Step 10 — Daily Inventory – Chris S. – FOTSNY – 2016

on steps 10 and 11 Chris good morning everybody my name is Chris and I am an alcoholic this has been a fun weekend I got to tell you the combination of of having Chris and Meyers here and Bo and the combination of seeing so many of my friends because this is the Northeast is really my area has really made it a lot of fun mark thank you and your team for putting everything together you know Bill thank you for what you do because I got to tell you you know about eight months into this thing and I'm going to the closed-minded discussion meetings and I'm you know my alcoholism is raging within me and I got a whole hold of something somebody had bothered to go around and and record and it it gave me gave me a path towards some kind of solution that the discussion meetings just just weren't giving me and I'm grateful for that it's it's really interesting to study the history of alcoholics and I'm so there was a period of time where I got involved in trying to learn about the Oxford group and some of the early even before Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob showed up, to see kind of, you know, where did we come from? What was the stuff that was put in front of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob that led to the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the pivotal turning point in addressing alcoholism? You know, what was going on? Now, truly, up until that period of time, there's a really great book. It's called Chasing the Dragon. It's written by a wonderful man named William White. And he goes over the history of alcoholism and addiction treatment for, like, the last 400 or 500 years. And this is a really interesting book because you have no idea what they did to us prior to the 12 steps. You have no idea. Some of the treatments was the gold cure. This was called the Keely cure. They would inject you with heavy metals, all right, three times. You know, they would inject you with heavy metals, all right, three times a day, no thanks, you know. What they've learned about heavy metals is you got to get them out, not put them in. There were aversion treatments that were absolutely brutal. They would institutionalize us for the rest of our lives because if we showed signs of being put in a hospital and then leaving and drinking and then coming back to the hospital and leaving and drinking and then coming back to the hospital, that was not something they wanted to deal with. So they, so there were problems. So they, so there were problems. So they, so there were problems. There were places and periods of time where we were institutionalized. There were incredibly harsh punishments. I read in this, I read in this book about having molten lead poured down your throat for being a chronic alcoholic. I'm going to pass on that, you know what I mean? And so, so I'm interested in all this stuff. What, what, you know, what did they learn? Where did this all come from? It mainly came from the Oxford group, you know, what was the Oxford group? The Oxford group was a religious organization and they took, they took their religion seriously. They got very, very involved. It was not, it was not a process where you went to church for an hour and a half on Sunday. It was, it was, you know, we meet Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night, you know, and we're given talks. And we're, you know, we're, we're witnessing and we're confessing our sins and we're making restitution. And then we have house parties. We have weekend parties where everybody comes over and we're all doing, we're all doing this spiritual, religious work. They got really involved. And what happened was Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson both were exposed to the Oxford group independently. So there was some idea that drunks were being, helped in this group, obviously because, because of the people who, you know, who interacted with Dr. Bob in Ohio and Bill in New York. Now Bill, here's what Bill did. Bill went to the Oxford group a couple of times drunk. That, that was nice. You know, he'd push his way to the microphone and share, you know, that, that would have been interesting to hear. But, but he did finally sober up. He, he. gave himself to the simple Oxford group program on his hospital bed and you can read about that in his story he gave himself to it and then he was all in he came all the way in and he sat all the way down and when they said Bill we want you on a soapbox on 48th street you know tomorrow night you're going to be witnessing about Jesus guess what Bill would do he'd be on that soapbox witnessing about Jesus he would be going to the house parties he you know he got involved he got Lois involved you know they got involved and he would go early and he would stay late and he got sober now in this process he recognized that he wasn't really relating to these normal people much but whenever there was an alcoholic around man did he relate to them so early in the night he would go to the house parties and he would go to the house parties on, he got the idea that he was going to work with alcoholics. This is another idea that came to him on his detox bed. You know, are we here by seconds or inches or what? You know, I'll tell you what, I don't even remember what was going through my head on my last detox bed, you know, except insanity. But he decided he was going to start to work with other alcoholics, and that's what he did. He was practicing these principles of the Oxford group, and he was working with other alcoholics, and he stayed sober. His life started to get better, and he started to become very, very influential in the early days. Now, let me tell you what Dr. Bob did. Dr. Bob was pulled into the Oxford group by his wife, Ann Smith. She said, Bob, you're going, you know, I don't care, you're going. And he went very reluctantly. He would come late, he would leave early, and he would not get involved. And he just, you know, he was keeping a low profile. You know, I'm a doctor. I don't want anybody to know what kind of problems I have. So he wasn't really being honest. He wasn't really being forthright. He was going under protest. Have any of us ever gone to Alcoholics Anonymous under protest? Not really a great way to go. Maybe better than nothing, but not really a great way to go. So, guess what happened with Dr. Bob? He never stopped. He didn't stop drinking during this period of time until Bill Wilson went out there and told him what Bill thought of the problem. Here's another great thing. A shyster stockbroker is explaining the medical condition of alcoholism to a surgeon, and he's listening. You know, there's just some amazing things about our history. But when Dr. Bob started to get it, he went back to the Oxford group, and he said, okay, okay, boys, I'm in. You know, and after like one relapse, he was able to stay sober. He made some amends, and he was all in, and he stayed sober. What does all this have to do with 10 and 11? It has a lot to do with 10 and 11. It shows from our history what happened in the early days, and why is prayer and meditation, why is continuing to take personal inventory, why is to continue to set things right, why is that important? important for our continued sobriety and recovery, because that's what the treatment for alcoholism is. Alcoholism, we tend to think alcoholism is drinking too much. Here's what I believe. I used to believe that I became an alcoholic because I drank too much. That's what I used to believe. Today, I believe I drank too much because I was an alcoholic. Like Chris was saying the other night, it's a genetic bullet. It's a genetic bullet just waiting for you to start drinking too much. It's a bigger issue. Within that genetic bullet is spiritual and emotional aspects that many of us alcoholics have in common. What I've learned about alcoholics, this isn't everybody that walks through the doors of AA. You get psychopaths that have absolutely no conscience showing up all the time in AA. They're predators and they're moving through the group to see what they can gain. The alcoholics suffer from the things that they've done wrong. They're tragically burdened with the imperfections in their lives and where they have fallen short. And the suffering is immense. We're good people that do bad things and we're smart people that do stupid things. And we're waiting. We are empty vessels waiting for a spiritual solution. There is a spiritual hole within us that we try to fill with alcohol. We try to fill with other things. We try to fill it with other things. There's so many things out there that if we can bring in here will make us feel good for maybe a short period of time. How many of us have spent money we don't have buying things we don't need to try to impress people we don't like? How many of us have gone on food sprees or sex sprees or just you know I got a friend in New York that had an omni, but it was totally fine. in Texas, who, you know, he jokes with me every once in a while, he'd call me up and he'd go, hey Chris, you know, I got the new H2 Hummer, you know, that big vehicle, I got the brand new one, and I'll go, yeah, and he'll go, that's not it either, you know, it's like a joke, and because we're that way, you know, we want that shiny new, you know, relationship, or that shiny new vehicle, or that we got to have the big job, what all that is, is it's an unresolved desire for a solution that's going to make us spiritually and emotionally whole, and we keep grabbing for these things, and that's what an alcoholic is, they are an unresolved mystic. Let me tell you you, mystics were a group of religious people who would go all the way in, those are the guys that would go on the silent retreat for a year, those are the guys that would go to the Himalayan mountains and sit in the lotus position in a cave for 10 years, you know, I mean, they were driven, they were driven for this connection to God, they had to have a connection to God, and they were willing to put their whole life in, and that's what the, we're unresolved mystics, we are ready to go all in for that connection to the divine, and we don't know, we don't know that, so what we're doing is we're out here on the playing field of life, and we're just grabbing the shiny baubles that go by, and that's not good enough, then we discover alcohol, or we discover drugs, now we go all in with that stuff, you know, here's, here's, I talked about this on Friday night, when I discovered that alcohol filled that spiritual hole the first night I drank it, that became so important to me that I went after it with a vengeance for the next 20 years, and my experience was it didn't work, but I was, I was so driven, to get that feeling of unity, that feeling of comfort that I got the first time I put whiskey in my body, everything was perfect, and, and that's what I wanted, that's what many of us want, you know, non-alcoholics can bump around in life, you know, their whole life not being concerned about feeling that connection, but we need a connection, so, so that thought brings us to, to step 10, we've talked about steps one through nine, I think most people in this room have experience with the first nine steps of, of one kind or another, and I also think everyone in this room can have a deeper experience with it, if they, if they, you know, if they want to continue to practice these principles, and continue to do the things that step 10 asks us to do, step 10 basically asks us in a reactive way, to apply the principles of the steps in our life, where available and where appropriate, so, it's, it's the practicing the principles step, it's the, how do I, how do I apply the steps as a way of life step, step, it, it's about using these tools when they're appropriate, and when, they're available, so step 10 basically says, continue to continue to take inventory, the people whose recovery I really respect, are people that do a lot of writing, when they get pissed off, they don't just stay pissed off, they'll write on an envelope, they'll, you know, they grab a piece of paper, you know, whatever, they're going to deal with that resentment right now, because they've learned that you can, you can Reduce the suffering by addressing the resentment or the fear or the harm to others. You know, we're not, we don't come in here with a small piece of baggage. You know, let's say I borrowed $500 from Mark in a meeting one time because I was about to get thrown out and I was in between jobs. And, you know, Mark's a nice guy. He'll give me $500 just so everybody in here knows. That's, you know, he'd be happy to do that. And I take the $500 from him, right? And, you know, thanks, Mark. And I go and I pay my rent. Now, when I finally get my job and I get my first paycheck, you know, Mark or this other stuff? I'm going to go with this other stuff. And the next week, I do the same thing. Now, I start to try, I start to avoid Mark because, you know, I don't want him making me look bad, asking me where his $500 are, you know? So I'm not, you know, I kind of move to another meeting and, you know, and all this. And then by the third or fourth month, now Mark's a nice guy. He's not going to bug me about it, you know, and you all should know that too. And so, so. So, but now it's like two months in and I keep thinking about Mark. God, God damn him, you know, for, for, for now, now it's like, now it's like I start to get pissed at him. Now, now listen, we don't come in here with one of those. We come in here with hundreds of those. And those are things that for us to be spiritually and emotionally comfortable, we need to take care of. Now. Now, when you've gone through a whole series of amends and you've, you've paid back the money and everything, you know, you, you understand the spiritual significance of doing an amends. So you move into step 10. Now you need to do it reactively. You need to do it reactively. You know, I'd say at least once a month, I'm straightening out something that I did. Maybe I sent out an email that wasn't completely accurate. It kind of painted a picture that made me look better than. You know, the actual situation called for, you know, maybe, maybe I was, I was a little bit aggressive with one of my workers because, because it was like the third or fourth time he made the same mistake. You know, I've, I've learned to do constructive counseling instead of bringing you in and handing you your ass in a meeting. You know what I mean? And that's come with, that's come with maturity and that's come with a lot of, a lot of step work. So, so when I'm wrong, you know, I, I promptly admit it. I really try to promptly admit it. When I own amends, I really try to clear that up right away because here's, here's my choice. Here's my choice. Clear it up right away. You know, give Mark the $500 from the first check or let it be. I had now I have to drag it around like a block of lead behind me until I do. I've just learned that. You know, I've just learned that. So, so today I, I will try to, I will try to set it right as quickly, as quickly as I can. There's an enormous amount of reliance on God in our program. An enormous amount of reliance on God. The early AAs totally believed that it was only the interventionary power of God that was keeping them sober. And they believed. They believed that. You know, in this day and age, some people really think it's what they do in AA. I go to a lot of meetings. I talk to my sponsor. That's how I stay sober. Well, you know, let me tell you, in the back in the day, these were demonstrations to God, you know, in appreciation of what God was already doing, you know, keeping them, keeping them sober. So there's, there's an enormous amount of, of prayer work. There's an enormous amount of devotion. There's an enormous amount of developing a relationship with God that, that's, that's, that was important to them and should remain important to us. Some of the, some of the statistics that were gone over, especially by Chris yesterday, should get all of our attention. Since 1993, the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous has not grown by one person. We've changed a lot, folks. We've became, we've become meeting dependent. You know, there are dependencies that we have, we've gone after that, listen, if they worked, we would have a much bigger fellowship. They're not working. They're not working. So in the early days, when they were actually carrying the message of the power of God to other people, the fellowship was doubling and tripling in short amounts of time. They went from. You know, two people to a million, pretty, pretty darn quick that worked. So you gotta, you gotta pay attention to what, what works. My sponsor is wonderful. You know, I'll cover a challenge with him and he'll say this, how's that working for you, Chris? How is that working for you? You know, well, it's not, or I wouldn't be talking to you about it. Okay. Okay. Let's. Let's talk about a solution. You know, I love, I love that answer. How is it working for you? So we need to pay attention to what works. I talked also, uh, in the last couple of days about the people that made it through the steps are all still around. And the people who started and stopped with me are all gone. Duh. You know, let's pay attention to what, what works. Alcoholics are the type of people. Who. Who need to learn the same lesson 700 times when you're in recovery, you don't necessarily have to learn the same lesson. You just need to be willing to change your actions, to change how you, how you apply, uh, yourself, yourself to life. So, so step 10 is, uh, is a basic reactive application of all of the spiritual principles. Uh, in. Your life on a daily basis, we need to keep in mind that we don't have the option to stumble through life like a non-alcoholic. We have to have a set of principles which are guiding. Here's a cool thing in alcoholics anonymous. We don't, we don't, we don't rely on advice. We rely on spiritual principles. So somebody will come. To me and they'll be, uh, they'll, they'll be breaking up. You know, they'll have a, they'll have a divorce going on or, you know, a, a real serious situation in a job. I, I, I, you know, I have, I instinctually want to go in there and take their side and say, you know what, you're right. They're assholes. But I, I have to fight against that and I have to try to figure out what spiritual principles can be applied to this situation. Because we live by spiritual principles. We don't live by advice. And that's really an important, uh, important thing to remember. So step 10, all the lessons in the first nine steps and some of the lessons in 11 and 12 step 10 talks about us applying those on a, on a daily basis. Now, step 11. I absolutely love step 11. I absolutely love step 11. I absolutely love step 11. Because, um, it opens up so many doors to so many interesting things. Now, in step, step 11, it's basically, uh, we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. Let's think about that for a minute. If it's saying we do these prayers and these meditations to improve our conscious contact with God, to improve it, what does that mean? Does that mean we, we've been able to establish a conscious contact with God? I believe it does. I believe it does. I believe if you've been thorough and painstaking with the steps prior to step 11, you will have a conscious contact with God. There'll be a spiritual center within you that you can call on and you can go to. That's what happens. That's what the steps are. The steps are a recipe to a spiritual experience. And if we do them, if we do them, uh, thoroughly and painstakingly, we will have a conscious contact with God. And step 11 asks us to improve that conscious contact with God. You know, my first, my first experience with seeing that the treatment for alcoholism was a spiritual experience. And I think that was the spiritual one. I had a lot of doubt and I had a lot of prejudice. I saw the lamp, the window shade up on the wall, right? These are the, these are our 12 steps. But because I wasn't hearing about them very much in the meetings or the treatment center that, that I was, uh, I was at in my first six months. I thought that it was just a philosophy. some historical stuff that kind of identifies us as Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't see anyone actually going through the steps. I heard them talking about the steps in theory, but I never, you know, someone would not come in and say, I just finished my first two columns of my resentment. You'd never hear anything like that. So you never heard about anybody specifically doing this stuff. And I thought that, you know, this, the early people relying upon God was quaint. And today, today we learn to rely on our sponsors and our home group and the meetings. That's what I thought. That's what a lot of new people will think when they come into Alcoholics Anonymous. They're selling themselves short. And if you help reinforce that belief, you're selling them short. Because there's a absolutely bigger, there's a bigger world out there in Alcoholics Anonymous than just meetings and sponsors and stuff like that. There's a much, there's a much larger, it talks about the great reality. It talks about the fourth dimension. We're going to be rocketed into the fourth dimension. There's amazing things that are available to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if we embrace this spiritual, the spiritual part, we're going to, we're going to be able to actually experience some of the wonderful stuff that you can get when you go all the way in to this, to this program. There's three basic disciplines and step 11, I want you, if I want you to remember one word, I want you to remember this. It's a discipline. Disciplines are things that you practice continually. It's asking us to do that. There's, there's upon awakening, there's as we move through the day, and there's when we retire at night. And I would ask anybody in here, listen, I guarantee that 99 out of 100 of us are not doing this perfectly. That's the cool thing. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence. That's the cool thing. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence. That's the cool thing. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence. There's some slack, but I would just challenge everyone in here with this. For, for one week, pick one of those. It can be as you move through the day, it can be upon awakening, it could be when you retire at night, and focus exactingly on the instructions in that particular discipline and do them. Do them so that you can personally experience the benefit of this. Do them so that you can personally experience the benefit of this. Back in the Oxford group, Frank Buchman and the group were challenged with convincing people that they needed God, or that God even existed. So what Frank Buchman developed was he developed an exercise for you. And if you, he knew that if you did this exercise for a week or a month, you were going to have an experience with God. We do the same kind of thing in, in, uh, in step 11. If you do the disciplines of step 11, you are going to improve that contact with, that relationship with, that, that comfortable centering power that is God. And, uh, you know, I highly, uh, I highly recommend anybody, uh, anybody do that. So I'll just give you, I'll give you some breakdown about how I would look at this in the book. Let's talk about upon awakening. On awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead. This is something I do every morning. And what it does is it concerns what's my plans for the day? What meetings do I have in business? You know, who am I going to see at night? You know, what, what the heck am I going to do? You know, what, you know, do I have enough money for lunch? I think about the day ahead and I try to plan for it to be reasonably successful. I come up with a lot of, business strategies in this, how can I handle that meeting with the client later today? What, how should I direct the conversation? What are things that I should focus on? A lot of this stuff comes in the morning when I'm, when I'm doing this, uh, doing this exercise, we consider our plans for the day before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives. I have a prayer ritual that is, that's memorized in my head. You know, I, I think there's two great ways to pray. One is to do it as a conversation. And one is, is to, uh, is to develop something for you and then use it as a routine. I think if you look in the 12 and 12 and you look, look in the big book, I think there's latitude for all kinds of stuff like that. The wonderful thing about step 11 is, is you, you can get involved in, in so many different spiritual, philosophical, religious traditions. You know, it's open, it's open to all. But the first thing I do in the morning, I did it, you know, I did it before I left, uh, the hotel room to come down and get coffee, is I ask God these things. I not only ask God these things, I ask God a lot of other things. You know, it's about a three minute, takes me about three minutes to get through this prayer. Um, it says under these conditions, what conditions? The conditions that I've, I've asked, I've asked this in prayer. Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance for after all God gave us brains to use. Uh, our thought life will be placed on a much higher plane when we are thinking is cleared of wrong motives. And that's true. Selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of our problems, folks. That's the foundation that we've built our life on. Though we usually don't know it, we have. I can tell you that. I can tell you one thing about a newcomer. They're selfish. That's, that's the one thing I can tell you across the board, okay? Um, so it's gonna be a lifelong struggle to get to a point where I'm selfless. I may never get there. I may never become completely selfless. But if I don't continue to practice and continue to work toward this lackluster, this lack of self, this removal of self, this escape from the bondage of self, I'm not gonna make it. I have to, I have to continue, continue to, to try. In thinking about our day, we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration and an instinctive thought or a decision. Before I get up and, and, and speak at anything, I ask God for that. Um, I, I don't want to be behind a podium being Chris, the self of, of Chris. I want there to be some inspiration that comes from outside. You know, that, that, uh, you know, I want a power to be working through me. If I was just Chris up here, no one would be interested. I can tell you that. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we've tried. For a while. So this is, you know, this is like going into consideration. One of my great spiritual teachers taught me consideration. He, he taught me how important consideration is. And then you see, you see, think, think, think, you know, up on the wall. We're folks were supposed to think we're supposed to set the stage for right thinking by asking God in and practicing these spiritual disciplines. But we're God gave us. We're supposed to use, we're, we're, we're supposed to think we're just supposed to think without selfish and self-seeking motives. We're supposed to plan what we're going to do today with some consideration of other people. You know, I heard somebody say, my sponsor told me one time, he goes, you know, those shadowy figures that are in your peripheral vision, those are other people, you know, it's like, I, you know, we, we got, we got to be able to, we got to be able to, to consider, consider others. All right. It says, what used to be a hunch or an occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. What is intuition? Intuition is to know without conscious thought. You know, women's intuition, they know what's right without even talking about or thinking about it. That's what they're talking about. Knowing without conscious thought. I'll be in a meeting. I'll be in a high level meeting. And, you know, if it was 20 years ago, I'd be scared to death what was going to go on because, you know, you got clients and you got people, you got people that could fire you like that, you know, and all this stuff going on in the every, you know, there's problems and you got to explain difficult situations in a way that, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. You know, there's problems and you got to explain difficult situations in a way that, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. Makes everybody confident that you know what the heck you're doing. And I go into those meetings with absolutely no fear, counting on, counting on the intuition to be able to handle those situations reasonably and responsibly. And it works. It really, it really works. If I didn't have these disciplines, if I wasn't asking God in in the morning, it would be, it would be like, you know, it'd be like walking out onto a battlefield. You know, and everybody's shooting at me. It's, it's a change in perspective. Recovery is a shift in perception and perspective. It's just seeing things differently. And one of the main ways to get to that point is to do, do this step. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is probable that we are not going to be inspired at all times. We might pray, pay for this presumption and all sorts of absurd actions. And ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it. You know, we do. We come, we come to rely on it. I'll give you an instance of how I, how I relied on this. I'm about three years sober and all of a sudden I start getting a pain in my gut. That's absolutely. That's absolutely brutal, right? And it just gets worse and worse and worse. And it's about two in the morning and I say, you know, I'm putting this off as long as I can. Hospital. Right? Let's go to the hospital. I go to the hospital. Well, what it was, it was my appendix was about to burst and they went in there and they opened it up and, and they took out the, they took out my appendix and I, you know, I came to in a recovery room and I came to in a recovery room knowing something was desperately wrong. This isn't just pulling out my gut. This is a gizzard. There's something else going on here. And what happened was my lung had collapsed from smoking non filters for 20 years. I had a lot of scarring in my lungs and when they put me on anesthesia, those, those scars ruptured and my lung collapsed, you know, totally all my fault. But anyway, I come to in, in a recovery room and they're thinking, they're thinking he's, he's going to be fine and he can go home later. I mean, that's what they're thinking. And I'm like, now I had to handle this. This is like three years sober. This is, you know, I'm talking to the doctor. I'm making all the, you know, going crazy. Did I think of reaching out in prayer? No. Did I think that this was something that God should be handling? No. This was much too big for God. I'll take this. Thanks. That's what I thought. Right. And I can't even tell you what kind of a mess it was. I can't even tell you what kind of a mess it was. It was, it was at least a month's worth of absolute mess and me making bad decisions and all this. Now, fast forward, fast forward a couple of years. I've begun these, I've begun these disciplines. I hop off the back of a, back of a pickup truck at work and my wedding ring catches and it yanks my finger off. Okay. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, you know. And that'll get your attention. You know, when your hand, when your hand is pumping like a garden hose, it'll, it'll get your attention. Now, immediately reach out to God. Get, you know, get in the ambulance. You know, go, go to the, go to the trauma room. You know, I'm sitting there and I am, I'm just praying. I'm, I'm doing a route prayer like this holding my, holding my hand. And, you know, I was able to go through all this. Believe it or not. Believe it or not. With no opiates. Can you imagine having your finger ripped off and not taking painkillers? I didn't. I didn't. It was painful and maybe I was stupid. But, but I, I was, I was relying on God. I was relying on God. And it was a much different experience for me. You know, I had developed, I had basically developed, developed that discipline. Um. The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. I want the spiritual life to be an intellectual exercise. I want to read that next book. You know, The Power of Tomorrow. Or The Joy of Resentment. Or, you know, whatever book is being, is being passed around. Or whatever's being passed around at the meetings. You know. The Perfection of Imperfection. Or, you know, whatever, whatever's being passed. I want to be able to read that book and then go, ah, you know. The spiritual life is not a theory. We, we have to, we have to apply it. We have to apply it. One of my great spiritual teachers, he would work with a book for a year. I read a book a week. He would take, he would take a book. He would take one of those spiritual books and go through it. Just like he would go through the big book. And when it said to do an exercise, he'd practice that. And if it didn't work, it didn't work. If it worked, he'd put it into his discipline. He was, he was an application spiritual engineer. You know what I mean? That's, that's what he was. I love that stuff. I seek to be like that one day. You know. But for many of us, it's as much as we can possibly do to apply the 12 step principles. One of the things that I see, I'm going to end with this. And then the next section is going to be questions. The questions were great, by the way. It's going to be a lot of fun. But the, the thing that I want to end with is the dangers inherent in going way in. There's a wonderful poem by Sam Shoemaker, I Stand by the Door. And it, it says that there are people that go so deep in, we lose them. There are a lot of people who, you know, who went into, into the religion, the religions and came to the conclusion that, you know, AA is over here and AA is fine. But, you know, God is the whole deal. So I'm going, I'm going into this religion. I cannot tell you how many people have come back into the rooms after they did that saying, I never should have left AA. I'm going to say this and it may be controversial. But Jesus is a bad sponsor. Okay? I'm, I'm, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. You got to stay connected here. You do all that as well as, not instead of. Okay? And most of the people that I, that I see, you know, flowing into the, the, the religious traditions and, and leaving us don't make it. Do some of them make it? Maybe. You know, that's fine. But do you really want to roll those dice? Do those spiritual and religious traditions as well as. Never do them instead of. We need to be grounded. We need to be grounded. I believe we need to be grounded in a home group. I need, I believe we need to have someone that will hold us accountable, a sponsor. And I think we need to be practicing these principles in all of our affairs. And the good news to that, there's multiple good news. The good news is we'll stay sober, which is why we came here in the first place. That's, that's a given. But the unbelievable vistas of experience and, and you know, wonderful experience that can be had by continuing to practice these principles is, is, is unbelievable. You know? I went from, I went from a bad electrician living in a room at my mom's with absolutely no friends talking to a bottle of bourbon. I went, you know, I went from there to, to what's going on in my life today. I, the big problem with my life today is there's not 17 days in a week. You know, that's really, that's really my only problem that I don't have time enough to experience all the things I want to experience. All right. That's it for me on 10 and 11. We'll be back here in about 15 minutes. And I, I'm going to answer some questions. Thanks.