance and the verse of surrender and all its blazing glory, do you know how easy it is for me to go into step two because there's no amount of human willpower that's ever going to stop this thing. I lack the power to do it. I mean well and I can't do well. I cannot stop this things. The force is so powerful and so strong that there's only one thing that's going to trump over this and that is a power that i find in step two and now there's this whole unfolding blossoming thing here and it says that i come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity and so in step 2 i feel that this isn't a race in step to what i bring in is i bring in the sermon on the mount by emmett fox and we start to go through the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religion. This is not a Bible. I don't name a God from the podium. I call it power or I call it God, but this book was the first book that Bill and Bob used before they even wrote the big book. Bill Wilson loved Emmett Foxt. They used to go into New York and they would see him speak at Carnegie Hall and he was a mystic and a scientist and a philosopher. And he took down biblical and spiritual verses, and he broke them down in layman's terms. And interestingly enough, in the Sermon on the Mount, so much of the big book comes out of here. I mean, some of it's just word for word, bedrock and faulty foundation. There's so many verses that are very similar to the big books. You can really see the writings being so similar. So there's a lot to consider in this, but what I do is I go through these eight beatitudes and i'm just going to highlight some of this stuff we're gonna i'm gonna go on for about another 10 minutes and then we'll take a little break and then will come back again but blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven is the very first beatitude and emmett breaks it down in this amazing way and he talks about he says that to be poor in spirit does not in the least thing is mean poor spirited nowadays to be poor in spirit means to have emptied yourself out of all desire to exercise personal self-will and what is just as important is to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the wholehearted search for god it means to be willing to set aside my present habits of thought my present views and prejudice my present way of life if necessary. In fact, anything and everything that can stand in the way of my finding God. Now I look at blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And it has this whole new lively energy to it. It's beautiful. It doesn't feel all churchy and crossy and stuff like that. There's a living message in here. So to be poor in spirit for me is to empty my mind and my thoughts out completely. And to say, maybe just maybe I don't know anything anymore. Maybe just maybe every single thought that surfs the waves of my brain is a flipping lie. Maybe the calls are coming from inside the house. Maybe I don't know anything in it anymore. And maybe God does. I've looked at all of this other literature up to here. And now I want to have a relationship in step two and coming to believe in a power greater than self that can restore me to sanity is only in the moment. I don't just do a one-time prayer. I do not just say, yes, I believe. It is not a conscious decision. It's a subconscious decision. I can surrender intellectually or I can admit intellectually but I have not accepted wholeheartedly. I am either having an experience in step two or I am not and step two is an incredibly experiential step. If I'm not having an experience in step two, I want to go back into step one and really look again what's blocking me and start saying, power, could you take this from me? I'm offering this to you. Build with me and do with me as thou will. Relieve me of bondage of self. And if this part of self isn't serving any good purpose anymore, lift it right now. Lift it today. God does not permanently lift character defects very often. Sometimes people do get white light experiences, but there's often just constant improvement. And the constant improvement happens when I align my will with God's will. And how I do that is I get up in the morning and I start a program of recovery and a program of action before I even get out of bed. I take my emotional temperature and I say, power, can you help me? Can you be with me right now? Can you helpme get outofbed without using my mind as some kind of weapon. And I start to know what my defects are and I don't step into them. And I ask God to direct and guide my thinking, to be with me. And as those thoughts start to come in, I continuously pray them out of my system. It sounds like a lot of work, but I can tell you the payoff is incredible. Absolutely incredible. Now I'm building a new character with no reference to the old. The new woman is really being born. Way down in step zero and step one, I'm already seeing what's unmanageable. I haven't even gotten to a fourth step inventory yet. That's way down the road still. I'm building a real relationship in step two. And there's so much literature and so much in our literature on step two, on coming to believe, on having a spiritual awakening, on believing that there's a power that can restore me to a sound mind i look in in this step two and there's like there's these five different you know guys they talk about the the one who lost faith and you know the one reeking of alcohol the one that was defiant and revolted and i can look at all of these aspects in step twoand i can see that that at any given day or moment i have been all of those things and what i want to do is back down everything and like i said before just go out into the desert and pile everything again on god's altar and say power just take my life have it all i can't do this anymore please be with me you know even in step two it says another crowd of aas say we were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works the bible we said was full of nonsense and we couldn't cite it chapter and verse. We couldn't see the beatitudes for the begets. It's in there, it's all woven in there. It just gotten sort of lost in the shuffle, but it really is a part of AA. I know sometimes when I talk about this stuff, people will say, I don't know where you're getting that. That's not Alcoholics Anonymous. And I really feel so enthusiastic about reviving this and bringing this to the surface like this. Yeah, I feel it's so cutting edge for me to even try and present something over a weekend with this much material. But this material has absolutely saved my life, revolutionized my life. And I've seen so many aha moments with so many people. And like I said earlier, the whole idea of sponsorship and working with others is a whole nother vast area to talk about. I work with a lot of people and I don't know if it's defined as sponsor, sponsee. And I've had so many people work with me. The bottom line is that I'm always working with somebody, anybody. Maybe I get a phone call. I've taken many people through Emmett Fox and through the Tebow Papers. Our home group has a Sermon on the Mount meeting Saturday mornings at nine o'clock and we just go through one paragraph at a time and talk about our spiritual practice in the right now moment it's all alcoholics in there we don't identify as i'm an alcoholic but we cuss and swear and say god all in the same moment it is hilarious it is just like the funnest meeting of the whole week for me and um it has really enriched my life so for me i really believe in this process and i think we're going to take like a 15-minute break and then, no? We don't take a 15 minute break. At quarter till? Quarter to one. We don' t take a fifteen minute break, excuse me. We have 30 more minutes to go. Okay, so let's go into a couple of more Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and I'm so sorry that I don't have handouts for this. It would have been tricky to, I don' know, tear out the pages But let me just touch on some of the stuff here so that we can see that there's so much more spiritual action to consider. You know, in my home group we talk a lot about application and the application of spiritual principles. And so I want to know what those spiritual principles are. And they aren't just, you know, those 12 principles in each step, you know the honesty, the open-mindedness, the willingness. Spiritual principles in application are even admitting and accepting my devastating weakness, anything that's going to have me have an experience with something. So this whole thing of blessed are the poor in spirit of emptying myself out, I'm really doing something there. I'm trying to offer my mind and my heart and my harms and my anger to God. Let's see what Emmett says about Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted so this general principle applies to everyone for their every one of our difficulties not merely physical or financial troubles but all the other will ills to which flesh is air so blessed are they that mourn for they should be comfortated and it talks about how good it is for us to be in pain, for us to be mourning, for us to be grinding on something because like Bill says, pain is the touchstone to all spiritual progress. So it's my temperature, it's the touchtone and it's my barometer that wow, I'm off the mark and now guess what? I get to grow spiritually more. You know, and like I said last night, sometimes God will even put a situation in my life where someone will trigger me so severely and in the end they were the biggest blessing because I had to overcome something. i had another obstacle in my life so family troubles quarrels and estrangements sin and remorse and all the rest need never come at all if we seek first the kingdom of god and right understanding but if we will do we will not do so then come they must and for us this morning will be a blessing in disguise for through it we shall be comforted and by comfort this beatitude means the experience of the presence of god which is the end of all mourning so i want to see that like i said before the pain is the touchstone to all spiritual progress and i don't have to rescue people anymore i can stand back and i can watch someone's process and i don't even have to interfere with it you know he's in his third divorce whatever you know she's gotten herself in a mess again i can have healthy empathy and sympathy but i don't have to fix it and rescue anybody i can watch their mourning process i can wash their pain and i can launch their suffering and i trust that also they have a god it helps me with that healthy principle of allowing people's process keeping my side of the street clean you know alan on principles whatever you want to call them, I allow people to live and let live and just stand back and watch the movie. Okay, the next one is the blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. This beatitude is among the half dozen most important verses. When you possess the spiritual meaning of this text, you have a secret dominion, the secret of overcoming every kind of difficulty. it is literally the key of life this gnomic saying is actually the philosopher's stone of the alchemist that turns the base metal of limitation and trouble into the gold of comfort or true harmony we notice that there are two polar words in the text meek and earth so again blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth they are both used in a special and highly technical sense and they have to be unveiled before the wonderful meaning that underlies them can be found. First of all, the word earth does not merely mean this terrestrial globe. It really means manifestation. Manifestation or expression is the result of a cause. A cause has to be expressed or manifest before we can know anything about it. And contrary wise, every expression or manifestation has to have a cause now you learn to divine you learn in divine metaphysics and particularly in the sermon on the mount that all causation is mental and that your body and all your affairs your home your business your experience are but manifestations of your own mental states the fact that you are quite unconscious of most of your mental states does not signify because they are there nevertheless in your subconscious mind, notwithstanding the fact that you have now forgotten them or never were aware of them at all. So what he's saying is that whether I'm aware of my thoughts or not, it doesn't matter. My thoughts are what are manifesting my view in the outside world, that I have a disease of perception, that I can't see the truth about my life or about others, that I see in a very third-dimensional, closed-minded, narrow view of everything, including how my life is going to end, how people should treat me, what situations look like, as within, so without. So I go in and I start to clean the subconscious mind, and this inheriting the earth comes in a totally different way. For me, I even believe, I'm not one of those people that's like manifest, manifest, us, but I can tell you that the spiritual principle of cleaning out the subconscious mind, I start vibrating at a higher frequency and jobs come to me and people want to be around me and I'm taken care of. And I don't know, but food still falls in my lap and there's just enough money to pay the bills sometimes and everything's all okay. And I believe that a big part of that is cleaning out this subconscious mind, which then changes my view, which allows me to vibrate at a high frequency with God, which brings the good life in and sometimes can bring the good life into such an extent that there's so much of an abundance in my life that now I can outpour and I can help others. So there's a real spiritual principle and spiritual manifestation to consider, but I don't go for some of these spiritual carnival type of principles that say just make this vision board and manifest big boobs in a fast car and you'll get it. You'll get it. I don't see where God's will is in that. It sounds like a lot of selfing and self will to me and there's a sand pit at the bottom of that. I mean, even if God forbid I manifest a guy and I haven't cleaned up my inside life, how am I going to have a healthy relationship? Or I manifest some big car and now there's this huge gas crunch. How am I even going to pay to drive the thing. So manifesting on the outside is not the importance. Cleaning up the subconscious mind is, and then the healthy manifestation of the outside presents itself. All the dots are out there rearranging themselves and they fall into my lap at a much higher level. I really hope I'm making some sense here. Yeah. And you know, it's here in the literature. I'm not just making something up. It's really interesting. Okay. All right. So then your earth, so blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. The earth means the whole of my outer experience and to inherit the Earth means to have dominion over the outer experience. That is to say, to have power to bring your conditions of life into harmony and true success. Very interesting right there. And it's a spiritual principle. And I believe it's in all religions that if we keep close to God and do his work well, he will always provide for us. And what this principle does for me is it allows me to start really trusting and believing and having bigger faith, even in the middle of a big S storm, you know, and maybe there's a war, maybe there'S sickness, maybe THERE'S a hurricane, maybe THERE's a tornado, but I don't have to fear anymore. I start to build my faith muscle and I start TO stand tall and true with this power and hold on to this power AND get rid of self and this power strengthens me and this power provides for me so we see that when this beatitude talks about the earth, possessing the earth, governing the earth making the earth glorious and so forth it is referring to the conditions of our lives from our bodily health outward to the farthest point of our affairs so this text undertakes to tell us how we may possess or govern to be masters of our own lives and destiny. The Beatitude says that dominion, that is power over the conditions of our lives, is to be obtained in a certain way and in the most unexpected way of all, nothing less than meekness. Meekness is a mental attitude for which there is no other single word available. And it is this mental attitude which is the secret of prosperity or success in prayer it is a combination of open-mindedness faith in god and the realization that the will of god for us is always something joyous and interesting and vital and so much better than anything we could think of for ourselves this state of mind also includes a perfect willingness to allow the will of god to come about in whatever way divine wisdom considers to be best rather than in some particular way that we have chosen so we talk about in the literature over and over our impossible wish for santa claus that we think we should have it a certain way and the open-mindedness and the willingness and to trust that the will of god is better for us than we could ever produce sounds something like this i don't know what's right for me anymore i don'T HAVE TO BE ANYWHERE I don't have any preconceived ideas. I don' t need anything. Whatever your will is for me, God, I'm going to sit right here and I'm gonna fall in love with the unknown and I' m gonna be totally comfortable and I don''t know-ville and I dont' have to have an answer for anything anymore. I don'T need to know what's right for you or for me. I just don' T be a liar, cheat, and a thief. I just align my will with God's will today. I just suit up and show up and be an AA woman. I answer my phone calls, I make my bed I get to a meeting, I do my work to the best of my ability I smile, I'm kind to other people I become a giver and the rest I don't know I don' future surf I stay away from all of that because like I've said before the ego is attached to all of those things and it creates a compliance situation and then it spurns on the ego and the instincts and then I think there's not enough and the next thing you know I'm self-talking and then i'm in a character defect so this backing down progress process and this meekness is being humble so really saying blessed are the humble for they'll they shall inherit the earth blessed are the people that are totally connected to the power of god for they shall inherent the earth what he's saying is blessed are the People that are connected to The Power because all the good stuff's going to happen to them and even if something bad happens they're going to be able to transcend and be totally okay with it and handle it in a really healthy, high way. That's what this beatitude means for me. And you know, for me, it's been so important to be in a study group with this and to have people help me break this stuff down because it's not easy, you know? And sometimes just handing this to somebody or any of these to somebody and telling them to read it, the decoding is a huge part of this. Having an experience with the literature, discussing it with other people is a huge part of it. You know, also please feel free to take my phone number and you can always call me. I love having conversations about this stuff because it helps me to go further too. It's not just about, um, there's always something more to be looked at in the day that I'm in. So even a piece of this that didn't have a whole lot of meaning yesterday, now there's a new problem in my life and it means more to me. So there's all these things that I've been doing for a long always something to be considered and there's always more growing okay so let's see where do we go here he talks about um he talks About Moses Moses did not therefore think of it as self-sacrifice for he knew it to be the highest form of self-glorification in the true and wonderful sense the self-glorification of the egoist is is the mean vanity that leads at least to humiliation true self-glorification the glorification that is really glorious is the glorification of god the father in me he does the work i and thee thou and me not my will but yours be done. Very interesting. Okay, we'll go into the next one. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Righteousness means not merely right conduct but right thinking. Interesting. So blessed are they do which do anger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed Are They That Are Starving For Right Thoughts is what Emmett's saying here. So as we study the Sermon on the Mount, we shall find every clause in it reiterating the great truth that outside things are but the expression or expressed or pressed out or out picturing of our own inner thoughts and beliefs and that we have dominion or power over our thoughts to think as we will and thus indirectly we make or mar our lives by the way in which we think. I can't change my thinking without God, so I have to ask God to direct my thoughts and to direct my views. And this whole as within, so without, I know that the ego has a really hard time because it'll say things like, yeah, but what if we're broke? Or what if we lost our house? Isn't the view always going to be the same? Every single problem that the ego is tripping on is going to being changed and transformed with the view of God consciousness. I'm going to be able to see it at a higher level. I am going to be able see the good in all problems, in all catastrophes and all the disasters. I can turn all my problems into my greatest assets, every single one of them. There is nothing too great to be overcome. And that's what this whole thing is about, is placing my thinking on a higher plane and a higher plan and just transcending completely this lowly, lowly third dimensional life. I start to live in a world where not only drinking is not necessary, but thinking is not necessarily either. I just allow God to really guide me. And then the whole idea of the first half of step one is so far, far, Far removed. My life is so much bigger and so much richer on the inside that why would I ever throw it away over a bottle? Why would I want to go so sleep into that dreamy, dreamy unconscious dream again. There's no point of that. So let's see. I think, um, let's see. Habits of thinking are at once the most subtle in character and the most difficult to break. So Emmett talks about this repetitive mind function when I think the same things over and over again. They're very hard to break. It is easy, comparatively speaking, to break a physical habit if one really means business because action on the physical plane is so much slower and more palpable than on the mental plane. So Emmett's even saying that it's actually easier for me to break the habit of not taking my shoes off at the door than it is for thinking a repetitive hateful mind function. Then I can change a physical habit because it's moving much slower than the mental causation. Most of the time, I don't even know what my mind is doing. I don'T even have enough self-awareness. It's been on and cracking for an hour and a half, and then I'm like, oh my god, I've been captured by self. I'm doing it again. I'M UP TO MY OLD TRICKS. In dealing with habits of thought, however, we cannot, so to say, stand back and take a comparatively detached view as we can in contemplating our actions. our thoughts flow across the stage of consciousness in an unbroken stream and so rapidly that only unceasing vigilance can deal with them again the theater of one's actions is the area of his immediate presence so the presence of my mind is what creates my actions we all know that i'm not going to do it until i've thought it my behavior is a direct reflection of what i'm thinking. And even if I'm not acting on it and I'm thinking it, I'm still just as guilty. I still have blood on my hands. If I'm hating so severely that I wish you were dead, it's just as poisonous as if I was screaming and yelling at you. I've made the Kool-Aid and I've drank my own Kool Aid and i'm choking on my own venom once again and I get what I always get and my past becomes my future. And like I said, it's not about time. It's about right now. If I'm not treating this disease in the moment that I'm in, then I'mnot in a program of recovery. I'm just dry. I can range over the whole area of my life, including all the people with whom I have been or am in any way concerned. I can soar way into the past or into the future with equal ease. We see therefore how much bigger the task of achieving all around harmonious thinking or true righteousness is than appears at first sight. And like we say in Alcoholics Anonymous all the time, the resentments of the past and the fear of the future have a lot of story, a lot ego, and a lot untreated alcoholism attached to them. The only time I can treat my disease is right now. I've probably said it a hundred times over this weekend. But again, it's always back to the present moment, always back into the present. It's back to that present moment. I have no business going into the past, I believe, unless I'm in a fourth step inventory process. There's nothing to retrieve back in there. It's a harmful, hurt, damaged life loaded with anger and hostility and fear and resentment. And I have No Business marinating and stirring around back in here and going back down in there unless I am inventorying something, unless really shining the spotlight and searching and researching again and again with my open mind to retrieve something that needs to be scraped out of my subconscious mind. But just to be fiddling around in there for your average alcoholic is a very poisonous, toxic situation. And again, it's another mile marker for me to really start to watch and look at that this is not where I want to be. I don't want tobe in the past. I want to be in the present moment. Do not dwell upon your mistakes or upon the slowness of your progress. Claim the presence of God with you, all the more in the teeth of discouraging suggestion. Claim wisdom, claim power and claim prosperity and prayer. Have a mental stock taking or a review of your life and see if you are not still thinking wrongly in some section or other of your mind. Is there some wrong line of conduct that you are still pursuing? Is there somebody whom you have not yet forgiven? And I tell you, I know that Bill took so much of this and put it smack right in the big book. And so again, I want to be self-reflective and I want to search and research again and again. Are you indulging in any kind of political or racial or religious secretarian hatred or contempt? This is sure to be disguising itself under the cloak of self-righteousness if it is there. If it is, tear off the cloak and get rid of the evil thing for it is poison to your life? Is there some kind of jealousy left in your heart? It may be personal or it may be professional. This odious thing is a good deal more common than would be readily admitted in polite society. So I also don't have to wait for the fourth step to go into these things. I think sometimes there might even be a misunderstanding about how the steps are and that I have to wait until this happens for that to happen. God's going to show me, and it's in God's time, and God's times are out of third-dimensional time. There are some things that are going to be presented and they're so just reeking of untreated alcoholism that it's really obvious to me that I don't need to do a whole bunch of inventorying. This just needs to be dealt with now, that I really want to pray these things out of my system, that I Really Want God to Have Them, that I Realty Want God To Have Dominion Over My Thought Life so that I can have right thinking and right acting. All right, I'm going to go into another one. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Let's see. The point that we need to note is that, as usual, the vital bearing of the principle covered in this beatitude lies in its application to the realm of thought. The thing that really matters is that you be merciful in your thought, kind actions coupled with unkind thoughts or hypocrisy dictated by fear or desire for self-glory or some such motive. They are counterfeits, and they bless neither the giver nor the recipient. So once again, as within, so without. This whole idea of I can think it as long as I'm not acting on it, uh-uh. I really don't believe that to be true. I'm guilty inside, and I'm making myself sick. You know, and it's interesting because all the Beatitudes over and over and over, they're about my thought life. They're about my conduct. They'RE about my behavior. TheyRE about my thinking. TheyRe about my desire. On the one hand, the true thought about fellow men blesses him spiritually, mentally and material and blesses you too. Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brother for in truth we are all one. The more deeply he seems to error the more urgent is the need for us to help him with the right thought and so make it easier for him to get free. You, because you understand the power of the spiritual idea, you have the responsibility that others have not. See that you do not evade it. So my outlook for the sickest people in Alcoholics Anonymous is really important. When I see the most twisted people come into AA, that's when I really have to put on my spiritual armor and be as loving and as forgiving as possible. And I know that AA is the sickest bay in the world. I already know that. I know we have a lot of problem, troubled, troubled people. And how can I have compassion? How can I be more of service? How can be forgiving? How can i be loving? That doesn't mean that I work with every single one of them. Some people are incredibly toxic. And if somebody's severely toxic for me, I'm going to steer clear. I'm not going to try to go deeper into the relationship and fix the toxicity because I've learned through application that it's not very easy for me. If somebody is triggering me, there's something inside of me that's still untransformed and I'm going to continue to get triggered until I get right with God in that area. So often I'll steer clear and I'll even just tell the person, you know, something in this situation is triggering me and I don't think I can work with you. I don' t think it's the right healthy thing for me." So I don't just go blindly into every single relationship. You know, as a principle, for the people that I work with, I want to really have a loving, open feeling for them in my heart and then it flows very easily to work with others. When I am not in a loving state of consciousness, I can tell you as harsh as this sounds, I'm probably going to hurt them. I'm going to say or do something that's not nice because the love isn't there. so i know that as a barometer that i just don't want to work with somebody that's triggering me because i'm going to get nasty or i'm gonna say something cruel and like i've said before i'm not a saint i'm a woman with alcoholism with untreated alcoholism i have a devastating weakness i really have a disease that's trying to kill me all the time so i want to check myself before i wreck myself let's see blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see god let us consider what the promise in this beatitude is it is nothing nothing less than to see god now we know of course that god has no form and therefore there is no question of seeing him in the ordinary physical sense in which one might see a human being or an object if one could see god in this way he would have to be limited and therefore not god so emmett's saying you're not going to see a man because that's third dimensional god is outside of space and time and god is not a physical manifestation god is infinite so god would not have a penis or a vagina or a top hat or be smoking a cigarette that doesn't mean that god doesn't work through people like i can see the angelic beingness inside of people all the time i can see the sparkle i can see a god light go on but that's not the whole the whole i mean i have this third dimensional body and i have self coupled with god if one could see god let's see okay we live in god's world but we do not in the least know it as it is heaven lies all about us it is not a distant locality or a far-off place in the sky but all around us now but because we're lacking in spiritual perception we are unable to recognize it that is to say we are able to experience it and therefore so far as we are concerned we may be said to be shut out of heaven and so for me what happens is as i begin to pray and raise my consciousness like i've said before everything starts to look differently my responses are different the outside world looks different i can even handle a hurricane or whatever it is i can start to understand that maybe these things are God's will. I don't have to go marching and picketing all over the place and, and standing up for this and standing out for that. I can allow things to really be, and I can even see them in a beautiful way that maybe every, every problem underneath it, there's a great asset that's going to spin out from that liability, that something's going to be transformed. I'm going to read one more a little bit. Heaven is the religious name for the presence of god and heaven is infinite but our mental habit leads us to mold our experience into three dimensions only heaven is eternity but what we know here we know only serially in a sequence called time which never permits our comprehending an experience in its entirety god is divine mind and in that mind there is no limitations or restrictions at all so I'm going to end with that for right now that God is expansive and like I've said throughout this whole day that God opens my mind God does for me what I can't do for myself God is always searching for more and opening up and expanding out and having a new experience and it is an experiential program and it's an experiental relationship with God and when I'm interacting with God I can interact with you and with my life in a so much higher way of consciousness. It's a beautiful way of life, and I just feel so grateful. It's such a gift. Alcoholics Anonymous is an amazing program, and there's so much to be offered and considered here. And I think we'll break for lunch, and thanks for letting me share. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening.