Making Amends and Sponsorship – Milestone Step Workshop – Part 2 of 5 – Chris

like really being incredible my heart is fed at seeing all of you here as well um i work for the milestone house milestone house is a non-profit we're hoping to put something like this together every quarter we'll have chris lead the way on that we're so grateful for that anyway we're just all grateful that you're here thank you mike for found you know the founder of milestone house 22 years ago And we have a couple more hours to go. We're going to go through steps 10, 11, and 12. And we'll start off with Chris. Yeah, listen, a couple of things before I get going. I've been paying real close attention to Milestone House for a long time now. it was mike's vision to put this thing together and he put it together and got real serious about it and countless people countless people have gotten their first glimpse of what recovery is like and nickel nicoletta has has been such a solid guiding light in this uh in this endeavor uh that it's amazing i can't i can'T tell you how many people i i pointed somebody in your direction yesterday they're always real winners too you know yeah talk to Nicoletta I'm gonna block your number so no that's not really true oh man I'm really having I'm really having fun doing this with Marty oh my god this is uh this is so cool listen a couple of uh a couple things on on immense you know before i move into anything else there's really really good instructions on amends in the book alcoholics anonymous there's instructions on financial limits there's instructional on criminal amends there's instructions on stepping out on the miss amends right there's the man we hate amends so it really covers it covers everything and and i highly recommend that you pay attention to that and when marty said a sponsor is needed more in these steps than anywhere else he's not kidding an experienced sponsor is really needed as we move into these events because you can make things worse let i want to tell you a story i'll tell you a couple stories all right so so this is back during the period of time it was around 2000 or something i was working with like way more people than i should they're over my house every night i i forget where they are in the steps there's so many of them that i'm working with and there was this one guy who you know had just done it just on his fifth step And this is before I got to meet with him to explain how to do the amends cards or any of that stuff. He decides that, you know, he admitted some stuff and he decides that he's going to make amends to his wife. And so he's a highfalutin businessman and, you Know, he'd done a little stepping out and he sits down with his wife And he admits that he's had, over the course of the last 10 years, he's said three affairs with women at work. I'm sorry about that. She got pissed. She beat the shit out of him. She beat him to almost a pulp. He almost lost an eye. She was like kicking him in the head when he's down. Emergency room, all this. and he calls me up after this fact didn't go so well right what are you doing and and the worst part was she absolutely insisted on knowing who the three women were and getting a hold of them and their husbands about this whole thing which i go to how do you have any idea how much worse you made this thing you know so so when it says you know uh should we admit this to other to the to the people we love not always we think and something like that is where you need a really really good experienced sponsor we we cannot unburden ourselves if it is going to cause harm to others that's just not fair you know what i mean it's not it's not fair and i've seen a lot of people cause a lot a lot of harm doing it doing it that's not the purpose of this you know what i mean um i'll tell you i'll tell you about another a couple of events that really really meant something to me um so when the smoke cleared and and you know i'm part i'm putting it was probably my second amends list i'm put it together um uh i put my niece down on it's my sister's daughter and uh all i can say is whenever i saw her it was it was a holiday because we would all be at my mother's house and what would i do on holidays marty i'd drink and somebody would say something you know how they are you know they're gonna they're They're going to say something. What did you say? And I have hazy recollections of saying some things to her that were, you know, an uncle just doesn't say to a niece. She reminded me so much of myself, it disgusted me. And it wasn't her, it was me. So it's time to do this amends. and uh you know i i make i make the direct to my story you know i do the deal this is where this is where i know that i was wrong i'm really trying to try to live a live it live a different life you know let's let's you want to talk about this am i did i leave anything out uh you know what would you what would you have me do to set right just wrong because because you know this is certainly what i'm willing i'm willing to do anything in reason and uh and she was just blown away she's like no one's ever done anything like this to me before you know uh uh she was juste kind of really blown away by it and all right all right and we go we go our separate ways well well about three months later um she ingests just a little bit too much lsd and ends up uh in the psych ward like you know psychiatric emergency 101 and does she call her mother? Does she call her father? She calls me because she thought I would be able to understand and I actually did I said did everybody turn into Muppets so so so I was able to point her toward towards therapy really what this kid needed was was therapy she'd grown up in a crazy house her father was just an awful and her mother was not present at all and uh and she you know she just she grew up without a lot of direction and and became you know had just a lot a lot issues and i you know i was going to say you know you should you should probably uh you know get it get a therapist and she's like well my father used to say to me if i don't behave he's gonna take me to the head shrinkers you know i don't want to go to the head shrinkers and i'm like i'm like no don't don't worry about it you know therapy therapy's cool uh you know my wife has 20 years worth of it you know and and my wife at that time and so so she she did because i gave her direction and she spent she spent five or ten years in therapy and she is so centered now she plays violin in groups in new york city she's got an apartment in new york city she she she's an executive at a tech company you know i mean really really doing well making more money than all of us put together and uh and i don't know i i think i think this process mighta might have had something to do with it you know like i come from um i come for a spiritual lineage where you do your your night step you know mark and joe you do it you do it unless it's going to harm other people you you god damn it you'd do it uh if they're in california you get a plane ticket if they were in australia take a week off you know what i mean because you're you're gonna you're gonna do your amends and what i've seen from this and i've seen it in other people and i'm experienced it myself is there's no more freedom or power to be gained from any step Other than like, step nine will give you more freedom and more power than you can imagine. So, and that's what I think Alcoholics Anonymous is about. I think it's about power and it's About Freedom. It's about gaining access to a power that can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This power, this is what we promise you in AA. the power of God will work in you and through you and do for you marvelous things they don't even promise you that in church money I mean think about it you know but it's true it's this power and it's all about power being powerless you have to have power to be able to stay separated from drugs or alcohol and and the power is is deep the power can be very very deep and uh and each of us each of of us is given the dignity to come to terms with the power of our own conception and our our own understanding and our own experience and the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is the difference between AA and church where it regards our relationship with this power is like this. I'm 11 years old and my mother comes in and she says time for you to be a Methodist. Your brother's a Methodists your sister's a methodist, your father and I are Methodists you're going to be Methodists. I said okay and off I go to Sunday school and in Sunday school, the Methodist Sunday school they teach you this and they teach you that. This is how we see the Trinity this is that, this is Moses and this is all the other people and everything. And do you believe this? Yes Yes, okay We're going to put you up and we're going to stand you up in front of the church for confirmation I stood up in from of the church and they asked me they asked if I believed in these precepts and you know what i said i said yes not understanding any of it yeah and uh and i became a methodist they told me what i was to believe alcoholics anonymous they know bill knew alcoholics we aren't we aren't going to be jumping on that boat but what what what that what we offer you is we offer you the experience of god we offer you the experience of god you come into aaa you start going to a bunch of meetings you'll start to see god at work you start to work through some of these steps you start to work through some of these steps you're going to start to experience the power you may not understand it you may not be able to define every single attribute of this but you know you know there's something going on you know that there's a power awake in you now that wasn't awake in you before and some of us call that power god and and nothing will get you get you ready to accept that power then then step nine it's just gonna so so how i see all this is i see god has been awake in me forever uh god god is the the power of god is always available what i do is i screw it up i take self-will and i build up all kinds of constructs around myself all kinds or roadblocks log jams everything you know by living life along along selfish and self-centered lines there's no access the sunlight of the spirit can't come in You know, the experience of God is not going to work with all that crap. And so when I get to step nine, what it is, is it's like taking logs out of the log jam between me and access to power, the sunlight of the Spirit, the great reality, the fourth dimension of existence. that the consciousness of the presence of god is what starts to become awake in me as i'm finishing these amends i know some people in this room i know some people who've done some heroic amends flying all over the place making appointments and you know what i'm talking about right you know when i'm talking about gaining access to that power and it's also about freedom As I'm making amends for how my selfishness and self-centeredness has caused harm to other people and other institutions, I start to get free of the bondage of self. I ask for that in step three. I start TO get free OF it in step nine. That bondage OF self. What's the bondages OF self? that toxic experience of self-consciousness it's you know i uh so so are these amends important um you know you don't know what alcoholics anonymous is if you haven't done these events because that that's that's where all this stuff wakes up that's where all his stuff becomes operable in uh in in your life do we do them do we do everything perfectly you know i've done amends wrong i've i've i've got everything wrong that you can do right i've done it wrong uh i you know i i think we gr i think would get graded on on effort you know intention and effort i really i really do and i think we gain the gain the freedom and the power just trying to do uh try to do the best we can now like i said before take a look at steps one through nine and consider them a spiritual boot camp of one kind or another they we've take their aggressive spiritual exercises that we take in a short period of time they're they're revolutionary they're transformational they're revelatory and you know what you know we come out of amends like you know like like holy macro and uh and and we've been disciplined for for the spiritual life and the next step the next step they ask us to pay attention to is step ten and in essence this is how i see my experience with uh with step 10. i've been given a series of spiritual exercises to employ as i move through the the first nine steps um on to apply those those spiritual exercises where it is appropriate throughout the day. So this is my living, a sober life step. When I cause harm, I learn to try to set that right as soon as possible. You know, do I need to talk to somebody? Am I selfish? Am I self-centered? Am I, am I self seeking? Am I dishonest? you know be awake to those manifestations of self that continue to defeat me i've seen their terrible destructiveness as i've gone through the first nine steps um i'm i'm being told to be mindful of those as i move into step 10 and there's appropriate action if i need to inventory I inventory, you know, there's appropriate actions to take when self creeps back in and screws something up. And step 10 asks me to do that. And, you Know, there are some very, very simple instructions and they're really to be paid attention to if we want to be able to say that we're turning this thing into a way of life, right? Now, I want to share a couple more things. And then I wantto turn it over to Marty. Marty, you can do 10, 11, whatever you want. So I got a new sponsor about four years ago. For the longest time, I had Good Stuff Gary. Before him, I was Fish Food Phil. Now I have Cowboy Brad. but good stuff I was with Good Stuff Gary a long time and then he moved away on you sponsors will move away on ya it should be illegal they don't realize the emotional damage that they could do by picking up and moving but they move away on ya and that's why I've gotten a new sponsor every single time because they moved away and Good Stuff Harry moved away and uh he he became really really hard to uh communicate with his uh he was he was in the hospital a lot with his wife and i just knew the responsible thing is to be accountable to another person on this spiritual journey that that's that's the virtue of having a sponsor being accountable so uh so i heard i heard this guy this guy brad uh share at a at one of the meetings uh you know i met him in a couple of meetings but i heard him i heard he shared our home group and he he was coming from a place that a spiritual place that i found very very attractive uh i later learned out what that what that was there was a group of people uh just north the la area years ago who uh who got involved in some really really really deep spiritual work chuck chamberlain was what was one of them but there was a whole bunch of them and they were all going to this one church it was a the church of the science of the mind or something right and out of that out of group the aas that went there and learned all this crazy stuff you know chuck didn't learn that stuff in a yeah you know he learned it at this church of the science of the mind or something and all these people started jumping out of this church and started to sponsor people and they were they were really really deeply into what i would term experiential spirituality you know they were all in they were the people that were going to the retreats that you know, they were in the meditation circles and they went all in on this stuff and and uh and brad came out came out of that school so that's why i found it uh found it attractive and uh we've been working working together about the last the last four years and he's got me doing a number of different exercises all the time and you know a couple of them all you know couple of them i'll share with you today because they're really really meaningful uh from for me and they have something to do with uh with step 10 and certainly step 11. so we've talked a bunch about the economy of the spiritual life you need to understand that this is simple we're the ones that complicate it when i first got sober you know i thought oh man i gotta get spiritual so i bought like the course in miracles and the the book, your rant. You ever read The Course in Miracles? It's like 1,700 pages of tiny little print with exercises you're never going to do. It just goes on and on and on. I just need something simpler because I actually have to do it. You know what I mean? I actually had to do because reading about it has never helped. so he gave me a couple of exercises I want to share them with you alright, he told me, he goes Chris, I want you to tell yourself you're doing whatever you're going I'm like, what? he goes, yeah, whenever you're doing something, I don't want you to tell myself you're doing it I'm not doing it and then he goes and whenever you are doing something yeah i want you to ask god for help doesn't matter what it is ask god for help you know so i'm like i'm like okay and then he goes whenever you you step outside of the building i want you to look up i'm like you want me to look up and he's like yeah and and listen you got to understand every time you give me a suggestion i don't think it's going gonna work and I think it's stupid every time right but I put I've but I've learned I've learned that there's this virtue in in following a sponsor's advice you know I don't need to know why what the the virtue and the exercise is to do it so I start doing this stuff and and let me tell you what my what my experience is again I don' t do this stuff perfectly and I don''t do all the time but tell yourself what you're doing all right chris i'm standing up a podium in dover new jersey trying to talk about step 10. uh you know that's what he wanted me to do now so i started to do that and you know what that did it brought me in it it brought into the present so so so much of the problems i have emotionally and spiritually don't reside in the present they're in the past or the they're the anxiety of the future so i start always telling myself what i'm doing i'm right here i'm now i'm in the now and that exercise was designed to help me be in the now. The holy now. You know, we're all as well. Now he told me to always ask God for help. You know I'm going to be speaking with Marty today. God help me. That was wasn't really like that. You know. God help me carry a message today. You know God helpme drive home from Dover. God helped me do it. Now what does that do? what does that do puts me into the consciousness of the presence of god constantly and there's instructions in our big book i will not mind be done these are thoughts which must go with us constantly we're supposed to constantly be communicating and in communication with the spirit with the divine and that exercise started to you know i'm always god's always helping me because I'm always asking them for help. It was revelatory. Now, the last one, when you walk outside and you look up, what I started to recognize and what I decided to do and what it started to realize is an overwhelming gratitude I got. You know, I look up at the clouds. I look out in the country. I look at the trees and the mountains. and more and more i'm incredibly grateful that i've been given this opportunity to be to be uh you know a self-aware biological being on this planet earth at this particular given time and i started to see this this this world is is really it's god's cathedral you know you start looking around and, and you just know, I just know God made this, made this for us for a playground. You know, let's make something really cool. And it's God's cathedral and it's a playground and you know what? We're all on recess together. You know what I mean? We are learning how to, how to be kids. We are learning how to get along and not hit each other and and and you know play fair and and here we here we are where you know we're we're on this ginormous playground and uh and i'm incredibly i'm incredible grateful for this opportunity i love every moment of life today and you don't you know where i was in 1989 i had a 38 caliber handgun put to my head almost every night cursing myself for a weakling that i couldn't pull the trigger you know that that's a that's a huge huge disparity and here's the exercise i'm going to repeat this twice here's the exercise he has me working on today he said this to me he goes chris i don't want you to worry about anything that's not happening let me say that again because that's big I don't want you worrying about anything that's not happening now that almost seems irresponsible, right? but it's not like I don' t plan and I'm prepared at work and I'm, you know, I'm doing all this. I'm just not worrying about it. You know, I'm trying not to worry about it and all these lessons I think come out of come out of this spiritual way of life that we're offered here and, you know, step 10 is just it's an incredible piece of work. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of god's will into all our activities how can i best serve thee thy will not mine be done these are thoughts which must go with us constantly we can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish so i'm exercising my my will by asking god for help and telling myself what i'm doing and being grateful you know it says if we've carefully followed directions that we have begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us you know the the the manifestation of the spirit within us within us and uh it's just this is just an incredibly ridiculous ridiculous journey it's all i came here for was to not die drinking and i can't even i can t even believe some of the stuff that that's happened to me you know i'm really grateful i'm grateful to be here with Marty come on up yeah it's a we we come and we hammer into those steps four through nine I think I was saying like that that's the body of the AAA program we got to surrender in steps one and two and then this decision made is step three and then a cleaning house in between four and nine and then and And then what are we left with? We're left with sort of discovering a way to live. And I think the beauty of this is, like, I'd sit around tables for years in the 12 and 12 meetings that I would attend, and I would sit and I Would share about step 10 as we read it out of the 12 and 12, and having no personal experience or identification or relevance to anything to do with sobriety and just try to sound smarter and smarter and smaller each week. try to read it even before the meeting so that i knew what was coming up and uh i remember my first sponsor he said the essence of the 10th step isn't saying sorry son it's not doing the things that make it necessary to say sorry and it's one of those brilliant sayings that i thought i don't even know what that means you know i have no idea what that needs and you know when i see what i've got you know you know your book is going to be pretty decimated around this area steps 3 and step 2 step step 10 I think anyway mine is it's where I live today that I believe that all the secrets to good living are tied into this step I have no other place to go I don't reside anywhere else I live here right here it's not a coincidence that this is where Chris with his longevity of sobriety know what I believe is a very powerful sound alcoholics anonymous message can sit here and just pontificate at length about what what it's like to live in this place I said earlier that I would talk a little bit about the now and about the importance of the now and then Chris touched on that and the sixth step were introduced to the now are you now ready to have it you're introduced to this concept are you now ready have these things removed and now is a place none of us are very familiar with no it's very difficult to live this moment and and and it i don't know of any other sort of spiritual program that exists that that actually input puts its emphasis on that and again i think this tenth step is everything i think it was created it was developed it was evolved it was you know how did how did wilson know like how are all these things sort of strapped together how did i i don t understand it i can't think of any another hand but a divine hand that had an influence on how this comes to pass and the practical application of these 12 steps is what I'm always interested in I sat for many years philosophizing about the 12 steps reading about them thinking about them looking for cute things to say about them that's what I did and believing I was in a 12-step program living the 12 steps that way I'm gonna just go through it's a little something for you here to to sort of maybe put it in a frame of relevance to, here's the news. It's difficult news for people to swallow. They don't like it when I say it because they think I'm minimizing the terrible sort of trauma of their lives. But the news here in step 10 is there's nothing wrong. There's not a goddamn thing wrong with your life. And the challenge that I put out there as I say if I asked you right now now right now here and now what is wrong with your life you'd have to say well nothing but your ego quickly comes and tells you the story about what's happened this morning what's gonna happen tomorrow what it quickly comes up there goes so this guy's a tool like does he even know what he's talking about like I got real shit going on in my life I've got stuff to worry about I have stuff that I feel awful about them you know what the last few years have taught me that this stuff is real and again my passion probably wouldn't be there if it wasn't stop brings us to step 10 what thought that these promises that they give us in step 9 and the experiences we've had in those first nine steps are going to materialize if we work for them so that stems tenth step puts me in a position where i need to be aware i need to be conscious of the now i need to be awake to this moment right here right now when everything's okay and those practices that chris is talking about help me be grateful about that that i'm standing in the moment but that's not what real life looks like that's right it's real life for chris but that's not what real life looks like we all got uh wives or husbands or children that drive us crazy or jobs that are tough we all have bosses that are bitches we all got that stuff right so so so we're going to be challenged to stay in the now but I don't even know if if if the obvious nature of these this step is is if people are aware but it says at the stop into step 10 says continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right mistakes as we go along we commence this way of living as a clean up the past. So this is happening while we're making our nine-step amends. It says we've entered the world of the spirit. We're no longer living in the world of the material. We have entered the world of spirit, and it's a practice. These are practices. How do we know that that's happened? Because our measuring stick can show, and this is what Sandy used to say, the measuring stick has some of these promises occurred in your life. Have you had a taste of some of those promises? Because these things are going to start to materialize, and we're going to go along, and these things are going start to sort of reveal themselves. we vigorously commence this way of living as we clean up the past we've entered the world of spirit our next function is to grow effective and understanding or understanding effectiveness it's not an overnight matter it should continue for a lifetime continue seems to be a really important word here continue continue continue it's all over the all over the chapter or all over so wants us to watch for some things you guys familiar with what i'm talking about right now on page 84. what are we watching for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear where do we learn to do that we learned to do that step four right so we're gonna continue to watch for that stuff when they crop up what do we do? We ask God who wants us to be good. When did we learn to do that? 6 and 7. We ask God to remove our defects of character. When these things crop up, we ask God. So we're talking about right now, when this thing crops up. So when anger, resentment, bitterness, any of that stuff sort of crops up, fear. When These Things Crop Up, what do I do? Immediately ask God To Remove It. Now that's bringing it into the mix. That's a spiritual discipline. that's this awareness that there's this power not going to try to solve the problem and it says at once to remove we discuss with somebody else at once where are we going to do that then it says we discuss when someone immediately we make amends quickly if you harm anybody in the process okay so something crops up where do we learn to make a mess that's eight and nine now what does it say turn our thoughts to someone who can help step 12 we have a program of action that we're talking about there all morning which we've been telling all afternoon we talk about right now right here right now when they crop up now that again still looks like a theory it looks like a theorem when we talked about it is a goddamn theory try telling somebody this you got no problems they don't like it you tell someone they don't have to come to you with a problem so that's not a problem and they say don't diminish my sense of worth and all that shit right it's like we have a spiritual way of living up that we can agree upon and and if this idea of it that I can be free of this is foreign to somebody who never has the experience I'm living my life. You guys all know Sandy's story, and if you don't, look up Sandy's story, you'll hear about what happened with him. So I'm spending time with him, and I hear his story, from his story sitting over dinner, I'm deeply affected by the power of a God that can help remove the anxiety or the pain or the anguish or the grief of losing a daughter. Immediately. Bang. So you lose a kid. So I'M driving home one night, it's a Thursday night, love my home group, love my home group, my favorite thing to do. I'm driving down to my home group and I get a phone call that my middle daughter Sarah, who I mentioned earlier, has hung herself. And I'm in the front seat of my car and I start losing my shit. I smash on the dash, I smash in the mirror and I scream out, really? You know, really? After all I do for you? And I am filled with anger and rage. Rage! And this stuff came over me. I said, oh my God, God, you've got to take this from me. I'm on my way to my hometown, you have to take it from me! I go down the hill and I run into brian my workshop partner i fall into his arms and i start crying i start telling him what the call i just got he says what do you want to do the drunk buggy pulled up a couple of guys fell out of it got them into the meeting got them settled we go down to the hospital now i want you to know that in between the time that i got the phone call and the time that i go to the hos this is what took place for me and it wasn't because of any sort of directions i remembered it was because this is the spiritual way of life that has been provided for me of listening to sandy beach and chris schroeder and cd and talks and messages and all of these years and practicing this 10th step on a day-to-day basis with stuff that really didn't matter oh yeah yeah that's what i'm supposed to oh yeah that' s what i' m supposed to do oh yeah that's what i am supposed to sitting at workshops and stuff like that and go that sounds like a great idea hope i never need that you know and that's what's going on. But I walk into the hospital and I go directly to my wife and I hold her as she's sobbing. I told her it was going to be okay. It's because I knew it was. I went up to the doctors and the nurses and I thanked them from the bottom of my heart for looking after my little girl. And I walked in the room and she lived. She was on life support, but I put my hand underneath her head and I lifted her head up. I kissed her on the forehead and I told him I loved her and it was gonna be okay because I know it was and I walked out and sat with my wife as we waited for the news to come my daughter survived but i told you she's still on the street she's more damaged than she ever had been and and this was a bad bad situation for her but she's she's like she's great like sarah's great she's your favorite like in aa i got four daughters she's the one you guys love the most because she's one of us but she and she's crazy and shit but she she's a fantastic gal and today she's 36 years old and beautiful and she has opiate atrophy so she walks like this, and she never will be straightened up, right? She's very damaged. Very damaged from the lifestyle, the drugs, the hanging. She's really damaged. But my life got from, I'm on a beam, and it got from off the beam to on the beam, and off the being to on being. I don't give a shit what your circumstances are. You should see me work with guys who are going through struggles. I don't lack compassion. I'll sit with you all day long. And I'll help you make arrangements. I will be with you in the painful times. But don't do this. Don't go back into self when selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, or fear crop up. What do I do? Ask God at once to remove it. And I tell somebody about it. And I make amends if I've harmed anybody. I resolutely turn my attention to someone I can help. That's how it works. And that's what happened with Sarah. I'm getting warmed up. I got an older daughter, Dana. And all through COVID, you guys were there for me. You bought t-shirts, you know. Alfred Tell bought like 100 t- shirts and distributed them across to raise funds for the break. My daughter calls me, and she banged her head around on an ATV while she was in the field and rolled the ATV in. And she said she wasn't feeling right, and she told her to go to Tilsonburg and get checked out. They sent a rusher to Hamilton, and they sent her to Hamilton. She calls me while I'm at work, and I'm not at my desk. Now, I try to make this practical so people understand that this is the real stuff. i just do my job and being a clown and having fun and all that kind of stuff oh phone rings my daughter dana says i've got a brain i've Got a brain tumor the size of a plum and she is devastated and she can't talk to her husband he's he's a good guy in that but he's got nothing for her he has none of that she needs her daddy so she comes in i i lose my shit because this is happening to me i get this call and it's like really and i just and i start losing it again i think oh my god i go into a room adjacent to my office i drop down to my knees so you got to take this from me please take this from her she's on her way here i'm going to be of no use please take this for me and i walk out and i tell my co-worker the call i just got by the time i got down to the stairs i could be for her i couldbe there for her by thetime i got down the stairs she came around the corner she fell into my arms sobbing and i kissed her on the cheek and i told was going to be okay because i knew it was and she beat the brain cancer she wasn't supposed to but she did and then she got lymph node cancer and she'd beat that second primary these aren't mastocytes these are second primary cancer and should beat that and they drilled her and they they gave radiation and chemo and and beautiful my beautiful young daughter has been devastated by the treatment overwhelmed and beaten and pieces of her jaw have fallen off and she's been so sick and jj was you saw her down she's down she'd done a national industry with the morgan walling concert last night a year ago december there's three brain three cancers she got lung cancer and it gave her eight months to live a year go december she's at the morgans wall encounter lastly and every single time we get this devastating news when these crop up what do i do i ask god who wants to remove it and every single time something like this happens i get better at it i get better at more people get helped what happens when the bad news comes you know i'm not going to turn this inward you know i have a wife who's also in this program and she's just a model of absolute strength to me i don't know how she does it but i need this stuff and it's real this is not playtime this is not like i don't get to say everything except the sick child everything except the death of everything except it works for everything just like i was demonstrating in a fourth step this here is this is spiritual living this isn't theoretical living it says this is not a theory this is no way you're not going to think your way through this you're going to take these actions every time and each time it happens off the beam is less and less and it puts me right here right now with you i believe the reason i get so weird up here at the podium get all freaked out and it's because i can't help but get right here right now when i'm with you have a profound deep belief in god profound and deep connected belief in a god but it's never available or as apparent to me as it is when I'm with you and I when I get up here it's like it gets oh my god it's the now it's just the now I'm here in Jersey I don't give a shit about what happened yesterday or this morning I don'T care where it's going tonight NHL playoffs UFC whatever it is we're doing killing deer in the neighborhood where Chris lives whatever we're dealing tonight whatever we decide to do i'm good right here right now with you and each moment that i've been moving through this day this 10th step this is the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous this 10 step looks like this and if you can't demonstrate it and this is where i'm really getting freaked out these last couple years if you don't live that way if you couldn't get back the center on a fairly quick basis. I'm not going to tell you how long it should take. I'll tell you Sandy's story really quickly. Sandy was on the gurney going in for knee surgery, and he gets a phone call that his daughter had been murdered. And they said to her, he said, I'll be up there. And then, no dad, you get your knee surgery. You stay there. You get that knee surgery done. You've been waiting a long time. He laid back, put the phone on his chest and said to himself, thought to himself thought to his God, he says, well, two things are apparent. One is I'm going to have to forgive the perpetrator. And the second one is why not now and he didn't mean in that moment he meant in that circumstance and i challenge everybody here what problems do you have shut up what problems Do you have buddy really really what problems do you Have any of us can come up to me at any point and say you're wrong i actually really do have problems and i'll say yeah that's the problem you have problems that's the problem not anything else you know i got this guy that's saying to me you know dave we he was at your place very grateful to dave and jen and lost his business went through a ton of difficulty and i was having a conversation with him the night before last they said do you understand that your nefarious activities in life and business and your lack of a relationship with this power is the reason why you're suicidal no it's because my business is bad it's because my man do you understand that it's your relationship with god that's the issue and it's hard for people to conceive of that okay no i'll get to god later i gotta solve this problem i gotta i'll give the god when the godly steps i'll get the god in step 11. this is telling us that right here right now this way of life Life is freedom. This way of life, and it's available to everybody. It's the only way we can cease fighting everything or everyone. How do you not stand up for yourself or argue or dispute? How do not do that? If you're living in the now, there's no room for that. My takeaway from step 10 is that I can actually be free, for real. not a passing phase. It's not a passing phase you know I believe that I said at the beginning I think that the secrets to good living are here as a man who's been sober for quite some time and has known tragedy and loss and trauma and I've had counseling but not the kind of counseling that actually is effective like I've lied to every counselor or therapist I've ever talked to I've never been truthful to them and all my life I was a broken damaged human being. And I get to this place here right now and it's like, not anymore. I have been given the power and the strength to do what it is it's asked of me. When I'm asked to turn my attention to someone that I can help, to turn myself resolutely to someone where I can be helpful the moment I change my direction and my thoughts, I begin to heal and in the now, I don't have any problems you know Earl always says get in between those two claps right here right now get in between that and if you can stay there without life's clamors worldly clamors and all that kind of stuff pulling you if you can stay where you will be living in the sunlight of the spirit this is what we're talking about in step 10 how can we under like I think it's undersold as a tool for living I think I think its almost like okay we have these 12 steps we don't drink anymore we don' have our solution anymore so now we're gonna sort of go through life experiencing the pain and the and the calamity of life with God but it's it's not like that it's like that it comes and it goes and it comes in it goes you know and if I don't have you when Sandy was telling his story he talked about it talked about being fairly young in sobriety and and hearing the story of the drive-by shooting where young black black kid was killed and then the mother said they put the cnn put the microphone in the guy's face in the mother's face and and he said how do you feel about the perpetrator and she said well i've already forgiven him and sandy says i remember sitting there hearing that and thinking to myself how could anybody have that level of spiritual living i will never get there and then a few years later that uh that um amish the story of the amish guy murdering them you know and then the family's sending all of their wares over it became an international story that one and sandy says i heard that just many years later he said i heard that and i thought to myself oh my god how can people live like that how can people live spiritually like that i'll never be able to live like that and then he got the news about his kid and then his other daughter died as well in the following june this happened in february march and then following juna's other daughter died and and he was right here right now it doesn't mean you don't grieve that's not what it means it means that you go to this you go immediately to this and you find how you can be of use and judge jack corderman told me that sandy spoke 210 times that year his daughter said carrying a message of hope and power when he could have been sitting at home justifiably mourning and being up whining and complaining or crying and whatever it is you want to call it when someone's going through deep grief you know i'm not diminishing it i'm Not putting it down or being disparaging about that what I'm saying is if we do this and we turn our attention we go through this stuff high level high level spirituality God always has something in store for us that we may not even be aware of it looks like bad shit's going to happen if we get into right here right now use me as you will use me as you will again all the secrets to good living are right there step 10 what are we gonna do we're gonna do we gonna roll right into 11 yeah you hit 11 okay good thanks guys