George – Step 7 – Right Sized And The Bondage Of Self – 2009

time and listen carefully. When it's your time to share, you'll be listened to the same way. And at this time, I'd like to introduce George, who will be speaking on the seventh step. I'm a grateful alcoholic. My name is George. I'm sitting here thinking about humility because one of the many principles that is in step seven is about humility. All of our steps are about humility. If I sit back and I look at the first step and come in here and tell you that I can't handle my own life, that's a humbling act. But before I go any further, let me always give my clarification. I don't speak for Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll have my experience. No one has that right or that authority. You want to know what Alcoholics Anonymous is, our literature, tells you who we are and what we do. And I always like to put that out there because all I have is my experience. And getting back to where my head was running away with me at the beginning, I asked Scott in and he's not shown up yet, but I know how humility affected me. You want to get a meeting quiet and I'll get back to how I look at all the steps and where humility plays a role in each one of them up to this point. You want to get a meeting quiet, bring up the topic of let's talk about humility. People will say, well, if you... Talk about it. Talk about humility, you ain't got none. Or then if you share something that's of being humble, you're really not being humble anymore. That's not my experience. My experience is what the definition of humility is in the fifth step. It says, humility is a clear recognition of who and what we were by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. That's in step five. That's where humility takes place in step five. And then step seven, if I spoke to another human being about all my defects of character and stuff, then I've been practicing an act of humility with another human being. So humility is in every one of the steps. I walk in here, I tell somebody my life is terrible and I can't drink and I need help. That's an act of humility if you're as prideful, as stubborn, as conceited, as self-centered as I was when I walked in here. Now you've got to go in and find a power that's greater than yourself. And for me, in my case, I was asked to draw that power up and put it down in words what that power was to me and then to ask that power to keep me away from a drink and a drunk and to help me be a better person. That's an act of humility. Sitting in a meeting every day saying serenity prayer and the Lord's Prayer for me was an act of humility because I didn't pray when I got here and I didn't believe in prayer when I got here. To get to that third step, making a decision to turn my own life over to care of God. Oh, I got on and did my knees with another human being, which is a great thing. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to lie to you anymore. But I did that. And it was an act of humility. I said the prayer, but I really didn't believe it. So he suggested that I make a commitment which means do more work, which was an act of humility to be able to look at myself in that fourth step and do that inventory that I didn't want to look at me. It was much more fun to look at you and tell you what you were doing wrong rather than look at my inappropriate behaviors and see what was really going on. And then to sit with another human being, those are acts of humility. Just putting it on paper for someone like me was an act of humility. Now I get to that fifth step, and I told you what my definition of humility is. And then in step six, we become willing to have God remove these defects of character. We were just talking before the meeting, David and I, about defect, shortcoming, floor, whatever you want to call it. They're all the same thing. You know, Bill Wilson, in his way of writing, didn't want to say the same thing over and over again, so he used a lot of different words to get the same idea across, because if you throw it out enough different ways, sooner or later something sticks. And for me, you know, a shortcoming, a character defect, I hear people say all kinds of things. A shortcoming is not knowing that I'm doing wrong. A defect is when I know I'm doing wrong. They're both wrong. Wrong is wrong. It's, you know, just like there's not such a thing as a little bit pregnant. Either you are or you're not. It's not a little lie. It's not a white lie. It's a lie. Either I'm being humble or I'm not. And alcohol gave me a terrific beating, and that humbled me. It humbled me enough to come in here and say, I need help. And that's where the first act of humility took place for me. So, you know, I'm not one of those that believe we don't talk about humility. I'm not going to tell you all the things that I do, because those random acts of kindness, which we'll talk about, takes away from being the humility. That's a look at me, and that's a grandiose thing. And I've got to be careful and keep things in balance. And humility is to stay right-sized, not to let my head run away with me, not to tell you what a great, the great I am. I was the great I am before I got here. If I was doing so great, what am I doing here? That's not the great I am. The great I am is God. And I had to learn who that God was, or that power that moves in this room, that keeps me away from a drink, and has graced me with enough of his presence that the obsession to drink has been lifted. That is a gift beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Step 7. We come in here, and last week I read about 130 flaws of character that my sponsor was kind enough to show me that I had in many different ways. And like I said, they show themselves in many different ways today. What I did learn about those flaws is those flaws are part of my makeup as a human being. It's when I let them far exceed their intended purpose that I run into trouble. When I let them run me, instead of using them, I let them run me. And staying right-sized. It says, Since Step 7 so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility is, and what the practice of it can mean to us. When I got to the seventh step, my sponsor said, Real simply, George, you want to practice humility, you chop wood and carry water. What the heck does that mean? Chop wood and carry water. You get up in the morning, you ask for help, you go to a meeting, you reach out to another alcoholic, you read some literature, and you pray, and at the end of the day you say thank you. You've had a successful day. That was chopping wood and carrying water. You know, I'm here a while now. Guess what I do? I chop wood and I carry water. I get up every morning, I ask God into my life that he keep me away from a drink, and try and make me a better person than I was the day before. I have other steps when we get to those. We'll talk about those. I go to a meeting, I pick up a telephone, I speak to another alcoholic, at least one a day, and then I try and help someone, and do that quietly without letting somebody else know. And then at the end of the day, if I didn't, you know, I read some literature, and I thank God and go to bed, and I can go to sleep with peace of mind. That's not the person that walked in here. So, you know, how do I practice humility? Well, that's one way I practice. You know, I'm one of those, and we're going to talk a little bit about prayer today. I'm one of those that don't believe prayer is about the position I take anymore. It's about the petition I make. And I'm going to talk a lot about prayer tonight, in the seventh step. And we're going to talk about my correlation between step three and step seven, and all the prayers that led up to that. You see, when I walked in here, I had no idea of how to pray, what to pray, all I knew was hurting, and I just didn't want to feel what I was feeling. And somebody said to me, ask whatever's up there to not let you drink today. That was my first prayer, the prayer of help. And at the end of the day, it was thank you. And then it changed a little bit. Then it was to ask the power that was up there to help me get through the day, and not to jump down someone else's path. And to not jump down someone else's throat. Or not to act out in an inappropriate manner. And those prayers come along, you know, and if I sit and I read our literature, which I do, and I read the big book, in the first edition, in the third edition, it says, I only advise that every alcoholic to read this book through, and though he perhaps he came to scoff, he may remain to pray. Now, I wasn't a prayer when I got in here. And prayer is a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people. I'm not going to get into the religiosity, but I'm going to get into the religiousness. I'm going to get into the religiosity of what prayer is. I don't consider myself a religious person. I consider myself someone who's on a spiritual journey, and I can speak to God the way I'm speaking to anybody in this room. And I believe when I do that, God speaks through me. And that's where my God enters into the equation. In Bill's story, it says, to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet the problems as he would have me. One of the biggest problems I got in here is, the serenity prayer. Everybody was running my life. Everybody was renting spaces, we used to say. You know, you'd say hello to me, and I heard you say, you didn't like me, and already I was into an argument. I was getting angry. I was getting defiant, rebellious, and I was looking to get into, be argumentative. And the serenity prayer to me was one of the best tools I have. I use it to this day many, many times throughout the day. And to me, I look at it a little differently. I use it to pray. I ask God for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, which is everybody else in this world. The courage to change the things I can. Me, my attitudes, and my actions. And the wisdom to know that. Because every time I try to change your attitudes and your actions, my life becomes unmanageable. And that's a new surrender for me. So the serenity prayer is the first place that I started saying, I have no control over anybody. One of the big words we talked about last week, control. Control and manage. Letting go of that came to me. And I think it's a key to the serenity prayer. And then it says, never was I to pray for myself, except when my requests were on my usefulness to others. Oh, I used to ask God for a lot of money so I can help other people who needed it. I was not doing that. I was trying to manipulate my higher power of God, as I understood him, to give me money. And then I would say, well, if you do this for me, I'll give him $100. And if God did that for me, I'd say, well, he don't need $100. Maybe $50 will work. The fifth step talks about us rationalizing the most errant nonsense and believe we're hearing God speak to us. I stop praying for money from people that I can give them or things I can do for them. All I ask God to do is whatever his will is for that person, that if he wants to use me as a tool, to please do that. That's a big change from the guy that was asking for something for nothing to see how I can give. And this is in Bill's story. Then on page 59, he says, we asked his protection and care with complete abandon. That's a prayer. We get to the fifth step on page 59. It says, we admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I still believe we do this for three reasons. We go to God for forgiveness. We go to ourselves for understanding, which is what our fourth step was about. And we go to another human being to practice that humility. And this is my first practice of humility, is sitting down with another human being and being honest. I wasn't honest with anybody. I believed my lies so much they were my truths, and you couldn't convince me otherwise. I needed a loving man who guided me to show me what real honesty was about, what a real man was about. And then in the 11th step on page 59, it says, we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. I haven't even got to the third step in the big book, and already I am seven prayers into the book. And I wasn't praying. I kept telling myself. I kept reading the book. I was doing what I was told, I was praying every day, but I didn't see the prayers in the book or in the literature as they were laid out. Then on 63, it talks about the third step prayer. It says, many of us said to our maker, as we understood him, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thy will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way. Amen. That's the third step prayer. I used to ask that he take away my difficulties, which was my ex-wife, my old job. I had it all backwards. I said the prayer, but again, I was bargaining. I was really bargaining with the prayer stuff in my third step. Now we get to page 67 in the big book, and it says, we ask God to show us the same tolerance, pity, and patience we would carefully grant a sick friend. When someone offended, we say, God, this is a sick man. Save me from being angry. Thy will be done. That's in our fourth step. Now I'm in the fourth step, and there's a prayer there. Then right after it, it says, thy will be done. Save me from being angry. Those are three prayers in two lines that are in step four. Then we ask, on page 68, we ask him to remove our fear, and that's my biggest thing. All those defects of character that I spoke about last week and that I've been talking about since I've been here, those flaws, those flaws in my personality, that discoloration of the way I looked at the world and my fellow man and God was what I needed removed from me, my fear. That was all fear-based. It was either I was going to lose something that's not mine anyway that I believe was, or I wasn't going to get something that I wanted, and most of the time, I'm glad I didn't get it today because if I got what I wanted, I probably would be asking God to remove it now. God will give me what he needs me to have, and I've come to that place in my life where I've learned that. So, we get to this point where I ask that he remove my fear and direct my attention to what he would have me be. What do you want from me, God? Show me what you want me to do. Show me what you want me to be. I'll tell you some stories about that, and we're here in the sixth and seventh step. My sponsor, when I got in here, Bob Welsh came down with Infizima when I had about, four years, and, hi, Bob. And I was given the pleasure of being able to sit with him during the time before he went back home. And one night, around Thanksgiving, he died around Christmas time, around Thanksgiving, he was very mad at somebody he knew up in Delray, and he was yelling and screaming, and Bob was not one of those people who kept his language the way I work. Keeping my language, he was very abrupt and very outright in the way he spoke. And when he went through this rant about this person, I said, you know, my sponsor once taught me that if I have a problem with somebody, I should call him up and speak to them. Well, he kind of yelled at me and asked me to leave the room for a minute or two, and when he came back, he said, you know what? I think I'm going to call him up. And I had the honor, and I call that an honor, to sit with Bob Welsh, Eddie Dalton, God, Helen Hart, and I was the baby, with five years. I think at the table, there was like six of us, and there was about 120 years of recovery. What a gift that was. All because I said to him the same thing he said to me. I became a parrot at that point. I can tell you because I was able to have that dignity and the ability to be there when he passed from life to death. I was able to be there for my mother because he taught me about how to show up for life. And because I was there for my mother, there's a young lady by the name of Kelly Peck who, who died of cervical cancer. And every Sunday, I was the only guy. It was six women, all married, and Sunday was family day. George got to spend every Sunday with Kelly the last six months of her life. And I got to read, and we got to pray together. And I got to do those things that I was taught to do three people prior to. And that's what this is all about. We pass this forward. So, God directed my attention to what he wanted me to do in those cases. None of that is what I wanted to do. I will tell you, I don't feel well. People who know me know I'm going through some medical stuff. I spoke to one of my sponsors on the way here. I said, I'm on my way out of the house to a place I don't want to go to do something I don't want to do to be around people. Right now, I don't want to be around. But I'm going to do it anyway because that's what the seven steps is all about. Acting my way in a good thinking. It doesn't matter how I feel, what I think, what I want. I have to show up for Alcoholics Anonymous the same way Alcoholics Anonymous shows up. They showed up for me. That's the gift that was given to me in my seven steps. All right? And then in page 69, we ask God to mold our ideas and help us to live up to them. I want to be the best George I can. I said, God, tell me what you want me to do. Show me how you want me to do it. And then give me the strength to get there because I don't know how to do this on my own. And he has done that over and over again. And it says in meditation. Now, we're talking about meditation and we're not even on step 11. It says, in meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. I'm meditating long before I get to step 11, this is telling me. I'm on page 69. I'm not even into step 7 yet. It says in page 70, if we're sorry for what we have done and have an honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we'll be forgiven and we will have learned our lesson. We're still in step 4. And here I am praying and meditating in the fourth step. Here again, my blindness does not let me see it when I'm at that stage, when I was at that stage in my early recovery. But today, in retrospect, I get a wonderful way of looking. Monday morning quarterbacking is great. I think all of us who have been around a while, we do a lot of that. But we know that it's not what we're doing. It's the grace of God that leads us there. And those new awarenesses is all about the second step for me. It says, they talk about the sexual conduct that a lot of us don't have very well when we get here. It says, to some, about sex, we honestly play for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for strength to do the right thing. If you read that part in the big book, it says, we treat sex as we would any other problem. Bill Wilson was very smart. He figured he'd get our attention when he talked about sex. Do you know that same prayer works for everything else in my life? In any situation that I'm in, if I ask God for the right ideal, for guidance in each situation, he's going to show up and give me what I need. Not what I want all the time, but definitely what I need. And then it says on page 72, this requires action on our part, which once we complete it will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects. We're only on step five. Carefully reviewing the first five proposals, when we get done, we go back home and we do these prayers again. We look at the first five steps. We ask if we admitted anything for we're building an arch, we're building a church, we shall walk a free man at last. We thank God from the bottom of our heart for we know him better. And now we're at step six. If we cling to something we don't want to let go of, we ask God for the willingness to let go of it. We've gone through one, two, three, four, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, we went through 20 prayers already. Now I didn't know there was 20 prayers in the first 70 pages of the big one. The only prayer I knew about was the third step prayer because that's the one I was told to keep saying. But there were 19 others that I didn't even know. And it says if we don't have the will for this we keep asking until it comes. That's all my sixth step. Now we get to the seventh step prayer. The seventh step prayer to me is a reconfirmation of the sixth step, of the third step. The third step says I ask God to relieve me of my, to build with me and do with me as he will. To relieve me of the bondage of self. In the seventh step I'm asking God I'm asking him more specifically exactly what I want him to remove. Those defects of character that block me from him and my fellows. So now I'm reinforcing the commitment I made in step three with step seven. That's the way I look at it. That's as George sees it not as the literature says it. That's my own opinion and that's how it's worked for me because that's what the seventh step has done for me. It's given me the ability to recommit a third step to the third step and I don't like saying prayers over and over the same thing constantly. So as I went along as I do with my sponsees and as I was taught to do I write my own. They may not be formal prayers but if I say the same words over and over again they're kind of just words. They're not from my heart and a prayer for me is about my heart. It's not about my words. It's not about the position. It's about the petition. How honestly am I asking God in? How much of a prayer how much do I want him to change my behaviors? How willing am I to go to any length? The things that I was asked when I first got here. So when we talk about humility there's a whole lot of things I like to talk about. It says for without some degree of humility no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all AAs have found too that unless they develop much more of this precious quality that they then may be required just for sobriety they still have a much chance of becoming truly happy. Seven step said to me real easy do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I said I want to be right. My sponsor used to say stay miserable and walk away from it because I was still stuck in six. I couldn't get to seven. And when I wanted to be right I learned that there was a new surrender to a new willingness that led me to a new happiness between six and seven. Last week I talked about the house I built between step six and seven because on any given day I'm there. Every day that I've been in sobriety I'm always in six and seven. No matter what else is going on and then I've got to get back to one to re-surrender whatever it is that is my floor of character that is blocking me from God and from you. That's very important to me to do on a regular basis. And it says without this degree of humility we cannot live to much useful purpose or in adversity be able to sermon the faith to meet any emergency. In step four it says something that we now can meet serenity with the calamities. That's one of the greatest lines that I know in the big book because there's no adversity that has come to me that has been that overpowering that I have flipped out on another human being and behaved the way I used to because the grace of God has given me the ability to have a little bit more serenity a little bit more clarity and a lot more love for my fellow man. We talk about love and tolerance being the most important thing in the world. Being our code. Giving rather than getting becomes our guiding principle. Getting that stuff from my head to my heart is a journey. And that's the journey I need to take between six and seven. It says humility is a word and as an idea has a very bad time in the world. Not only is it the idea misunderstood the word itself is intensely disliked. Many people do not have a nodding acquaintance what humility is is a way of life. There's a book called The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis. It was required reading for A.A.ers from Dr. Bob for his sponsees. There's the Father Lawrence. There's a whole lot of religious books that talk about spiritual ways of living. There's a guy by the name of Thomas Keating who talks about centering prayer who's one of my favorites who talks about thoughts are okay to have in meditation. I mean everybody said get your mind blank. I couldn't do that no matter how much I tried. And somebody turned me on or introduced me to this fellow by the name of Keating and Keating has a way of saying what you do is you sit on the bank and watch the boats go by and don't jump into them. Now these are all not A.A. things but these were all tools and it says we look to see where religious people are right and what we can use to enhance our recovery. And it's not a medical thing. It's a psychological religious. I need those people. I need them to help me get a clarity and a better understanding of who I am so I can become that person that I really want to be deep down that's trying to break out. That's been trying to break out for years and years. That I've locked in a cage that I would not let out and I've warped his perception for many years. So the theory seems to be that once everybody's primary instincts are satisfied there won't be much to quarrel about. The word will in turn will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on culture and character. And if it comes to culture and character I'm a character. I'm not interested in culture. Character building will always lose out to culture. It's always the money property and prestige that's going to divert me. I have a sixth tradition that has taught me that. So I have to be real careful. I have to stay right size with that because when it comes to me I'm not going to be being okay with who I am. I always want to be something I'm not. At least when I walked in here that's who I was. Today I'm very happy in my own skin and the sixth and seventh step is where I learn to get comfortable in who I am and what I do. One of the greatest things that I've learned since I've been here is my job is not who I am it's what I do. I learned that in my sixth and seventh step. Little simple things like keeping balance those were not things I knew how to do. I knew how to do when I got here and it was the guidance and love of the people in this fellowship that worked with me long enough and loved me strong enough that I wanted to emulate what they were. We're sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by the formula by this formula than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige and romance. When we seem to be succeeding we drank to drink. We dreamed dreams of even greater dreams. When we were frustrated even in part we drank for oblivion. We never was there enough of what we thought we wanted. You know I used to say if only people behaved the way I wanted one of the greatest things was when people behaved the way I wanted I automatically wanted them to behave a different way again. I was never happy with the change they made. So I was never happy. Today people think that people are going to behave exactly the way they are where they are and that's where they're supposed to be. And I'm happy if that's where they are. I don't have to change them anymore. I don't have to control them. I don't have to manipulate. What a gift that was. And you know what? People don't have to do that for me either anymore. People used to tell me exactly what to do. I had an ex wife. I always tell the story of taking out the garbage. As a young kid my mother used to say take out the garbage. As I got up, got a little older I had a girlfriend. She taught me how to take out the garbage. I was a young kid my mother used to say take out the garbage. She taught me how to take out the garbage. I got married I had a wife that told me to take out the garbage. I had a second wife because I'm a good alcoholic. She taught me to take out the garbage. And that second wife one day says let's go shopping and I blow up all over the place yelling and screaming about her. She has no idea what it's about. It had nothing to do with going shopping. It had everything to do with taking out the garbage. But that's me. That's that misdirection that I always did. That's that manipulation and the diversion. That's my character deflection. The flaws that I carry into this seventh step. We had lacked the perspective to see that character building and spiritual values had to come first. On page 127 it says to us that for us spiritual well-being always preceded material not the other way around. I had that so backwards. If I had the nice job the nice girl the nice house I'd be okay. You know what? When I had those things I wasn't okay. I had it all wrong. I had it all wrong. I had it all wrong when I got here. And I didn't know how to get it right. Quite characteristically we'd gone all out in confusing the ends with the means. I had all these things and I was empty. Spiritually empty. Bankrupt in every way possible. I came in here. I made a surrender to a process I didn't think was going to work for me to people I didn't believe I liked. And like I always say and I joke about this a lot today I'm one of those people that came in here became one of those people I didn't like when I got here. And I'm one of those people when I got here. You know that's really what I became. And I'm really grateful that happened because that metamorphosis and that's the metamorphosis of Alcoholics Anonymous and that's the metamorphosis that takes place in Step 6 and 7. Once I get a grip on where I really am with that desire to become something better I get to see a whole different me and you know what I can't change any of it. I still need you people and God to guide me. See I cannot it's not George removes these defects of character or my sponsor or my friend or my support group it's that God removes these defects of character and brings me to a better place so I can be a better human being. It says true most of us thought that good character is desirable but it was also obvious that good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self satisfied. Here we go. Here I am selfish and self centered. I'll have good character what am I going to get out of it? What's in it for me? What's the payoff? There's always had to be a payoff and I learned by staying here long enough the payoff is I don't drink and I have a much better perspective on people around me and a much more loving understanding of what life's about which I didn't have when I got here. It tells us a little further on we never thought of making honesty, tolerance and true love of man and God the daily basis of our living. That's a big heavy statement. Never thought of making honesty, tolerance and true love of man and God. Big Book says our very lives is the next problem drinkers depend on our constant thought of others and how we can meet their needs. Not our needs their needs. That's being of service. Love and service. Dr. Bob talks about that. Practice the seven steps love and service. That's how I practice my seven steps. I show up in places I don't want to I do things I don't want to do I do things I don't want to do I do things I don't want to do I don't really care about or I'd like to do I'd rather be sitting home especially on a night like this not in here sharing anything with anybody because I don't feel good it doesn't matter how I feel. What I'm here to do is give back what was so freely given to me that's what I was taught to do. I don't know if that's a humble act but it's an act that I have to do if I want to stay sober. It's vital that I work with others if I want permanent sobriety. That to me is what I was taught. It tells me a little of what I was taught and it tells me a little of a whole lifetime geared to self-centeredness. Now the reason I don't want to come out is because I'm selfish and self-centered. I want what I want when I want it. I want to do it the way I want to do it. You guys don't understand I'm different I'm unique I'm whatever it is those things those flaws that keep going on through my head that tells me you don't understand. Yeah but. Yeah but. My sponsor used to ask me if I was a motorboat yeah but, yeah but, yeah but. Every time he says yeah but you don't understand yeah but. Stop being a motorboat. Say you don't know. That was a hard one for me. So you know those were very painful things that I went through getting between six and six steps seven. And it tells us that I being a selfless being a selfless human being is not something I'm comfortable with. It's not something I'm used to. I came in here and the way I got to doing that because this is where prayer and that prayer without action is just fooling yourself. The way that I got to that my sponsor put me at the back door or the front door and said say hello to everybody coming in. Go over there and make coffee. Fold the chairs. He was really good. He used to have a chair in the old old bottom line where he wrote my name on the bottom of it and every day he'd move it somewhere and I had to come in early to go find it so I knew where I was sitting for that day. But he got me there early and when he got me there early he said now that you're here why don't you make some coffee. Why don't you go say hello to that guy. He's got a week less than you. And that's how I started getting acting my way into good thinking. And that's what the seven step does for me. It keeps me acting my way to good thinking. And it tells us the lack of anchorage to any permanent values this blindness to the true purpose in our lives produced another bad result for as long as we were convinced that we can live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence should just that long was a working faith and a higher power impossible. When I surrendered my way of thinking to the power of the divine I was able to do to the process of a sponsor the steps and this fellowship I started getting a relationship with God. And when I got to that six step when I finished my fifth step I walked into a meeting after it and somebody said to me welcome to AA. You know I know what that means today. Because that's when I first became a real member of this fellowship. That's when I knew I belonged here. That's when I was not apart from you guys anymore. That's when I wanted to become a better human being. That's when I wanted to become a better person. So if you're new stick around get through that fourth and fifth step because once you do that they talk about the fourth dimension of existence that we never dreamed possible. I've been rocketed to that place. With all the problems that I have with my health with my ex-wife with where I'm living or whatever's going on God has been good to me. We were sharing a couple of stories about that before the meeting. The first thing that I wanted to say is that I'm not a Christian but you are. The basic ingredient of all humility the desire to seek and do God's will was missing. As long as I am running on self-will then there's no God in my life and there's probably no permanent sobriety in my life. The book says we've recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. I was very hopeless and helpless when I got here. It was you people that gave me hope. It was you people that took the helplessness and gave me a reason to live. I had no reason to live when I got here. I don't know about how anybody else felt, but I know how I felt, and it was the love of the fellowship that brought me around. You breathed a new life into me. You gave me a second chance to live, and I'm forever grateful for that. It says, for the purpose of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations. Biggest humiliation I have, I shared about walking out of a meeting and being served papers to give my children up. I've carried that pain for many years. I gave them up because it was the right thing to do. Probably the greatest act of love that I could have ever done. I was angry for a year after I did that, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I did it in spite of how I felt because it was the right thing to do. God has, we'll talk about that in a later step, has restored that to me because of my willingness to let go. There's an old story, if you catch a butterfly and you set it free, if it returns, it's the way it's supposed to be. I'm a firm believer in that little story. Thank you. I'm saying, there's lots of butterflies in here you got to let go. You really got to let go and God will take them on their journey. It was only at the end of a long road marked by successive defeats and humiliations that the final crushing of our self-will, we began to feel humility is something more than a condition of groveling despair. It's something I wanted after a while. You know, there's the story of the, and I always, I don't tell jokes often. But this is one that I like. There's the story of the great guy who turns around and sends his sponsee to the Himalayas to go speak to the smartest man in the world. And the sponsee goes up there to the Himalayas and he yells up to this Buddhist monk that's on top of the mountain. He says, my sponsor sent me to you. He says, you're the smartest man in the world. He says, I have some questions for you. And the monk turns around and says, yes, what are your questions? He says, how did you get here? How did you become the smartest man in the world? He says, well, I had all the right answers. He said, how did you get all the right answers? He says, by making all the wrong choices. My sixth step was all the wrong choices. I got a lot of wisdom from those mistakes. In literature it says our defects become our assets. All right. And I know this is a lovely step. I want to talk about the things we gain. Because I know I can go on for another hour. Another two hours on this step. And it's not because I want to be grandiose. It's because there's so much information packed into 12 and 12. And in our literature, even though it's six lines, it's probably one of the biggest steps we take. We come in to seventh step with action. We get admittance, awareness. We get some assets. We make amends. We talk about amends in the seventh step already. Admissions and acceptance. And we're achieving. We're practicing brotherhood already. Because now we want to be at one with God and our fellows. We learn balance. We get a belief system. We care. We get contentment. We get confidence. We learn about companionship. We get to be able to cope and stay calm at the same time. We get some clarity. And we get some compassion, consideration. We learn about confession. We get some conviction and counsel. And we learn about change and character building. We get decency. We learn about God dependence. We get discipline. We get direction. We get to have discussion. We deflate our ego. Ego puncturing. What a great gift that is in step seven. We learn to be effective. We learn freedom and faith. We become fearless. We get the facts, which is truth. We get forgiving. We get God. We get grace. We get gratitude. We get honesty. We get happy. We get help. We get hope. We learn more about our higher power. We get humility, integrity, insight. We get to learn more about our inventory. We get just. We learn about good judgment. We get knowledge. We get kind. We do a lot of work. We get liberation. We learn to listen. We learn about love. We get morality. We learn more about meditation. We get openminded. We get objective. We learn about obedience. Two words I didn't like when I got here was discipline and obedience. Seventh step is all about discipline and obedience. So is the tenth. We get purposeful. We get progress. Spiritual progress. We get patience. We get protection. We get peace of mind. We get a perspective. We get to practice. We learn about principles. We get a purpose. We learn more about prayer. We get practical. We get peace. We learn about quiet time. We get quiet. We get quality. We get reflection. We get recognition. We get restitution. We get relief. We get real. We get responsible. We get reassurance. We get to get some seeking going. We get security. We learn about sacrifice. We learn about spiritual values. We get self-discipline, straight thinking, sincerity, strength, spirituality, service, selfless, serenity, sanity. We learn about stock taking. We learn about tolerance. We learn about being thorough. We get trustworthy. We get useful. We get understanding. We get our virtues. Virtues. Something I didn't know what they were. We get values. We get willingness. And most of all, we get affirmative action. That's when we start doing what's right. What's right for me may not be right for anybody else in this room. We get a morality that's our own. And the seventh step is one of the greatest steps. And it's the seventh step. It's a step that allows for me to break outside of that cage that had me locked up called self-will. That is one of the gifts that I got working at the seventh step. I was told first I work the step. Then I apply the step. And now, by God's grace, I get to live this step. And that's the person I've become. I am comfortable in my own skin. I was not when I first got here. The seventh step gave me that comfortable zone. We're going to talk about getting uncomfortable next week. And step eight about defective relationships. Thanks for letting me share. According to our seventh tradition, we are self-employed through our own contributions. And the second basket being passed is because this group supports prison coffee. Because we, yeah. And the meeting is now ours. So raise your hand and try to limit your sharing to two minutes. Everyone who wants to share gets a chance to do so. I could have went another ten minutes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .