Mary T. at the FOTS Toronto Step 11 Speaker Series – 2023

hi i'm here there okay thank you kelvin that was sweet of you to say that um yeah my name is mary theory i am an alcoholic uh i'm coming to you tonight from tampa it's about 75 here today this is the way it's supposed to be you know anyway um i guess i was on about a year ago and uh these pages page 86 87 and 88 is really a foundation on how i got into this program and um and they continue to reveal more and more to me as the years go on and especially since since the pandemic it's uh it's been kind of fun to work with these pages um more and more every day well every day i do anyways but i've been playing with them for a while now um as calvin said i um um what when i came in to uh alcoholics anonymous i had taken a geographical cure and i had gone from uh massachusetts to southern california and spent the last five years of my drinking and valium use um there in californIA and then i was 12 stepped into the halls i should have been put right into some type of a detox but i wasn't so i in those days they used to say you're sober up on the bricks and i and i did and it was rough it really was rough i never stopped shaking until i was about eight or nine months sober i remember but um there i used to attend a um a meeting out there and something called north hollywood radford it was kind of a popular club at that time uh there was a woman who ran that club and her name was Alabama Carabas and she came from Texas and she used to say things and um she she had such an impression but she I remembered when I was within the first year of my recovery I remember sitting there and she said um for you that want to know what to do between meetings and I really did because the only place I ever felt safe was when I Was um uh in a in one of the meetings That was an odd experience for me. I was so scared and so frightened and so beaten from alcohol. I really never spoke until I was about three years sober. I would sit in the back rows, I was just frightened. I were just paralyzed with fear. And so I really didn't know what to do, but I knew something was happening. And in this program, there was an energy I felt from the very first meeting i went to i was fortunate enough to the first speaker i ever heard was a woman by the name of sybil she was the first woman who got sober that was west of mississippi that was in i should tell you i'm i'm 49 years sober maybe that would help to tell you i came in a while ago anyway and that was september of 1973 and she was still alive and there was um it was a very powerful meeting i didn't know who she was uh i didn'T even know what aa was and um and and i was introduced to her as i was sobbing after she finished talking and she looked right at me and said welcome home honey and there was something about the depth and weight of that woman's talk that i knew that she could see through all of the damage and all of the horror and right through that facade that I had making you think that I was perfectly fine but she saw the preciousness within all the brokenness that I have gone through and that was um that was how I got to AA now I didn't know that at that time I know a lot of people don't feel as though they've gotten home but my story kind of tells that I never really He couldn't walk them in any home. And so there was something inside that touched me, and I couldn't explain it. And I truly believe it was this presence that this 11th step talks about. And it's a feeling. It took me 20 years in this program to get out of theorizing about God and finally experiencing God. i thought i had to have knowledge all the time and and it was more about a feeling and it was that same feeling that i got from sybil i got it from my original sponsors uh they could look right through my false personas that i would present to you people and they would look into my soul now um my soul was sick it uh i didn't realize um i think every single one of us and i started to talk about it i wanted to tell this story calvin and then i'll go into these pages i didn's finish it i don't think the other night but i wear this little thing i don' t know if you can see it it's an acorn an acon is is a little nut that has a funny little cap on the top of it and if you snap that cap off of the acorn, it's absolutely perfect. You ever done that? When I was a little kid, I used to always be taking the cap off an acorn and the nut is perfect. It's like your soul is perfect and we're all a bunch of little acorns nuts that are perfect with this little cap on top of us and what the cap is is all the stuff that has happened to us that we have had to build survival skills to get through. And that's the way I believe this program did for me. And for some reason, on September 13, 1973, and I was brought to that meeting, and Sybil looked at me and said, Welcome home, honey. There was a crack that happened on top of that calf. And there was some light that went through all my mind and into my soul. and for the for the last almost 50 years here coming up um i have been cracking the cap of this acorn so that i could reach the light that is within and my book told me this the deep down inside of every man woman and child is the fundamental idea of god and that's where it to be found and so as these things happen to me because if you get sober it's going to get better then it's going to get worse, then it gets better. It doesn't get better, better, better, okay? Because these false personas need to die. We need to be reborn. We need to get rid of that part of that cat so that we can get some more light in. So this 11th step I was sitting in North Hollywood, Radford. I was scared to death and I heard Alabama Carothers say if you want to know what to do between meetings go home and read page 86 87 and 88 and i thought okay because i i was just too frightened i didn't know what to do and so i went home and i read it and i started with the beginning where it says constructively you are dead and so she said to read this thing and so for i hate to tell you how slow a teacher i am but every night i would read constructively and as the years went on i would hear somebody say it says to constructively review our day it doesn't say destructively to construct is to build up now by the time you get to an 11th step you usually have some values and principles that you know that are yours if you've done a fearless moral inventory not a fearful garbage inventory but a fearless morale inventory and you've discovered some of the morals and values that you need to live by took me a lot of years to hear what that step said and to do it that way to find my values and where I was going against them once I have a set of values it's almost like I've been walking over a footbridge without any railings, but once you do these steps, you will start, especially your fourth and fifth step and the sixth and seventh step, you will have some railings to hang on to, some values to hang onto so you don't fall off of that bridge. As you continue to go through the rest of this stuff with the eighth and ninth step and especially the tenth step, you finally are going to enter the world of the spirit. now that means you're not going to ever be alone again took me a long time to hear that i didn't realize that i read it with theory i didn' t experience the feeling that is will happen if you continue to do this program so anyways i would read this this thing in the morning and the night and every morning I woke up and, and, um, and I realized, um. I saw the connection. Well, maybe I'll just tell you the story and then I'll go into what I found over the last number of years. Um, once she told me to do that, I did that. I, I, I read it every morning and every night and that's all I did. I read it closed the book and then went back to my life now there was some clear-cut direction there I could hear the first one which was you know basically to ask God to direct my thinking that would be divorced from self-pity dishonest and self-seeking motives and I could remember to do that and I did it as I said it and I read it and closed the thing about six months went by and I was working in California for this company and my boss did something and I was really upset with him I really it was in the days when they still had big enormous xerox machines that you do copies do you remember those things and so I mean it was like I went in the back room and I started just copying whatever it was that he wanted I'd already get whatever doesn't make any difference and I realized that I was agitated in this voice inside of me said when agitated or doubtful we pause and ask for the right direction or the right action and i heard this in my mind and i inside myself went i'm agitated and doubtful and right at that moment the phone rang and i went to pick it up and my sponsor had called me now she never called she she never really called me at all because i had to learn how to ask by the way that's something she taught me but anyway uh for some reason she called me and i don't know what she call me for because out of my mouth came well God's acting fast I'm glad to hear that you called because I'm agitated enough and I went right into what it was and I realized the last part on page 88 was correct it works it really does but I had to do it and that was the that was the kicker for me that I realized that for six months I've been reading this thing but I had never stopped during the day when agitated or doubtful and said i need the right action of the right thought and so that hadn't happened and so and when after that i remember reading right after that it said you know um that we say thy will be done a lot and then it said that god what i asked you to put on this thing that god disciplines us in what he had just outlined And I sat there because I wasn't raised with a God, the discipline. I wasn'T raised with any God. I was raised with money, property and prestige religion, but not the religion of any church thing. I didn'T have that. So I didn't have to unlearn a lot. But when I read that part where it said, I'm undisciplined and God's going to discipline me in the simple way he just outlined. Now, I've been reading this for six months and I said, he just outlined this. how is he disciplining me and I literally went back and I looked at these pages at night it's the first ask what what he does is he disciplines us to ask first now I do everything backwards my sponsor told me we alcoholics do everything backwards you know um used to demonstrate used to say you watch people light a cake for people's sobriety they always light the candles on the outside before they do the ones in the middle they burn out it's backwards you're supposed to we just do things backwards it was like i would i would go and do something and if it didn't work then i'd ask god but i didn't ask god you know before i picked up a drink. I asked him a lot when I was in front of the porcelain throne, vomiting, please God help. I didn't say that before I left to go out to drink. So my life has always been backwards. It's been self-sufficient. It's done that I think I'm all alone and there is no presence that's present that can hear me. And so as the years have been gone on, I realized that there are eight asks in what we read every day so i have to be asking god eight times what's going on for me so the one that became very very clear to me as it went on was this um at night you know this nightly review i don't know about you but um throughout the years i've done it many many ways i did exactly as it said here i would write out the questions i and you know i was like as anal as can be i was going to figure this thing out you know as if i intellect was going to get me someplace not that there is anything wrong with my brains as it tells but you know i haven't asked god about it it's like i was gonna be smarter or something than god so i would write these things down and you knows i kind of what happened to me is is that i had like a dualistic mind when I first got sober so it was only right wrong there was no gray there was no love involved at all and and so it would be like I'd punish myself so those lines in there that said be careful not to go into morbid reflection and so forth you're going to be no use to anybody and I realized that was pretty much what would happen to me when I'd write this stuff up i would beat myself up i had a terrible inner judge that was there for years now i knew what this book said i knew very well what this broke my i was raised with big book people um i have wonderful foundation of this program and at 20 years i still had a lot of fear now i couldn't tell you that because you know you have to have a mask when you have so many years don't you I mean we have to have the AA mask going as if we're I don't know what we are we're outright mental defectives is what we really are but you know we're going to show everybody we're fine I guess and and I so I had the mask and and i had i had time and you know i'd been asked to do these conferences and talks and things like that so you'd think i'd had my stuff together and and there would be times when um life had dealt me some you know um trials and low spots as it says certain trials and law spots i didn't feel necessarily um as if i was really a good member or whatever but i had this kind of comeuppance with myself around 20 years because externally everything looked all right and and you people would not have known but have you have you ever gone to bed at night and as you turn the light out feel the loneliness i mean why should i have that at x amount of years so i had a pivotal change around 20 years in recovery and i really looked at what my relationship was with this presence that this book is talking about and um and i found my answer of course in the black lines and for me it happened when I was reading Bill's story and what Bill's story basically said was that he had turned things into his newfound friends and I can remember reading that and sitting on my couch and and pondering do I think of God as a friend now a friend is an energy when you really look it might be a person i happen to have a friend that i've known since i was six years old and i sponsored the last 44 years and we now co-sponsor each other but that woman is is a friend and if i could see her in one of these hollywood squares and missy if you're on i'm sorry i did this one other night she was on i didn't even know it but if i Could see her i would go i don't have to say anything i just nod should nod and we'd go and i'd feel the energy of that connection now you think of your best friend if you don't Have a best friend and you have an animal you think about animals it walks in and immediately there's an energy isn't it i don' know if he has a dog i have two cats and i have a stray i was just still out there looking for more food she is i live about 30 feet from tampa bay and anything that goes by here birds or cats or anything i'm after i love animals um so there's an energy that i feel and i feel a connection and i feels safe and connected at that moment just at that minute i will feel the safety in the connection it was like coming on here and realizing that you know you people haven't seen for a while and seeing you again after speaking you were like right in the front row the whole time and you you were easy target to just you you heard me and i could hear that you could hear me and we were connected at that moment i never say your name right i mean a ren or something but whatever you know i love you when i saw you in the thought that you came all the way to hear me there was a connection that happened didn't and we had a connection for one second there isn't any fear and I realized there was something going on with this friend thing and I started to think about how I had done the steps and how fearful I was to do the steps and yet I was never afraid to tell Missy anything she's a friend she's heard and we've gone through it from since we're six years old there isn'THING that I haven'T done that she doesn'T know about or vice versa and there's no judgment thing there's only compassion and love and forgiveness and um and i thought that's the type of god i need because i have been a batter you know we all have our traumas that we've had okay so when you when you have these traumas you have to find somebody where you feel safe and connected with in order to talk to so of course god has to be even a hundred times more safe and connected than even missing is. And I have found that to develop for me. And so slowly over the last almost 30 years, I have been trying to have a God of my experience, not my understanding. In fact, to be honest with you, I think it's an unexplainable sustainable force, but it's unexplainable until you experience. It's an experiential feeling that works that makes me feel safe and connected. Hence why I do the 10th step. I wait. I do my steps for the effect. The 10th Step Promise means you're placed in a place of neutrality. Definition out of the book safe and protected safe and protective I could not do what I do with you people I'm an introvert I don't like talking or anything I don'T MAKE ANY SENSE I DON'T THINK BUT SOMEHOW IF I DID NOT BELIEVE AND ALANAUN TAUGHT ME THIS EARLY ON AND WHAT I THINK SECOND TIME I EVER SPOKE I SAID I CAN'T DO THIS I'M TOO SCARED I CAN't DO IT AND SHE SAID TO ME YOUR PHONE WILL not ring unless god wants you to talk and at that moment i got out of the way now i have no idea why god wants me to talk but if god wantsme to talk i will talk because that presence has been present for me where i never knew that i could get through some of the things that i've gone through in the last number of years, all the years I've been sober, let alone what I was doing before I got here. So I know there's a presence. I just know it. Once you're present with a presence and you have that presence and feel that presence, nobody is going to tell you anything different. Is that right? How many people here have had a spiritual experience? Now, there's no reason, no rationale our logic connected to that but it is yours and you try to have somebody talk you out of that well you know what they can do good for them i know what's happened that's yours you own that that that's that's available to every single one of us and i and so and this is why i do what i do so when i constructively review my day now how i look at this thing is i don't i don'T write the questions out anymore i found out by doing my inventory um to find out what my morals were not my parents or whatever um you can find that out on page 68 if you ask god to remove the fears that have caused you to do the defects in your character you ask him what it would have you be you'll come up with a value or principle or moral those are yours they could be your parents but they're yours if you said god if you could take away all my fears of being a mother and so forth what would you have me be and you sit with that presence something will pop into your mind okay that's that's your value that's normal and if you look at what you don't like about yourself because of being a parent you'll see you weren't following that moral value that is where you went against your own values so I now have these hand railings that I can walk and so when I review my day i look and i say was i honest today was i curious today that's a big one for me i don't just take an assumption that i know everything anymore i try to ask questions um so was i curious today was I loving was I awake today one of my ones that I've recently found with an inventory I did when I was in the pandemic because you know we're powerless all of those things and I went through and I and I found out that I wasn't surrendered to what is so one of my values is being surrendered so that's how I do my nightly review was I surrender to them and if I wasn t the story will come up I don't have to look for the story it'll just it'll play for me the area and I'd say well what happened it's always fear I came from fear I didn't come from faith I didn'T come from God on that and so when I realized this the last sentence in this constructive review a day is my biggest deal and I don't do this perfectly in fact I'll tell you about how I'm working on that um it says that i'm to ask my best friend for forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken that's a question that isn't for me to sit there and figure it out afterwards it's for me go to sleep because the minute i wake up i'm going to ask god to direct my thinking so don't get involved with trying to figure things out let this present be present and guide you you know that there will be a guidance it takes some time but there will being guidance So I realized this is most of my nights when I go to sleep and I think about my day, I say, please forgive me, God. I was trying to do your job again. I was tried to do you your job and what God's, you know, Don Pritchard used to say this, we're here to do God's work, not his job. I thought that was brilliant. And I thought, what does that mean? It took me five years to realize it meant when I'm doing God's job, I've got an outcome, an expectation on how it's supposed to turn out. no I'm just here all I did is show up I'm showing up paying attention I'm telling you the truth I don't know what the outcome is going to be I didn't know when it was going to become two weeks ago I have no idea where am I what am I going there in the middle of deep freeze it's like that I really am grateful for the what I would I received was internal not external as much as internal your mother Teresa used to say something problem with folks today is that we draw our family circle too small and we do and i have a new family after being there in new jersey and and you can't buy that you know nobody gives you that it's something about a grace that happens when you get in this spiritual flow so that's what i do and every morning when i wake up i do ask god to direct my thinking i think it's very important to realize that we're every day i have to say divorce my thinking from self-pity, dishonest and self-seeking motives. Self-pitty is first. That means every day that means I'm going to wake up with those. And all of those things are fear based, aren't they? So before I even get out of bed, fear, which I fed for so many years, not faith, was self-Pity, Dishonest and Self-Seeking Motors. Me, me, me the alcoholic opera that's exactly what was going on for me forever and I finally looked at that one day it dawned over you know you've got a lot of self-pity so I you know I don't have any power like power is my dilemma I can't take it away but this presence can so I can ask this presence then it tells me I can employ my mental faculties because they're god-given once I get rid of Mary there i and you know after a while if you do this you'll realize that after you've said that you're not thinking about yourself you're thinking about what your kid might be up to or you're thinking about maybe the cats need to be fed outside you're still out there that mother stray is still out well we'll wait on her anyway um it so it'll it there'll be a slow gradual process of you waking up that you're not the only thing here the world is not revolving around your navel there's other things that are happening out there so i go on and and i would read that but that part i worked miraculously for 20 or more years i get up and it was like before i even got out of bed there was a voice that was saying direct your thinking have it through you know it would be like constant so during the pandemic i want to tell you what's happening over the last three to four years what the heck with the rest just read it keep reading it there's a little voice inside there is a god inside and the more you do this as it says on the last sentence in to the agnostics as you grow closer to god he'll reveal himself to you i don't know when that's going to happen but your heart will be quickened and i promise you this will work if you continue to do the drill so just do the dream and as you do the thrill new twists of this will happen so i during the pandemic i started to listen to that insight timer you know that and most of people know it's an app these i love this technology stuff i didn't think i'd like zoom i had so much contempt prior to investigation i love zoom same thing with these apps so here's this little app and it's called the insight timer and some woman i can't think of her name that would be nice if i knew it right there's a thousand of them on there but this one woman reads our book page 86 87 and 80 on awakening and she would read it and i would listen to it every morning and then i would meditate i have a quiet meditation afterwards one day i was listening to it and you know i thought to myself i don't say that i will be done many times a day do you ever get honest with yourself and ask yourself i mean i read it and so that's not it then we shut the book and we never say it again right so now you have more technology there's something called a pray minder p-r-a-y-m-i-n-d-e-r is another app it's a free app and you can write in prayers you can have tell it to say exactly and no you can't set it for a specific time but for 20 times a day i have something that comes up that bings me it bings and i know when i go and i will be done and and the more i do that the humbler i get because it's very funny to me i go you think you're so smart you can't remember to say thy will be gone no there was a time when i did meditation and this is the hardest thing in the world i want everybody here to do six 10-second meditations. Just 10 seconds. Stop. Don't do anything. After 10 seconds, blink. The only way I could remember to do that was the stoplights here in Tampa. They're much longer than 10 seconds but you try to do it. That's the hardest thing in the world because I'm undisciplined. My mind doesn't stop. i don't know about you but you know i'll have great intentions but that's that so anyways so that's kind of the first thing that i realized so i'd have the prey minder and and and i do the die will be done so i oh i thought i was so bright it was wonderful i was doing such a great job and so i continued to this on and on and then i realized do you know the second thing after you ask for self-pity and stuff has to do with if if you don't know what your next thing is to do you need to ask for inspiration an intuitive thought and a decision or a decision and i started to ponder that and i realized i'm retired i can do anything i don't want my next step is to be i'm kind of a dope i i really don't i'm weird so i thought you really don t plus the fact i do get inspiration and intuitive thoughts but i don't have any power to carry them out before i don' t know when i was young i thought i didn' t have to ask for the power to carry anything out because i had a lot of energy i'm old now it's good to get up and get a cup of coffee you know so it was really funny for me because i decided i said you know god i really need a decision done and i need your power to carry it out. Isn't that what the 11th step says? Ask for his power and the power to carry it out. How many people ask for the power to carry you down? I never did. I remember when I was new, I wanted to stop smoking. I remember Beth said, well, it sounds like you have the willingness. I said, I do. I really want to stop smoking. She said, Well, you better ask for the power to carry it out. Now that was like a light bulb going on. I did. And you know, you can receive that power. don't ask unless you really want them and we've done that because you'll get the power to carry it out i had my lungs so bad the doctor gave me the power hey stop anyway um so that became an interesting thing and so i would sit in the morning and i would ask for inspiration intuitive thought the power of care now bam all of a sudden i got everything done and didn't have any i wasn't exhausted and everything i had wanted to do i didn't have to make any list it was fascinating to me that still happens i still love to do them it's amazing to me so i'm going to relax and take it easy and my in my day unfolds and then i got to that point this is the biggest thing and i heard this woman on this you know on this insight type of insight timer i guess it's called um say we usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what my next step is to be that i'll be given whatever i need to take care of such problems now does that make sense to you listen to this i said what i'm sure she read that on. What do you mean I'll be given whatever I need to take care of such problems? Once I ask God to show me what my next step is to be, I have to have something to solve the problem? Of course I do because it isn't going to be what Mary Therese wants to do, isn't it? Because the next line is especially that I'd be free from myself. Well, I had to have freedom and then it just clicked for it was the funniest thing i went oh my god well i want to know what my next step is to be and i am given whatever i need for the next problem which i as i said a couple of i was up there in new jersey and i got in um the car with the person that brought me to the airport which was about an hour away i got him at the hotel he picked me up and i was in the lobby i put my phone in my jacket pocket and cold up there and jumped into his very nice vehicle and we were halfway out of the parking lot and stopped and took off our coats and when i did i just opened the door and took my elbow out and stuff and threw the coat in the back got to the airport and put my coat on there was no phone now i want you to know he was just about ready take off and i went max he said yeah i said don't go i don't have a phone he said what do you mean you don't know before we tore his truck apart everything and it must have fallen out of my pocket when i you know opened the door to take my coat off that was the most fascinating thing in the world it you know i i don'T HAVE A PHONE NUMBER HOW CAN I CALL MY DAUGHTER TELL HER I CAN'T CALL HER IN THE LINE IT WAS VERY INTERESTING AND I SAID THIS IS REALLY I WONDER WHAT'S GOING curious I was totally curious at what was going to happen at that moment and I went I just really I don't know what to do and Max said is that an iWatch I said yeah he says your contacts are in your iWatch would you have known that I mean I was given what I needed for that problem and I got a hold of my daughter and when I got home the spectrum was open and I have a new phone um so that that problem was resolved I got what I needed to take care of such a problem and that happened that's just a silly example but it's a truism and I didn't have to have some kind of a meltdown and die and it was fascinating to be six hours without a phone in an airport who had to get a real pass and things like that was very exciting nobody talks to anybody by the way everybody's got their head in that freaking phone the whole time including me but that day i didn't so that was kind of interesting so i think that's a that's up that's point to just take i know you probably people think of that anal here but i am now it's kind of fun i just i'm looking at this thing and i'm going yeah i think i'll do that because i was agitated and doubtful now this next thing comes up when you're agitated undoubtedly you want to pause and ask for the right direction and the right thought. In the last about four or five months, I've realized that every day I'm doubtful. I remember I was sitting and I was, I'm not necessarily agitated about things, but I am doubtful, and I go, you know what? I'm doubful. You know, if that's so true that I'm a doubtful God, I should be asking you every minute what my next action and thought this because i i don't know i just don't know what's going to happen and i just ask do you know how much love and care that is just to ask this why i finally realized at night when i said i'm really sorry god i've been doing your job i never even asked you do you Know if we have entered the world of the spirit in the 10th step it would be like me coming into this room and never saying hello to the people i know just ignoring you it's like there's an energy that is present for me due to the fact i've taken enough of my acorn cap off and there's enough light and i can feel that there is a presence is present for you that will help me through whatever it is whatever it means now a lot of you people know that i went to school you know another thing you do everything backwards your kids go and get master's degree and then you go to college i mean you know it's just the way it is and so mid you know i had about 17 years and i asked god what do i what do i want to do i had an excellent job excellent job with a high school education i don't even know how i did it but i was a buyer for major hull equipment for ships in maine at the biggest largest whatever shipyard largest employer in the state of Maine I had a great job and something I hated it was killing people and I just didn't like what I was building anyway I kept praying and praying and praying then I heard a woman who I respected a lot and I used to listen to in California her name was Dr. Elizabeth Kugler-Ross and she was the woman that brought hospice in the united states and she had a school in new mexico um for hospice and grief counseling to become um to work with people that were dying and uh i went i this voice said to me something happened can you hear me can you people hear me my screen just went off and came back oh somebody said i have five minutes oh good i'm glad okay so anyway i study i i um i studied death and dying and became a hospice social worker and a grief counselor so i have been with a lot of trials in those spots and i've been with and the sacred time of being with people and their final act of maturity as elizabeth would say um as we pass into the next realm i'm in the winter of my life i had the opportunity of being very sick and dying and coming back so it's like i know there is a presence um i know that this means deep to me um how much i want to commune with my lord um one of the things that we do every year um at new years is to ask what's your intentions for the year for the last three years i have had only one intention and they said put it in one word and that one word is to be awake i want to be away that's what i want want that more than anything i don't want you know it says we're driven by a hundred forms of fear uh i'm not afraid of my fears today the second one i'm afraid of self-delusion i wantto be awake i wanto be present i don'wantto be asleep i want to avoid whatever god wants me to see for as long as i can see you and these these lines every day as i listen to them what i've done this year is that another techie thing your people don't think i'm the tech person here but did you know that your iphone has a voice memo thing that you can do i have recorded this in my own voice in the eye and i go right through it and i say you know god probably i'm going to be doubtful or agitated today so i want you to remind me to do that and now that i have company this week i've had company um people that i have the privilege of sponsoring and and they're with me and i'll say you want to do meditation today we do it's wonderful if they're not around the cats go with them and i do meditation and and And then the main thing is, is that by asking for these things for what I will be done, I'm not as agitated. All those things happen. I'm more alert. I'm awake to what is happening for me each moment of the day. The end of the game. In fact, I don't do well in planning things. I'm really glad that people remind me to do things. I love my life. My life is full. It's so full. my family continues to grow as i continue on this journey with you i have a better relationship with a presence that's present that i know is present with all of us i do believe that i need you all very much because if i get in a dark place you hold a candle for me until i can reconnect with that presence and i believe that's what sponsorship is each one of the gals that i sponsor has a beautiful soul and all i do is hold a candle if they get in a dark spot and i can give them these black lines and some suggestions because these are spiritual tools this is true this is the best most moving brilliant sacred movement on on the face of the earth today the people that we reach it's amazing but it does mean we will go through necessary suffering and when you're going through that necessary suffering you got to have some presence present with you and i pray that i continue to do this because i uh i love you people i think i'm done am i done is that good enough thank you folks Nikki. Hi, Nikki. Come on up, please. Hi everyone. Nikki alcoholic. I'm so grateful to be here tonight. Thank you so much for your share, Mary. That was beautiful. There was moments of like deep reflection and that brought tears to my eyes and there was a lot of laughter too. I really appreciate your share. And one thing that really stood out to me, because I'm really struggling right now with jumping back into self-will all the time, and I really heard your message that it sounds like you're asking for God to guide you. and like was there a point in your journey that that just clicked and it was like an all the time thing because it's just like I honest to God right now I'm just more in the self-will than in asking for God and and I'm it's frustrating but it's so refreshing to come on and listen to you and just and get that like you know reconnection of like I need to like I need to get this because the self-will is not working that's that's all i got yeah um you know thank you for mentioning something i remember uh i thought i was going to drink in my first couple of years with a one of those situations where myself will you know i wanted what i wanted when i wanted wanted it unfortunately i would get it and then there would be a problem. And it was one of those situations and I was just devastated because of the reality of waking up my delusion type thing. And I was sobbing and thinking this was the end of the world is a lot of drama. I had a lot more drama. And remember, a situation happened and there was a group of us together and all of a sudden I found myself laughing. Are you there? can anybody hear me hello you can hear you a few people left i don't know where you went but there you are um anyway um funny i don' t know what happened i'm in my contacts but so if you can here me that's all right i can't see you people um what happened was is my sponsor said to me i said to my sponsor i said i'm laughing and she said yes honey and when you're laughing you're closest to god i think that's probably one of the most important things with the people that i'm i sponsor if we weren't laughing we could never go to the depths that we need to go to it you you think about that when you learn to laugh at your own self there's an energy there that you're closest to god if you're not frightened or anything so i think that's very important other than that i think my trials and low spots in running into myself surrendered me i think i needed them in order to learn how to surrender That's probably an awful thing to say. But I've gone through some things that I don't want anybody to go through, okay? But I'm here to tell you if you don't drink, and my sponsor said this to me all the time, if you Don't Drink, You Don't Use, and You Don'T Kill Yourself on the other side of that pain, I promise you, you'll be closer to that presence. And she didn't lie. And it's my experience now that that is true. There are low spots and trials. I had to learn, and with the idea of the work I did and so forth, there's a lot of things that aren't fair. There's a lot of sadness in this world, especially what we've been going through and watching and everything, and I finally have to coin this phrase. I'm sad every day. Every day, I'm said. Sad is not bad. i used to think it was bad to be sad it isn't there isn't a time when i don't go through this day with laughter as well as sadness as as you just said nikki you said that you were laughing or could cry there are emotions that i have not given myself permission to have to be authentic so i had to find somebody that i could be authentically that knew this program to guide me. I don't know if that helped or not. There is such a thing as grief that is different than self-pity, so make sure you're with somebody that understands grief. If you're going through a major loss, there is a process. Grief is not an event. It's a process anybody else? I don t know if that helps. Thank you, Nikki, and thank you, Mary, for the answer. Jackie, come on up, please. hi everybody my name is jackie and i am an alcoholic so good to hear you again mary exactly what i needed um tonight for the rest of my life uh here we are laughing anyway i really appreciate everything you said um because it's like oh my gosh i am in a state of restlessness self-pity self-seeking right now and i've been there since saturday we're on vacation and um nothing's quite going the way i planned it and um and you know i'm gonna be honest i have not been doing this um since we got here yesterday i started falling on my knees but But, you know, I still, you know, it's like we say, I run in self-control or self-seeking so much. So thank you so much for waking me up. If you were here, I'd let you slap me. But anyway, remember, you said something about the memo on the iPhones that we can record our voice. And so when you do that in a meditation, was that just like this um unawakening you recorded your voice in first person is that what you did yes yes i start off and i go i say hi god good morning we want to be directing my thoughts you know let's not have any self-pity dishonest or self-seeking motives and god you know me i don't know what i'm doing so give me some inspiration intuitive thought and definitely the decision and power to carry that out because i can't do it without you and i talk as if i'm talking to you okay and i read that and now i've also added to that there's some other because you know it says we can do other literature so i also say thanks god for reminding me i can do other literature and i have this one thing that i read for since before i got in aa and it's called commune with your lord and it comes out of this unity book that was given to me and i've read it for years and and i always wanted it starts off with let every other thought be still let every cell in my body temple reflect the light of your divine presence and i love that and so i read that out of it and then i talked to god i says you know i know this is like matthew 12 12 and i you know I have this conversation if god's right there and then i ended then i went on because jay stinnett the other js said the other night that he's doing saint francis's prayer in the morning so then i said so then I do the prayer you know use me as an instrument now I will probably do that for a while until it becomes mechanical if it becomes technical I will change it up because I want to stay awake you see it's kind of yes if you and i got to know each other we'd be sitting down having a cup of coffee and see what's like here and this and everything else that's how my god is with me thank you jackie for your question thank you mary irena coming up please hi everybody i'm around an alcoholic mary you know that i love everything you say you go straight to my heart and i do do those pages every evening and morning and you have brought so much depth to the details there that are going to just definitely energize my practice uh my question is and if you can answer it i am still in the intellectual part of god i still do the faith with my head and this conversation with god uh and i know it's coming out of my head and i keep waiting for it i and i feel the presence but i know it's not connecting with my heart and i was wondering if there are any hints to make that switch to make that growth to uh to affect that i'm 23 years in the program and obviously working to the i love what you say about god being your friend and i'd like to develop that kind of relationship so if you have any suggestions on how to get there i would appreciate it well i think the first step is so important um you know unless we admit we're powerless we're not admitted in this program did you ever notice that admit we'll power us over off once you admitted it then you're admitted into this program and you have to admit your innermost self don't you what's the first step of this program to admit to our innermOST self that we're alcoholic it didn't nothing changed until i admitted to my innermost self that i was a horrible mother there was no excuse i was just bad when i admitted then there was some room for god to do something there was not intellectual there was There was no justification, there was no rationalization. I admit it. Nothing happened until I admitted to my innermost self that I was totally selfish, self-obsessed, self centered. Nothing happened. It wasn't logic anymore. It was a feeling. And that's why I think it says that we're gonna search diligently within and you can only join us it says only if you wish you can join us on the broad highway here on page 55 i think it is this is deep down inside this is not a surface program this is not therapy this is thisis a shift in a change of being a caterpillar to a butterfly we have to be reborn with new things now that's a very hard thing because i think my whole society has taught me i had to learn learn learn which for 20 years i learned learn learn every one of those lines and theoretically i could do it but what you just said you just admitted to how many people around here 80 something people that you're intellectualizing this so if you could do that with us what about your best friend why don't you just say yeah i think i'm too intellectual here but i'm just going to sit here and still ask you hopefully you can help me because i don't have that power i don'T HAVE THAT ANSWER FOR YOU ONLY SOME QUICKENING OF YOUR HEART WILL CHANGE THAT AND I WISH THAT'S WHY I SAID I THINK WE'RE ALL CANDLES YOU FOR SOME REASON KEEP RUNNING AROUND SO SOMETHING'S WORKING WITH YOU trust it how many people jumped in the car and drove four hours for crying out loud to do that there's something going on for you why don't you give yourself permission to accept that see we we keep thinking some wacko thing has to happen to us it's there all the time there's a presence it's there all the time i'm the one with the acorn cap that i keep trying to crack so to let the light in i want to feel it i was so afraid of feeling i was so raised so proper i was never supposed to have any emotion wasn't until i did the grief and the death and dying and the trauma i was a facilitator of trauma work i had so much trauma i needed to get through them now it's the end thing it's a bus thing everybody's doing trauma stuff i've been doing for years because i'm the fish i gotta catch god is there i promise you that from my experience whether you feel it or not that presence is present it's my i don't care if you think i'm wacko i know that's what i said to you before it's like you and you know you've had many miracles happen to you i've witnessed them so just stay awake never know when the dolphin's gonna surface you're gonna be awake to see it hi thank you no hands up i'm gonna pick lee from dc would you like to come on up for a second hello sorry hi i'm lee and i'm an alcoholic really happy to be here you know like god is strange i was sitting there thinking i should have my dinner and and the message was uh-uh you're getting up to a meeting, and it's Mary T. And I thought, Mary T., I have heard that name before. I think I know what she's going to talk about or whatever, I thought. And what did it do? I heard your voice. AndI was like, I know that voice. I absolutely know that voice.And I was so happy. I just lay down on my couch and I thought I am just gonna sit back and listen to it. And you finally said it. You said me, me, me me and I just love that when you talk the very first time I heard you talk I was so excited because you just it's like a web you're knitting this web for us and coming in and out of things and I'm good and I can hardly wait until the recording comes out because I got to put it in my car, because that's the only way I can listen to this again. And I'm like, oh, I'm so ready to hear this again, and I also go to a small women's group, and i'm like oh god, I gotta take it, and I'll play it for them, and all the rest of it, no, so you make me very excited about this, and I am very excited, about this program, I love what I learned, I keep learning stuff, I've been here for a long time, and there was a whole long time where I didn't learn anything, because I wasn't paying any attention wasn't listening wasn't answering wasn't talking to god wasn't anything i was just here and proud that i was sober i was sobre for a long time but now i get to listen to you and learn from all of the people that are in this room when you speak and i just really really appreciate it i love it i had the strangest thing going on uh last i don't know whether this timed in terms of two minutes or three minutes but this afternoon after waiting for two weeks to do something that I had to do that I didn't want to do and it was just going to make me mad if I did it. I was standing in my front room and God said why don't you just get a little organized here sit in your chair read the stuff and go ahead and do it and it all it's it was because i got this huge bill as a mistake i was thinking it was a mistake the mistake was me the mistake was me because the bill i read it and it said it was this humongous amount of money i owed them and the deal was it it i didn't read it well enough i didn'T pay enough attention to what was going on and i got myself so wound up and i and when i finally figured out what was going on, I was just like, thank you, God. Thank you, God. I really need that. So here, look, twice, once in my front room and now in my front room again, get to this meeting and say hi to everybody. So thank you. Thank you. Nice to see you. Yash has a hand up. Come on up, please. Hi, everyone. My name is Yash. I'm an alcoholic. thanks to everyone behind the scenes who makes this meeting work I am very grateful for every Tuesday night and I've been I try to be as regular as possible and I will say it's it's life-altering in many ways because of the some things that I hear once a week I remember and other things that are here every day I tried really hard to remember and so this is these are some of the things that I really appreciate. My question for the speaker is, I could really associate with the fact that when your phone will ring, you will be ready to speak when your phone will drink, which I interpreted as when you're ready to be of service at that level, which is when you can help someone if someone calls you um that's when you know the phone will start ringing when you're ready and i'm at um at about a little less than three years of of uh you know sobriety slash abstinence i'm i'm trying to figure out my my program customize it to me and I have all the tools and assistance available but I wanted to maybe confirm if my interpretation is correct that once I've once I am ready the potential for service will arise on its own and I don't have to try too hard that's my question you know I have done something you know how they have a moment of silence in the meeting and you every everybody would say god please use me as an instrument you know that well i didn't realize it but because i never spoke about it but for almost well 49 years i've been going god would you use me for an instrument and everybody in this room is an instrument for me i always say that see i don't want to be the only person in an instrument you have to be an instrument from me do you see and that is a form of um humbleness and i didn't know that most people don't do that until i said it to somebody i sponsored i donno about six seven years ago i said you know i always ask god to use everybody as an instrument here and as an instrument for me because the longer you're sober there isn't going to be that many people ahead of you sometimes and so but i know that somebody is going to be an instrument for you because i need i know god will work through you and i need to be touched all right so that's number one i'm not ahead of ya i'm behind you i'm walking shoulder to shoulder with you all right and in three years you're new to this you're you're just you if you're anything like i am i i studied a lot i tried to figure everything out you know remember the brain i'm gonna figure everything out you and stuff and unfortunately i made the mistake of listening and i knew there was something going on here so i couldn't leave because i knew something was happening and so when so what I'm saying is that when my phone didn't mean that I didn't speak in a meeting if somebody called on me and stuff I was so nervous though it would just about I would be I was somebody that was paralyzed with fear I was fear-based evil corroding thread was definitely shot through the fabric of this existence and I didn t know that there was any relief from them but gradually they used to say god is spelled r-i-s-k risk so when the phone rang or somebody called on me or you who raised your hand tonight you risked so god's already there god's ready there now don't rehearse what you're going to say because i promise you it will never be what you're going to say i mean i did that for years and then right i didn't even say that somebody said to me did you ask god to use you as an instrument i said yes they said then you said exactly what god wanted you to say and uh that is only going to come as you continue to come as you can the more vulnerable you get the more god on board you have okay i promise you that you'll find that because it won't make any difference i think another one of those mother theresa things if they love you it's wonderful if they hate you it'S WONDERFUL because sometimes you speak for yourself i don't know about the rest of you that's been out there speaking but you know that you've done a flubby job with something and you just know oh my god and it's a teacher you'll be your own teacher it'll help you we're not here this is not you know everybody wants to be popular in the outright metal defective ward here we're Notwell so don't try to be populous just try to be what God wants you to be we're like snowflakes we're all flakes but Snowfall is quite rare in Tampa, Florida. So there's no typical data. Alexa, there's toxin. Alexa, stop. The atmosphere in snowfall is zero inches. Alexa, stop. No snowfall in Florida. That's it. All right. There you go. So I hope that helped. And thank you for the question. Yes. Thank you, guys. And thank you, Mary. Can you not call it up, please? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Hi, Mary. Hi. It's so wonderful to hear you. Wonderful, wonderful. I have a question. You know, you remind me when I was in treatment, I had like, you know, counselors and psychiatrists and all that. But I had one spiritual advisor and I never forget her and she helped me the most in the program. And she didn't take that many people because there were so many there, but she would listen to me and she took me on and I was so comforted by her and you remind me of her and that energy, you know, I feel it so rarely, you know and I forget it I really um forget it and I wish I could could always you know have it and I feel like I need to be recharged um are there any books at night I've been wanting to read something that just kind of um is an affirmation of that or just brings me comfort um and I like what you say about grief that it's a process I'm kind of going through that with my husband he's had cancer for like four years but he it's stage four and you know it's it's just kind of like really working its way through we're lucky that it'S been this long you know for some reason God has just you know blessed us in that way but it's starting to you know do it I care took my aunt also with cancer so I kind of know you know the process but thanks for saying that because I could feel like I'm getting into self-pity and you know I'm not the one who's sick you know that kind of thing and and um but anyways and i'm working through that with learning how to sit with it you know sit with the fear and sit with it and anyways aside from that is there a book that brings you comfort or you know um helps me bring that energy and the belief in the energy again um yes I'm an avid seeker okay I think one of the things that happens for me is that I had no background really and before I got into the program I actually had somebody introduce me to a church that was called the invisible ministry because you didn't have to go to it, which I liked a lot. And it was based on Emmett Fox's work. I don't know if you know Emmett Box. So I was actually witness to miracle, to be honest with you, being there three years before I got into the program. I think it helped me come into the programme. But one of Emmett Cox's books that I think is the most powerful and the one that I used, had my scotch class i was a drunken saint with it for god's sakes was around the year with emmett fox it's called around the gear and it's it's just one page it's kind of like our day at our time book and it helped me to do the things it would be like it talked about god being um i think it's i think there's seven aspects of god or something and one of them was like um truth and it told and it tells you exactly how to claim it. And I claim things. And, you know, it's like when I do things that I'm reading and I don't understand, it says to claim divine intelligence and divine wisdom and say thank you as if it happened right away. Now, I did that all through college. I was 4.0 and summa cum laude. And I didn't even think I had anything to do. But and I wasn't doing it for the grade. I just wanted to have divine intelligence and divine reason. and any spiritual thing that i read i claim that before i pick it up and i and i read it your soul will tell you which book to pick okay if it doesn't work for you don't worry about it meditate now i want to say one thing about your grief okay um you are going through what we call anticipatory grief which i'm sure you're already aware of and and one of the things my whole thing while i was a hospice social worker was care for the caregiver very important for you to have care for the caregivers and so i give myself i give my self-permission i say that i'm giving myself permission and i give meself 10 minutes to experience grief to be sad to take a walk to throw a rock if i'm angry you know to rip up a telephone book if i just need if i have anger or anything like that i give myself 10 minutes and then i get up and i go clean the cat box or do whatever i need to do but you have to give yourself permission 10 minutes to experience feelings other than that we'll lose you okay yeah blessings