Fourth Step and Forgiveness – Workshop – Part 5 of 7 – Raymer W.

a little bit better, because what we want at the end of the day is we want freedom. We don't want this to be, to play a head game, you know, continually in our mind. We don'T want to be dwelling on this and having this incident continue to cause us emotional and spiritual harm. So some of these are difficult. I truly believe it. With some inventories, I think to talk about them with some professionals is called for. I don't need to do that often with inventories but sometimes they're a little bit out of my league when it concerns things that are real devastating like that, like child abuse and things like that. But anyway, how about if we look at each of the specific things that it asks us in column four? You said that you were frightened. Obviously this is going to cause some fear in your life. is it possible that you when you reacted to this you were when you reacted to this you could have reacted in a way that might not have been in your own best interest what exactly happened after you got this letter what was What did you do? You went to the authorities? Yeah, my principal went to the police. They came in. They said for my best... They asked if I was if I felt safe at the school and that's where I was dishonest. So I said yes, I'd finish off. It was two days before the Christmas holidays so I said yeah I'll finish off because I was encouraged to look as if I didn't have, I didn t receive it. I had a troubled student. We kind of know who it was from. You kind of knew who it was? Yeah. All right. And so I stayed and then after returning and having been escorted around the school and having people in my room, I kind of had a breakdown and I was transferred. Okay. So the dishonesty was probably saying I could handle it when I couldn't at all. How dangerous do you believe that the individual that you think did it was? Not him, his family. His family. Yeah. Okay. I'd smoke them out like wasps. I would. I'd scorch earth them. Let me... This is tough stuff. Guys, this is one of those kind of deals in inventory where the word my part needs to be removed completely. We hear this all the time. I mean you talk to 100 people about inventory and they'll always read that fourth column. And so what was your part? Listen, this kid didn't have a part in this. This is just – there's not a part to play. This is a situation where she was a victim of a malicious situation. And so what we are forced into is this kind of weird corner where we have two choices that we can make, and only two that I can see. You can forgive them or you can forget them. Those two things. I mean, you can either get to a place in your head where you can go, I'm so done worrying about this, and get on with your life. And it's possible. You can just get past it like this. Or you can forgive him, which takes more courage to do, and you may not be able to do it at this stage of the game. This is where prayer is such a powerful tool in what goes on with this stuff. You mentioned this stuff, Chris, this stuff about we see this lots of times around molestation and things that happen to us where we are truly victim. We have no part to play in the situation at all. It's just something. But after years of carrying the burden of this, after years OF feeling this kind of stuff, But at some point in time, I knew a guy one time who had been molested when he was 6 and he was 82 when he confronted me when we were talking about this thing. So for 70-something years, he carried the victimhood of what had happened to him that was not his fault at all. He had nothing to do with it like this. But it completely controlled the rest of his life. And he was the most beat-up old man I've ever seen in my whole life, and he was just a total, complete victim. He simply would not get any help around the deal. On a lighter note, though, and I'm going to tell you this on a lighter note, if they don't have concealed carry where you are, this would be crazy. This is the reason why everybody in Texas carries guns, because of idiots like that. All it does is bring out the father in me, and all I want to do is go kick some ass. That's just me. Ultimately, what we want is we want freedom for you. Ultimately, we want you to be able to release the negative emotions and the negative trauma from this event. So, you know, I think Meyer's idea of carrying a gun around the school is probably a good one. A couple of warning shots will do. But, you know, seriously, we have to be as honest as we can about the situation. It sounds like you've alerted everybody that needs to be alerted. It sounds Like the authorities are back in your play and they know who's doing this. I think the DEFCON level has come down a little bit on this yeah, this happened back in January so it's over dealt with, I moved to a different school because of it but I can't let it I didn't realize how angry I was at it oh man but this is the stuff that gets me about this stuff because something that was said casually and I'm betting you hard folding money that it was said casually and they never had a clue how it would affect you. They never had an idea that it would have a clue that it could affect you so deeply. I truly believe that. I'll say this, don't ever doubt the power of prayer and the power God in the middle of healing this kind of wound because none of us like to feel like we are a victim. I speak as a man who was raped in jail and I'm just telling you I hated that guy more than anything in the whole wide world but eventually you find yourself in a place where you just simply get past it and you stop letting it control who you are. You know what I'm saying? You will. Yes, sir. Just a quick question when it talks about these resentments it says it talks that we learn tolerance, patience and goodwill towards all men and even our enemies for we look on them as sick people and this is where Sutton and I would actually key on a sick man exercise and I don't know what was going on I'm looking at that right now like what was going on in their life specifically maybe this is the norm when this person or maybe this was the norm in that house and they're doing the best they can could be could be I was just thinking something I like to say that you know page 552 my big book is 552 about praying for people you know and I always say that I do it until I mean it because at first it's like okay God I'm going to pray for this person you know And I just keep doing it until I can mean it. And it's not to let the person off the hook. Now, I had situations in my life where it wasn't to let that person off the hook, it was so I could move on. I could let it go and get past it. Underline that. Absolutely. Page 66, when in doubt, always go back to the book. Page 66. It says, the wrongdoing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill us. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. This was our course. We realized that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Obviously, this individual was spiritually sick, you know, deeply spiritually sick though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us. They, like ourselves, were sick too. They, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry, thy will be done. And it's asking us, we avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. you know we don't shoot yeah true absolutely we don' t shoot them that was callous some of them should be shot some of em should be some ofem should be you always tell fathers that have daughters right it's like we wouldn't miss em but this is one of those kind of situations thank you because it's dead on persistence around prayer in this situation is one of those other situations where things happen supernaturally I mean go figure that I could actually forgive somebody that harmed me but it's possible. Thousands and thousands and thousands of situations we see all the time of situations like that that come up. In the middle of it, it's difficult. Your efforts will always be rewarded. The trick is whether or not you'll make the effort. There would be the question mark. I'm proud of you, buddy. That's some good stuff. Thank you. I'm wondering on some level you said you were angry and you also said that you said to the people in authority at the time that you thought you could do it. Does any of that anger come from the fact that you made it yourself for not recognizing that in the first place so that you can't really wind up forgiving yourself and yet it took you to some other school where maybe you didn't really want to be or you really would have preferred to be where you were? Yeah, I didn't want to leave. I was transferred, yeah. Yeah, an anger at myself too. Have you forgiven yourself? Have you forgotten the kid's dad that wrote it? It was the kid that wrote it. Okay, well he got that idea from somewhere. Yeah. He wanted his own way. That's tough stuff. I think sometimes we beat ourselves up, which goes back to other stuff from a long time ago, with baseball bats and maybe you just need to switch it to a feather. I think there's participation that needs to happen in the forgiveness process And if it's a prayer discipline or whatever, you know, you may not be completely in charge of how that is released and how you are healed. That's kind of God's job. I think sometimes it's our job, though, to, like Myers was talking, like everybody was talking about, is there's some forgiveness prayer work to be done. You know, think about this. a person that would do something like that, something so deviant there's almost nothing you can do to them that's going to be worse than what they're going to do to themselves with belief systems that would allow them to do something like that you know, something you need to do, to punish these people the thing is to get free yourself from the emotional bondage to this event And I think prayer is a marvelous way to do it. Inventory, write it down. Share it. Pray. InventORY, write It down. Share it, pray. This stuff works. You know, this stuff works I don't know why I just want to make really sure we're clear about something before you step down from here like that that forgiveness is never about justifying a behavior. You said it but it was important enough that I feel like we need to make sure that we understand this stuff that we can forgive somebody, but we're not justifying bad behavior. We're not trying to let this guy off the hook for what he did. I mean, a jerk is a jerk. But forgiveness is something that transcends it and goes beyond that kind of deal. In the end, judgment is God's and God will deal with this thing. I promise you. One of the things about being sober and being happy in your own skin is that you just simply got to get out of the judgment game. You just got to go someplace else with it like that Because in the middle of that, playing the judge in this thing, you'll find yourself so twisted up. You will never have any peace in your heart in that situation. We want you to feel comfortable on this planet. This is a great planet. This is very generous planet. When you're aligned with the spiritual life, some amazing things can come your way. And this is not only about freedom. The 12 steps are about two things. Fundamentally, they're about freedom and they're about power. And the more you practice this work, the more freedom you get and the more power you have in your life. And with that freedom and with that power, you're stronger, you'RE better able to deal with the world, youRE MORE EFFECTIVE, you'RE MORE USEFUL, you're less likely to cause put yourself in the line of fire for problems and what we're here to do is basically to re-encourage all of you to do what you already know you need to do which is to embrace this spiritual life and the principles that are in this book so that you can get more freedom and you can gets more power in your life you're going to be an Amazon sponsor kid I'd pay $100 to have you as a sponsor after this because once you get through it, there's going to Be Nothing stopping you we don't charge in Canada thank you thank you alright, you want to get started on 10 you want to do 10 or 11 But, excuse me, let me do 10. Let's look at this real quick. We're in a great situation here because what we're going to manage to do, guys, is we're gonna do a little piece of 10, a little peace of 11, and we got the skids greased for doing 12 in the morning early. And so we're not gonna go as long as our schedule from hell here. I just want to make it clear to everybody. This thing says we're stopping at 1130 tomorrow. will be done by probably 10.30 or 10.45 at the very latest. It'll be an hour knocked off of this thing. And there's a couple of reasons. The biggest single reason in my world is that my flight leaves earlier than I thought it did. We've got to go all the way back to Newark, and so we want to... But everything... But I came to do the talk in the morning. The stuff that we're talking about, the weekend stuff that мы все говорим, all comes together in the stuff that we were talking about in the evening. That's what I'm talking about on the morning, and so this is the reason why it was important. Otherwise, I'd have just said, And, you know, Chris, you handle it and I'll go on to the airport. But anyway, I want to know just offhand, how many of you that sponsor people actively do 10-step stuff? Do you have guys that are 10-stepping fools? Wow. Let me tell you how weird that is that you do. I was in a conference hall a couple of months ago and there was probably 600 people in there and we were talking about some stuff and I asked that question and there was maybe one, maybe two hands in the whole room that went up. This step 10 stuff is a situation that most people ignore completely and it's something that if I could look back on the men that I've sponsored, I can say this without any reservation whatsoever. If you show me a guy that will 10th step with me and consistently let me help him with some of this stuff, I'll show you a guy that will make strides that he never dreamed that he could make, that he will turn into a man that he'd never dreamed that he would be. I've sponsored some awful sick guys over the years. There will be men that will never do it. I've sponsoring guys for 15 or 20 years now. I've got two guys that I've sponsor for over 15 years and they simply will not 10-step. They just simply will not pick up a telephone. And I have this conversation with them and I tell them are you going to fire me Myers because I don't do 10-stepped stuff? I say no. But the deal is It's like the present's laid in front of you, and you won't open it up. You won't see the benefit of taking an action on a situation. You're just going to see... See, I think theoretically some of these cats feel like if they did effective inventories when they sobered up originally, if they just did these inventories, that they would never have to go back and look at 10-step stuff. The reality of that stuff is, can you tell me, are any of you in a situation where you've gone a whole day without stepping on somebody? I mean, if you're like me, in my best days, I'm still going to step on somebody. I tend to shoulder some responsibilities that keep me a little jumpy and so I get quick with people. Yeah, come on, come one, hurry, tell me what you want. Wow! Wow! You see? And this is the stuff that begins to build up. And it's real casual, a quick snappy report to somebody at the cleaners. And now I feel uncomfortable about going to the cleanERS. and then pretty soon I'm doing something with somebody at work and now that employee is kind of off to one side in my vision. And so, you understand? Day by day, my world starts getting a little smaller and a little small and a lot smaller and pretty soon, I'm going to be like, I'm not doing the same thing I was doing when I was out there acting cool. I got a little bitty teeny world with no freedom in it because I've allowed my actions to get me in trouble again. And they gave us the greatest set of tools to get clear of that stuff. Look, they took it out of my book. Yeah, there it is. They just moved it over a page. Look at the way that this is written. We'll just talk for just a second about this stuff. 84, excuse me. This thought brings us to step 10 which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set wrong any new mistakes as we go along. We're halfway down the page. So this stuff keeps going. Guys, I knew a guy that was a circuit speaker kind of guy for years and years and ears that used to from the podium always say that you could not do any step after nine until every one of your amends was done. and I've heard him on a dozen CDs actually cassettes because he hadn't been around for CDs but he's been dead a long time but you understand what he's saying the book just contradicted that right there because there's going to be amends that you might not be able to make for some period of time it may take you a while to get to France but this idea that we can't do work in 10, 11, and 12 until we get all these amends done is ludicrous I just want to make sure we knock that down out of the sky first and make sure that we're okay. We vigorously commence this way as a way of living as we cleaned up the past. The cool line, we've entered the world of the Spirit. All I need is that. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. That discipline of 10-step stuff, that discipline of being accountable to somebody else should be there forever. I say this again, especially to older men and women in here who have put yourself in a situation where you have stopped using a sponsor, it comes up all the time. All the time! I mean, I get 20 emails a month from older people in AA who have walked away from the disciplines of this deal and I have nobody to hold them accountable. I've been around for a long time. I know what's best for me. I'm just begging to differ. I think maybe you're farther down the road. I think that you're doing a great job. I'll hand you all that but I can tell you right now on any given day when self rears its head again you're likely to say something unkind to somebody and make your world smaller by one man. You see? Yes, sir. Especially if they don't have... Because those basic things, when these crop up, we discuss it with someone at once. If he doesn't have a sponsor and he's self-sustained, who is he discussing self with? Of course. Absolutely. And the part that gets me is that who judges what's important? This is the deal. The moment I start making the decision in my head what's importante enough to call somebody about, I'm in trouble. I'm in trouble. It didn't say, I'll do this when I deem that my mistake was big enough that I need to call somebody. Because let me tell you something, you're up against a foe called an ego and I guarantee you, at some point in time your ego is going to say, they deserved everything that you dished out. Right? Absolutely. And so this is where it gets goofy and so we become our own worst enemy in that deal. The discipline is so easy to do once you're on the path and once you are doing that kind of stuff let me tell you something if you call your sponsor and tell him that you had a fight with your wife three times during a week that you have a fight with her like this don't you think they are going to address it don't think your sponsor is going to sit down and go hoss three times really in a week you've had a squabble with your life tell me what's going on and then we are going to get down to cause and effect we are not going to find out what it was that did that like that if you are like me and now I know as I know you are what most of you will do is what I do is you'll call him on one of them and don't call him on the other two because you don't want him to know that you've been a we thought you were going to say you shot your wife no no she's it's not wife shooting season in Texas we'll have to wait they both have guns I was just going to say she probably better shot than he is infinitely better and it causes me untold amounts of pain and grief to think about how good a shot she is. Who's Hoss? Everybody. Everybody's Huss. Everybody's Hoss. All the Hoss are guys and all the big guys are Hosses. Yeah, but it's usually like Hoss come here a minute it's that it's just a general term that means you let's talk actually I'm going to talk and you're going to listen kind of thing in sponsor land. But look at what they've asked us to do. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonest, resentment and fear. Where do we get that from? Inventory. They're asking you to look for the same stuff that you looked at on your inventory. And then they give you four things that you're going to do when these crop up, when these prop up, they're assuming, they know it's going to crop up. When these cropup, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately. that's two we make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone that's three and then four and we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help love and tolerance of others is our code it does not necessarily mean in AA land I mean what we're trying to do is go help somebody carry their groceries go wash a car go do something mow the lawn what they're trying to get you to do is get out of your head and quit doing some stuff and as you begin to practice the discipline as you began to see the value in it you will practice that you'll kind of hone it down to a fine deal. My wife knows when I owe somebody amends when I'm in the middle of a 10-step deal because my hand stays on a receiver. So there's a supplier that just pissed me off royal, and I'm reading them the right act, and I hang up the phone. Now, I know this by now. I just don't let go of the phone because I know what I've got to do. So I sit there for just a minute like this, and I ask God to get in the Middle of this deal again, and then I pick up the telephone I hit speed dial for Cliff Bishop, Krusty Cliff. He picks up the phone and I tell him what's going on. And he said, you know what to do? Yes, sir, I do. And I hang the phone back up again. I pick it back up Again, and I call the vendor back. And I said, oh, don't hang up. Yeah, yes. Listen, you did not deserve what I just dished out a lot on my plate. And you got the worst of it. Please forgive me. And they go, absolutely. And then we talked for a second or anything like this. And I hung the phone up. And then I get off my butt and go back in the back and see if I can help somebody at work. I go do something to get clear of this kind of thing. And I tell you guys, so now sitting in 11 at the end of the night, so sitting there like this, we're getting ready to talk about it. I don't have a whole bushel basket full of nightmare that I've got to clean up. I don' t have a bunch of stuff because I've been dealing with it during the course of the day. Do you reckon you could sit there at the beginning of the week at the start of the end of the evening and be peaceful? Do you think you could sleep well? There's a lot of this stuff that you could do if you're on track and if you've dealt with these things. Otherwise, what I've managed to do without it, I've lost a vendor that I valued and my life gets small again. I put up one more little sheet of patina between me and God in that sunlight of the Spirit and eventually you'll just get crushed. You'll just wake up one day and realize that your life is... There is no sunlight of The Spirit. It is just empty rhetoric and you don't want that. You just don't. You just won't. I got a question. When I'm watching for things like, and I pull delusion into that, if I watch and I see it, I take the same action on delusion or lust or all these different things. Now, if every time I did that during the day, I'd be calling my sponsor eight or nine times and that just wouldn't happen. So I'll discuss these things sometimes but someone would just sit beside me at work and I'll go, oh man, my eyes are starting to wander again or I'll say, oh, I got pretty short and just ignored that guy. And I'm not an alcoholic. Just discussing with anybody that's possibly around. So you think that it needs to... I would be fine with that. I would. Some of you may disagree, but I just think that the accountability trumps everything else. Having somebody that's there like this. There may be other people that you've given spiritual consent to in your life to help you along this path and it may not just be a sponsor. It may be somebody else. You may be close enough to your wife that you could talk to her about some stuff or a friend or somebody, or a co-worker or somebody like that and you'd save a lot of time and a lot to wear and tear. Big ticket items, I mean obviously your sponsor needs to know that you keep stumbling, you keep stumbleing because he can help you from that perspective like that. You've got to be sure not to use that part of it as a tool that later cuts you to ribbons. Do you see what I'm saying? I've got something else. Executing, he says if you execute the 10 step out of the book I should never hear from you as a sponsor. If you execute it out of a book I should never hear from you and a guy who talked to sponsor twice a year when he's writing in with her that's it and if you execute and I just and up to me sometimes doesn't intellectually make sense but it's like if you actually get out of there I shouldn't care for me yeah let me get her person and I'll come back no I just wanted to say I'm glad you brought that up about helping someone it doesn't necessarily have to be someone in a because I've been privy to that where people say I'm not knocking service in AA, coffee making and all that but it's been my experience to take that spirit of service to try to take it out into my community and help other people. I so agree with that. I so like that. Listen, at the center of what just happened with my debacle with my supplier on the telephone, what was at the center of that debacle? It was selfishness. This guy I felt disrespected me, or he was quick with me, or he didn't make any difference what the deal was like that we had the deal. But at the center of it was my own selfish desire to have things my way. And when I'm doing something for somebody else, then I can get out of my head, and it begins to sort of break that cycle. You ever notice real quick how you feel when you do something productive or do something for somebody else and how cool it feels for a few moments to realize that you did something and there was nothing attached to it like this and how cruel it is and it breaks that little cycle so that your head will stop spinning in this self thing and you can get back on track. Great question. And not to go contrary to what I am about to share, but why it's important for me to discuss it with someone that's kind of on the same wavelength is because if I harm someone and there needs to be an amend, and I'm blocked to that. What I'm trying to do is I'm kind of trying to get out of self and get back on the AAB, get back grounded again, sunlight of spirit, and perhaps someone that's not in the program doesn't know where I'm coming from, why don't you share with them all? I've got an indiscretion going on. Great point. But it's really, really vital for me and I have a pool of people, old, young, especially younger members. Hey buddy, I hate to tell you, but I've had farts and warts too. Yeah. Immediately. We have immediately's. A number of my sponsors, what I ask them to do is to have a group of people who've given them spiritual consent to call them at a moment's notice for this stuff. And you'll find that your need for that hopefully is going to decrease. The point of this whole spiritual life is to move forward. to have some progress. But, you know, looking at steps, we're asked to practice these principles in all of our affairs. You know, the end game is the 12th step. And in the 12st step it's telling us that we need to continue to practice These Principles in All of Our Affairs. Step 10 is practicing These Princibles in All Of Our Affairs now. You know what I mean? Now! Not later, not putting it off. It's in real time. It's reactive and it's how we're supposed to comport ourselves on this planet As recovered, recovering, recovered Depending on whether you've finished the steps Alcoholics We need to live a certain way They found out a long, long time ago That we need to Live a Certain Way And we need To Practice These Principles A Certain Way For Our Survival Really there are people who can go around being horses asses all day long and then going home at night and smiling about it we don't have that luxury what happens is we get the emotional boomerangs we get you know we get the negative consequences to our actions erode our spiritual condition And if we don't take care of it immediately, it's just going to sit there and corrode. So very, very important to become disciplined at step 10 and disciplined at step 11. This takes work. When you first start doing this stuff, you have to keep going back to the book. Back to the books. What are the instructions? Let me read this again. How do I apply this? What situations do I applied? What time of the day am I going to do the 11th step? It takes some work to really develop these disciplines, but I cannot tell you how important it is. If you're an alcoholic or if you're a drug addict or a food actor or anything, I cannot tells you how much it's important to become proficient at these specific disciplines because they're going to keep you in, like what Myers was saying, the sunlight of the spirit you know how we participate is we participate in the maintenance of our spiritual condition through working these specific principles in our lives that's our part of this deal we must participate in The Maintenance of Our Spiritual Condition in the 12 and 12 there's a great line Bill Wilson says God will not render us white as snow without our cooperation so the How then shall we cooperate? We cooperate by doing steps like 10 and 11 and becoming disciplined at it. That keeps us in the sunlight of the Spirit where we're safe and protected and where our problems become solved through spiritual power, not necessarily through fighting our way through it. So we're in the spotlight of the spirit. We must always know though that we are not the sun. you know what we do is we place ourselves in the sunlight of the spirit with these exercises absolutely just two little quick things one at the very bottom of that page and we've ceased fighting anything or anyone even alcohol how amazingly cool that would be for a group of people that thought that their only problem was the booze or the dope and to find out that now we are also clear of this bondage of all of the other crud that we set up ourself by our crazy behavior. By this time, sanity will have returned. This is the best definition of recovery that I have ever seen. Once the sanity is there and I can manage the decision not to take the drink, then I'm as sane as I'm going to be. This is pretty cool around the drink. The only other thing I want to point out is on page 85, there are three more of those musts. There are recurring themes in the book that always seem to come up. Action is one of them that's repeated over and over again. And this theme of willingness is over and over. Honesty is another one that keeps coming up. They're like the big ticket items that they just keep reminding us of. And I'm always reminded, I got a guy in an old home group that used to every meeting say there are no musts in the big book. Every meeting. And there's three on 85. There's no must to take up a seat in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a whole hell of a lot of musts if you want to recover. From alcoholism, those are two different things. You know, sitting in a seat in AA doesn't take a whole hell of a lot. Recovering from alcoholism does. You know? Step 11, I absolutely adore step 11. Step 11 opened up so much for me. I believe the alcoholic has a spiritual vacancy in an unrecovered state. There's something seriously missing from us. Some people call it the God-shaped hole. But what it is, is it's an emptiness within us that we have tried to fill over the years with alcohol. We've tried to feel it with drugs. We've trying to feel with toys. We've try to feel was sex, with money, with food. What we're trying to do as alcoholics is we're trying to take something out here to fill up something in here, and we're trying to put a round peg in a square hole. It's not going to work. What works in that vacancy is to fill it with spirituality, to fill it with the presence, the consciousness of presence of God is what fits perfectly in that vacancy. And step 11 is really the thing that opened the door for me to this relationship with God. I recognized in step 2 that I was going to need it. I made a decision in step 3 to go after it. By the time I get to step 11, I've had some experience with it. But in step 11, it says go further. Go further. Seek this power. Seekthis relationship with God. You know, go as deep in as you need to go. And I love this step. I've been very disciplined about this step for many, many years. But I don't just do this step. There's a lot of other things that I do. There are a lot of other practices that I've learned how to become engaged with. There's a lot of other literature that I've used besides the big book for this 11-step work. There's different kinds of meditation practices that I'm engaged in. You know, when it talks about meditation in this particular step, I want to make something clear to everybody. When we hear the word meditation, we immediately think of the Buddha Or we think of Zen meditation, or we think of the type of meditation where we empty our minds in a lotus position with incense and New Age music playing. Because that's our modern mindset with meditation. But the Maharishi hadn't come to America when Bill was writing this stuff. What we had In the 30s, when this book was being put together, what we had was basically Christian contemplative meditation. And that's a different animal than what we think of when we think about meditation today. And listen, they're all good. They're all great. But the type of meditation that they would do back in the Oxford group was very specific. They would read a piece of devotional literature and they would think deeply about it. They would try to just concentrate on that particular piece of devotional literature and ask themselves what it means to them, how can they apply it, you know, just to think very, very deeply about this stuff. And it's more contemplative really than it is meditative. But that's what they were talking about in 1935. so a lot of times what I'll do is I'll do the eastern types of meditation I love that, the zen meditation and the buddhist types of meditation, I do that but I also do the contemplative work reading devotional literature I read a ton of devotional I read the big book like a maniac I've probably read this book four or five hundred times if you consider the people that I'm taking through the big book and the workshops that I've done and the personal reading. I'm serious, like four or five hundred times I've been through this book. So there are pieces of this that I can take and I can just meditate on these pieces for a long period of time. Like watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. I could meditate on that the rest of the year, just that one. You know, thinking about what that means to me and how I can apply it and how i can use it in my personal program. So that's a good part of this. Now, when I'm looking at step 11, I'd like to break it up though into three different pieces. Let's start with upon awakening. That's 86 toward the bottom. Now, upon awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead. Here's another piece of contemplative exercise. It's asking us to think about the 24 Hours Ahead. Think about the challenges that are coming at us and do a little preparatory work. Think about, okay, this is coming at me. I'm going to need to be prepared for this. I'm gonna handle it in a spiritual way. I do this about my day at work every single morning. I think about what kind of challenges am I going to have at work, what kind OF challenges amI going to HAVE with my family life, and I try to be very present to those things. I always have prayers that I do first thing in the morning. For the last 20 years, immediately upon awakening, I go into prayer. I'm still in bed, and I'm going into prayer as I'm getting up. And I've got specific prayer disciplines that I use. I use some open prayer, which isn't rote. It isn't like a memorized prayer. It's more like talking to God. But certainly part of my prayer is asking God to direct my thinking, divorcing me from selfish dishonest self-seeking motives and self-pity I add a lot to that I don't just ask for this in thinking about our day we may face indecision this is telling us about preparing for some of the day we may be worried about a particular meeting with a boss different things When facing a decision, we ask God for inspiration. We ask God to please help us with our sixth sense, with the realm of the spirit, the realm of intuition. Please help me develop that intuitive characteristic of my thought systems. And that intuitive characteristics, please affect that. And please guide me through that intuitive characteristic in my life. I'm asking for what the Oxford group asked for, which is guided thoughts. God-driven thoughts, divinely inspired thoughts. I'm hoping that I'm going to get those so that I'll be making correct decisions when things are coming at me in the day. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. The right answers will come. we usually conclude a period of meditation with a prayer that we'd be shown through all the day what our next step is to be I certainly do that, I certainly ask for freedom from self-will, freedom from selfishness and self-well is like the main thing that I ask for, and you know what, I'm going to have to continue to ask for that forever because as an alcoholic, I have a default setting, I am going to default back to Chris, you know one way or the other, if I don't keep asking for this freedom from self, freedom from self-centeredness. I'm going to end up back there and I won't even know I went there. I won' t even know that I got on the bus. All of a sudden I'll be coming from self and everybody will be doing things wrong and I'll mad at my crew and my wife won't appreciate me enough and the home group sucks and all that stuff is gonna happen so I have to continually ask for for that there's the when we retire at night we constructively review our day we ask ourselves were we resentful selfish dishonest or afraid do we owe an apology have we kept something to ourselves which should be just discussed with another person once this is a this is basically a spot check of how well if we practice these principles How well have we lived the spiritual life? And you know what? An unexamined life is not a life worth living. Somebody said that. I think we need to be appraising our lives. I think мы need to go over our behavior and make sure that we're aware of what we're doing, that we pay attention to how we're treating other people. we need to be awake to that so much of recovery is waking up waking up to what's really going on what's really important and this 10th and 11th step stuff is really about us becoming more aware of why we're really here and how important it is to be helpful to other people you were talking earlier about service I think the more of these principles that you practice in your lives the more compassionate you become and the more you place your life on a service plane where you're really of service and that's almost kind of the antidote to the selfishness and the self-centeredness that we've built our lives on. You know, we practice these principles enough and we're going in the other direction toward compassion and service. It's truly amazing. And that really has a lot to do with what recovery is. We're not the person we used to be. You know? We've got a complete shift in personality. You know every once in a while somebody bumps into me who used to know me back in the day And, you know, two things will happen. One is they'll go, my God, have you changed? The other is they will treat me like they would have 25 years ago. And I will be like, whoa, whoa. Are you nuts? You know, because they thought I was such an idiot, such a maniac, such a selfish jerk. They will act like that's the way I am. And I'll be like really surprised because people don't treat me like that today. People treat me fairly well. It's unusual for me to run into somebody who's going to be confrontational and really arrogant. It just doesn't happen that much in my life. But every once in a while, somebody will come out of my past and act that way. And it will show me just basically how much I've changed, how much i've gone in the other direction. And one of the things that i've learned from some of the spiritual masters and some of my unofficial service sponsors is you want to truly be happy. You want to really be happy make your life about giving instead of getting Make it about service instead of figuring out how to pack more into your life that you want. You never would have been able to convince me of this in the early days. You know, it almost doesn't make any sense. If you want to keep it, you have to give it away. You know? That doesn't makes any sense but it's absolutely true. We have a question. I know this is 12th Step, but you said something about service plane. And in 12th Step, and I get service and I run two meetings back and forth on them. It says not to put ourselves when we put ourselves on a service plane things don't work right. I think they're talking about the people that we're working with, the people we're taking through the steps or trying to help. So does it mean that we concentrate on just being in a spiritual plane, keeping ourselves on a spiritual flame? Or is that we just had a big discussion a couple weeks ago at one of our primary purpose groups, and during the whole meeting, this service, and one girl said well maybe we should just keep ourselves on a spiritual plane our life on a spiritual plane that may be a much better way to put it I don't know, I just was throwing that out there as a question that may Be a much Better Way to Put It I think where they say we shouldn't when we put ourselves on a spiritual plain with a sponsee like trying to give them a home to live in and money And, you know, if we're giving inappropriately to a sponsee, it can be damaging to them. Service doesn't mean enabling. Exactly. And, and, you Know, we need to know when and how to give when we're working with sponsees. But I still believe, you Now, all of my heroes in AA and in the spiritual world, all of them have made their lives about service. They've made it about, you know, expressions of compassion. Always trying to make things a little bit better for other people. On the service note too, you now, it's something that I integrate into my morning meditation and prayer is a couple of things. But it says on page 85, it says, how can I best serve thee? Right, and online with what you're saying. So it's like I've learned, the text tells me that I need to be a servant. but selfishness is my problem. I need to be a servant, you know, and I'm here to serve God and his kids, and that's my job. The actor, or the, back in the third step, you know the pact I make, he's the director, I'm his kid, I'm working for God, you know what I mean? The agent thing, the agent, yeah, the agent principal thing, it's like I'm workin' for God and I want him to be his servant, and that's how I move away from myself. So, I agree 100% with what you're saying. You know, the work that we do on the service plane is one of the best outward expressions of where we are on a spiritual plane. If we're doing the things that we're supposed to do then we find that we... I mean, you show me a guy who won't do any service work who won'T be of service to anybody else and I'll show you a guy that I would be suspect about his spiritual condition on the deal. I mean, gratitude has an action to it. That sounds like Pete walking up to help somebody. Well, since we're going to ask them back up a little bit just at the end of the evening review, after we make our review, we ask for forgiveness and ask what corrective measures can be taken. And what I'm inspired is that I heard this one person and I worked towards that. he says that God knew what you were doing and forgave you when you were doing it. In other words, George you were letting up on your spiritual program of action self was rebuilding evil was rebuilding and all that kind of stuff please forgive me God, I'm very human and what correct measures can be taken? And what I get from God is okay you're forgiven George rest well get up and first thing in the morning plug in it's a new day let's go kick some AA butt there's a question in there too what could I have done instead that's a growing question if I don't do that this spiritual work is just so deep you look at people like some of us in this room who've been working with this material for decades. And we haven't even mined half of the gold from this spiritual work. It is so deep. And we all can continue to practice this stuff and continue to gain benefit from it, there's no doubt. I have a quick question for you. When we look at the circle triangle, one side of that, service. And you get some different opinions on what that means. Some people say that it's the 12th step. Some People say that it's service in AA. You get some lines in the book that say our real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. And it's like our largest ex-problem drinker depends upon the constant thought. What do you think that side, when it says service on that side what does that mean to you? Personally some people in AA will want you to think that the service part of the triangle is being on the grapevine committee or something. You know, what I see, I see it as a much bigger thing than that. I see sponsorship in there. Absolutely. I see carrying the message, you know, practicing the principles in all my affairs, really helping people. Being an expression of a recovered alcoholic out there in the world, you know being of service, I'm not going to box it in to an AA commitment on some service committee. it's bigger than that it has to be bigger than that but you're needed there too oh absolutely I'm not don't think I'm knocking the grave line far far being from me to knock the grave line committed to me meditation back to meditation so if you were talking about you could meditate on those dishonesty fears So let's say you have something like that that I meditated or thought about during the day. Is that meditation, is it something I'm focusing on during the Day in order to get myself grounded? Or is it just something that you're saying you just meditate on that? Give me a real specific example so I know what you're talking about. All right, so I heard something last week that I find helpful. I've been using it during the Days and I find it to get my self-grounded because I cannot stay in the moment to save my life, right? So I'm in the process. So I heard, it was probably Mark H. and Dave C. And Dave C said, he talked about resentment, and he talked about ego, and He talked about fear. And he said, when you're in resentment, your ego is pulling you in the past. And when you are in fear, your Ego is pulling you in the future. And when You're in the moment, It's quiet. Right? So I have a hard time with that. So I'm in fear a lot of the time. Like with my job, I have six clients. I'm at client A, and I'm already worried about how am going to fix client D, and I can't sit still for client A, and I'm all over the place. So that, for me, I stop myself. I go, wait a minute, I'm in fear. My ego's in the future. I pull myself in the moment. I take a deep breath. So, that's something that I've been using as a tool. You know, God knows I need a lot of tools, but I picked that one up lately. I picked it up and I like it because it helps me to breathe and stay in the movement. I realize that I'm being dragged all overtheplace, and that's not where I'm supposed to be. I'm to be right here. Is that a form of meditation or no? I would never say no. Because I think any time that we direct our thinking in a quiet way, we direct our thinking toward the divine, I think that could be considered meditation. I've had some bizarre forms of meditation that people have tried to tell me wasn't meditation. Two of them were incredibly helpful to me. One was running meditation. I was a long-distance runner, and most of my recovery philosophy was hammered out between mile 5 and mile 15 on long-distance runs. I am telling you. And there's something about the endorphins and everything that when you're that far out, it's not really a runner's high, it's more of a runner centering. You can think about one thing for 20 minutes without your mind wandering. and I considered that meditation another thing that I do is musical meditation, I turn all the lights out I've got noise cancelling headphones and I put a beautiful piece of music on and I sit back and all I do Is concentrate as deeply as I can without hopefully without my mind wandering on that piece of music and I find that very meditative, now that's not orthodox meditation but I'm telling you