I Married My Psychiatrist Which Isn’t a Terribly Smart Thing to Do 🤣 – Mildred F.

Just saying to David, you know, they're two popular, if you will, workshops, one on spirituality, but also people want to hear about relationships, because many people find their relationships are in trouble, so I can understand they want to do that. But anyway, whoever's here are people who want to be here, so we'll continue. Let's just take a minute to turn within. We won't say a prayer. We said that at the beginning, but we'll turn within to the spirit of God within us and just to the silence. It's a beautiful thing to do. Thank you. Hopefully we'll get to step 11, and I'm going to talk a little bit about meditation and what it can do for you. See, I've a long time ago learned that I can't fix myself. I've a long time ago given up that idea that I know what the right way is, and that if I'm going to change, life is going to send you appropriate challenges. It certainly has me. None of this business, well, now, you know, I'm 34 years sober. I just, you know, cruise along every day, and everything's easy. I've got a big challenge in my life, just like some of you might. And I say again, if I want to meet it properly, meditation is the place to go. So I left off talking about where I had taken a drink at five. I come from a family that, my family isn't alcoholic, but my grandfather, my mother and father were Americans. And my grandfather... My grandfather died in a pool of his own blood, and there was no AA to stop that in the late 1890s. So on my father's side, there's alcoholism, too. And in our immediate family, I have a brother who was dying when I left home to go to the convent. And as it turns out, and I'll talk about that tomorrow in my talk, he got into AA and was sober 49. And he died. But I was absolutely addicted from that first drink. You know, some people slip into it more slowly. I had no defense against the first drink, right from the word go. So I don't have to tell you that I didn't grow. See, when you can make the bad stuff go away by taking a drink, you're not going to be trying to change and do the things. You're going to be trying to find out how you can live peacefully. So I went to the convent, as I told you before. I didn't go with ideas of piety and I'm going to become a spiritual. What I went for, as I told you, was I'm going to do this hard thing for God, and then God is going to do for me. That was the quid pro quo. And I can tell you, as I said, I came out of that place more sick when I left than when I had been there. I went in there drunk. I got a great education in there. I studied a lot of theology. I knew a lot of stuff. And that worked against me because I had a head full of stuff that was irrelevant. See, I believe. That God must be an experience. Intellectual stuff is not an experience. The intellect can become an avenue of awareness. So I can read a book or I can go to a talk and I can hear some things. But if I don't put it into practice, it's just information. And so when I came into AA later on, people thought I knew she's an ex-none. They assumed a spirituality in me that I didn't have. And so I came out of the convent. And the next 10 months were absolute disaster. I left the church. Do you mind pulling that door shut back there? Thank you. I think the next 10 months I could describe as, uh, the dance of the walking damned. And I left the church and I left the church, not because the church hadn't harmed me. I just realized at some point I didn't fit there. And so that brought me then to 1966 to Alcoholics Anonymous and five and a half years where I didn't drink, but I was, I was always stoned. And then I left Alcoholics Anonymous and, uh, I lost everything. I had married my psychiatrist, which isn't a terribly smart thing to do. He too was alcoholic. So, uh, you know, uh, he couldn't protect me. And, um, he started to drink again. We lost everything. And so by the time, um, 1973 came, I had no home. I, we had no money. Everything was gone. There wasn't something, you know, where we could say, well, there's money stashed away somewhere. We were alcoholic. So was he. And so we lived the way alcoholics do. And one day it all just came crashing down. I told you, I have a long history of psych wards, shock treatments, all kinds of things like that. Am I doing something to rattle this? Should I take that off? Okay. Um, the morning of May the 20th, see, we're talking about spirituality and how does God enter, how does God enter our lives? Well, he doesn't enter. He's never been away. God is the essence of our being. How does God learn? How does, how does God deal with us in such a way that we will let God express in us? That's the question. And so the morning of May the 20th, I'm in the psych ward and, uh, I'm, something had happened. And the nurse said to me, you know, she said she was trying to tell me what big trouble I was in. I weighed 85 pounds. I had teeth knocked out. My hair was straggly. This eye was purple and I had a big purple, whatever around. And, uh, she said, I said, I'm a woman of the streets. And she said, yes, you are. What are you going to do about it? I didn't know. So I went to back to my room. What are you going to do about this? And I knew that I was out of everything. Absolutely out of everything. If you had come to me and said, I have got a job for you and I'll pay you a half a million dollars a year. I'd have had to say, I can't take it. I was totally broken. And, um, so I decided I didn't know. I hadn't another idea in my head. So I decided I'm going to take my life. I'm done. My family didn't want me. They'd let me come home, but they wouldn't let me drink. I need to drink. I can't survive. And so, uh, people had said, stay away from us, your bad news. And, uh, so I, um, decided to take my life. I asked the nurse to bring my clothes. She went away to bring my clothes to get my clothes. I was going to leave because I knew how to take my life and I'd be gone in half an hour and I had no qualms about that. I was done. And, uh, do you mind closing that door at the back? And, uh, in that moment I had a spiritual experience. It was as if a giant. Hand reached into me. I was 40 years old and I had never taken a sober breath. If I could draw a drunk one, I'm not saying I was drunk every day, but that was my ambition. I drank all the time, any time. And I did anything I could. And, uh, in the midst of that, this is what happened. I can't tell you anything else because it's God's truth. It was something happened to me, reached into me. It felt like. And took the compulsion to drink. And I knew it would in a heartbeat done, done. And I knew that I didn't have to drink again. I knew it was, it was gone. I can't tell you how I knew my soul knew that I had been, it had been cleaned away. And I remember that morning because I also knew that I couldn't stay sober if I didn't change. And I didn't know how to change. I had. Uh, I just. Knew it. I knew from within what the deal was. And so, um, I said to whatever that thing was in my room, you got to send me somebody because I don't know how to live. See, I started drinking when I was five and I think at my whole development was arrested at five. I didn't know how to do relationship. I didn't know how to get along with people. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know how to get along. I didn't know how to get along with God. I didn't know anything. And I said, you'll have to send me somebody. And if you do, I will obey. And there was a rap on the door. As I stand here, a man stood there and he was the instrument who got me into the hospital, into Donwood, which was a hospital started by Dr. Bell for addicted people. And, uh, I was there 28 days and, uh, at the end of that time, they gave me enough money that I could get a room on Skid Row and I lived the first year of my life in sobriety on Skid Row. I did not believe in God. No, that's not right. I believed in God. The useless twit. I believed it. It was useless. That whole business of spirituality useless. And so I have to tell you, I lived the best way. i can describe it is i didn't suck up much oxygen i lived very small i put one foot ahead of the other i got a job sweeping floors and the compulsion was gone i had all my belongings in little plastic bag and little suitcase that was where my life had come to the ex-nun the well-educated woman the woman who comes from a family whose name is integrity and on and on and this is where i am i didn't fight it i didn't try to get out of it i just did what we had i had to do my husband the psychiatrist and surgeon he couldn't get past his qualifications he just couldn't he sat depressed so i went out and and i did what needed to be done and this is where discipline comes in this is where commitment comes in this is where ability sometimes to do what you don't want to do where you just say you can't do it where you just put one foot ahead of the other and that's what i did for six months hated aa i'm not going to you bunch of losers you didn't fix me see i think what you need to understand is that spiritual experiences are given for a very specific reason the spiritual experience i had removed the compulsion to drink very effectively it did not change my life see that's the god-given process that we have to go through through so that we'll change so that i will live different nobody can pour that in and that's why there's no instantaneous change if and i've seen it over and over if a miracle so-called is required you get it but it moves you to the next piece and that's what this did and after six months i can't do it for six months i can't do it for a while i can't even you know i think about that often there were days we had no food the only money i had was the money i made from sweeping the floor and i didn't ask anybody for anything i didn't try to manipulate anything the only thing i did was my old shtick the damn husband if he just got his act together see that's an old idea in me that if you changed i'd be okay if you changed and did what i need you to do then i'd be fine and there's never been a bigger lie on the planet and i found it out in those six months and one morning i went to donwood because they they had an aa meeting there and uh i didn't go for that not going to that bunch of losers and uh a man met me in the hall a chance meeting and his father met me in the hall a chance meeting and he said would you like to come to a meeting with me and he smiled and i said sure i didn't ask what meeting and it was a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and you know i don't remember much except that in the next three months people they didn't care that i was ugly they didn't care that i wasn't well I could hardly put two sentences together. That's how broken I was. And they just said, keep coming back. And then I chose a sponsor. She had blonde hair, gold earrings, and a white suit. Aren't those brilliant qualifications for a sponsor? Yet she told me one thing. She said that I needed to hear. She said, you can get well even if your husband doesn't. And she kept saying that. And then she'd complain about her husband. But she had given me the message I needed. That was her shtick. I heard what she said. And I kept going to those meetings. She got drunk. And two guys. And two guys in the group stepped up to the plate and said, Mildred, you are going to have to do the steps. And I did the steps the first time. And they told me what to do. They said, you come an hour and a half early. We'll be here. We'll read you the book. We'll tell you what to do. And that's exactly what happened. And the night before I went to do my fifth, I read over, as they told me to do, I did exactly what they said. I read over my fourth step. And the light bulb went on. I was 41 years old at this time. And I had not a clue that you were not my problem. And I saw it. You're the problem, Mildred. That was the gift of that series of doing the steps. And then I got another sponsor. And he did the steps. And he did the steps with me again. And it was quite a different experience. He didn't so much stress the spiritual. We did the steps. But, you know, and I can't go into it. But he taught me so many things about how to be an adult in this world. And that's a form of spirituality, too. Because I didn't know how to do many things. And then, for the next ten years, I made money. I'm a teacher. A high school teacher. But also, I started buying houses. And I made piles of money. And, you know, this was a really important thing for me. Because somewhere in my psyche, I believed that if I could have lots of money, I'd have power. And I could buy my way into happiness. And I could travel first class. And I could do this. Remember, I'm the girl who sat on the park bench for weeks. And panhandled. And slept with whoever to get enough booze so that I could, you know, jump off this world for a little while. And one day I sat in my fine house. And I said, this isn't it either. And I was 18 years sober. And my life started to unravel. Big time. And I can't go into all of it because I do want to go through some parts of the steps. But I realized at that time that no human power could fix what was inside me. What happened was, I would go to meetings. And I'd say to some of the old timers, See, spiritual growth doesn't stop because you've done the steps. You've got to keep growing. It's like, if you want to be a university professor, for example, and you want to stay on top of things, you've got to keep studying. You've got to keep writing papers. You've got to keep researching. You've got to keep growing. And I think it's the same with the spiritual life. And I know that now. I'd go to the older members and I'd say, I don't feel good. And they'd say, go to more meetings. And I did go. It didn't answer it. And then at 21 years, I decided to take my life. I just figured, one more time, I know the truth. The program works for you. Do you ever think that? Anybody ever have that idea? The program works for everybody else, but it doesn't for me. Yeah, it worked on the outside. I've got stuff and I've got money and I've got this and I've got that. But I don't feel okay. And one more time, I had a spiritual awakening. And I knew it was going to be okay. I just knew it was going to be okay. And I got out of bed the next morning and I put one foot ahead of the other for about three weeks. And then one day the phone rang and it was a Jesuit saying, would you like to come and give retreats? I've been excommunicated oftener than Carter's has pills. You want me to give retreats? Yes. And that started the process. And at that very first retreat, all of a sudden I started to cry. I don't cry. Maybe with men once in a while if there's a strategic advantage. I don't cry in front of women. And I bawled. And I heard myself say, and you know, I'm saying, never underestimate the power of grace. Because I heard myself saying, you know, I'm 20. I was at 22 years sober, 21 years sober. And I said, I don't have a friend in the world. I have lots of acquaintances but no friends. And it was as if God took the walls that separated me from you absolutely down. And I just stood there bawling. And I said, would some of you be willing? Would some of you be willing to have a cup of coffee with me? I'd like to see if I could become a friend. And that's where a whole new level of life started, you see. Because as long as I was stuck behind those walls, I couldn't grow. I need you to park your suitcase in front of me and bring up that anger. I need those experiences. I need the nurturing that you give me. I need to be able to nurture you. I need the dance of life. You see? We will get to the steps, but it's all about the steps. I took my shoes off. Here we go. See, this is stuff I didn't know. And I think Bill opens the door for this in Step 8 in the 12 and 12. Because you know that Bill didn't come onto the, into AA or start AA. He was depressed for 15 years. And later on he wrote about this. He said, we've had experiences in childhood that have twisted us, that have later discolored our personalities and altered our lives forever. He said, I learned. He told his spiritual director, I knew I needed to be number one to be safe. See, my shtick went like this. You have to fix my life. I can't do it. I'm just a little girl. Right back to being five, you see. And I think that the whole, the whole spiritual journey comes alive. Comes alive when you understand a couple of things. Certainly helped me. And one is that we come in this two-in-one package. We come with a body and we come with a soul. But where does childhood, what do we get in childhood? And this is not about blame Mama and Papa. They did the best they knew how to do. We as a race are growing. We're changing. We're getting some of this stuff. But I think it's fair to say that for most of us the emphasis was on the body. This is how you grow up. This is what you do. This is what you don't do. And then you'll be okay. We learned how to get the good stuff. I learned that a lie here or there, you know, flatter my father whether it was true or not, that got me a lot of good stuff. I learned how to avoid the bad stuff. I told lies and I cheated and I did whatever was necessary. And I had my plan for happiness. You change. You do what I want. I don't want much. You just do what I want. Cooperate with me. I'll be perfectly happy. And, you know, the tribe, our family, our, you know, our nationality, our whatever. Carolyn Mace talks about that. They don't want us to change. They want us to stay with this. And the spiritual journey is the diametric opposite. The spiritual journey says pay attention to who you are in your God-given identity. And that might mean sometimes that you have to venture forth. And take actions that a family doesn't agree with. See? That's what life is about. You know, I think that when we move forward spiritually, we don't necessarily move as a family. Isn't that true? You know, somebody starts this spiritual stuff and the rest of the family says, what the hell is going on there? All I wanted you to do was stop drinking. You have to get into this. I see that you relate to this. See? You have to go to these meetings and you have to meditate for God's sake. Make breakfast! So, sometimes, you know, that's why I think if you talk to people, that's one of the things we provide for each other, is support. And I think also what happens on this is that you find the people of like mind and like soul and like growth who can support you. You know, I have a teacher in California. I go see him because he supports me. He teaches me. He gives me ideas. He helps me to see what's happening in my spiritual growth. And it's fantastic. I need that because it's like a sponsor in AA. The sponsor in AA can, because they've walked the way before. See, and as far as our soul is concerned, how many of you were sat down by somebody when you were a little child and told, you know, you have a wonderful spirit living in you. It's a spirit that made the universe, that made you, and it's available to you all the time. I sat down with a young man the other day who came to see me. He's about 32. I call him young. When you're 74, 32 is young. And he said, not that I regret being 74. And I said that to him. I said, you know, the spirit of God lives in you. I said, you're beautiful inside. The goodness of God is in you. And he started to cry. He said, nobody ever told me that before. See? And so, that's not to blame. But once we know that, then we can start to radiate that energy. We can start to treat people like that. I don't have to set everybody down and say that to them. But when I meet you, I can deal with you like that. What in... Well, I'm going to leave that for now. See, Chuck gave me the diagram that I showed you at first. And as I started to think about that, yes, I believe we're all one. But one day in meditation, it came to me. There are different parts of our life. We live in a body. I always thought the body was alive. I don't believe that anymore. It's my space suit. I just put it on for a couple of years. And when I'm done with it, I'm going to take it off again. That's all. What the body does for me, it enables me to dance here. It enables me to experience life. Because otherwise, I could live up in my head, and I could be dead wrong about that. What's alive in me is this spirit. That's who I am. And so, why can't I live that way? Well, the book says it. You and I, if you're alcoholic, we have these... The body, if you put alcohol into it, we get what is known as an allergy which shows up as a craving. Well, case closed then. Just don't put the alcohol in. What's the problem? The book says the main problem, main problem, rests in the mind. And I'm using a translation, you know, my own version of it. I always thought the mind was the intellect. I don't believe that anymore. The mind is the inner world. The mind is all that stuff we learn, the old ideas. You're not good enough. You're a piece of garbage. You'll never amount to anything. And so on. All those nice ideas that we grow up with. And I think everybody has them to a certain extent. Our judgments, our memories, our values, our old thinking, our prejudices, the things we saw, the things we heard, the things we repressed. That's what that inner world is made of. And when I saw that, I said, bingo. That's what's going on here. See, and I didn't know that, that this had so much power. According to the prayer of Saint Francis, the life force is within me. And I'm telling you, and I'm to be a channel for the life. I'm to be a channel for good. I'm to be a channel for the good stuff. But if this life force that is within me and in you has to go through these old rusty pipes, we're not going to get a good result. And then what happens is we're very unhappy. It looks as if the problem is on the outside. And it never was on the outside. The way I see it today, my work is for that to heal. And that to me is what the steps are about. And when I started to see that, I started to heal. I changed in ways that I couldn't understand. Because those old messages that we carry, whatever they are, nobody loves me. That one will drive you to some nice events, I'll tell you. Because those old belief systems drive you. I never understood why I behaved in such insane ways. I never understood why I felt the way I did. I do now. This is the work. Getting rid of this. And again, if you don't believe me, take a look at what Bill says in step eight in the 12 and 12. That in childhood, we've had these experiences which are buried below the level of consciousness. And I think what happened, you know, because this isn't therapy. Don't get the idea that what I'm talking is therapy. Therapy, I've had hundreds of hours of that stuff. And that never got me sober. And it never kept me sober. And it never made me sane. Because no human power can fix this. See, these old ideas I'm talking about. Let's say you take this one. Nobody loves you. That's a lie. God loves you. See, the correction for it is not in the human world. Well, my dog loves me. Or my mother loves. That's all human stuff. That can pass away. We have to go to the truth of the matter. The life force is within me. And I'm all right now. You see, that's where the healing is. But anyway, we'll come back to that. Because there's a thing or two. You know, and when you read what Bill said, when Bill wrote this, don't forget, he was about 15 years sober. And he had, you know, as he says in another thing that he wrote on emotional sobriety, he said, what do we oldsters do? And then he goes on to describe the terror that he had experienced in relationship to his depression. And he says, what was the problem? He said it was his almost absolute dependence on people, places, and things. And he said, now he realized that and he was able to do the work. And as I said, in one of his letters to his spiritual director, Father Ed Dowling, he said it. He said, exactly this is how I got clued into it because I read this. He talked about his childhood and how his mother had always favored the sister and pushed him aside. And he said, I took hits in childhood. See? And he said, I made a decision. I better be number one. And it's interesting how his life evolved to the place then where he says, I now live in the bright sunshine. And that's why I think spirituality is so powerful. And no human power can fix that. You will be carried exactly to the places you need to be. I'm going to talk a little bit about the steps now. When I got to that place after that 21 years sober, my sponsor took me through the steps again. And I saw the steps quite different. You know, Scott Peck, in one of his books, he wrote, alcoholism is a blessing. He said, everybody is broken. Not just alcoholics. Everybody is broken. But he said, the blessing of alcoholism is that we are broken visibly. Visibly. They find us in the gutters. They find us under the table in the bars. They find us drunk in the convent. Not a good thing to find. They find us sleeping it off in the confessional of the church and interesting places like that. It breaks us visibly. And so he says, we are forced into community. And I think I would add, we are forced to find another way of seeing ourselves. Which is the way of enlightenment. Which is the way of seeing God within. So, I look at my alcoholism. I took another look with my sponsor. And what I saw was that I had spiraled downward. You know, at first, when I was five and took that drink, there were no problems. I just hid and lied and cheated and stole the booze. But as far as making big problems, that was to come later. And so we spiral down to that place where we can't go on. We reach the turning point. And the book says, we either accept spiritual help or we go to the bitter end. Have you ever seen somebody go to the bitter end? Anybody? So, so have I. You know, the people with the gunshot wounds and the people who sit in front of trains and the people who put a bag over their head and end it that way, it's not a pretty sight. And the people who just waste away. So we come to the turning point where either we will surrender and say, I don't know how to do this or we go to the bitter end. And that's between God and ourselves. And I don't think God ever loses because I think if, I just think life is an ongoing experience and if life is so painful, just my idea, if life is so painful that you have to get off and get out of it now, you get other opportunities somewhere down the road. I think what I learned when I did the steps, it seemed to me this way. I had chosen the wrong solution. See, pain is a wake-up call. Pain is the voice of God rapping, saying, you're out of harmony. You're not in harmony with me. You're going down the wrong road. Wake up. And what did alcohol do? It shut down the voice of God. You take a fire alarm, this is a good thing, isn't it? You shut down the fire alarm, you shut down the alarm, and if they catch you, you're going to jail because people could die because of that. We need the wake-up call. And so my solution for life was the wrong one. Drinking alcohol was kind of like abusing God's goodness to shut down the voice of God. And I think what I really learned from that, and I'd like to share that with you, is that I'm not the boss. The universe says, you know, we say we admit that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable. And I like to use that, those words, but I also like to think of it this way. I'm not the boss here. I can use alcohol to shut down my pain, but it's the wrong solution. I can jump off the 25th balcony and say, I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. I'm not the boss. The reason that the universe exposes I don't normalized me when using alcohol to annoy me and to famous people, is that I shouldn't go out and drink for down in bass when I couldn't drink iniler to claim I'm not the boss. The world is about liche I can stop ass-kissing, and I can stop feeling like a piece of crud. They're both taken care of. You're not the boss, I'm not the boss, but I believe there is one. And at this stage of the deal, I don't know who that is. I believe also I'm a guest here. I'm a contingent guest. See? And I should behave like a good guest. I know when I come to your home. I know how to behave like a guest. I don't behave, come in your house, and, you know, I'm there two minutes and say, you know, you need to move the furniture, and I don't like the painting there, and pictures are wrong, and I don't do that. So that to me now is the essence. I spend at least ten minutes every morning on step one. Just reviewing. I'm doing this. Because if I leave the house, and I learned it through alcohol, I'm not forgetting about that. But I learned I'm not the boss, and I'm not the boss over anybody that I meet today. So perhaps that's the way then I should learn to treat people. So the question then arises, is if I'm not the boss, who is? Who is? You know, it's like getting a new job, and you go into your new job, and you don't know who the boss is. Well, the chapter to the agnostics, I find extremely helpful in this business of talking to us about the boss. But I'm going to keep it real simple. I always say to, because, sponsees or other people, you can't live off my experience, and I can't live off your experience. You can listen to me and say, okay, I want to try that, or whatever. I can listen to you and say, okay, I learned that from you. And then, what do I apply? That's the big question. So often, you know, nowadays, I find, people come, and say, and they have no, no, they've never been to church, they just have, they have no anger about it, they just, it's irrelevant. And I just say to them, because by this time, they're probably sober a little while. And I say to them, how is that possible? See, I think of that morning, when I got sober, when the compulsion was absolutely, absolutely, in a heartbeat, taken away. You know, I am a colossal fool. There was nobody else in the room, if I say, there's nothing there, because I couldn't see it. Isn't that true? You know, you put your hand over a hot, steaming kettle, and you're blistered, you didn't see the steam, yet it blistered you. We don't see gravity, yet we don't jump off high buildings, unless we have a death wish. You've never seen gravity, I've never seen it, neither has anybody else, and yet we know it exists, by what it does. And I think, I look at it this way, there I was, hopeless and helpless, didn't have a clue, and that, there I was, and I had no more compulsion to drink. What's my conclusion? Some good power was there, because being without the compulsion was better than having the compulsion. And so, my conclusion is, that's a good power. And if I work at it, you know, and often people say, oh yeah, I can buy that. Because, you know, it's like Longfellow wrote a little poem, and it goes like this, I do not see the wind at all, or hold it in my hand, and yet I know the wind is there, because it swirls the sand. And God is very much like this, invisible as air, and yet we know and see his goodness, goodness everywhere. See, what got in my way of developing a relationship with the power was the old way that I saw the world. You were my problem, God was out there, and all that fed into it. Yeah, I think I'll move right on, because, does that make sense to you? There's so much, beautiful chapter to the agnostics. Like I just read that, and read that, and read that. It tells me what gets in the way. Give God a chance. Not the God that you think you're going to manipulate. Give God a chance. I don't know how to do this. Help me. Show me the way. It's amazing. Just look, if we had continued to believe that the earth was flat, if the Wright brothers had continued to believe that airplanes wouldn't fly, we wouldn't have a shuttle launch, would we? And look at how limited we are. And I think one of the most unlimiting things is to say, here God, I don't know who you are. I don't know. And I sure wouldn't stand up here and try to say, because I don't know. But I know, I have an experience of God. So, then we come to step three, which says, and I'm going to take that kind of from the book, being convinced. See, step three is a powerhouse, but you have to do it. Step three does not say, I have to be perfect. All step three says is, I have to make a decision. And if you are a business person, or professional, or you're a parent, you know you make decisions. How? You don't pick them out of the air. I used to do that drinking. But you make decisions based on the facts, don't you? You take a look at the facts. So, we have just had how it works, and the ABCs, which follow our description of the alcoholic, chapter two, the agnostic, and then it says, I can't fix myself, you can't fix me, but God could and would if he were sought. Right? And then it says, being convinced, comma, being convinced of what? Of that. I can't fix myself, you can't fix me, but God could and would. Being convinced, it says, that life, being convinced, we were now at step three. And then it goes on, it's so beautifully written. You know, that life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Isn't that the understatement of the year? And it goes on to explain. But there are a couple of things that, you know, I want to comment on. It tells me there what the root of the trouble is. It's not you. It's self-centeredness. That's the root of the trouble. And the tree grows out of the root. And if I don't want trouble, I've got to get rid of this self-centeredness. And he says, we made decisions based on self, which later put us in a position to be hurt. And I can tell you this, and you probably can agree with me. Every crisis I've ever had in my life, I can trace it back to a decision that I made years ago, which at the time, I didn't know better, but it was self-serving at the time. I want what I want, and I'm going to have it. And it has long arms. You see, but the beauty of that is, is that if you can see it, God uses that process. See, there's a reason why I don't have children. It was a decision I made. You know, sometimes now I think, oh, well, you know, my friends, they've all got grandkids, and so on and so on and so on. Why don't I have children? It was because of a selfish decision I made. But you know what? My sponsees always say, yeah, but where are your kids? We need you. And it's true. God never lets us sit. You know, it's like they showed me in Oregon, you know, where St. Helen erupted, and the ash fell and ruined many of the trees. As the time has gone on, beautiful foliage has come out of that. And I think whatever it is, where we have, through our self-centeredness, wrecked our lives, God brings beautiful things out of that if we allow that and work with the process. And then he says, our troubles are basically of our own making. That takes, you know, that saves me a lot of time. You're not the problem. I am. So I made the problems. I got to clean them up. And he says, we must be rid of this selfishness or it kills us. God makes that possible. And he goes on to say, and this is why I love this book so much. People say it's not well written. I don't agree. From the spirit, the way spiritual ideas are connected, it's magnificent. Because he says, we have to be rid of self-centeredness. And then he says, we couldn't reduce our self-centeredness. Much. By wishing or trying on our own. We had to have God's help. Later on in step six, he connects that. Because what we begin to see is that everything is of a piece. See, God shows up in our lives in ways. You think about this. See if you can't identify any problem that has ever showed up in my life, I'm sure is the wrong one. Not true? I could handle this, but I can't handle that. How did that come into my life? It's God helping me. It's God showing up, giving me an opportunity to change, to see where I am at fault, to see where I'm out of harmony with that great life force. And then he says, we have an opportunity to walk under that keystone of the new and triumphant arch to freedom. See, it's not freedom from trouble. It's freedom in God. God is the father, the director, and the principal. You know, I could talk about that. I just think then, step three is a decision. I hear people say sometimes, well, you know, I take it back. I don't. I made that decision that God's way is best. Do I always carry it out? No. And I bet you don't either. But I'm not so stupid as to think after everything that I've experienced that my way is really best and if I can just maneuver it, sometimes I'm asleep, sometimes I'm too tired, sometimes, you know, I just am careless and I do do my own will. But I'm not saying it's best. I know that I'm going to pay for it. And that's the perversity of the false self, isn't it? That you do your own will and you know as you're doing it there's going to be a consequence for this. And then the promises. And I won't go into them except on page 63. We always read the promises on page 84 or whatever that page is. Never read these beautiful promises. We have a new employer and he provides everything we needed provided we stay close to him and do his work well and on it goes. And finishes off, we were reborn. You don't get to rewind your life. God, wouldn't that be lovely? You know, we all have those experiences in our life that we say, oh, did I do that? Wouldn't it be nice if we could just rewind the tape recorder of life and it would be wiped out? Doesn't happen. But again, God uses that stuff to bring us to a total awareness, a total dependence on God. That's the beauty of it. And then the beautiful third step prayer, you know, which is part of what I do in the mornings. I get up and on my knees and I meditate on the first step. You're not the boss, Mildred. Don't go pushing people around. Don't go hating and criticizing and judging. They're in God's hands. Yours is to be supportive and loving. Who are you going to serve today? And so, and then the third step prayer. You know, here I am, God. I'm going out today to do your bidding. And I think we use it two ways because it says at the end of that, it'll have little effect if it isn't followed by getting out the pencil and paper and doing the fourth step. If I'm going to try and live God's way, I've got to know what's going on in my life that really needs changing. And if I do it on a daily basis, then of course it's what have I got to do today? This morning I did it and I said, I don't want to go and do this seminar. I haven't got anything to say. And I did the third step prayer. I offer myself to thee. Well, it turns out I agreed to have my name put on the program for this seminar. So go and do it. And if you fall on your face, you fall on your face. Go do your best. Help me, God. See? Now it says we launched on a course of vigorous action. Just one or two things I want to say about step four. I think step four is brilliant. I don't know about you. I've had hundreds of hours of therapy. And in all that therapy, I could give you all kinds of gobbledygook about what they did and how it interacted with me and now I'm this way. Yes, now, you know, we're going to, and here, I'm still, I'm still the I-cell on the podium, not reconnected. What's the problem? The problem is I'm the I-cell on the podium saying you're all to blame that I don't feel good. No, they're not to blame. I have got to wake up and be reconnected to, and I've never been really not connected. But I've got to wake up. What happens through the process of being asleep, I blame you. And out of that comes my hatred. Out of that came my rage. Out of that came my fear. Out of that came the despair. And out of it came all the behaviors that were so shocking. All the behaviors that were geared to manipulate, to manipulating you and getting my way. So we've got three areas. I can tell you, if you do those, and I'm sure you know this, if you do your fourth step and do those three areas, you're going to know yourself better than you want to know yourself. You know, the last time I did the fourth step as part of a process, and I don't think we should do the fourth, I don't ever do the fourth step, without going through one, two, three, and then do four. And it just seemed to me, I had such a clear vision of what it is that I need to change, what I need to do, so that God can change me. See, and it always goes back to the dance. We're supposed to dance. God gave us the instincts for sex, security, and companionship. Otherwise, I might sit on the planet as a blob. I'm supposed to learn, and I'm going to learn by dancing with you. And you dance with me, and just like a dance floor, we step on each other's toes, we get our elbows in one another's bodies once in a while, and all that kind of, that's the dance of life. And through that, we learn. And you see, if I don't get it right about who's the boss, then I'm going to be afraid. I always tell sponsees, it's the equivalent of going into the boss's office in the morning, and you sit on the boss's chair, and you put your feet up on his desk, and you order his secretary to bring you coffee. Now, you may be insane enough to do that, but I suspect you'll be a little nervous, that you may get thrown out ass over tea kettle. And I think that's what fear is about. I'm behaving as if I'm the boss here, and part of my soul knows I'm not. And then in step, then the sex part, sex which is to be a means of loving expression between people, becomes a means of grandizing the false self. If they want to sleep with me, my goodness, I'm somebody. Oh yeah, right. And so, that's what the fourth step really is to me. You get to know yourself. Step five, you tell your secrets. Secrets never look so bad once they're out. I remember the first fifth step, there was some pretty bad stuff on there. And I thought, well, you know, maybe some of that stuff I just won't tell. And this priest said, is that it? And I said, yes. And I started to sweat. Because it wasn't. The real dirt was on the back side of the sheet. So I said, no it isn't. And I started telling it. And as I told it, I grew six feet tall. I had a freedom that I had never known, because I had done I had completed the task. And I left there just, I can't describe it, it was amazing. It's a principle by which we can live today. There's nothing like honesty. There's nothing like being able to say, I did such and such or this, whatever, to whomever, that applies. And then we come to step six. And I think, I think it was, Scott yesterday, who said we lose people in six and seven, maybe. See, I think column four in, in step four is there for a reason. Because in column four I list how I behaved out of line. What's my part? You see, we start out thinking it's you, and by the time we get to column three and four, we see it's me. It's something in me. And how do I behave? And then I begin to see where, you know, the things that I need to change. See, because I think the more realistic step six becomes, at the start at least. There were things in column four, for example, I lie. Imagine that. I tell lies to flatter you. I don't, you know, I don't contribute anything. I make a long face to manipulate you, and so on and so on. When I got to step six, my sponsor said, it's right there. That's some of the stuff that you have to change. And I thought I was going to change it. See, I think I've got to change my behavior. I've got to change my words. I've got to change my actions so that God can change me. I'll tell you just a little story. I was teaching again by this time. And I was a basket case. You know, I went into that school. I'm Mrs. AA. They didn't care about Mrs. AA. They just wanted a stable, sane person doing a job. And I couldn't always pull that off. Because one day, you know, the emotional roller coaster, I was a year and two months old. Two months sober. And so I made up my mind. See, here we go again. I made up my mind. I don't look good. This has to change. God. And so I wasn't a church goer anymore. But I was quite willing to go to church and see if I could persuade God. So I'd go to church in the morning and I'd kneel down and oh my goodness, I'd pray up a storm. God, please, let me be kind today. And the more I prayed, you know what happened? I'd get into the parking lot and I'd be screaming. Doesn't work. Step six is about another level of surrender. You know, I've got to do the changing of my words, my actions, my behaviors, my thinking. And then God uses that process. Just like people say, well, you know, God does the changing. Of course God does the changing. That's a no-brainer. But it's, if I want tomatoes, I'd better do more than just pray for tomatoes. In step six in that prayer, he says, or rather in that little writing in those six lines, am I willing? Sure, God, I'm willing. You can just put the wings on me. Right now. I'm willing. But there's another little dirty word in there. It says, are you ready? You know, I was willing to come to Orlando a long time ago, but I wasn't ready till Wednesday morning when I closed the suitcase, locked the house, and went down to meet Rick. See? And I think the one thing about step six, if you read it, you really want to get the gist of Bill. Read step six in the 12 and 12. Because there he says, why doesn't God's grace work 100% on our character defects when it works 100% on our drinking alcohol? Because I don't want to give them up. Because they're my defense mechanisms. I don't know how to live without them. So there's a whole other thing we could talk about that. I think that the process of growth sometimes seems very slow. But if I continue to do the work, then one day I say, oh, like lying. I would lie about everything. And one day my sponsor and I had a chat, and he said, would you be willing to make this commitment that if you tell a lie, you're going to go and crack it? Okay? And I very shortly thereafter did a real doozy. And I made up my mind, you know, I'm going to honor what I said I would do. And I went back to those people and I told them. I said, what I told you wasn't the truth. I told you a lie so I would look good. And you know what? It broke the back of my need to tell lies. You can pretty well count on today if I say it's black, it's black. And if you say to me, how many people were at the meeting and there were 20? I don't say 50, so I'll look better. That kind of stuff. It's amazing when you take responsibility and hold yourself responsible. In step seven, getting tired, I'll hustle. No, I'll hurry. Might be a more appropriate word. You caught that. There's only one word in step seven I'll say something about, and that is humility. Humility doesn't mean I'm nothing. Humility doesn't mean I'm not good at what I do. Humility doesn't mean I'm ugly. Humility is not a down put. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, many years ago, gave us the most beautiful, simple direction. He said, humility is the truth. And the truth is that God is my life. I've made some mistakes on the outside, in those outer rings, but God is my life. That's the truth. And as Einstein said, this intelligence that pours out of me is not mine. It's pouring forth from something else. See? From the power within me. Are you going to dishonor that power? And if you are a Beethoven, and you can write symphonies, and you're a Brahms, and you are an architect, and you can draw beautiful buildings, are you going to say, no, they're not good? And are you going to dishonor God in your life and say, oh no, you know, really? That's not what humility is. Humility is an acknowledgement. And you see, I think then, if we'll do that, we can stand and be counted. Nobody's going to beat me today. Because today, I think, I believe, that God is within me, and I live on that identity and that dignity. Make mistakes in the human world? Yes, I do. But in my essence, I am God walking here. Just like you are, showing up as you. And so from that place, we should walk with dignity. And I think that's really the essence of that we ask humbly. Because we're going to make mistakes. I make mistakes. I make lots of mistakes. I think then we come to step eight, which is really about, Bill says, if you'd find that, you know, making the list, et cetera. And it's in step eight that he talks about these unconscious things that have happened in childhood. But he says, even if you find that you don't have much to do in the way of restitution, get to know yourself. Get to know yourself and how you function. Powerful, powerful stuff. I'll tell you a little story, because I wouldn't have believed this possible. I went home one time to Saskatchewan and my sister was having a dinner party. And I said to her, who's coming? And she said, named the people, and then my sister-in-law, who I don't like. And I said, do we have to have her? And my sister said, why not? And I said, well, she's always so pretentious. I said, she always acts, you know, as if they have so many rich friends and they're so rich and they have so much, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my sister, without skipping a beat, said, she only acts that way when you're around. And I learned a whole lot about step eight, where Bill says, get to know yourself. Have you any idea of the energy you put out? How would it feel moving into your energy? You know, I used to have this idea that I was just so, such sweetness and light and all this. Then I began to take a look at what it would feel like to relate to me. I thought, whoa, I don't think I'd like to do that sometimes. See? And you get a new look at how you behave. She only acts that way when you're around. Yeah, right. In step nine, we get to the point of making amends. And I think that brings us to the issue of forgiveness. And, because I don't think I can make amends until I see clearly. I have to get past the idea that you did it to me. I'm to the point where I think if you do something that offends me, there's something in me that needs healing. And I think that with, if you can forgive the person and be completely okay with that piece, then you can go and make amends. But if you go with the idea, well, you did some bad things too and, you know, I'm going to clean my side of the street, now you clean yours. Forget it. It's not the essence of what the amend is. It's about, me cleaning my side of the street. And before I do that, I've got to be right with that. You know, people say, forgive and forget. There are just two things I want to say about it. Forgive and forget, impossible. If something happened that was really significant, it will always be with you, but you still have to forgive it. But what happens is, the sting goes away. It goes out of it. That's the difference. People say, act as if it never happened. It's not helpful. There's a better way, the way of the spirit. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. Who am I to say that you can't be forgiven? I'm the one that has to do the work so that I'm clean inside. And there's one other thing that, I want to say, and I think a lot of people mistake this. They make a mistake between forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. They say, well, you know, I don't want to have lunch with that person, so I guess I haven't forgiven. Not necessarily so. Forgiveness takes only me. You may have done things and I don't want to have lunch with you. That doesn't mean I haven't forgiven. The question is, can I see the presence of God in you? That's the issue. If I can see the presence of God in you, regardless of what you have done, then in my opinion, I have cut my tie with you and I can forgive you and I can walk away There are people I don't want in my house. Jesus never said that we have to like everybody. He said we have to love everybody. And what that means, of course, is what the program teaches. I can't shut anybody out. I have to see God in you. And it's not dependent on your skin color. It's not dependent on your behavior. And it's not dependent on simple feelings. Why do I want to be loved? What kind of love will this love have for me? What kind and empathy do I have for myself? It's just that you're there to forgive. You can't escape and you can't just look at everybody and laugh. no one can hide that you have love and need and laughs. You win.