Emotional Sobriety and Spiritual Maturity – Wilson House Workshop – Part 1 of 5 – Dave F., Mark H., Chris R. – Dave Frederickson, Mark H, Chris Raymer

I'd like to welcome you all up here for another Wilson House adventure. Before we get started, there's a couple of administrative things that I'd like to take care of. We're going to have somebody hand out these things. Yours aren't in color, but you can deal with that. Please only take one. We didn't know there was going to be this many people, so the numbers are really tight. So if you need extra copies, see me and we'll get something else printed. I can get it to you on disk or something. This is a complete set of notes. It's to save you from having to sit there and dig through the big book and basically anything that you want is in here, hopefully, knock on wood, so that you can not – unless we're doing an exercise, that you don't have to be distracted looking something up in your big book and getting a reference to it. But, I mean, everything basically. I'm very anal, as you'll find out throughout the weekend. It's all been done for you, you know. Construction references, requirements for step one, you know, requirements für step two, all that stuff. Which means I didn't have to do anything. It's in here. It's it's all in here, so we'll be passing those out and make sure you get a copy of them, get a copier of it, as well as in your folders when you register, there should be a piece of paper and a pencil. We're going to be writing this weekend. The whole purpose for this retreat is basically a continuation of what we did in July or August. Somewhere in the summertime, we did the Fellowship of the Spirit conference in New York City. It kind of hit us in the middle of this thing that we should have a continuation. We were talking about how we worked the steps and it was a workshop where basically you're sitting out in the audience and you're getting a lot of information. And in the middle of that experience, there was a shift in the crowd. And I gave out a homework assignment on Friday night for people to try over tonight and they came back on Saturday morning and the people that did it said, wow, that was really kind of cool. And then by the second night, by Saturday night, people were knocking on people's doors at 3 o'clock in the morning saying, hey, I wrote some inventory. I need a fifth step right now. People were off on the sidelines in the middle of the retreat writing their sex ideals. And there was a shift that occurred in the group. It wasn't just sitting out in the audience and hearing a bunch of great knowledge and then get alcoholic amnesia as you walk out the door and say, well, that's a great idea. Maybe I'll do that someday. So if you're looking for a nuts-and-bolts retreat, this is not it. But this is going to be a retreat. We're going tobe doing work here. It's going to be prayer and meditation. And hopefully the spirit is going to take us where we need to go. There's somewhat of an outline. You'll notice that your outline is very sketchy. For those of you that know how to spell, it does say secession instead of session. That's what you get when you've only had three or four hours of sleep and you're trying to type this thing up at the last minute. And it is actually a word, so Spellcheck didn't catch it. of course it's my fault everything is my fault wait until we get to the rules rule number one no matter what happens it's Dave's fault now what the heck are we going to do about it anyway so there's going to be a whole bunch of directions like that announcements are up here on the table on the long side there's all kinds of workshops and flyers there's a going down the stairs on the left hand side behind the coffee pots there's flyers for those of you that it's your first time up here at the Wilson House. You may not understand how this place works. This whole setup is an exercise in philanthropy. Ozzy and Bonnie started this place. It's a non-profit corporation. Everything here that you see is volunteer. The people that clean your rooms tonight, they're volunteers. The people to cook your food, they're volunteer. When we do a workshop, at least when I do a work, I come completely self-contained. I brought 25 pounds of coffee and all that stuff, it's all donations. Everything is donation. This is not like, oh, you pay however many dollars you paid to come here and you expect things. If you're expecting something, you're going to go home with a disappointment. So keeping that in mind, if you see a piece of paper on the floor, let's try and pick it up and help out where we can because this relic that is before us, it's our history. And if we want it to keep going, we have to support it and take care of it because we're a dying breed within AA. So you'll hear me talking about supporting the Wilson House, and in that endeavor, it's an old building and it does not have a sprinkler system. We've been working for a number of years to get a sprink ederim and they're raising money, and one of the things that I did last year when I came here is we ran a 50-50 in order to help, and the money from the 50-500, the 50% is going to go specifically towards the sprinkler system to try to preserve this and eventually this building and move over to the archives. So there's a beautiful woman sitting over there in front of the piano who happens to be my wife. Bren, would you stand up for a second? There she is. She's got the 50-50 tickets. They're a buck apiece if you want it. Non-mandatory. Glenn's going to donate two tape sets. Whoever hits it, we're going to have a raffle. We'll do two tape set one tape set, another tape set and then we'll do the cash drawing throughout the weekend. anybody else wants to throw something in by all means last year on the opening night of the workshop we did here last year there were two goats born and so we auctioned off the goats you know so I mean we take anything you know as long as it's going towards a good cause this weekend we're going to try to do we're gonna try to do this thing in sort of like basically one hour one hour and 15 minutes so that the addicts can get outside and puff them and the bathrooms are down here on the left hand side and if the door is closed you can pretty darn well be sure somebody's inside the locks don't necessarily work on them so please if the doors open by all means but if the doors close even if you knock too hard the doors go they open up surprise surprise when we're praying and meditating please have a consideration for the people that are in here particularly these doors over here they make a lot of noise let's try not to walk around until the meditation is done And we're going to be doing some writing and exercises. If you're done and you finish writing, it doesn't necessarily mean get up and run through the audience to get out of here to go get a cup of coffee or whatever. Part of the shift that I think we're gonna be looking for is to get ourself together and to get rid of ourselves and into thinking about the other people around us in a constant walking meditation in essence for the rest of your life. So we're just gonna start by trying to practice that within the group amongst ourselves. And this is your retreat. We are a spiritual body that's never going to meet again. This is probably a one-time deal this weekend. And you will notice as we go along, you'll start to feel a bond and a pull and we'll just kind of gel. I don't know where it happens or when it happens, but usually by, certainly by lunchtime of Saturday, there's just this gel and something happens. If you have questions, ask them. The only dumb question is a question that's not asked. The other thing that I always like to talk about is please listen for the message and not the messenger. You know, a lot of people find me hard to take and I can't figure out why. You know? I'm extremely passionate about the program because it saved my life. It literally saved my live. And don't mistake my passion and say, you know what, and just turn the switch off and you might hear something come out of my mouth. And the same thing for you. I won't disregard anybody that's in here. If you ask a question in my experience, if I realize that we're going to get to that and there's a better time, I might say, hold on to that question please. We'll get to it later on. Please bear with that. It's not that we are blowing you off. We will get to your questions and we will deal with whatever the issue is. Hopefully, we're going to be laughing and having a hoot up here and we're gonna be crying and we are going to experience everything in between if this really works the way I think it's going to work God willing. So why am I here? I'm here to share my experience of strength and hope By God's grace, I just celebrated 20 years of sobriety. And I mean it. That's God's race. If I had been responsible for my own sobrietry, I would have gotten drunk. There's no question. There's a number of places in my sobriery and my story that I would've gone out for sure. I'm here to share my experience, and I do have a lot of experience working with the steps, with the traditions, with the concepts, with relationships, particularly with the principles and the lost chapters. We're going to be doing a lot of talking about principles other than just the 12 steps. When you hear me share, I always try to share with the base as the big book, and then we go from there. So when I talk about inventory or making reference, I alway make a reference to... You can always assume that I'm going to do a resentment inventory, a fear inventory, a harm is done to others inventory with emphasis on sex. I'm gonna write a sex ideal. We know that. That's in the bigbook. But where do we go beyond that? The real goal that we're going to be talking about this weekend is emotional sobriety. Once you've got the nuts and bolts and you've had a couple of years under your belt and the ego's starting to rebuild and you're delusional because you don't see your own lies that you're building, how do you move from that position into a position of neutrality where you can write another inventory and see what needs to be seen? How can you surround yourself with the people that will not look at you and say, wow, you've Got five years or you've GOT ten years or you'VE GOT fifteen years and help kill you and say, well, he's got that much time. He should really know what he's doing. Know that we'll come up to you lovingly with tolerance and pull the rug out from underneath you and say maybe it's time for you to write inventory. Let's do it together. So that's really why I'm here. There's a couple of requirements for the retreat. It's the old how. Honesty, open-minded, and willing. We all know what honesty is. The open-mindedness. you're going to see and hear some things that are probably going to come from left field. They're things that you haven't experienced. If you haven'T any experience with them, don't judge them until you try them and see whether it works for you. We're going TO be sharing stuff up here and you're GOING TO be going, man, these guys are hardcore. I would never think of doing something like that. Speak for yourself. If we make you uncomfortable, good. There's a reason for that. sense what's going on inside you. If you feel this anger or this passion, any time we say something they're just words. It's frequency vibration that we're sending out. If you all of a sudden feel something in your gut and it ties up like a knot and you want to come up after the session and have an argument with us and tell us why your point is completely different than why it's right, we've touched something inside you that you need to take a look at because it's the same mechanism that will get you back onto a bar stool. Somebody else will touch it and you won't be awake to it and then you'll say F this, I'm going to the drink and it would be off. Our goal is not to agitate you but if we do, that's a gift from God. Pay attention to it and deal with it. Write about it. At least make a notation about it and ask a question. Say, you know what? I'm really feeling upset with you when you were talking about X, Y, and Z. Why is that? If you can't figure it out, we'll help you figure out what it's all about. The last thing I want to talk about before I turn it over to Mark is willingness. The big book and the 12 in 12 are loaded with willingness, and it's my experience that most alcoholics have absolutely no idea what willingness is. Willingness has absolutely nothing to do with acquiescing. Meanwhile, we're dragging our claws and we're doing it under duress. That is not willingness. That's what the word duress is all about. Willingless means by definition, if you look it up, it means eagerly compliant. It means that you want to do it. It's not your sponsor told you to write it and so you postpone it, postpone, postponet and then you know, well geez I got to do it, you know and you're really not into it. If that's your attitude, you're not going to get out of it what you need to get out if it. You need to have an open mind and say you know what? Let's try this. Let's see where this goes. True willingness to be eagerly compliant to try something new just for no other reason because it's something new and see what happens. You know my old, my grandmother used to always say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Give it a shot, see how it tastes and whether you like the recipe or not. Don't judge it before you've cooked it. And the last thing I want to say before I turn it over to Mark is believe it or not I'm going to quote my father if you can believe that. One day he looked at me and he said there are very few original ideas and if you happen to have one it didn't come from you. We are going to be stealing from at least I should speak for myself again I'm gonna be stealing from everybody Big Book, 12 and 12, Emmett Fox, Bonte Wamala, Eckhart Tolle, Osho, Soup to Nuts, Tech Nahon. You're going to be hearing stuff from all over the place. I'm one of those people that believes, you know, look and see where religious people are right, you know, and I try stuff. And if it works for me, I try to figure out how it fits together with the 12 steps and I apply it in my life in that realm. So you're goingto hear me. I'll be doing quotes throughout the weekend from various people. If you react and you don't like it, I'm sorry, but that's my experience. And there's a jewel that is... The reason I'm adding this stuff is not just to take up space. It's because something in there has touched me and has made a difference in my sobriety and my perspective of where I'm going with the program. So there's going to be places along this weekend for you to ask questions. I highly encourage you. If you hear something, and you'll hear Mark and I both mention the same author, come up and ask us, what book was that? There's an old ancient parable in the martial arts that if you want to learn from the master, study what the master studied. Don't study the master. And that's a lot of what we're going to be sharing with you. It's just tools and techniques to hit this 12 steps from a different direction. So that's why I'm here, and I'm going to turn it over to Mark and let him tell you why he's here. Closer? How's that? Evening, everybody. I'm Mark. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Mark. And my sobriety date is October the 19th of 1982. And the universe is a better place because of that. And I'm certainly grateful for that. I give my sobriety date because that's what we do in Texas. To say that you want to align your will with God but not be willing to submit to a group conscious or a way other than your own is delusional. I'm here at the Wilson House this weekend, so I play by the rules. I submit to away other than my own. One of the things that's almost killed us is these rules do not apply to us, whether it's here or on the highway or anything else. So I'm really glad to be with you all this weekend. I just laugh at the humor of God. Dave, of course, rents a U-Haul to bring all his stuff up, right? Now, I've had a long couple two weeks working and stuff, so I get to bed late last night, and my pal Rick comes over to pick me up this morning, and we get to gabbing, and next thing we know we're at the airport, and he gets his luggage out. Unfortunately, we didn't get mine out because it was sitting in my house. So it's too late, so I'm on the plane. And, you know, this program is amazing. It's like one of the principles of the 10th Step is I've ceased fighting anything or anyone. And I prefer a shorter phrase called whatever. So, you Know, whatever. You know, I got money, so you go to Eckerd's and go to Walmart and say you'll see me in sweats tomorrow, and here I am. But I just laugh at that. I didn't have to bring anything because Dave brought it all. So funny how that works, that whole deal. You know, really, unbeknownst to me for years in Alcoholics Anonymous, the actions that I take in the first nine steps are really designed to catapult me into the spiritual dimension of the 10th, 11th, and 12th step and to begin to work with daily disciplines of the 10th, 11th, and 12th step. To be awakened to the fact that what resides within me is a spirit and it's alive and there's conscious contact with that which created that spirit. And really all that we're going to do this weekend I think in one form or another is move you back and forth and understand that if you're sitting here you're probably also sitting here for the most part because you've probably taken a course of action that has you in that spiritual dimension as well. And we're going to probably be talking a lot about the 10th and 11th and 12-step tools this weekend, among many other things. I want to read a couple things that came to me that I wanted to start this with. I wantto mention something, too, about over the years, I think since 1995, I've probably done about 30 of these all over the country. And I have gotten taken to a place where the idea of going anywhere, listening to two drunks blabber all weekend is just not anything I can participate in anymore. And you know how we are, right? We have all this knowledge. We leave. We sound good in meetings for two weeks. Don't do anything the guy said to do. And so I was telling Dave when we got to talking about this, I said, you know, the paradox is where I'm at in my life right now, the sweetest sound to me is silence. So I am not enthralled with the sound of my own voice. So when Dave and I were talking about it, I said well, and he asked me would I do this, I said I will under one condition. He said what's that? And I said if we do it where everybody is involved and we do spiritual exercises. I said, instead of you and I sitting up there gabbing all weekend. So that's really what we're going to do this weekend. We're all going to get involved with this weekend process. You know, what's funny about Dave and I being up here and being presenters, I'm not sure what that word means, but Dave andI have swapped fifth steps, and I think it's just kind of funny you all want us up here. you would think with 39 years of sobriety we'd be doing a little better than that but we're just not which is maybe why we're up here I'm not sure but we are up here because in the world in which I live and move and have an experienced life there's only the will of God and nothing but the willof God you're also all up here for the same reason I am you had no choice in being up here I understand that some of you probably think you chose to come up here this weekend. Is that right, if I ask you that question? So sit with that this weekend and ask yourself, did I really choose to comeup there? Or is there something within me that's moving me through life that loves me far more than I can ever imagine and conceive of, that cares for me, and that if I will just let my life happen and not get involved with my life, it might just get real, real interesting. So I'm here because I had no choice. because there's only the will of God, and that's why you're here too. I want to read something. This has to do with being open-minded. If your mind is closed, you cannot learn anything new. Closed minds reject anything different, anything that conflicts with our old beliefs, beliefs that may be false. We forget that experience is stronger than belief. Fear is the force that will keep our minds closed. only open minds can receive and process new knowledge which can lead to new practices and understanding a lot of what Dave and I are going to talk about this weekend in addition to some basics in the first nine steps is you know the eleventh step for example says be quick to see where religious people are writing what are they talking about there's tons of spiritual books out there that can help you and I on this spiritual path we're going to be talking about a lot o' that stuff a loto' the stuff we've worked with over the years I want to read a few other things that came to me we can only accept God's will we cannot try to understand God's will for this reason our intelligence is very limited our intellect is very limited, whereas God's intellect is all eternity so how can we, who can only see in a limited way, understand God's Will? All we can do is accept things as they are whether we call it acceptance or surrender makes no difference What is the basis of acceptance and surrender? That there's truly no me who can do anything. What is that? What is it that is the final bottom line of acceptance in surrender? That there is truly no mean who can do anything? Big book prior to the third step decision says with God's help I can be entirely rid of self. Main problem centers in the mind has a complete new meaning when viewed in some different ways in addition to the mind taking me back to alcohol when I want to not drink or should not drink. If one considers that the thinking mind and the ego are the same, then one must realize the mind has been programmed and stamped at the moment of conception, physically, mentally, emotionally, intuitively. And in addition, we've been conditioned by our environment. We had no choice in our parents. We had No Choice in our genes or DNA. We had NO Choice in Our Environment. Therefore, we had NO CHOICE about the conditioning which our body-mind receives. Hence, we go through life being driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and when it doesn't go our way, self pity. Stop fighting your ego. It's useless. It is only the power that created the ego that can destroy the ego. So accept the ego and let it continue. A couple more things. Seeking God. Every sense of baby's born life is nothing but seeking. What if there's never been a seeker? Wrap your mind around some of this stuff. it's all in the big book sometimes just different words what kind of seeking happens will depend on the programming over which we have no control there are some people who consider themselves seekers of money some seek fame some seek power some seek among other things god this kind of seeking let's call it spiritual seeking or seeking god or seeking freedom from the ego is happening to our body-mind sitting here because we're programmed for this kind of seeking to happen. Our seeking begins with an individual ego seeker seeking enlightenment as an object which will give him or her more pleasure than we can ever imagine getting from the material world. This is where it starts for whatever reason it starts. The seeking by the ego for God can end not with intellectual understanding but only with the absolute understanding intuited in the heart. There never was a seeker, a doer. there was never a seeker for any seeking. There's doing, but no individual doer thereof. The end of seeking can be brought about only by that power which started the seeking. Our heads are already in the tiger's mouth, but we didn't put it there. The seeking has begun because it is God's will that seeking should happen. And how that seeking progresses is obviously not in our hands. It's in the hands of the power that started the speaking. So we leave God's business to God. So look at your own experience with the above statement. Did you start the seeking? Did you bring yourself to AA? Did you bringing yourself here this weekend? Did you really work the steps or did a power through you work the steps? A couple little stories. I'm going to flip this back to Dave. One of them has to do with, I call it the donkey story. But, you know, there's a lot of different ways to come to know the power behind the name. see I'm not interested in the name God I'm interested in experiencing the power behind the name so whatever your higher power might be there's a lot of religious practices out there but I like to tell this story because all of us in this room imagine we're at the bottom of a hill right and the only way to get up the hill is a donkey well the donkey is your belief systems how have you come to know God your donkey may be AA in the 12 steps, your donkey may be Buddhism. Your donkey may be Hinduism. Your donkey may be Catholicism. So we all get on donkeys, right? And we start up. Guess what we start doing? We start arguing that my donkey looks better than your donkey, right. Miss the whole view. Well, when you get to the top, the only way you can enjoy the view is you've got to get off your donkey. The moral of that story is it really doesn't matter what donkey brought you here this weekend. Don't attach to the donkey, right. Stay open-minded. The view from the summit is the same for all of us. That's why in spiritual living, the worst thing that could ever happen to any of us is to have a closed mind. You know, to know God you must be out of your mind. You do not know God with your mind. These people in AA that think they know God's will for them and their life really are scary to me. I mean just wrap your hands around that. How can anyone of us in this room attempt to know what to what the will of God is. I mean, I think there's some basic given assumptions. I think that love probably is at the heart and soul of it all. And I think if I'm demonstrating anything other than love in anything that I've ever done, then I've probably been to self-will instead of God's will. So this weekend, again, let's come at this stuff with an open mind. You know, for me personally, I am more excited about my life today than I've ever been and the reason is because there's no end to experiencing God there's there's no end to it to what you can which you can know of God and and for me that always ultimately is going to translate somehow into love being of love and being of service there's just no end to this whole thing I met a meeting recently and this guy he's talking about being bored and alcoholics anonymous. And I thought, yeah, I'd like to sit down and talk to him about what he's been doing, right? So there's a lot of good stuff. But I'm like Dave. I want to have some fun this weekend. I think that weekends like this, we should leave here rested. We should leave hier a little bit excited about maybe some practices we can begin to bring into our life. I would hope this week in that you all touch what I like to call your amazingness. That part in you that's just absolutely amazing and unique unto yourself. Then along the way, you also stop some of that incredibly harmful self-talk. You know what I'm talking about? Three o'clock in the morning, the vulture wakes you up. Get up! You're going to be fired today and nobody likes you and you're probably going to drink. that kind of thing so that's all I got in my first session thanks Mark Matt would you do me a favor would you start passing out the stuff from underneath you'll notice when you guys start getting your guides I use a study edition of the big book this is a third edition basically it's the exact same text that you're going to find it's just that inside there's only writing on one side of the page And the other reason I use it is when we make a reference to something in the big book, it uses the same symbology that they use in a Bible. They use the page number and then a colon and then whatever paragraph it is on the page. If there's part of a paragraph, it's a colon zero and then it goes on. Your guides, I'm very anal, as I said already, and you'll find that in the guides, everything has got the reference to it and it's got it in that format. If you've never seen one of these big books, I highly recommend them. It's the first 164 pages of the big book. It's Dr. Bob's Nightmare. It's got the foreword from the first edition. It's Got the Original Multilith that they sent out to the doctors and the priests to test the big books. In the back, there's a concordance. It's basically every topic you can look for. I brought five cases of them. They're sitting next to my wife. They're $6 apiece. If you don't have $6 and you want to borrow one, by all means, borrow one. I just ask that you don't write in it, but it will make your study of the big book a lot easier and it makes those guides a heck of a lot easy if you have it. So those are back there for when you're on a break and just throw six bucks in the can and grab yourself one of those. For those of you that are into highlighting, I've got a can of highlighters someplace floating around. We're not going to need them tonight, but tomorrow I'll make them available. I only ask that You please put them back in the Can at the end of the weekend. And there's also a can of pencils and pens for those. When we get to the exercises, we're going to be writing some stuff. Let's see. Mark was talking about open-mindedness. There's a quote from Dr. Bob. He says, We are inclined to have closed minds, pretty tightly closed. That's one reason why some people find our spiritual teaching difficult in AA. And then in 1944 Gravevine he wrote, Tolerance furnishes as a byproduct A greater freedom from the tendency To cling to preconceived ideas And stubbornly adhere to opinions In other words, it often promotes An open-mindedness that is vastly important It is in fact a prerequisite To the successful termination Of any line of search Whether it be scientific or spiritual So you're going to hear us emphasize Over and over and over Tolerence, kindness, patience, love Open-mindedess, acceptance We're goingto be talking about a lot of principles that you may or may not be familiar with. And one of the guys that I quote quite frequently is a guy by the name Emmett Fox, and a little bit of history. Bill Wilson knew Emmett Box as secretary, and it was very common for the New York AAs to go to an AA meeting, and they would have gotten some tickets to an Emmett Fox speech that night, and he'd all leave the AA meeting and go run over and listen to Emmett Cox. And if you read the big book, and you've read Emmett Fox, and you've red Oswald Chambers' My Utmost First Highest, you'll see that Bill was not beyond plagiarizing a little bit. Because there's exact quotes word for word from these guys. And one of the things Emmett Fox wrote says, Have you an open mind? It is the window of your soul, open for fresh air and sunshine of truth to come in. Or is it closed and shuttered by mental laziness or the emotional congestion of what we call prejudice? You'll hear us this weekend talk about prejudice. All prejudices is a preconceived idea. It's coming up with an idea before you've had the experience. There's going to be an extremely valuable tool that we're going to be working with here this weekend and I can't emphasize it enough and that is called consideration. We're going give you a series of exercises and for those of you that are very quick readers you will read it and your mind will process it and you'll immediately come up with an answer. It's the space between when you read the question or the concept and when your mind develops the answer that's the consideration period. And that's what we need to develop this weekend. We need to open our minds without prejudice, take our time when we see these things and ask ourselves the question, have I had this experience? Does this apply to me? If it does, does it apply to something that happened five years ago, five weeks ago, five days ago or five hours ago? Is this something that's currently going on? And before you come up with the right decision, And, you know, if you're sitting next to somebody that you're afraid that you know and you're worried if you write down the truth they might look over and move, change seats. The whole point of this is garbage in, garbage out. If you're not truthful to yourself and you can't write down what's really going on in your life in some of these exercises, you're going to come out the back end of this deal and you'll be going, well, that wasn't anything special. But if you really write down What's Really Going On In Your Life and you are honest enough with yourself to take a look at these things with an open mind and use that span of time, that three-tenths of a second or whatever it is, to think about it before you respond. It will do you a tremendous amount of good. The same thing goes when you're hearing us share. I'm sure there's some junkies in here, some tape junkies that have heard numerous tapes of workshops from the past and you'll start to hear us tell a story and in your mind you're already playing the tape. You already know how this one's going to end up and you're making a mental position in deciding if they were saying this to you how you would respond and turn that switch off. Have an open mind. Hear what's going to come out because I think you're going to hear some different things this weekend that you're not really expecting. What else? I want to read one thing which I think is the whole goal for this weekend for me. It's the whole idea, the real forceful idea of where I think we should go as a group and then I'm going to turn it back to Mark and since we're a spiritual body I'm going to let Mark lead us and invite God into the room to kind of guide us and direct us before we actually get down to the nuts and bolts of what we need to do. It's written by Bill Wilson. It comes out of The Language of the Heart in 1958. And he said, he's talking about emotional sobriety. He said, I think that many oldsters who have put our AA booze cure to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobrietty. Perhaps they will be the spearhead for the next major development in AA, the development of much more real maturity and balance, which is to say humility, in our relationships with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God. Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, perfect romance, urges quite appropriate for age 17, proved to be an impossible way of life when we were age 47 or 57. Since AA began, I've taken immense wallops in these areas because of my failure to grow up emotionally and spiritually. That's one thing we're going to be talking about. I can't help you much with your emotional maturity, but hopefully we're gonna give you some ideas and show you from different directions on how to take yourself to the next level on a spiritual maturity. Because I've paid a hell of a price in the last couple of years to gain some new spiritual insight. And hopefully I'm gonna be able to transmit that to you and you can try it and see if it works for you. My God, how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible. and how final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been but still finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round. How to translate the right mental conviction into right emotional result and so into easy, happy, and good living. Well, that's not only a neurotic problem, it's the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness. There it is again. You're going to hear over and over this weekend we're going be talking about real willingness There, I lost my place. and to hew the right principles in our affairs. Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place that many of us oldsters have come to. And it's a hell of a spot, literally. We shall our unconsciousness from which so many of fear, compulsions and phony aspirations still stream be brought into line that we actually believe, know and want. How to conceive our dumb, raging, hidden Mr. Hyde becomes our main task. Suddenly I realized the matter was my basic flaw had always been dependence, almost absolute dependence on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security and the like. Failing to get these things accordingly to my perfectionist dreams and specification, I had fought for them. Does that sound like any old-timers you know? Five years, ten years, fifteen years sober and we're going through life and we should feel like life every day is the best gift we've ever been given and yet we're still pissing in our Wheaties. Something's wrong. We know we've missed something but now our ego is too big we're looking around and kind of going well who can I ask about this thing where I'm not going to look bad and we're afraid of who we're going to talk to and then all of a sudden a new person comes up and of course I've got to puff up and put that image on meanwhile we're dying inside I had fought for them and when defeat came so did my depression there wasn't a chance of making the outgoing of love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away because I had over the years undergone little spiritual development well that's what we're gonna be doing we're going to be talking about spiritual development this weekend the whole goal of these exercises is to have a new spiritual experience and to take a look at the stuff that's in the big book you know how sometimes you read it and you go wow when did they put that in there I've read this a hundred times and hopefully that's what our goal is going to do this weekend is to try to find some of those things that are in the big book that have been there and you've been reading them you may even been saying them for years but you haven't thought about how does this apply to me that's part of the goal of this weekend plainly I could not avail myself of God's love until I was able to offer back to him by loving others as he would have me. We're going to be talking a lot about love this weekend. We're gonna be practicing exercises amongst each other, amongst ourselves, you know, so that we're not going to walk out of this weekend for the first time and try it on our family. We're not going to knock it out in here and see if we can knock off some of the rough edges with some real basic, real simple things before we get going. It says, my stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive. Thus, I think that I can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and consequent unhealthy demand. Let us with God's help continually surrender these hobbling demands then we can be set free to live in love. We may then be able to 12th step ourselves and others into emotional sobriery. That was Bill Wilson in 1958 after he'd been in the program for quite a while and realized he'd missed something and he was starting to work with new spiritual advisors, you know, Ed Dowling and some of the other characters that he was hanging around with. So since we're on a spiritual path, why don't we get quiet for a minute and we'll invite God into the room and then we'll roll up our sleeves and get to work. All right. bringing us together in fellowship and love. And we ask that you set aside everything we think we know about ourselves and these steps and about each other and the fellowship and the big book for an open mind and a new experience this weekend. Amen. Mark, alcoholic. Hey, Mark. I want to read. Oh, I know something I wanted to do. I'd like to get a feel for links of sobriety in the room, if I could. So just maybe give me a show of hands. Do we have anybody here with less than 30 days? Oh, fabulous. Good. How about six months? Okay, great. How about a year or less? Okay. Two? Two years? Okay. Three? Four? Five? how about 5 to 10 great 10 to 15 great 15, 20 alright 20, 25 I love it 25, 30 alright 30, 35 alright that's fabulous good anybody more than 35? going once? I want to read something you know Don't bother opening your book. It dovetails into this emotional sobriety. It's on page 27. A doctor was talking to Roland Hazard, the drunk, who was going to learn the inner workings of his mind so well that relapse was unthinkable, right? And he got drunk again. Can you imagine? So he went to this doc and the doc said, look, buddy, you've got the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I've never seen one single case recovered. And, of course, Bill had a penchant for drama, so he felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him, right? Is there no exception? Yes. And he describes this exception. This ties into emotional sobriety. He's really describing the vital spiritual experience. Here's what he says. When you have this, this appears to be in the nature of a huge emotional displacement and rearrangement. Ideas, that's how I think, right? My plans. Emotions, how I feel. Attitudes, my belief systems. Which were once the guiding force of the lives of these men and women get suddenly cast to one side. and a whole new set of concepts and motives begins to dominate us. And that really, when you talk about emotional sobriety, I've given you a... I gave you an example of emotional sobrietty when I had to hop on a plane with no luggage. Whatever. That's emotional sobRIety. Now, five years ago, been a little bit different response now there's a connection between what we're going to talk about this week in the steps there's an connection between self-will and what's talked about in the tenth step God's will and the line of the will the extent to which your self-Will is intact is the extent to which you will be an emotional disruption if you will on a more consistent basis the more that self-will is not present within you, the more than you experience life along the line of God's will, the more emotional sobriety and the more peace of mind and serenity you will experience. My experience is I've only known one course of action that brought that about consistently. And that was looking at the considerations of the first three steps, followed by a lot of inventory work, a lot if fifth steps, steps six and seven, a list, make amends, and then work with the disciplines of 10, 11, and 12. That's been my experience. For me, no other vehicle has worked. And over the years, I have continued to do that because I come from the school of I'm going to work and rework the first nine. Again, the importance is not on the first 9 The importance is how they allow me to experience the 10th and 11th and 12th step. The 10thand11th step in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is new language. It's language designed to speak to your spirit. It is not language of self-will. We read the 9th step promises at great lengths. There are what I call the 10 step promises. You cannot experience the ten-step promises if you're still ego-bound, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self pity. What do I mean? What are some of these promises? Love and tolerance of others is my code. So if someone comes up and says something extremely derogatory or raises your voice or anything, Can you be tolerant, compassionate, loving in that situation? I've ceased fighting anything or anybody, dash, even alcohol. You can't live that if you have self-will intact because self- will is always concerned with is it going to come out the way I want? This position of neutrality that it talks about in the 10th step, that's not just around alcohol you can get in a position of brutality, I'll probably say this many times through the weekend my life happens but I'm not involved with my life and to me that's another way of talking about this position of neutrality the more my self will is intact, my ego what I think I need then the more I'm going to go through life reacting to everything. Anything into everything. And I can give you a little illustration. A man I sponsor calls me. My wife wants to leave. What do I do? And I said, you tell her, God bless you. Go in peace. And he said, You can't swear here. I'm not going to tell you his response. Because that... and he basically said, Are you crazy? And of course, I used the big book on him because he's a big book person, right? And I took him to this and I said, well, I thought you said you loved her. Well, I do. I said well, you told me you've loved her unconditionally. Well, what did she say to you? Well, she said she wanted a divorce. I said, then what other response can you give her? He said, all right, I understand what you mean but I don't care for any part of this. But that is truly an example of how you of what we're going to try and get out this weekend, and why I so love the steps, and Why I So Love Reconsidering the First Three Steps, andWhy I Love Writing Inventory and Doing Fifth Steps. Because I like the effect produced by taking that course of action. Because I like the fact that when we got to the airport this morning, and I didn't have my luggage, Rick and I just had a ball. It didn't impact nothing, man. Then we got together, and we got a little bit of fun, and then we got to go in Eckerd's and cheered up this lady at not having a good day. See, this is how God works. If I'd have had my luggage, we wouldn't have made that gal smile. I mean, we had her humming. Then we went to JCPenney's for a while and we had another gal humming because you all talk real funny out here, right? So we talked about how funny you all talked, you know. And so, but see, that's how God work. You follow me? And what a great way to go through life. What a greatway to go though life. Sense of calmness inside, you now. You get on the plane, you meet new people, you just have fun. That to me is what emotional sobriety is. See, it is impossible to drink from that state of consciousness. It is only from that state of consciences that you can love. Really love. It is always from that state of conscientiousness that you can love everybody exactly as they are and nobody needs to change. Nobody. Because if you can't love that way, that's not love based on what I know. I've written enough inventory she's in column one and column two I can assure you we're not talking about love here we're talking about Mark has created a third column of what this woman is supposed to look like and she's not following the script keep in mind I never gave it to her there's the line in the book that I'll be happy and satisfied if I only manage well so that's some of what we want to do this weekend is, you know, there's so many incredible things in the 10th and 11th step that you can get to experience from the time you get up until the time we go to bed. You know, of feeling you're in the world of the Spirit, this fourth dimension of watching your life happen but not being involved with your life. Of asking and turning and ceasing fighting and how can I best serve thee and this sixth sense thing. Rick and I were talking about that. This happens to me all the time. You'll be sitting at home and it's comfortable. Lately we've had snow in Dallas, which is real bizarre. And you're sitting home and that still small boy, go to this meeting. Just got in your sweats and just comfy. Go to this meet. I don't want to go to the meet. Of course no one's around. It's a good thing because you start that kind of dialogue. Then pretty soon it's, I call it the thunderous silence. Go to the meeting. You know, just fine, I'll go to the meet. There's always a reason why you go to the meeting, see? And you go, okay. And you just begin to, Rick and I were talking today, though, when all this first started to happen to me, most of the time it's real insane stuff that the still small voice instructs you to do, none of what you can't connect any dots, you know? It's like, what will somebody think? You know? What difference does it make? But that's some of what we want to, you know, talk about this weekend. There is a course of action that all us in this room, and I don't care how long you're sober. We can continue to participate in to experience the power behind the name in ways that you just cannot even imagine to make you be more effective in your life, to have more peace in your live, and power, like the big book says, a sense of direction to know that all is well regardless of your life situation Rick and I were talking about this today too so much of our meetings are occupied with discussions of your life situation. Well, guess what? I know about my life situation I know what it looks like today, it's going to change tomorrow and if I can't reach, if I can't live in the life beyond the life situation it's not going to be a fun deal for me. I'm going to go through life with no emotional sobriety in my life, very little capacity to love and I'm gonna be packed full of fear that is not how I believe God intended us us to live. So that's some of what we hope can happen here this weekend in some of these spiritual exercises. So anyway, thanks. Thanks Mark. Something hit me when Mark was sharing. Is there anybody in here that has not been through the 12 steps with a sponsor and the big book? Okay. I'm speaking directly to you folks. You're going to be hearing the next level the basic program of AA is the 12 steps as written in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous we're not going to delve in tremendous detail into the nuts and bolts that's what sponsorship is for you guys need to sit down with somebody and go through the big books one on one to learn and do the 12 Steps have somebody show you if you're expecting to get that this weekend you're not gonna get it if you don't have a sponsor, get one and hopefully you get somebody that's done this work otherwise it's the blind leading the blind It's really, really important to get that as a foundation. Because what we're talking about is, what do you do once you've done that? Once you've worked with a sponsor, where do you go from here? One of the other things that I always like to do is issue a warning. And that is that God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. We are going to reach inside you and we're going to touch things inside you that you have no control over. I don't care how big you've built the wall and how good you think you can control what's going on inside you, each of us has a little box inside there. I like word pictures. I always like to make an analogy. So I got this stone wall and there's very few people that I let inside my wall. Very few people. My wife, my kids, sponsors, very close friends. And I don't necessarily let them in all the time. And inside my Wall is that little box. And I hide all my dirty little stuff in that little Box. Well, without knowing it, we may reach through a chink in the armor that you guys have put up and touched that box. And we're going to stir up at the deepest level inside you some stuff just by the nature of the way we're doing about things. We're going hit stuff from an angle that you're not expecting it. And it's going to agitate you. So don't be surprised if tonight when we get done, you have drunk dreams, if you have bizarre dreams, this whole weekend if strange things start to happen to you, Relax. Take it easy. It's no big deal. It's just part of the process. It's like really sitting down and doing a fourth step and a fifth step and you start sharing that stuff and stuff happens to you and you're out of control emotionally and it's kind of a scary place because as alcoholics we don't like to go there. My warning to you is don't start down this path unless you're willing to commit because if we start down the path, remember what I said, God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. If I show you a piece of truth about yourself and you take a look at it And you go, oh my God, that's me? And you try to shove that back in the box. Guess what? It doesn't fit anymore. And it will start to eat your lunch. It'll come up. Once we wake up the beast inside you, it's awake. There's only one way that I know to kill the beast and that's go through all the steps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Right down the line. Write the inventory. Fifth step it. Ask God to remove the defects of character. Go out and make the amends. Pay the money. Whatever it takes to get rid of those beasts. you know so that's something I always like to talk about we're talking about life and death here I'm a mad dog alcoholic I know Mark's a mad drug I'm not a mad dog alcoholic you know my drug of choice was more just give me more make the feelings go away so I'm coming at this deal from a perspective as a mad dog you know Hippocrates way back when I think he's a Greek guy said extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases our disease will kill us. It's a life and death struggle. That's one of the reasons I'm so passionate is because for me doing the 12 steps on a continuing regular basis is life and death. When I don't, I wither. My spirit withers. My ego rebuilds and I drink and die. We'll have some fun. We'll be laughing and joking but underneath it lies this deadly earnestness that's out there. If your experience doesn't match mine, don't worry about it. We didn't drink the same probably or in the same places but my disease is the exact same as yours you know if you can put it on a scale of one to ten if i am let's say a nine and you're only a four it doesn't matter we both have the same disease and that's what we're going to be talking about because eventually the disease is going to continue to continue to grow and it's going to come back to bite us uh there's an old oriental parable about the zen master and he went out to walk with one of his students and uh and they're out walking and the zen Master looks up and he sees this fox chasing a rabbit and he says uh You know, according to an ancient parable, the rabbit's going to get away from the fox. And the student's like, no, that's not so. Not going to happen. You know? The fox is faster. And the master says, no. But the rabbit is going to elude him. And the Master was very insistent. And the Student, very uppity, says, well, how can you be so certain? And he said, because the fox is running for his dinner. But the Rabbit is running For His Life. That's true with us. I'm running for my life. so if I seem kind of serious at times I'm running for my life we're going to have some fun and I hope we're gonna have a blast but there's an earnestness and a seriousness underneath this deal and we're coming at stuff so don't just poo-poo it if you're alcoholic and that's a big if one of the things we're taking a look at is if you are try this stuff see if it really works we're hitting it from a different direction Emmett Fox again the heart of fools proclaim foolishness that comes from proverbs never be original find out what is usually done and copy that realize that you have nothing more to learn this will destroy all danger of success sneer at those who are more successful than yourself tell yourself that it's too late and that you really did not have the proper equipment and it will be especially helpful to keep saying that people are against you never learn from your experience keep on doing the same fool thing time after time never wait to hear the other side of the story knowing both sides will only unsettle your mind. Use your wit destructively. Be smart at the expense of absent people. Stand on your dignity and never forget that you have a position to keep up. And then John F. Kennedy, The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but it's the myth, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic. One of the things we're going to be talking about is don't drink and go to meetings, that kind of stuff. If I could not drink and GoToMeetings, I wouldn't be in AA. I don't have the power not to drink. I drink. We're going to be talking about step one. That's where we're headed. We're gonna start taking a look at step one and we're not going to go into the big book, into the nuts and bolts of step one because there's so many pages. We don't know time for that. When we kick this off, Mark's going to take you down through step one and we'll talk about it later on. We're just going to scratch with a thumbnail and start looking at it from a sober perspective because really step one is three pieces to step one, There's physical craving, the mental obsession, and there's spiritual malady. Well, if you haven't had a drink of alcohol for more than about 72 hours, you don't have physical craving. There's no alcohol in your body to trigger the craving. The mental obsession... If you read what's in the 12 and 12, it says that God will remove that from you. There's nothing you can do about the mental obsession yourself. You can try to think your way through it, but the problem centers in the mind. That's a gift from God. And eventually, if he stays sober long enough, that's going to get removed. By definition, from the foreword to the first edition of the big book, by definition, when those two things occur, you are a recovered alcoholic. You're recovered from a hopeless state of mind, mental obsession, and body, physical craving. What's left? Piece number three, the spiritual malady. And the big books later on starts talking about how that piece gets worse, never better. That means insobriety, folks. That means five years, ten years, fifteen years sober, you're getting worse on a spiritual basis your ego your disease of the spiritual malady is growing it's continuing to grow even though you're sober which means your spiritual practices have to grow to offset the disease growth and that's why retreads find it so hard to get sober and stay sober you know and I call them retread because the people that come in you see them they come in and out and in and not and you know Mark and I both we get graced with the ability to work with them And then for some reason, they seek us out. And they're a challenge. They're a real challenge. But the analogy I like to look at is it's a race. When you come into AA and you start out, your disease is at the starting line and your spirituality is atthe starting line. And you start down the path, start working the steps, and your spiritualities grow in the exact same amount as your disease. But then you start feeling better and you start thinking a little bit better and she's starting to look a little bit better, and you don't have time for that meeting. And so your spirituality starts to slow and stagnate. Yet your disease is continuing to grow. And eventually, your disease is going to continue to grow and it's going to get higher than your spirituality at some point and you're going to drink. So your spirituality goes down to zero, starting line again. Guess what? The disease didn't. Now you come back in the second time. You're trying to work up the path again. You better grow exponentially to catch up to the disease or a very short order, you're gonna get drunk again. You're already fighting an uphill battle. That's why retreads find it so hard. The longer you've been around and you go out and you slip and you come back, especially if you've got time because then you have the double whammy of, I was sober for 10, 15, 20 years and then I had to slip. And when you say to the person, you say, how long are you sober? They'll say, well, I've been around AA for 20 years. And you go, every time I hear that, I kind of go, huh? You've been Around AA for 30 years? When was your last drink? Well, six months ago. We don't want to take a look at that because our ego then is doubly manifested and it's even that harder to come back in here. So we're going to be taking a look at the third piece of step one, the spiritual malady. And then we're gonna start down an exercise for step one. Once again, consideration is gonna be our guide. When Mark starts talking about, is it gonna bother you if I hand out the exercise while you talk or should I wait? I'll start handing out those sheets for this. Please listen to Mark. Don't look at The Sheets. Just, I'll hand it to you and just put it down. Matter of fact, I'm gonna wait so you don't get distracted. As soon as he said that, I know what y'all are gonna do. Yeah, as soon as I said that I realized That's what a good alcoholic is going to do. Go ahead and hand it out to me. It's all right. Just put the sheet down and listen because you don't want to miss what Mark's going to talk about, about the spirituality of step one. And then we're going to take a look at your program and your current spiritual condition because if you don' t have physical craving and you don''t have mental obsession, what are you left with? Well, we need to start with a benchmark. If we're gonna judge ourselves for this weekend, we need start with where are you currently? And hopefully the hamster's not on the wheel and you're not thinking about the traffic on Route 7 and the guy that cut you off and the business meeting that didn't go well or the job interview and you thought the guy was a jerk and doesn't like you, hopefully that's out of your head right now. And we're going to give you these questions and we're gonna take a look and we'll take a few minutes to write down some answers to some of these questions. Then we're don't think that you have to get them all. There's 30 questions and don't thing you have to get it all done right now We're gonna start down the path because some of you guys may have some questions about it and part of your homework assignment tonight is to go back and re-review the stuff and complete that sheet. The reason I'm going to ask you to do that tonight is because everything we do, all the rest of the exercises are going to be based off that sheet so basically it's the foundation from which we're going to work is where am I currently in sobriety right here, right now at the Wilson House on February 8th, 2002 and go from there. You can't start a journey until you know where you are. If you don't know where your heart is you are how you're supposed to know how to get it takes two points right well if you don't know where you are you can know where you need to get to but if you Don't Know Where You're Starting From You Have No Way To Get There So I'm Gonna Let Mark Talk About Step One And I'll Hand Out Those Sheets Yeah You're Gonna Get It's Called A Step One Worksheet It's Got 30 Questions And Please Take Some Time Maybe This Evening And Or Tomorrow Morning And Just Ask God To Help You and go through and answer those and you'll do something that I call locating yourself. Currently, it's not about when I came in here. Dave mentioned this idea of laurels. My body can't live off the food I ate two weeks ago. I can't stay sober today off the spiritual action I took yesterday, let alone two weeks before. I can imagine sitting up here today living my life based off an inventory I wrote a year ago. I happen to work in the field of chemical dependency. Alcoholics are still dying at the same rate they always have. We are getting shielded from them in Alcoholics Anonymous by a screen of hospitals and treatment centers, but they're still dying. I worked in this field for 12 years, and I know of over 600 wonderful men and women who have died from alcoholism or drug addiction. Three of those were very close, personal friends. Two of those guys had done a lot of step work. If you're a victim of the disease of alcoholism and do not have a vital spiritual experience and continue to grow and improve conscious contact, I believe there's only one direction you're headed in. and tell people, listen, any given day in any given moment I'm either experiencing the power behind the name or I'm headed toward a drink which is probably why the big book made my life pretty simple it said Mark, I'm going to give you door one and door two door one's the bitter end door two's spiritual living which one you want of course I'm the kind of guy that I'd like to consider that for a little bit I would not wish this on any of you my first 10 years in Alcoholics Anonymous I did not make the spiritual way of life my life and at 10 years I went insane and almost committed suicide some of you may have some experience with that now this ties back into this first step see if you're sitting in here and you think alcohol is your problem that's a problem Let me explain why. If alcohol was my problem, then not drinking would be my solution. And our big book would only be one page long. It would just say, don't drink, love God or something. It doesn't. My first three years in AA, I thought alcohol was mi problem. And the reason I can tell you that is because all I had to do was look at my actions in the first three year. It had nothing to do with working the steps. because again, if alcohol is my problem not drinking becomes my solution the first step begins to open you up to some things 33 pages are designed asking one question when you take a drink do you lose control not rocket scientist stuff although we're the kind of people that got to use 33 pages to answer that question because there's a part of us that does not want to say yes which is why they use 33 pages, they keep coming at you well I was a binger I only drank a little, or I remember this time when I was in high school, I didn't lose, you know, just weird stuff. But the book, the reality is the big book spends very little time talking about you and I not drinking. Now that should be a sign that maybe my problem's not the alcohol. Wasn't for me for a long time. Because from page 23 on, by the way, the book does not talk to you andI about drinking. It talks to youandI about the state of mind. and hopefully we're all in this evening, which is sober, right? There's no alcohol in our body. And pages 23 to 43, based on my experience, are probably some of the most least understood pages of the book. Those are the pages ofthe book that are designed to let me know this. Sober, with the best intention in the world, with all the knowledge in the word, with a lot of reasons to not drink, there's a part of me that's going to take me back to a drink, and I'm not involved with that. I work with chronic relapses. I just have to assume in a prior reincarnation I was a very horrible man. And I'm doing penance for that. Their four favorite words are I know and yes, but... They know the big book far better than I ever thought of. They want to argue every point. Anyhow. I love to ask them this question. Who was the last person that relapsed recently? We had someone 30 days, raise their hands. Where are you at? How long ago was it you drank? Two weeks. What did you drink? Okay. Do you believe that you were involved in that decision? Yeah. Okay. Did you hear what she said? She said yes. I said, do you believe that you were involved in your decision to relapse two weeks ago? And she said yes. If you're sitting in this room and you've recently relapsed and you think you're involved in that decision then you have never understood being mentally powerless. The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in pages 23 to 43 very masterfully lays out this idea that there will come a time that your mind is going to take you to a place called the strange mental blank spot and you're going to drink and you are not involved when that happens. Now here's the horrible deal for us. It only happens at certain times. Unfortunately, we can't predict what that looks like. Which is why my book says, Mark, you have one hope of staying sober today. And by the way, that's not about God. It says, Mark, if you stay in fit spiritual condition, you won't drink. But guess whose responsibility that is, Mark? That's yours, not God's. Whoosh. So for the lady who drank two weeks ago, if ye be a real alcoholic and you certainly look like one I have some good news and bad news. The good news is you weren't involved in your last relapse. The bad news is unless some power shows up in your life you're probably going to do it again. See this almost killed me prior to God separating me from alcohol. This idea that I'm involved in my drinking. You see, I'm not. That's what makes me a real alcoholic, right? We've all had this happen. You get drunk and your loved ones look at you. How could you? I used to ask myself the same question. Why would I do that? I'm more intelligent than that. You see I thought I was involved with my decisions to drink again. I'm NOT. See, if you don't get this you won't work the steps because you don't need power because you'll believe stuff like this, like you could think through the drink. See, here's the horrible deal. The other day, they got Tom Thumbs in Dallas and I was a little asleep doing shopping and I woke up in the liquor aisle surrounded by it everywhere. And I'm not delusional. I don't say I'd like to get a bottle of wine. I say I like to give it a shot. I get 57 gallons, right? And then I go through that little thought of, you know, wouldn't a glass of wine be nice and, you just have fun with it and then I'd just leave. Well see, I was in fit spiritual condition and that particular time I thought to the drink, right? The horrible thing is, the book says Mark, there's going to come a day when your mind is going to take you to a strange mental blank spot and at that point in time, Mark you could drink. Whoa! Well, I don't like that. Well, we're sorry about that Mark, but that's why no human power can help you because no human power can, there isn't anything we can do for that. So it's going to look at that. You're going to look at peace. This is another reason I love to go back and rework the first step. I really need to touch 19 years without a drink, I really need to me in this first step, I need to touch the idea that I'll do the most insane thing in my life sober. And not because I want to and not because I'm involved. And what that takes me to is my need for power. The rest of the first step. My experience is there's two schools of thought around this that I've seen in AA about unmanageability. One school of thought is this. I'm powerless over alcohol. I drink, therefore my life's unmanable. That's one school of thought. My experience is there's a second school of though. The book says that I drink for the effect produced by alcohol. What has worked for me is this. My life was unmanageable, drunk or sober. My life is unmanangeable prior to the drink. Unmanageability and or spirituality is an internal condition that I experience in my mind and in my emotions and it makes me so uncomfortable that my mind to save me says, let's go drink. It'll be different this time and I act on that. Which is why I think our big book says when the spirituality is overcome, I straighten out mentally. Which means my mind can no longer lie to me about alcohol. But obviously there's got to be a warning. If the spirituality's not overcome, I don't straighten out mentally. Now, there's a lot of words in there to describe the spiritual malady. Doctor's opinion. Restless, irritable, discontent. Three fairly common states for us, right? See? Okay. Page 52, the bedevilments. Great word. Trouble in personal relationships, right. Can't control emotional nature. Prey to misery and depression. Full of fear. Feel useless. Unhappy. Blah, blah, blah. Now, I want to carry that out a little bit further. so let's look at this idea is it possible that the obsession of the mind is activated by the spirituality that's a great question to ask yourself if that is true there's another question what creates the spirituality well there's going to be a line that we're going to look at prior to our third step decision seldom talked about in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous which I think is important it says above everything we better get rid of this selfishness or it this selfishness is going to kill us. Is it possible that the reason why people like us die an alcoholic death is because of our selfishness? And that is what is wrong with me. Alcohol, as a result of living a life based in selfishness, I am either going to drink to treat the subsequent inability to manage that or I'm going to be willing to die the death of self as a resultado of the work in steps four through nine and to work with the disciplines of 10 and 11 to align with the will of God, in which case there is no selfishness and I can work with cease fighting anything or anybody or whatever. Or if I got the job, I got it. If I got a job, my life situation no longer owns me. I get to touch life, to experience God, to experience love. So that's what we'll look at tomorrow. Okay. We're going to do something real quick here. one of the things that I meant to talk about we didn't is obviously we have microphones we're being recorded and every so often he's got to flip the CD, so we're at that point while Glenn's flipping the CD I want to put out a little thing here