Howard E. Found the Fourth Dimension by Following the Big Book Sequence

this evening. Take it away. Thank you, Catherine. Thank everybody who showed up here to support me. Special acknowledgement here to Kathy, who's over there in the corner. I love you, sweetheart. It's good to be here. My name is Howard Eber. I see her, I forget everything. My name is Howard Eber. I am an alcoholic. I picked this, I've always been fascinated by some of the things that we say in these rooms and we just kind of take it for granted and don't really put much thought into what does it mean? Why are we saying it? Well, let me just kind to give a background here, and I believe that there are three kinds of literature. There's fiction, nonfiction, and there's reference material, text material. Fiction is just what it says, fictitious work, science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy. Nonfiction is true stories histories biographies like i said true stories and then there are textbooks reference books textbooks are designed to teach us something a textbook is designed to convey information from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the student through the written word and when you think about that it is critically important that we understand the meaning of the words that the author or the teacher has chosen. If we are not clear, if we're not certain on what those terms mean we are going to get the wrong impressions we're not going to get the right answers and the other thing about a textbook is it must be read sequentially this is not a book where you can go to chapter 10 and three and two uh you can't walk into a first grade math class and have a teacher hand you a book for mathematics and say turn to page uh chapter four on long division and tomorrow we want you to have answered all of the questions in there they're not chances are they're not going to be able to do that because chapter one is on addition how to add and chapter two is subtraction which is the reversal of addition chapter three is multiplication which is just a higher level of addition and then if you have gone through those three chapters you're ready to approach chapter four which is long division that doesn't by any means it mean that you are ready for it but technically you've done the backup you've done the background material and make no estate mistake about it our book is absolutely a textbook it conveys a certain process and the process is the goal is change that's what this book is meant to do it to accomplish a personality change a complete psychic change psychic means in our way of thinking so when it's being taught we have to bear in mind it's being taught in a certain order and to try and follow it in that order so having said that reading the material on page 83 and 84 which we very often refer to as the ninth step promises and it's taken a lot of years to get people to say ninth step for years it would drive me crazy because people would say let's read the promises as if they're the only promises well baby steps we're now at least calling them the ninth step promises but as far as i'm concerned they're not promises at all they're observations they're telling me of what my life is like having joined this this this spirit of the fellowship we've entered the world of the spirit we're in this fourth dimension but going back when we take that out of context and read it at the beginning or end of a meaning a meeting it means something entirely different than what it means when we read it after having done the first one hunt done the 1st 82 pages of work it comes as a sequence after 82. When we tear it out of the book, it means something else. And for years I heard it read at meetings and I thought, gee, if I just put a buck in the basket and I show up here for an hour or so each week, I'll have those things? Economic freedom? Somebody's going to somehow pay my bills i'm going to lose my fear of of people and uh hell yeah i'll put two bucks in the basket for that if you can guarantee me that but that's what i thought and the fact that at the same meeting we can read how it works a great example of how no one pays attention to that is think of how many times you're at a discussion meeting where they read that at the beginning of the meeting and during the meeting two or three people throw in during their share i don't know how it works i just know it does well if you were listening you'd know howit works and if you put the two together and nobody ever did that either nobody ever told me these things these things we're calling these miracles these promises they don't just happen You just don't walk in here and get handed those things. They happen as the result of doing the work that we just explained and outlined in how it works. Would it kill us to add a couple of sentences of connective tissue between those two things so we can let people know that one thing is definitely contingent and based on the other, that one without the other is just an amusing list of things? It doesn't mean anything. So what I want to do is by the time I have gotten through my ninth step, certain things have happened in my life and I'm going to start to put up a couple of things to share here. And any of the things I do put up, any of these screenshots, if you want copies of it just after the meeting, send an email to thebigbookstudyataol.com. It's what I have right here next to my name, thebig book study at aol. com and ask for the bedevilments and promises information and I'll send it to you. But here's the point. If I have done the work of the first nine steps, I've noticed certain things. I've gotten right spiritually with God at steps one, two, and three get me right with God. I get the right order of things. I thought for 24 years in recovery, God was my errand boy. I was supposed to wake up every morning, get on my knees and tell God the things I need him to do to recite the shopping list, and at the end of the day, I still had a copy of my list. I don't know what he did with his. I think he loses it every day because at the End of the Day when I go through my list, God, what are you thinking? Because none of this stuff is getting done. But I'm a fair, open guy. We'll try again tomorrow morning. So I give him his shopping list tomorrow, and for 24 years we had that relationship that God was my errand boy, and I was always disappointed that nothing was getting done. Well, thank God for the chapter we agnostics because it taught me that I didn't have to do that. But I got right in the first of our three dimensions spiritually. In the first three steps, I recognized that I am not here to give orders. I am here to take orders, That my job is to serve, to try and do as God would have me do, not to tell him what I would have him do. So I get right in the first three steps. In the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh step, I get write in the mental dimension. I get writ up here. I got straight in my thinking. And as a result of working steps eight and nine, I got write with you, with the world and everything in it i've made peace for perhaps perhaps the first time in my life after working these steps i am healthy spiritually mentally and physically i am in harmony in those first three basic dimensions of life and i know there are some people who think there are two dimensions and i'm glad to debate that anytime anywhere but this isn't the time or of the place for it. I believe, and the book is very, to me, very clear, there are three basic dimensions of life, the spiritual, the mental, andthe physical. And if I've worked those steps and I am in harmony spiritually, mentally, and physically, I am functioning in what Bill calls the fourth dimension of existence, which is the harmonious blend of the spiritual the mental and the physical. And having done a lot of work to get here, I'm not ready to go backwards. So Bill has given me a roadmap, a prescription for continued spiritual growth, for relapse prevention in the 10th, 11th, and 12th step. And we don't really have that much time to get into it today, but I just wanted to kind of set the stage here for what happens after the ninth step when we get to page 83 and 89, these are the things that will have transpired in our life. But let me get rid of this for a moment and go back. I think that by the time I said as we get three steps, our life has changed profoundly, profoundly. These are not subtle adjustments in our lives. Things have changed profoundly. And in order for me to get an idea, a good idea of just how much my life has changed, I need a starting point. I need to control point against which I can plot my progress. And that point, it seems to be to me is very clearly outlined on the top of page 51. And I hope you have your book here because we may go through you'll need the book to go through this on page 51 uh bill states that at and where we are let's perspective is always important to me where we are in context we have taken the first two steps by the time we get to page 51 we've taken those first two steps we have not taken the third step yet and we certainly haven't implemented our plan of action where we are is after the first two steps, we've put the plug in the jug and we're looking at our life. Well, I'm one of those people who thought that all I had to do was stop drinking, to stop using and everything would automatically fall into place. That I didn't have to do that much more And Bill knew that. Bill knew that people like us, we don't have drinking problems. We certainly don't by the time we get to page 51. We have sobriety problems that once the drink is removed and it says on top of page 51 leaving aside the drink question, so we put it aside, we're not worried about drinking right now they tell why life is so unsatisfactory. I'm going to read you something from A New Pair of Glasses, and if you don't have this book, shame on you. Go out and get it. I think aside from the big book, this is one of the most important books that we have, Chuck Chamberlain's Pair Glasses. But he addresses at the beginning of this book exactly what I'm talking about. He says, The most baffling characteristic of alcoholism, And if you have the book, I'm reading the preface, Roman numeral page 8. I know certain people, maybe my friend Bert is here, who always wants to know the page number. Well, it's page, Roman numerals 8. If you live in the Naugatuck Valley, that's V-A-I-I. We didn't learn that much in the valley. But in any case, he says, the most baffling question about characteristic of alcoholism, both to the alcoholic and to those who must deal with them is the paradox in which the conflict of sober reality eventually becomes completely untenable leading to the return to alcohol and drugs for relief. Scientists who study alcoholics have stated that the patient may get to the point in sobriety where he actually must drink to preserve his sanity. How's that? That we get to the point where we're not drinking, but we haven't really arrived at a sufficient substitute, and he's suggesting that we actually have to drink to preserve our sanity because we don't have anything else to keep us sane. So what I want to do is we'll turn over a page from there to page 53, where Bill outlines. Bill tells us this is what our life is like. He makes a statement that life is unsatisfactory after drinking. So he lays out what he calls, what I call, symptoms of a spiritual malady. I know a lot of people call it the bedevilments. To me, they are maladies, traits of untreated alcoholism They're indications of unmanageability Call it what you will The easiest way to identify it is the bedevilments And we're right in the middle of the page The paragraph that begins with We had to ask ourselves And I'm going to put this up on the screen Because I'm also going to ask you To number these things as we get through it uh if i can find it here um give me a second and we're looking for this okay all right you can't see that yet so i'm going to have to re-put it re-insert it here okay now what i've done here besides number these bedevilments is i've broken them down into the three dimensions that they are affecting. But if we go through it, the paragraph begins with we have to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view. Here are the bedevilments. Here is what our life looks like on page 53 with only the first two steps in our pocket, in a sense. we are still sick in the physical dimension we are having trouble with personal relationships number two we couldn't control our emotional natures that's emotional instability we're talking about the mental dimension here three we were a prey to depression misery and depression four we couldn't make a living and five we had a feeling of uselessness and i'm hoping you're numbering these things as we go through them in the book because you'll need that in a moment if you don't just ask me for copies of this stuff and then the last three he says number six we were full of fear of course we're full of here so we have seven we were unhappy eight we couldnít seem to be of real help to other people. So all of these things deal with the various dimensions and we're going to come back to this in a little while because the way we get better and the way we regress have a lot of similarities but the way мы get better is by going through these things. So let me get this out of the way and there's something else I like to point out that The bedevilments don't end with what I just said, that we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. There's a question that Bill asks after that that I think is critical that we answer before we go past the end of that paragraph. And he says, was not a basic solution of these bedevillments more important than, and fill in the blank after that. whatever your distraction of choice is fill it in bill says whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight that's what interested him how about was it more important than catching up on game of thrones marathon watching uh breaking bad catching up on any netflix series uh spending two three hours a night on facebook spending three hours are not going to zoom meetings when you should be doing your fourth step i know that's not the most popular statement to make but it is a question of balance if you're hiding in a meeting and you're not doing your four-step work you're producing what you should do so in any case he's just saying whatever your distraction of of your choice is it'll be here When you finish this work, it'll be here. If you've paid too much attention to that work, the window of opportunity that you have is closing quickly. And whether you realize it or not, we all have a window of opportunity in the beginning and that window opportunity is when is the obsession going to return because it will guarantee that obsession to use will come back unless we do something about our thinking process because it's our thinking process that leads us to drink and if we haven't changed our thinking process the action of drinking is going to come back so we have a limited amount of time here nobody knows when that's going to happen when that window is going to slam shut so my suggestion is get busy fast get busy stay busy get other people busy but those are our uh um sorry our uh bedevilments um what i want to do is now go back to the promises on page 83. so on the bottom of page 83 we're going to number these promises observations i keep calling them promises they're not and please don't let the randomness of these numbers throw you it'll make sense in a couple of minutes but we're We're going to number them, but they're going to be out of order for the time being. And again, I just want to point out that what we're doing here on 83 and 84 is we are looking at what our life is like after doing the 30 pages of work between page 52 and 82. There's 30 pages of work there, probably the most critical pages of work in the book. It's only a tiny segment, but it contains the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth step. And if we have done those steps and we haven't changed, we missed something. We better get back quickly and do it again. Sit down with your sponsor and figure out what you missed. But this is what our life should look like in the fourth dimension. we have entered the world of the spirit we're in this little bus driving through the fourth dimension and we're looking out the windows and we are noticing certain things about our life and this is what we are noticing bottom of the page if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through and incidentally this phase of our développement is the amends phase we are now talking about the whole process because if we're halfway through the whole process, that's step six. Basic math taught me that. Twelve divided by two is six. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about being more than halfway through The Work in the Eighth and the Ninth Step. And remember, Bill says, we commence this way of living, 10, 11, and 12, as we clean up the past eight and nine so we've done a lot of work we're doing more work here's what we're noticing first one number seven we were going to know a new freedom and a new happiness we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it that's all number seven number two we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace does that promise me serenety and peace no it doesn't does it it promises me that i will know serenady and i will know piece i will understand serenade and i won't know peace i have friends and relatives in my life that i could say i know about them i understand those people, but they're not with me 24 and 7. So peace and serenity is not going to be with us 24 and 7. It'll be there as much as we want it to be, but the point of the promise is we have experienced it. I never did before. Number eight, no matter how far down the scale we've gone, we'll see how our experience can benefit others number five that feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear I've underlined will disappear because that's an important point number one we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self-seeking will slip away It doesn't say it'll vanish. It doesn'T say it will evaporate. It says it will slip away. And the point of slipping away means it can slip right back in too. That's why we have 10, 11 and 12 to keep these things current. Okay, continuing. Number three, our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Number four, fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. Does that promise me economic security? No, it does not. It promised me that I will be free of the fear of economic insecurity, of economic security, that god will take care of me that if i do the right thing and i live my life the right way god will provide god will taking care of these things um six we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us and finally we will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves what a wonderful wonderful feeling i'm going to put up another screen here so you can tie these two things together. Now let me get it so you can see it. For some reason, we're always one step away from that. Here's the other handout. We're comparing the bedevilments to these promises. So on the left-hand side of the page, let's say as we approach after we have the second step as we approached step three we're having trouble with personal relationships as we approach steps 10 11 and 12 after we've finished or halfway through the eighth and the ninth step we'll notice that we are losing interest in selfish things and gaining interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Self-Seeking, I no longer get enjoyment and pleasure out of the suffering of other people. I used to love to cause other people misery. That's what self-seaking was to me. I'm doing something to hurt you so I could feel better. I no long get any satisfaction from that. Number two, we couldn't control our emotional natures And after step eight, we will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. Three, we were a prey to depression, misery and depression. And after working the eighth and the ninth step, our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Four, we couldn't make a living after doing the work. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. Number six, we are full of fear. after doing this work we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us we are we have replaced that fear with faith we've replaced the fear with courage we're not filled with fear we may experience it but we now have a process for dealing with it Seven, we were unhappy. As a result of doing this work, we're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Eight, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people and after doing this, work we realize that no matter how far down the scale we've gone we will see how our experience can benefit others and i'm not talking about that three in the morning bar stool solving the problems of the world benefiting others telling everybody how to solve all their problems drunk at three o'clock in the morning that's not what we're talking about we couldn't seem to be a real help to other people we'll see how our experience can benefit others. My phone actually rings from time to time where people seek out my advice, and it's the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. I spent most of my life trying to achieve some degree of legitimacy. Nobody ever paid attention. Now people actually ask me my opinion on things. I don't know how that stuff happens, but it happens as a result of doing this work um so let me just go back here briefly and wrap this up on page 64 bill makes a statement he says when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically now i mentioned before and i'm going to put this up again that when we quote got better we first dealt with the spiritual dimension right when we he says when we get when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and then physically so it starts with the spiritual dimension the way I know I'm starting to come apart spiritually the first warning sign I have is I start to have trouble with you people I start to have struggle with my personal relationships all of a sudden that criticism tendency is back I'm taking everybody's inventory I'm making jokes and taking people down in my head all over the place. I start to have trouble with personal relationships. First warning sign, because I got better spiritually, mentally, and physically, I will relapse physically, mentally and spiritually. I'll have trouble With my personal relationships and then I'm going to realize that I can no longer control my emotional natures I'm full of misery and depression and I couldn't make a living and so on and so forth and I just want to read one last thing just for the hell of it do I have about another two, three, four minutes yeah, okay I want to reading to you something that I always like to do for fun let me get it here for you I call it what alcohol did for me. What alcohol did for me when it was still my friend, before it turned against me. I'm going to go back to those days when I was younger when alcohol and drugs were my friends. This is the way alcohol used to make me feel. And let me blow it up a little bit because it may be hard to read. But whenever I took a drink of alcohol, I knew a new freedom and a new happiness. I'm taking these promises and applying them to our disease. Whenever I took a drink Of Alcohol, I didn't have regrets past nor wish to shut the door on it. Whenever I Took A Drink Of Alcohol I comprehend the word serenity and no peace. whenever I took a drink of alcohol no matter how far down the scale I'd gone I could see how my experience could benefit others that's the three o'clock in the morning corner of the bar philosophizing and solving the world's problems whenever I Took a Drink of Alcohol that feeling of uselessness and self-pity would disappear whenever I Take a Drink Of Alcohol I'd lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in my fellows. I love you, man. I'm buying a drink for everybody in the bar. I don't have a nickel in my pocket, but that's what I do. Whenever I took a drink of alcohol, self-seeking would slip away. Whenever i took a Drink of Alcohol, my whole attitude and outlook upon life would change. Whenever l took a Drink of Alcohol fear of people and of economic insecurity would leave me. Whenever I took a drink of alcohol, I would intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me. Hell, I had to have alcohol and drugs in my system to figure out all of the things that baffled me. It was a requirement. And whenever I took the drink of alcohol, I'd suddenly realize that alcohol was doing for me what I could not do for myself. Now think about that for a moment. No wonder we loved to drink and to get high. Whenever you find anything that does all of those things for you, wouldn't you become obsessed with using it over and over and again? I don't care if it's Hostess Twinkies. If Hostess Swinkies, I assume you guys have that in Great Britain, and Oreos, if those cookies would do for you what the alcohol did, we'd all become obsessed with eating them. So the good news here is we don't have to drink anymore. We have found that alcohol will give us everything, everything everything good that i'm sorry that the steps will give us everything good that alcohol used to give us that's the miracle of aa but unlike alcohol those first nine steps will never turn against me i'm never going to get arrested because of those nine steps I'm never going to get fired or divorced because of those first nine steps. I'm not going to be able to live my life the way I want to live it. I'm ever going to go sick and throw up because of that first nine step. I may feel like it from time to time, but it's not going to be the cause of my doing that. I came in here restless, irritable, discontented, filled with guilt and shame and remorse, and I'm no longer like that anymore. i have undergone a change in personality i have had a spiritual awakening as a result of doing this work as a результат of the growth of the 10th 11th and 12th step i don't ever have to relapse again you know sometimes when people relapse we ask the wrong questions we ask you stop talking to your sponsors you stop going to meetings i'll close with this i think we asked the wrong questions. The questions are threefold. One, how much time did you spend each day in prayer and meditation? Not much? Oh, okay. How much time Did you spend each day deepening and enriching your spiritual life through intensive work with others one on one? I'm sorry, what was that? No, none. Oh, Okay. How much time? Did you spent each day an inventory? Speak up? What was it? None? Oh okay. And guess what? You were bound to relapse. It was only a question of when. If we don't do those things on a daily basis, 10, 11, and 12, we are going to start having problems with personal relationships immediately. And it's a slippery slope from there on. Thank you for having me. God bless you all.