Step 10 and the Spiritual Axiom of Being Disturbed – Sandy B.

Thank you very much Duke and hi everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? I'll get this out of the way. More than a workshop, in workshops you think about well we'll have some handouts and everybody will fill something out and that kind of a thing. This is more of just sit back and relax and let me share with you some of the thoughts that I've I've had over the past almost 35 years about our 12 steps from maybe a different way than you've heard about them or maybe in some way that if you're new, it might give you some thoughts on what the deal is. I mean, what are we trying to accomplish here? And while I will say that what I say is my own opinion, I do hope that I follow our literature pretty religiously and no ad-libbing. I think every principle that I'll talk about is contained in either the big book or the 12 and 12. But as the years have gone by, I have found that the way the steps looked when I first got sober has changed. And I'm sure that everybody who's been around a while realizes that. In the very beginning, they seemed like this formula that was being given to us in order to somehow avoid that first drink. And then once we avoided the first drink for a while, we found that these were something that could be used to solve crises as they came in sobriety. And everybody in sobrietty has something that comes along, a death in the family, a divorce, you get fired, you run into a health crisis. So now we're going back and we're looking at these steps in a different light. And when they succeed in that area, then we find that maybe they're worth trying when we don't have a crisis. Who ever thought of that? Maybe we ought to do this voluntarily just because it's a good idea. So then when we get into that type of relationship, personal relationship with our steps, we find that we're looking at them a little bit different and all the way along the way i'm sure each one of you that's been around a while has been astounded at the universal power that's contained in these steps and we just keep adding to our opinion of them and we just go, wow, these things are more miraculous than I used to think years ago. This is really something. And it's in that light that I thought I'd talk about some thoughts that I have come into my mind in more recent years. So this is certainly not, you know, a how to work the step, but more just some reflections on them. So if you could take it in that life and just sit back and relax while let me just go ahead and share some thoughts. If I were to try and explain to someone new now what I think these steps are designed to do, I think I would say something like this. I think i would say that we, you and I, were put on this planet and we had a challenge And the challenge was to have a happy life. And the only way that you and I ever found how to do that was at the bar. Until we found the power of alcohol, life had us buffaloed. We were insecure. We didn't know what was going on. We were frightened. We were angry. We were resentful. And most of all, we were self-centered in the extreme. and we found ourselves in pain most of the time nothing was ever right remember that feeling like you know if she would just do this or if my boss would do that or if the government would stop doing this or they would do this then i would be happy and we all had a tremendous inventory we were very good at invent not inventorying ourselves but inventorying what was wrong in the world and if we could just get it straightened out i could finally be happy you know i need more money i need a big yacht i need different girlfriend i need this i need that and so we all had made all these judgments but we were classic failures at life until alcohol came along and then we encountered a power greater than ourselves that could work miracles in our lives because it transformed the world that we lived in and when alcohol came in i remember when that third drink kicked in at the bar i remember looking around going now this is more like it well what is more likely the bar is still the same as it was the people outside in the streets are still the same but i remember just looking around and going this is our right you know and so what am i what's happening well something is happening inside of me to cause me to see the world in a different way and when i saw it that way i liked it this isn't drink three or four now we're not talking about drink 21 because then it got all screwed up again because people were stealing my drinking money and they were saying funny things, and the police were coming in to just see how we were doing, and took us off. So it always had an unusual twist. But I'm talking about that feeling that we wanted to have from drinking. And all it was was alcohol is a very powerful substance, and it was able to change the way I saw the world and I liked the world then. And that's why I'm an alcoholic, because for non-alcoholics that doesn't happen to the extent that it happens to us and that's why we are willing to pay a heavy price to have that feeling because we had a problem that alcohol fixed and what I think sobriety consists of through these 12 steps is we get that problem resolved so there's nothing for alcohol to fix and therefore it's real easy to not drink because we don't need alcohol for anything we're already alright or we know and have the faith that we're going to be soon we're having us a little health crisis we have this little emotional crisis but there's something inside of us that is telling us personally something right in here that is saying to me sandy I know it looks bad right now but everything's really fine now to be in touch with that is what I think is the goal of all our steps is to have a personal assurance inside in order for this to happen we have to change our mind about a lot of things we have get rid of all the old ideas that we had and the first one was that we're powerless over alcohol I did not want to admit that but we're shifting in order to have this happen in order to have the transformation so that some power can actually flow through me on a daily basis if I'm willing to clear the channel and constantly reassure me that everything's all right in spite of the evidence now in the beginning I did this through my sponsor. You know how we are. We're chicken littles in the beginning. We go out, we got a flat tire. Call my sponsor, tires flat, tires, flat tires, wet. I might be late for work. I might lose my job. I'll be fired. No one likes me. They hate me. Somebody probably flashed that tire. And then he goes, it's just a flat hire. Go get the Jack, go get that. When you change it, everything will be all right and then i said well if you put it that way so he would always put it that way he would take the way i saw it and get rid of that and then he would share a different perspective on it and so when he put it that way i went out and i saw that i just had a flat tire i wasn't able to see that on my own so in the beginning sponsors friends in aa and the aa group gave me that reassurance and gave me the ability to come in when the sky was falling and they would go no you're wrong the sky isn't falling everything's fine and i go oh good and i would just turn around and everything would be fine because they told me it was fine so you can see what has to be done is i am in constant need of help to tell me that the sky isn't falling because on my own that's the way i see it because i was born scared and neurotic and skinny and nervous and all that kind of stuff so when i first react to something i go oh this guy's falling but now this i'm going to tell you this is what i think advanced sobriety is okay i'm going to tell you what i think advanced sobriety is with advanced sobrietty we pick up the phone faster we admit sooner that we're screwed up because we know we can get rid of it like that but we can't get ridofit by ourselves we need the power of this program the reassurance we can get it from meditation we can get it from prayer and I love to just call somebody and say I'm freaking out and they'll go it's okay thank you that's all it took was for me to acknowledge that I'm freaked out or whatever term you want to I'm losing it I like to use and I'm going to focus this whole afternoon this whole hour on the sentence out of the 10th step in the 12 and 12 where it says there is a spiritual axiom you know remember this little one and it says whenever we are disturbed no matter what the cause there's something wrong with us well what's wrong with that we're disturbed that's what's right wrong with them that's all that is wrong with up hey I just got told by my boss I'm going to get fired and I got this and I got that. And you are disturbed. If you weren't disturbed, you would just be looking for a different job. And you would have that challenge in front of you. And so it never dawned on me that there was a way of directly getting undisturbed with the circumstances all still staying the same. And if I could get undisturbed with the circumstances is all staying the same life was going to get a lot easier now you may be saying it's especially if you knew now you're going to tell us that there's the power in this program so that you can get undisturbed when things are all screwed up yep and you of all people ought to believe that because that's what drinking was we did that all the time i would go into the bar and i would say i'm all screwed up do you have something to fix that yes drink this nothing has changed and i'm not screwed up i'm sitting there going hey man eat drink and be married tomorrow we could be dead i don't know i'll find a job someday i'll be this i'm just i'm just as loose as a goose why worry today man it's 10 o'clock at night you ought to enjoy the now living in the now not that we did it that well but it was a similar philosophy it was the ability to rise above the problems that we're having in our lives and so i like to think that the whole purpose of sobriety and the whole focus of all these 12 steps is to number one not get disturbed like we used to as often and to the to the degree that we did and number two when we do to get undisturbed as fast as possible and that there's really nothing else beyond that now you're going to be saying wow that's the whole program well i'm just going to say yes just for this afternoon's discussion and we'll see how it goes because this condition let me just share what i mean by undisturbed when we are undisturbed it means that we are in a state of being satisfied with our life as it is this moment now have you ever run into somebody who's in that condition, it's great being around them. I love hanging around people who are absolutely content with their life just the way it is. They're fun to be around. As a matter of fact, you could call them a miniature program of attraction. You know what I'm saying? There are people that are like that. I'm working to get there. I have a long way to go, but I have days and weeks that are unbelievable sometimes. And then something comes along and I decide to go handle it myself. Don't need any help on this one. And you would not want to talk to me during that week that I'm out there being self-centered. So this condition is a spiritual condition. That's the way I like to look at it. This is how God would have us we would draw close to our higher power, we would be in that state. We would suddenly find that all of these needs that we thought we had are being met spiritually and that all-of-a-sudden the need for a promotion or the need for a bigger job or a yacht or bigger bank account is temporarily gone. We have sense of well-being that comes from inside and all this other stuff becomes meaningless when we're in that condition we live in harmony with the people around us which is what we find in step eight especially in step 8 talking about how to live in Harmony with the People Around Us well it's very difficult to live in harmonies if we're disturbed because we're full of resentment people want to hear us we're whining we're complaining and we are not fit to be around i like to think about the self-centered whiner living in harmony out in the world and you know harmony makes me think of an orchestra and so you have a score that has been written by the master composer and if i would get in touch with this through a spiritual program then i could participate in this big orchestra and i would know when to play this note or when to let somebody else play and it would all come out in harmony but when i'm self-centered and i'm not tuned in to any master score i'm writing the score it's my music i only know one note and that note is me do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. It's me and I just go out and play that note. I just go me, me, and then I expect you to get in harmony with that. That's what I thought my job was to say this note so you could hear it and then go oh I see that Sandy's note let's get... I'll play this note. So I thought communicating was just telling you more about me and if you had enough information about me then you would know how to treat me and then everything would be fine and so i really saw nothing wrong with that approach to life at all and i i would try harder and harder let me tell you more about me look here's something more that might be helpful so that you would treat me better next time let me tell you this and people just want to leave the room we just drive people away it's been said that alcoholics when we're self-centered whether we're sober or drinking we can be equally bad i've seen some of us with a few years sobriety that remind us of being drunk because we haven't taken care of the self-centeredness and this self-center behavior brings out the worst in people and all of you will have to concede that in one way or another as you went through life as a tornado drinking drunk we disrupted the normal flow of human behavior you know what i'm talking about we keep people off balance because that way they're not going to poke into our business and we created disharmony wherever we went and i did that in my own family. I'd just keep them. They never knew where I was going to be, what kind of mood I was gonna be in. I don't know whether they'll let you talk to your father or not. Maybe some of you had situations like that. Or down at work, you had a lousy weekend, people are coming in happy. You resent that they had a happy weekend? Let's put the dark cloud on them. Hey, I don' want to hear all that happy stuff. If I'm miserable, everybody ought to be miserable. let's bring it down man let's get it down here so so we bring out the worst in people then we complain about the world that we live in it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy i'm going to go out and stir everybody up so that they're behaving worse than they ever behave and then i'm going to complain about it but man you know the world is filled with jerks and you know and i thought i had inventoried this to some degree and um i forget how many years ago when my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary my sister who now has 22 years in aa was planning the 50th reunion and she was telling me all the people that were coming and i oh that's wonderful that's wonderful that'S wonderful it was up in connecticut and i was going to go up there and then she mentioned this one uncle and I said, oh no, no do we have to invite him? Why do we Have to invite Him? He's always so abusive and curt he never smiles and she said, oh he only does that when you're around and I went I went, what? Oh yeah, everybody loves him he's great and I say, you know if she had been in the program i think i would have a hard time buying into that and so i went up there and i pretended that she was right i pretended he was a great guy so i ran over when i saw him how you doing i'm so glad to see you and he said i'm for glad to be you and it was wonderful and so there it was it was something that i must have picked up when i was younger and then i just carried this and came in and wouldn't say hello or give him that look or whatever it was and then he saw that and and all of that so what i'm getting at see this is all going back to being disturbed that we're going to create a lot of this world that we complain about when we're undisturbed and we're also going to feel bad ourselves so this spiritual axiom is a very powerful thing in the tenth step and when we wrong promptly admit it so if you look at this now how am i going to get undisturbed well the only way to do that is to have a power come in to our lives and soothe us just walk in and just sweep over us so that we look back out and it's much nicer than we thought now all of this seems to come about the willingness to try something like this which sounds pretty far-fetched you got to admit when you're new and they're saying hey man is this higher power in aa it'll make you feel wonderful yeah yeah i'm gonna do that i don't need to feel wonderful i need some money man i need the money i'll get serenity later but i need money right now i mean because we know our problems we've got them all focused in and if it weren't for the fact that we were powerless over alcohol i doubt if any of us ever would have done any of this stuff It was that we didn't have any choice. We finally got to a point where we were willing to listen to anything. You know what I mean? If my sponsor had been a member of Climb a Tree Anonymous, and he told me the way you get sober is to climb that tree and sit up there for a couple weeks, I would have gone right up that tree because he was sober. So he came in and he explained to me that I had a situation that was going to eventually kill me unless something more powerful than myself came into my life to rescue me. So number one, I had to admit this hopeless nature of my situation and at the same time I hadと change my mind about God and I didn't believe in it. I didn' t want anything to do with this higher power and he explained to me that AA does not try to convince anyone of the existence of a higher power. But they're very good at convincing us of the need for a higher Power. And if you desperately need a higher Power, you're liable to believe in one. And that's where I was. And I like to tell the story about taking a new person up. I used to be a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps and I have a lot of analogies that make me think about flying and being on course and being guided and all these things through the air and through life, et cetera. But if I had a new person who was wrestling with steps one and two, then I would say, well, why don't you jump in my jet and we'll go up for a little ride and I want to teach you about powerlessness and help you understand spirituality. Okay, so we get in the plane and go up to about 45,000 feet, blow the canopy open, turn the plane upside down, pull negative g's and he falls out no shoot but he's got the headset on and i can still talk to him on the radio and i'm going do you feel powerless you have a you have sense of powerless out there how you're getting the drift of power yeah and he's going he's probably saying i don't know how he's gonna do that somehow that plane he's Gonna get back under me and I'm going off a couple miles away just watching them and the real cool guy is probably going like a skydiver for a while but you get down around 3 000 feet and relative motion starts coming in and you can see a parking lot out there and that sucker is moving up fast and he's going powerless i got i'm understanding powerless i've got it i got i got powerless good hang in there because we're We're going to do step two right now. And about eight feet from the truck, a big hand comes out of the sky, grabs you, and a voice, it is big, deep voice, says, excuse me, we're conducting a survey. Do you believe in God? now you might get a different answer under those circumstances than you would on a bar stool and you might be something like no but under these conditions i'm willing to change my mind and that's all we do we convince each other that the circumstances require us to change our mind and have an open mind that there really is this loving power that can grab us right from that truck and save us. And if you don't change your mind, you hit the truck. You see what I'm saying? So it isn't like I'm going to prove God, here he comes and all that. It's like the truck becomes the proof. Do you want to hit it? Or do you want a gamble on this? So it's in that process that we become willing, as Bill says, as only the dying can become. And what is this willingness? We're going to be going against ourselves. We're gonna be going against our own better judgment, our ego, all of those ideas. We're gunna say no to our own thinking and we're guna try this other thing in order to avoid hitting the truck because we haven't got a way out. You know what I'm saying? If you're so smart, what are you doing here? You know, that sense of reality. So we hit this bottom where we became willing to say no to our own ego and try something that we didn't think up. And to me, that's the whole doorway into a spiritual program. When you finally say, I'm abandoning human ideas, mine, and I'm going to try this thing. As soon as we do that, we become willing. and you know how wonderful that is to be willing it is so wonderful because it's the opposite of willful which is so awful to be willful it's so painful to just be willfull you just go around this is the way it ought to be and it isn't you know and it's just so yeah and as soon as we go okay i'll try this remember how that when you struggled about aa and then all of a sudden you became willing and he just said okay i'm meeting every night okay where do i go monday where do go tuesday where do i go to and it just became a question of following guidance and following guidance is what spirituality is all about initially we can get it from a sponsor and we can gets it from our home groups and we can it from other people in the program that are helping us but the ultimate guidance is going to come from our higher power where we start working through what is blocking us from receiving this guidance so i like to think about all character defects and all these things as disturbing events i don't know about you but when i have a resentment and i'm furious it's very noisy inside of me it's like i mean you can't really hear it out there but i can hear it in here and when i'm frightened it's another noise it's much higher pitch and it's and all that and when I'm envious And when I'm lustful, I have a different one in there. But they're all creating disturbances of a different nature inside of us. And when those disturbances are going on, you can't hear the guidance. They talk about the still, small voice. That's why meditation, that's why getting undisturbed is so important. so that, let's just say for example purposes that the way the whole deal works is if you can get totally undisturbed and quiet and centered, you will hear something that is saying all is well. You don't have to worry about a thing. But it says it in a very whisper and when the racket's going on you can't hear the whisper. You can't here this wonderful assurance that in your life you are loved everything is fine there is nothing to worry about disregard all that stuff out there you are fine now if you could have that then just think how easy it would be to deal with all that step out there because the hardest part about dealing with all that stuff up there is to deal without overreaction to all that's stuff that's out there and so here's this this analogy of just there is this quiet signal make it a beacon make it anything you want but it's obscured by disturbances and they are all caused by character defects and the character defects are all cause by instinctual drive that were born in us so it's not our fault that we have character defects so all the catholics can get rid of the guilt not your fault not your fault you have those character defects it's your responsibility to do something about it because we need this raw energy bill explains that in the 12 and 12 and step 4 that we were given this raw energy that the energy to reproduce the energy To go out and work and succeed and the energy and demand that we have a place in society so these forces are at work in all human beings The secret to life is to harness these forces so they no longer run our lives. Today we were free without a higher power, and I don't want to become dependent on a higher power, but true independence comes from dependence on a high power, because until this comes into our lives, we're being jerked around by our character defects. I was going to stay at work but lust said you better go see that blonde I was gonna stay at work but greed said go to the racetrack I was Gonna stay at war you know what I'm saying they would have all these things and then these demands inside of us I really need the extra money so I have to cheat that's the only way I'm going to get there I really mean to do this I have a lie i just feel so terrible about myself i have to tear him down with gossip i've just appeared so all these things are these demands are coming and before we come into aa before we ever hear about a spiritual program what do you suppose is our only answer to doing something about these demands that come in and all of a sudden we're being overpowered with envy we're overpowering gluttony overpowered would love what are we going to do about it we got to go out and get stuff to meet them until they shut up so if i could just get enough sex or enough money or enough power or enough i could finally shut this stuff off and we come into aa and they go hey there's another side to that equation how would you like the power to reduce the demand so they aren't screaming at you like that and i thought about it and then i said well technically that may be true but I'm not sure we're getting into step six now that I want all of them totally removed you know I was trying to think of no pride who would look out for me no lust what would that lead to no greed let's let's settle for something respectable you know what I mean let's get a control on our lust let's have some control of our greed control over our pride I remember that you may have seen them at groups they had character defects listed up there and they had false pride like there was good pride somewhere and and this is the power of these demands to overreach themselves and tell us don't buy into that don't find it to that having those demands reduced and allow spirituality to flow through so that you have absolute contentment with what you have no way the whole country isn't built on that you can't possibly be happy with what you have you need this too i mean where would the economy go so i have to stay greedy to save the country you know what i mean and what if i followed these steps and became a saint you know we all know that's never going to happen but what if I did? What if I did do that? How do you think my neighbors would feel? It would make them so uncomfortable to live next to a saint. And they teach us to think about others. So I'm going to stay a jerk just for my neighbors. And so we find all manner of means to avoid what this step is talking about. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. In the 12 and 12 it talks about we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by because the implication of step six is perfection. We're totally ready to help God remove all these defects of character. So we started out by saying, I never saw anybody with all their character defects removed. True. But we also had our drinking obsession removed because we were able under those conditions to become entirely ready to have it removed. And Bill writes about that. He says, I wonder why we were unable to achieve that readiness and it's so difficult to do with the other character defects. And his conclusion was that drinking was life threatening and the other ones aren't. They're not ready to kill us yet. And so we seem to have some more wiggle room. But the rest of sobriety, all of sobrietty, you hear old timers talking, what are you doing? What are you dealing with? Six and seven, six and seven is to find more things that we might become more willing to get rid of. We're like, we're in a hot air balloon and we're trying to find something else to throw overboard so we can go higher and have a better view. You can think of spirituality as just going up higher where you could see from the great perspective. And when you start in the gutter, that's a bad view down there. And then we just work along so we never stop. Because if you go to 1,000 feet and live there for five years, the view is old and you start walking around you hear people going hey starting to get you you know it used to be exciting when i first came in i guess the pink cloud wore off oh i don't think so i think you've stayed at a thousand feet for 10 years time to go to 2000 get all excited about 2000. it's time to move on it's always time to move on almost like the program's divided with you move then you sit and enjoy the view and express your gratitude, and then you move some more so that you can enjoy the view again. So there's pain involved, if you call it pain, climbing. We'll get into this step seven, humility. Anyway, I think I've talked enough about this struggle with perfection. It's going to be with us all the way. But there was a thing in the little 24-hour day book that I remember looking at and said, I pray that I may be never satisfied with my spiritual condition, which is the same as saying I pray that I stay frustrated forever but it's the two sides it is knowing we're never going to be able to get to where Mother Teresa was but to try in our limited way whatever we can do to get closer to being selfless being selfeless would be the most selfish thing you could do isn't that unusual being selfless just having nothing could hit there's nothing could ever go wrong i think that i've said this in other talks that you could take all the problems that human beings have and reduce them down to one not getting our way and it comes in many forms you know what i mean didn't get the promotion i didn't this and you get that but it comes down to not getting your way so prior to working a spiritual program, we just want to set about getting our way. You know what I mean? We just spread out and went and did it. But then when we did it, it didn't bring what we thought it was going to bring. I've talked to people in the program who have really been successful with money and stuff like that, and then they go, I thought I was going to be a lot happier as a result of this. I thought i was going be a little happier after I ran the triathlon, but I'm in great shape, but there's still something missing. There's still something missing with the yacht. There is still something missing with this. What is it? It's a closer contact with our higher power. Well, it doesn't feel like that. That's right. It doesn't feel like that. We just have to experiment and see that those feelings will go away as we are willing to try to establish this conscious contact. But it can't be established until we remove all the obstacles. And that's what I talk about character defects and being disturbed anytime we're disturbed the channel that saint francis talks about in the 11th step is blocked lord make me a channel of thy peace picture the suez canal and all these ships are sunk in there those are our character defects and we can't have any of this peace flow through the channel as long as it's all blocked with resentments and anger and people that i haven't forgiven and just dumped it you can just feel it none of that can flow in and when it it doesn't flow in, we claim it doesn t exist. You know what I mean? You say, I never felt God. I don t believe in God. I never had any of that stuff you re talking about. That s right. The channel is blocked. It can t come through. So this is what I like to think is going on in these steps. We re trying to open this up. So now let s assume that we just developed some degree of willingness in the sixth step. We are entirely ready to have God remove these defects. Now we re coming over to, I'd love to talk a little bit about this, humility. Humbly ask God to remove these blockages. Let's think about them as blockages, these things that are making me disturbed. How am I going to, how am I getting rid of these things? I'm going to get rid of these things. And so it says, well, just humbly ask God to remove them. Okay, that's a deal. Then I'm going to humbly ask him to remove. Fairly straightforward thing. If I were to say, how do you ask God to remove these defects, you would go easy. Hey God, would you remove these? Got them on my list here and that would be how you ask God to remove the defect of character. Now the second question is how do you humbly ask God's remove the defects of character? So just take the piece of paper and write down the difference between regular asking and humbly asking and you're probably going to come up with huh because that's where i was was huh and the reason is humility as bill writes in the 12 and 12 has had a hard time of it in our society you don't see beer ad drink bud get humble or i drive a jaguar and you can see how humble i am you know it's like humble that's for that's like being meek you know and it was like the meek will inherit the earth that's because nobody else wants it you know that those type of uh attributes were not pluses when you're you know following all the superstars and all the hype in society humility what the devil is that and humility in the dictionary says it's a total absence of pride total no pride zero zero zero and i remember for years i was trying to prove that that was wrong and find a sentence that i could use the word pride in that would hold water spiritually well i'm proud of my son well i'm when i said i was proud of him hitting a home run it was i want everyone to know that i'm the father of the kid that hit the home run matter of fact he wouldn't have hit the home run if he wasn't for me pride wants to bring the attention back to me and it's a force and it'll cause us i was in the marine corps they appeal to our pride and it is a force but it's not as powerful as force as god it's another power force is a higher power so total absence of pride that would mean that everything that I do, I would never get credit for. I'd have to give it to God. God's everything. I'm nothing. Wow, nothing? Who would want to be nothing? Me, I suddenly realized I want to become I want a big shot. But now I'm in the spiritual program, I've decided I want to be so small I can go through a screen door. i would have no obstacles traversing through life it would just be because my ego made it very difficult for me to move through life because things had to be a certain way i had designed if you're boat designers out here i had design this wonderful craft to go through the oceans of life and it was 180 feet wide and three feet deep and i wonder why it took so much power to push myself through life because i had demands things had to be a certain way and then you know i needed this i sent out signals ahead of time have this ready have that around and that's all ego if i could take that ego and have it disappear then i would have the solution to things not going my way the solution the spiritual solution to that lifelong problem is don't have a way oh don't ever wait what are you talking about i'll be the hole in the donut you remember that sentence in the 12 and 12 where i'll do nothing no you're gonna go instead of trying to figure out life and think up what will make you the happiest and what would be the best deal for you why don't you try and get in touch with your intuitive side and be guided by a higher power and you will be led in to things that you never would have chosen how many of us would have chosen service work I don't think so gee I'm so unhappy what could I do well sponsor 10 people oh come on that isn't going to do it but then when you get led into doing it you go, whoa, is this cool? Is this wonderful? I don't think about myself. I'm working out here. Don't think About Myself. So there's no pain. These things apparently don't make sense and they never will until we do them. The spiritual principles only become visible after we do it. Up until then, it's just an abstract theory. So anyway, getting back to humility, here is this thing I want to change my perspective I've got to get rid of the absence of pride and a total awareness of my shortcomings so humility is an understanding that in order for me to go from self-centered to God-centered it's going to hurt this is no way that i can become unself-centered and not get my way without some pain so when i am willing you know this went the wrong way well you got to accept it i don't want to accept it well you ought to accept because it's killing you the way it is all right i'll accept it how do you feel better so you just let go of it having to be your way on that one issue whatever it was we're going to have chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla But I love chocolate. We're going to have vanilla ice cream or whatever it is. And when you finally go, okay, acceptance, acceptance. And so this humility is an understanding. Here's an example I would give you. Let's say you wanted to become a Marine. You say, I really want to become a Marine? Well, I want you to ask to be a Marine I want to be Marine. Now I want your to humbly ask. I don't know how to do that. Well, i'll show you how to do it we're going to take you down and we're gonna let you watch boot camp and just stay there and watch it oh shit i don't believe what they're doing to these guys this is now you watch it you stay there for the whole 10 weeks then we say you still want to be a marine and if you say yes you're humbly asking because you fully understand what's involved you're fully understanding that You, voluntarily, are going to place a top priority on squashing your ego. You are going to just become of service. I like to think about this in terms of a resume. All of you have probably filled out resumes and you know what they look like. You've put down everything on the resume that would entitle you to more. More money, better desk, better office, better perks, better everything. And also I helped out in the PTA and also when I was a little boy I was in the Boy Scouts. Anything to make me look better. Put down every book you ever read. Get people to write testimonials to you even if you have to pay them. Just get that thing filled with good stuff about you and then you take this document out and you insert it into the workforce out there and you look for the jackpot because this thing is going to entitle you to receive a lot of things. That would be a regular resume. Now we're going to have humility take place and we're gonna make it a spiritual resume and we are not changing a word on it. When we ask somebody, what is this document you have in your hand? oh this is a list of all of the attributes that god gave me that enables me to be useful out in the world i think i could be particularly useful in helping this communication problem and in helping this and all of a sudden it is a document of the energy flowing the other way it's the same document except it's not entitling anything and why does it do don't we need it to bring us anything because it's already all those needs are already being met spiritually we didn't need any of that stuff out there to solve this spiritual problem that we thought was material we thought if i had more money i could get rid of this nagging thing if i only had this if i only had that it was a case of misdiagnosis of what our real problem was the real problem was lack of power how many times that in the big book lack of Power that was our dilemma So we come into this final degree of humility in recognizing the best possible deal we could have is to be guided in being useful out in the world. And if you've ever read Chuck C's New Pair of Glasses, you understand that he was a very millionaire businessman and as he transformed his business into just one of giving, he doubled his volume. people were totally attracted to this selfless form of living in the world and that is what happens that's why the world we join aa and our family seems to straighten out it wasn't that they straightened out that we transformed inside and people responded to us differently so as we come down and we talked about the 10th step promptly admitting when we're wrong and that the whole point is to get undisturbed and the little formula in the 12 and 12 about how to live a day, top priority, self-restraint. That's something you can pray for in the morning. It's like a five second cushion between you and all the events of the day so that somebody comes up and says, I don't like this memo. In the old ways, you'd go, you don't write the memo. I quit. And then the I quit is going across the room to your boss's ears and you're trying to get it back you need this job but it's too late zoom and he says okay you're out of here because we got angry and then we came back down and then said okay i could change the memo i could do whatever it is so with a five second cushion we have self-restraint pray for that in the morning please can i go out my friend ed up in washington he goes out the door every day letting five people be wrong ahead of time just issues these pardons to the jerks of the world you know what i'm saying be my guest this is my undisturbed day you can behave any damn way you want so you can see what we're doing we're building flexibility into ourselves we're not trying to cause anything to change out there we're trying to across the way we function in this world and then when we do get disturbed instantly instantly that's what promptly means that's when we're wrong when we'RE DISTURBED we're WRONG so then we do an honest analysis was it their fault did they really say something inappropriate if they did maybe they had a bad night maybe they're having a hard time so i forgive them maybe i can help them out later in the day but my job is to get undisturbed maybe it was my fault so i own a man so i can go over and i can say jeez mary i'm sorry let me start all over again you really did a great job on this i'd love to see maybe some changes here or whatever go back boom bring it back into harmony go back to being undisturbed if we have to get on the phone we have do go next door sit in a little church pew for three minutes all we're trying to do is get centered again with our higher power and then proceed through life and this just brings about amazing transformation so this channel which is what sobriety is is the attempt to open this channel so that we can experience personally just loving higher power so the wonderful step 11 prayer and meditation they just make a couple comments about prayer what I think about prayer is that there's somebody sat down and wrote some wonderful words there's just prayers all over the place and these are wonderfully creative spiritual people pressing Francis a wonderful example Lord make me a channel of thy peace that where there's hatred I may bring love there is despair I may bring hope those kind of thoughts now what can I tell you about those kind thoughts those kind thought don't occur to me okay that's not going on in my brain that is not going on to my brain. That's not how I operate. I operate down at the mmm I gotta get mine level so if you were to use your brain as a theater stage what's on the stage most of the time now if you put a different act on the stage you would get different results because there's only so much stage time you know what I'm saying during the day so if you're up there excuse me I gotta have my way get off the stage for a second Lord make me a channel like peace now we're going to hear this the point is where we have we're reorchestrating what's going on in our head and we're taking ourselves mechanically to a higher level we're up here and we've gone hey I'm gonna be a channel I'm gonna be your channel I'll be a Channel and we are looking at the world that way so then when we meet somebody great can I be with that but don't develop then they respond back and you're going great day so far people are behaving themselves today and we're causing them to behave themselves you see what i'm trying to say it is we got to take that thinking that's up there all the time the automatic stuff i'm no good i'm terrible nobody likes me this is too hot too cold this guy's talking too long i know i'm gonna stop so there's what prayer it is changing we're reprogramming ourselves we're reprogram ourselves to a spiritual level look at it that way it is opening the channel it's clearing the noise the stage has all the character defects da-da-da I'm angry I'm lustful I mean and that produces terrible results we sit there going yeah think of this music so we put new music up their prayer just keep it going all day just on one of my favorite prayers is hi God I got high god high god hi god hi God you can just be doing that what do you think i'm talking to god i'm trying to keep the other guys off the stage hi god hi god sometimes i think he hears me but i don't know but i don't hear those other guys and then meditation this is a wonderful opportunity to truly open that channel and achieve a level of undisturbedness that we didn't dream possible and it is an individual adventure there are many books on it in libraries there are teachers there's oh there's no wrong way it is simply a question again of getting that crowd off the stage so that we don't have to listen to that stuff all the time all those things that drive you crazy up there that's meditation that's what it's for is to clear the stage and bring in quiet and then when it gets real quiet we can start hearing the signal you're just great you're a loving person you've got a lot to give to this world there's a 12 step you can use it to go out and give all these things that I'm freely giving to you in this silence you can go out and share with the world and as you throw that out into the world the world is going to respond to what a loving person you are and when you see them respond to you you're going to change your opinion about yourself and you're just going, my God I really am a spiritual person I really do care and you are going to find out that this jewel of a human being was inside you all the time wanting to get out and all the old ideas said no, you're not allowed out you're never going to get you're now allowed to be nice you've got to be this way, you've gotta be that way and it's all wrong it's all goofy we're free to be the wonderful loving people that we are God bless you all we're at the end of the time thank you