Jimmy D. at the FOTS Toronto Step 11 Speaker Series – 2023

Thank you, Michelle. And thank you for reading that topic. I just popped up the flyer so I could remember what I sent in. I mean, I knew we were going to talk about the 11th step, but I have to tell you that senior moments come more and more frequently for me. My name is Jimmy Dean. I'm alcoholic. And I am from Dallas, Texas, and I'm honored and grateful to participate in the meeting and uh and mary beth i just love marybeth and uh if we got mary best story she was probably leanne at some point in her past so we could just probably call her almost anything with any any woman with two names fence oklahoma i can tell you that right now sue ellen all that kind of mess right and uh sobriety date august 25th 1997. i can't remember if i gave it or not i uh i find it to be so apropos that the format of this meeting is to read spiritual experience at opening because that is such a substantive part of my experience along the lines of the step that and the quote from our book uh that uh that i would uh i would like to you know bring as a let's just say is my experience and as a topic of discussion for this evening i uh you know as with so many things my my beginnings of a relationship with a with a power greater than myself were they were certainly seeded and formulated by somebody that I called a sponsor. I've been fortunate in the time I've been in AA, I've always had a home group because nobody ever told me not to have one and I've Always had a sponsor so two thus far both of them are still living my first one retired from AA when I had about two and a half years and spent eight years going absolutely insane but never taken a drink. And so now in my home group on Wednesday night, I have the opportunity to sit in that speaker meeting with both my first sponsor and my sponsor of the last 23 years. And that's very comforting for a guy like me. I'm glad my sponsor did not have to experience the actual insanity of a drinking alcoholic before he found his way back into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was suggested that I set up a pattern along the lines of uh the instructions that are in our book uh pages 84 through 88 85 86 88 10 step 11 step information that he wasn't trying to fast track me but but i can assure you that i was on step 1.5 when i received a general suggestion that uh that in the morning uh after i said that prayer very quickly that didn't go any higher than the ceiling i didn't i thought at the time that uh that i should settle myself and try to center myself and he asked me to take five minutes and not think about anything at all that's it just five minutes don't think about anything at all and i thought i'm 32 years old i'm a college graduate it. I've been not thinking about anything for years before I came to AA. This will not be a problem, and so I got myself as centered as I could. I came in in August. It was probably, I would think, early October, so you know, Dallas, Texas, it's still 75 degrees outside at seven o'clock in the morning, and I was out on the patio and fired up a cigarette, fresh cup of coffee, and i'm ready to not think about anything at all and it lasted about 17 seconds and then i thought about that office i'd been in that company for 13 years drinking alcoholically when i got to aaa and i thought of all those soiled relationships i thought my grandmother the only family that i had when it came to alcoholics anonymous and how i wasn't welcoming her home when i got to about all of those worldly clamors i mean the things that were just you know part of the garbage that uh that i you know that i that i drug with me when i was a new person when i came in and and just you know counting minutes of sobriety my first few weeks at now and uh and you know it just it uh if i had enjoyed any serenity the first 15 seconds i certainly couldn't tell you so my call in was daily 7 30 in the morning and and i was hesitant about calling greg because i felt like he would certainly be disappointed i mean he'd only asked me for five minutes and and so i uh called and i did what i think most alcoholics certainly the guys that i sponsor that new or old will do which is uh try to the best of my ability to control the topic uh you know what do you have on your schedule for today well i see at the meeting tonight you know this that and the other i would just say you know banter right and he let that go for a couple of minutes and have you noticed that people get a little bit of sobriety and they're a little bit impatient with what they perceive to be you trying to guide a conversation in a certain way and and uh and i thought that was a well-homed skill and he said did you take your five minutes this morning and i paused for a second and uh and i'm going to tell you that i certainly debated on how i would answer i mean he wouldn't know uh and i said i think i failed he said what do you mean and i said it only took about 15 seconds before all those things started coming up the things that i don't know you know when or if forever will they ever be repaired and uh and almost immediately and with a tone that was as gentle as any i ever heard before or since he said try again tomorrow and i've been trying again tomorrow for the last 26 years and uh and i can tell you that it is uh it is a conflict for me uh that when when my life is even getting close to being uh semi-smooth i will abandon this practice that has served me so well for so long which is to try to the best of my ability to continue to enhance my relationship with the power that certainly has grown in the time that i have been in alcoholics anonymous and uh and so i don't know when alice and i talked about coming on and doing this i uh i would say that i had been in a long run of faithfully committing to the time at night 11 step directions beginning in the evening looking at my behavior for the period of the day and and what i need to do what actions i might need to take who i might need to talk about talk to about certain actions that perhaps i've taken And then, as importantly, in the morning, getting myself, let's say, centered and ready for the day ahead. Trying to the best of my ability to ask God, as I understand God, for the opportunity to be of service and to be sensitive to areas where I can be of service. And I found that prayer always comes true. um when i abandon this 11th step practice and when i say abandon it i don't mean entirely i mean when i shortchange myself by uh by not giving it the attention and the priority that it deserves uh what i have found is is that more and more i would uh treat alcoholics anonymous and sometimes even members of alcoholics synonymous as somewhat of a crash cart uh kind of like an emergency room at a hospital i run to aa so aa can fix something and then i wouldn't raise that way in aa i was told in short order that they would give me the tools that were necessary for me to go from a tanker to a giver and they did they fulfilled that commitment to me uh fairly speedily the tools obviously embodied in the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous and in everything that they shared with me that they employed on a day-to-day basis sometimes on a moment by moment basis in order to affect let's just say a greater spiritual consciousness now i was not struggling with atheism or agnosticism when i came to alcoholics anonymous but i was sorely disinterested and uh and frankly i would tell you that i thought that uh this time that these aa guys were telling me that they devoted to the practice of the 11th step was time that could be uh much better utilized in other areas in other words basically you know getting what you want or uh or getting what your need or telling somebody else that whatever you gave them was what they wanted all along when they didn't really and so i had to learn a brand new pattern of behavior and that brand new pattern of behavior was really built around the quote and the pages of the book that give us that shared experience of those 70 odd people that were really kind of just barely sober when they put all their experiences in written form for benefit of a guy like me i sponsor i don't know 11 or 12 guys today and uh and i donno i guess i've had three or four of them weekly call in so far this week as we sit in this meeting on tuesday night and every single one of those guys is struggling with his conscious contact with the god of his understanding when i was new in alcoholics anonymous i would have said what a coincidence that i would be on this meeting tonight share hopefully something positive about what i've employed in order to live and i've lived happy joyous and free in the time that i've been with you i've had a lot of forks in my road which have just been a natural condition of living on the planet with everybody else and uh and and that those those very simple tools have helped me to make sure that i bend to what i believe is god's will for my life at any particular point in time when i do not bend when i determine that uh that i need to make sure that god's will is and my will reconcile uh then i've gone back to old behavior i've come back to the way that i was i'm just you know i'm a non-drinking a guy who's employing these uh these character flaws that uh that people are certainly sensitive to in or out of aa so i want to be the guy who can show up at 5 30 to make coffee and not be sitting on pins and needles until another alcoholic shows up so i can you know share my version of sick with that guy i want to be the guy who's going to be receptive to what the second aa member that comes in the room has to share with me i want listen to what's going on in his life and be absolutely absent of anything and everything that i feel like is not going as it should go in my own life and the 11th step makes that so for me it is the process by which i can really take selfless action of myself i cannot do it it's been proven time and time and time again i am resentful when i don't feel like i receive what i'm due and when i'm resentful i don t get what i do because i would be punished for behaving in that fashion i uh i can tell you that the years of quote unquote continuous sobriety will peel away in the eyes of someone i'm having an exchange with if i've not prepared myself for that particular day i watched it happen i had a secretary in my company who'd known me since i was 19 years old i had window of time at year five or year six which was kind of a flying blind period for me maybe the first flying blind period for me and uh and i can tell you that i went for what i consider to be a significant amount of time a run of weeks where uh where i just gave up just a very perfunctory glance at the 10th and 11th steps and my attitude my outlook my actions they showed that to be true and uh at five or six years of continuous sobriety that secretary had known me all those years drinking five years of sobriety what she showed on her face when i spoke to her in the same way that i'd spoken to her before i got sober was that's just jimmy that's just the way he is and he's smoking mirrored this aa deal for about five years he's had a good long run but that's not who's really inside and i didn't want her to see that guy again and in order for me to be able to do that and continue to do that with some degree of consistency i need to make sure that through the best of my ability i try to employ the tools that aa has shared and given to me so as i was looking around to try to help one of the men that i sponsor through some of these circumstances of his own making and also knowing that old bill you know he had an aa birthday yesterday 89 years if he was still on the planet of particular variety and uh and i'm not much of a bill quoter and i know bill was human like everybody else tell you what get on the general service board and read some of the stuff you realize that bill was a seeker and i am so thankful that bill was a seaker and he had a lot of really interesting ideas about enhancing his spiritual consciousness and uh and the only reason that we don't print all that stuff is because a lot of it has nothing to do with the program of alcoholics anonymous but it was part of bill's journey it was certainly part of phil's journey so i'm not going to presume to read much to you but there's an article that was in the grapevine magazine back in 58 bill was getting ready to celebrate 24 years of sobriety i just rolled 26 back in august and i find this to be quite apropos that i would be in the meeting tonight and to try to bring you a little bit of positive experience uh around my experience with the 11th step in alcoholics anonymous bill says 12 stepping talking at meetings recitals of drinking histories confessions of our defects and what progress we have made with them they no longer provide us with the release and the abundant life our lack of growth is often revealed by an unexpected calamity or a big emotional upset perhaps we hit the financial jackpot and are surprised that this solves almost nothing that we are still bored and miserable notwithstanding as we don't usually get drunk on these occasions our bright-eyed friends tell us how well we're doing but we inside we know better we know we aren't doing well enough we still can't handle life as life is there must be a serious flaw somewhere in our spiritual practice and development what then is it and he goes on for another couple of pages to describe what he felt like was his deficiency as it related to the practice of a step that certainly he helped to write and i'm not in any way presuming to compare my life in alcoholics anonymous with the co-founder's life in alcoa but it is quite comforting to me that bill continued to identify flaws let's say in his spiritual practice and knew that what he needed to do was rather than find some material fix which is what i always look to before i came to a right if you buy something bright and shiny you feel better if you find somebody bright and shining you feel bitter if you go somewhere bright and shiny you feel bett er if you listen to somebody bright shiny you'll feel better and that's not the deal at all what they told me when i came down cox anonymous is read these pages follow these practices enhance them with your own practices as you see fit be honest and open with another human being who understands the nature of your condition in my experience that has been a sponsor make sure that you utilize someone who can look at your look at experiences objectively outside of your frame of reference and when i'm absent any one of those patterns of positive behavior i'm in the same situation bill's in i don't need to be making any talks i'll start believing them i don t need to going into rooms of alcoholics anonymous trying to suck the room dry to the best of my ability i need to recommit myself to a to a reconciliation that's just me and my creator only alone and ask what strength and direction i would get from that relationship that's 30 or 45 minutes on a normal day for me at night and another hour in the morning i was not a morning person when i came to alcoholics anonymous pattern and practice of the 11th step for me has made me someone that uh actually cherishes that time and uh and they're very chances to actually have uh an open conversation with uh a power that i can't see or hear or feel um i have to make arrangements and make time space and uh and give that commitment energy and respect and uh be able to try to the best of my ability to learn and understand from the exchange whatever the exchange happens to be my sponsor in the last 23 years gave me this phenomenal tool uh my my religion of origin that i don't regularly practice believes a lot in certain forms of meditation that would involve at least several centuries ago different forms of chanting and things of that nature and uh and really it's a recording for my phone and it's just a single tone and the tone rings almost like a clock and uh but it helps me to center so i start and end my practice with those tones and i know that that's when i'm going to try once again to take that five minutes that that sponsor asked me about all those years before When I when I do not employ that practice on a regular basis, I am moving more and more back towards the taker rather than the giver. I'm the guy who wants Alcoholics Anonymous to feed me and external things outside of Alcoholics Anonymous To Feed Me. Things that you know are panaceas let's say for my perceived ills and then when something legitimate happens when i'm presented with a circumstance that i can't postpone or evade sometimes i don't remember what tools i used to employ sometimes i'm not sure i can find said tools sometimes i do need to get just with somebody else or a group of people that can get me back on track there's a guy in the big meeting named howard p a lot of you would have known howard from arizona and uh and howard was a phenomenal communicator from behind an aa lectern and i was at a men's conference in oklahoma at lake murray 20 years ago and howARD talked on sunday morning and he only talked about his practice for 55 minutes of engaging in the 11th step in alcohol economics and i've got that old cassette tape and still got some ancient equipment that will run it and when i have been at you know the lower depths old howard has talked to me and helped me become more right-sized and uh and how would that old guy have known all those years ago that he could carry that message to me but i don't ever want to forget i don'll never want to forgive that i'm a guy who ran the show right into the ground and that absent the spiritual part of the program of alcoholics anonymous which i believe is the only part i have nothing nothing to bring nothing to give and and certainly i am less than willing to receive all the gifts that have been bestowed on me as a result of trying to the best my ability one day at a time to give back what i've been given i uh i hope that i have stayed somewhere between the bumper lanes of the topic uh and i am honored and grateful and and i really thank alice who's on the road for giving me the opportunity to come into the meeting tonight so thank you very much thank you so much jimmy that was that was terrific