Step 10 – Judy L. – Big Book Workshop Retreat – 2020

All right. All right. Welcome back, everybody. Chris Alcoholic. Hey, Chris. So it's so cool to be at the Wilson House. The first time I remember coming up here was, it was like 1995 or something. We're driving around New England, and I'd heard about the place, and I decided, you know, hey, let's go take a look at it. And we pull in, and we walk in, and Bonnie and Ozzie were there, and they made us feel real welcome, and they gave us the tour and everything. And, you know, from that point in time, this has been a destination for me. I want to tell a story about the Wilson House. You know the light that they have in the living room there? It's the perpetual light, and you're never supposed to turn it off, right? Well, I'm up here with my home group, and we're on a home group retreat, and some of us are milling around in that particular living room. And Bonnie comes walking in, and she goes, oh, oh, the perpetual. The light's been turned off. And one of my grand sponsors, he said, unplug it to charge his phone. You know, there's something about that story. You know, Bill Wilson would be laughing, too. You know what I mean? He didn't want us to be taking, he probably didn't want a perpetual light. You know what I mean? Well, maybe he did. Who knows, who knows? Who knows? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So I want to remind you, if you're in New England, you're probably going to see a couple of those things. I want to read something from a pamphlet. This is a pamphlet entitled Problems Other Than Alcohol. It was written in like 1958. So I read the part earlier about if we don't practice to the best of our ability these 12 steps, we sign our death warrant, and our drunkenness is not going to be a penalty. It's going to be as a result of failure to adhere to spiritual principles. He wrote that around 1950 or whatever. So this is written in 1958. And it says, Sobriety, freedom from alcohol, to the teaching and practice of the 12 steps is the sole purpose of an AA group. Now, that was 1958. When I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous, there was a lot of groups. There was a lot of groups that I was part of where that wasn't the sole purpose. You know, it was, the sole purpose was, I'm going to tell you about what happened today, and it may or may not have anything to do with recovery. But I don't have a lot to share, but I've got a desperate desire to share it. And these are some of the meetings that I was going to. I was going to 12 and 12 meetings. I was, so you would hear, you would hear a lot about the steps, and people would talk a lot about the steps, and they'd give you their philosophy about the steps. But I, you know, I really didn't make the connection for one reason or another that you do them. I thought if you agreed with them in theory, you were good, you know. Like, I'm cool with the steps, you know. But the more, the longer I was around, and the more experienced, the more I gained, and the more I sponsored, the more I became absolutely convinced that these specific steps are key. My personal experience with sponsoring is this. There was a lot of one-liners in the 90s, or the early 90s and the late 80s, a lot of one-liners. Like, people would throw one-liners at you like you couldn't even believe. And one of the one-liners that I used to hear a lot was, you gotta give it away the way you got it. And that was a big one. So my sponsor basically, if you had sponsors back then, in my area, you know, like Judy's and Lou are from Denver, you know, they had awesome stuff for decades. But in the Somerset County, New Jersey area, there really wasn't any. And if you got a really good sponsor, what he would do is he would say, he would, he would encourage you to have consistent meeting attendance. Okay? That's what he would encourage you to do. He would kind of keep an eye on you, and if you started to not show up as much as you used to, he'd have words with you. If you had a really good sponsor, that sponsor would be paying attention to your fellowship attendance and trying to get you to do some service commitments, like making coffee, you know, becoming the secretary, picking up the chairs, whatever, that was like a really good sponsor back then. So I, you know, I had this, I had this belief that the 12 steps were a philosophy. They were how I should think. And over the course of time, with my experience working with other people, it became apparent to me that these are the steps we take. And here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Here's basically how it happened. I told you I got exposed to the Joe and Charlie tapes and the Joe Hawk tapes, and they blew my mind, and I became very interested in them, and I started to listen to them all the time, and I even started to do the things that they asked in those tapes, the things they said that we do. So I started to do that. However, I was still sponsoring the way my sponsor sponsored me, because you can always do that. You can only give it away the way you got it, right? And so a lot of people, I'm starting to sound good in meetings, because I've actually gone through these steps. I'm starting to give good share, you know? And people are, hey, whoa, listen to Chris. That was profound. You know, I stole it off of some tape or something, you know? And so people are asking me, people are asking me to sponsor them. And somebody would come up and go, hey, Chris, would you sponsor me? Yes. I'd say yes. You know, I don't know if they're an alcoholic. I don't know if they're, if they have any willingness at all. I don't know anything. Yeah, you know, I'll sponsor you. And so I got all these sponsors that are running around causing all kinds of trouble. And I was just telling them I want to see you at meetings. And they were coming to meetings, and some of them would get a coffee commitment too, you know? So they're doing what was kind of expected in the fellowship in that area. But some of these guys were drinking on me. Judy, you ever have a sponsee drink on you? Make you look, make you look bad, you know? Judy, you look bad. Yeah, you don't want to look bad, you know? Is Harry yours? You know, he smells like alcohol, and he's hitting on the women, and he's borrowing money. Yeah, Harry's mine. I'll talk to him. I'll talk to him. I'll talk to him. I'll talk to him. You know? And so there's all these sponsees that are making me look bad. And what I started to do, this was around 1994. What I started to do is I started to invite people over my house, and like in Denver, this probably was not unusual. In my area in New Jersey, it was very unusual for somebody to say come on over to my house. You know, we didn't want people to know where we lived. Mostly. You know? And what town do you live in? None of your business. But I started to invite them over to the house, and we started to crack open this book. And we started to go through this book. And where there was instructions, you know, we would follow those instructions. And I started to sponsor that way. Now, what happened in my experience is not everybody is, you know, some of them would, you know, come to the conclusion that they've overreacted asking Chris to sponsor them. And, you know, they wouldn't get through the fourth or the fifth step, or they wouldn't take the ninth step seriously, or whatever. But there was a group of guys that I had from, say, 1993 to 1999. And there was a group of them who were desperate enough to do, you know, what I was saying we did. And. So I've got the people that are not willing to do the steps. And most of them are disappearing. You know, how people come through and they're gone. Or they're drinking on me and making me look bad. Those are the people who weren't willing to do this recovery work. And then there's the people who were willing to take the steps. And I can honestly tell you right now, I know where every one of them is. And without exception that I know about, they're all still sober. Some of them aren't in AA anymore, but they're still sober. And they found a way to give service back to the community, one way or another. You know? And so I saw that. I saw, A, you know, don't do these steps. And don't, you know, don't get involved. That's too much, you know. Drink or disappear. Do these steps. Stay sober and stick around. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And it was almost black and white to me. So, you know, I'm an unapologetic proponent of these 12 steps. I'll tell you another story. I was giving a lecture at the Rutgers School on alcohol studies. Now, for some crazy reason, somebody tracked me down. And they asked me to do a talk on the efficacy of the 12-step. 12 steps in alcoholism treatment to all the people who are going to school to become counselors of us, right? You know, but don't worry, you know, what are these steps you're talking about, you know? And what I did was I went through my personal experience with the 12 steps and explained a little bit about what my experience was with having an awakened spirit as the result of these steps. And, you know, there was like people like just not really getting it, I don't think. But after I got done, I'm on my way out and this guy follows me out. He follows me out and he's adamant. He's like, what about shame, right? He's like all over me about, like, don't you have to deal with your... Shame! And now, please, it's a legitimate thing for therapy, you know? It's a legitimate thing for therapy. But I stopped him and I go, well, let me ask you a question. I go, have you ever fully conceded to your innermost self that you're powerless over alcohol and your life is unmanageable? He said, no. I go, well, then you probably didn't come to believe that there was a power greater than yourself. You could solve that particular problem. He goes, no. So I say, you probably didn't make a decision to turn your will and your life over the care of a power that could solve the problem. He goes, no. And I said, that means you probably didn't do an inventory of your character defects. He goes, no. And I go, that means you probably didn't share your inventory of your character defects because you didn't do them, right? And he goes, yeah. And I go, you probably didn't come to believe then that there was... Or become willing to have God remove these defects of character and humbly ask them, right? And he goes, no. I go, and you probably didn't become willing to make amends to the people in the institutions that your character defects have harmed and go out and actually make amends to those institutions and those people, right? And he goes, no. I go, how the hell do you know if I got to deal with shame or not, you know? Like, I got to tell you. Personally, I didn't have to deal with shame anymore when I did those steps. Now, shame is something that's devastating. A lot of us really have a hard time with this. But I believe we have a solution, a solution for our alcoholism that's going to solve our problem. And as we move into step 10, we've gone... Let's say we've gone through... We've gone through the first nine steps. I see step 10 as a step... They used to call it back in the Oxford Group days, continuance. They were well aware that there would be people who would be real enthusiastic about, you know, the Oxford Group in the beginning. Yeah, you know, standing on the soapboxes and sharing for Jesus, you know, on the street corner. And within about six months, they're not so interested anymore. And we see... We see that in Alcoholics Anonymous all the time, right? We see people who come in, their ass is still on fire. You know, the wreckage is like dragging behind them as they come into the meeting. And they're... I'll do anything. I'll do anything. And within a month or two, you don't see them anymore. You know, they've kind of changed their ideas about, you know, their priority. So they saw it way back in the day. And they called it continuance. What I think the 10th step is about today for us is it's asking us to please ensure that you apply the spiritual lessons of the steps as a reaction to your experience with life. So when it's appropriate to apply a step... When you've done something wrong, it's appropriate to admit it. When you owe an amend, it's appropriate to admit it. When you've done something that you need to discuss with another person, it's appropriate to do that. And this particular step is like my cleanup step. It's basically like my practice these principles step. And there's some really, really cool stuff in here. I'm going to do something different. And I'm going to... I'm going to actually read from the book a little bit. You know, it starts out with promises. You know, every action step in this book has corresponding promises. And it says here that we set right any new mistakes as we go along. We've entered the world of the spirit. You want to flummox up a discussion meeting? Say, I'd like the topic to be entering the world of the spirit. Would everyone share their experience on entering the world of the spirit? You'll really quickly find out who's done the steps and who hasn't. Take about a minute and a half. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Then it asks us to do this. It says, continue to watch for... Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. These are the things that we identify very specifically in the four steps. And it says, you don't just do one four step and you're perfect. You know, and you're never going to make any more mistakes. So what this step does is it says, all right, you understand... You understand the damage that these character defects can do. You understand that they're really roadblocks to happiness. And they cut you off from the sunlight of the spirit. And you're... Your quality of life goes in the tank because of your character defect. So it's asking us to start to watch for these things. Continue to watch. And when these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. Now, that's a... That's a big chunk of instruction. The first part is watch. Watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. This is so big of... This is so big of a challenge that the person that I was working with said, okay, this month, I want you to watch for selfishness. Just watch for selfishness. That's all I want you to watch for. Watch for when you act selfish. Watch for when you act selfish. When they crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. Then we discuss them with somebody. I know a group of people in my sponsorship line that get immediately's. And what an immediately is, it's someone that you've made arrangements with that you can call them any time of the day or night and just cover this 10-step stuff with them just real quickly over the phone. Discuss them with someone immediately. So that's your immediately. I don't particularly do that, but I know people that do. Make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone. I learned this one... I learned this based on my own experience. What would happen is I would really do something wrong at work. And my basic nature is to don't tell anybody. Cover it up. Defend it. Whatever. Because I don't want to admit that I made a mistake. I don't want to admit I'm wrong. My ego doesn't want that for me. And so it came tough. But I remember the first time I really applied this, I was running the facilities department for a school district. And I did something... You know, that really was the wrong thing to do. And immediately I went down to the principal who runs that school and I told him what I had done. And he looked at me like I was crazy. Like, nobody admits that stuff. But, you know, why are you telling me this? So that I can fix it. You know, I did something wrong. And I learned this. I learned this. If I do something wrong, sober. Today. It's going to haunt me. Like when I was out there raping and robbing and pillaging and, you know, just insane. I could do things that were wrong and I could get past them. But today, when I do something wrong, it affects me. It haunts me. What happens is the path gets narrower. You know? And you get... You get very sensitive to your own conduct. And I think it's part of the awakening. You're now awake that you're causing harm to other people or other institutions. So I learned that it's in my best interest to admit it promptly. Then I can move on. I can put it behind me. Instead of trying to... Worrying about it or trying to defend it for the next six months. So, I saw this. I'm a fan of this one show. It was a late 1960s TV show. It was Kung Fu. Does anybody remember Kung Fu? I always wanted to be like Kung Fu. I wanted to be like this spiritual dude who was really chill but could kick your ass. You know? I always thought that was pretty cool. But, but he was a Shaolin priest who was on the run in the old west. And in this one episode, I'll never forget this episode. He's sitting around a campfire with a couple of his new buddies. He's always traveling around. So he made some friends. And they're all traveling together. And they're sitting around a campfire. And a couple of robbers come in. A couple of people with their guns drawn. Like, yeah, what do you got? You know? And they take the money and stuff off the two guys he's with. And then they go to him. And all he's got is like a bag of herbs. So they're like disgusted. You know? And they throw him down. And then they take off. They take off. And they're gone. And his new buddies know a little bit about him. They've seen him in action. And they said, listen, Cain, man, why didn't you kick their ass? You could have kicked their ass. Why didn't you kick their ass? And he sat there like this. I have nothing to defend. And it, like, hit me. I've been defending stuff my whole life through my ego. I've been defending my position. And I've been defending the way I, my belief systems. And I've been defending my property. And I've been defending this. I've been defending a turd. You know what I mean? I'm hanging onto this nasty ass turd. And it stinks. And it's keeping everybody away from me. But it's my turd. It's my turd. It's my turd. You know what I mean? Like, and it was so profound, you know? I have nothing to defend. And, and, and I swear to God, you know, when I'm, when I'm, when I'm, when I'm out there and when my old instincts flare up, I have the capacity to do the things that I used to do, to act the way that I used to act and to, to say the things and defend and all. I have that capacity in me. But this particular step is telling me to watch for this stuff. Watch, it's going to come up. Watch for this stuff. And when it crops up, ask God that wants to remove it, discuss it with somebody, make amends quickly. And it's a very, very simple, very economical process and that we can all remember. But it's so profound and it's so powerful when you apply it, you know? I don't know about you. I don't know about anybody else. But like peace of mind is, is important to me. It has a lot to do with my, my spiritual condition. Remember, I'm the guy behind the tilapia lady. I need, I need all the help I can get, you know? Not being, not freaking out all the time. And, and these, these, these things, these things are absolutely proper. Now, here are some of the, here are some of the 10-step promises. We've ceased fighting anything or anyone. Even alcohol. For by this time, sanity will have returned. That's a plus. You know, that's, if you, if you're, if you're new, you know, that's something to shoot for. You know, you get step 10, step 10, you know, you, you don't have to be accompanied by an adult anymore, you know? So, but, but, what kind of sanity they're talking about? Obviously, we're not all psychotic, you know? I, I. The type of sanity, the type of sanity that we're going to be restored to is, remember I bought a gallon of vodka and drank it to improve my sobriety? That's the type of sanity I need to be restored. I, I, you know, I can't be. Where it concerns alcohol, we have been strangely insane. That's what it says in more about alcoholism. And it's absolutely true. Just look back, look back in your own experience. Like you drank. I've got a great experience of that. I'm, I'm getting my license back for a third DUI, okay? And I've got to go down to Wayne Motor Vehicles, Wayne, New Jersey Motor Vehicles. And I've got to turn in a bunch of paperwork and, and give them a check. And they'll give me my application for a permit. I'd lost my license so long I had to do the permit again. And so as I'm, as I'm headed down there. So that was our first time. I'm thinking, you know, I don't like authority and I don't like fluorescent lights. I don't like standing in line. I hate paperwork. You know, maybe, maybe if I just have a couple of pops, you know, I'll be able, it'll smooth me out for this getting my driver's license back thing, right? So I start drinking as I'm driving down a motor vehicle to get my driver's license back with drinking vodka. I get to this place, right? And now I'm not shy anymore. I'm indignant. These some bitches took my license, you know? You know what I mean? And I finally get up in front of the lady who's got to give me the slip, you know? It's like, I've got it. I've got this and I've got this and here's a money order and I got this and I got this. Now give me that slip of paper. And she sniffs at me. She leans forward and she starts sniffing and she goes, have you been drinking? Like incredulous, you know? I'm getting my license back for a third DUI and I go there drinking. She can't even believe it. And what's the alcoholic answer? No. She goes, you're smelling vodka. A couple of days ago I went to a party. It's probably on my... No, but she's got to give me the slip of paper, right? So she hands it to me and I grab it and she thinks twice and it becomes a tug of war, you know? She's trying to protect humanity from this maniac, you know? And, uh... And... And now she's got me paranoid, you know? So... So I don't go right out to my car. I go through the woods and through a couple of neighborhoods and come back to my car. Now... Now, so... Where it concerns alcohol, we have been strangely insane, right? I'm not a stupid guy. Where does drinking to go get your license back fall on the stupid meter, though? The stupid meter is pegged at 10 on something like that. Now... Now, you know, I don't have lack of intelligence. I've got lack of power. And it's a strange insanity, my relationship with alcohol. So if I've been restored to sanity, that's a good thing. Okay. But... Well, seldom be interested in liquor. That, you know, and I... Truly, today, I'm never interested in liquor. You know, when I think about booze, this is what I think about. Oh, yeah, I'll have a drink, and then I'll have 46 drinks, and then my wife will throw me out, I'll lose my job, I'll get a DUI, and I'll be on the street. No thanks. You know? And... But before, before I was restored to sanity, I'll have a double. You know? That really is, that really is what this does. This restores you to sanity. We react sanely and normally, and we find this has happened automatically. It's happened as a process of the first nine steps. We see that our attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. There's been thought, and there's been effort on our part to live a serious life. Spiritual life. But there has not been thought or effort on our part to stay separated from a drink since we started these steps. It comes, that is the miracle of it, we're not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality. Safe and protected. So we can be safe and protected from the next drink or the next drug through this process. I believe it. I've seen it. I've seen it. Time and time again. With rare exceptions. And one of the rare exceptions is the doctor's prescription pad. I've seen really, really good AAs go out because they've had a serious operation and they've been given, appropriately, they've been given serious pain medication. That pain medication has eroded their spiritual condition to the point where they get cravings for more of the pain medication and then it turns into, an obsession and now they're back out. I've seen that happen to really good AAs. So we need to be careful with that stuff. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We're neither cocky nor are we afraid. This is our experience. This is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. You want to pick it up? You can do the spiritual condition part. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. I want to go back just a little bit. I'm Judy and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Judy. We have new people here and we've talked about these ninth step promises. And I think this whole thing is about promises and principles repeated over these two pages. But when I got here, I found that there was something that was really unpalatable to me and that was in the many ways in which we said we stopped fighting. I was offended at that. It seemed to me as though that was a place I didn't want to go to because fighting the system and life seemed to be what kept me alive. Now, it wasn't keeping me alive, but it felt, you know, I now say to myself, that was adrenaline. That wasn't real. But at the time, it felt like you were asking me to hand down all my weapons that were keeping me safe. And in several places, it mentions we stopped fighting. And for me, the fight was where my life seemed to be centered and it was important. So just say that over here where it says that we've ceased fighting anything, it says, that in several places, three come to mind about this business of stopping fighting. I don't want to stop fighting. I didn't even see that as a good thing. Today, I would tell you I have a life I would have turned down when I got here. But we start with some promises which sounded really good to me. And the reason I want to read those are something Chris was saying about if we start quickly on, you know, these, these, you know, these, these, what we call the ninth or 10th step promises. We've been, we've been promised a new freedom and a new happiness. We've been promised amazement. We've been promised the lack of regret about the past, nor the desire to shut the door on it. And then we're also promised that we will comprehend, comprehend the word serenity. Doesn't even say we're going to get serenity. It says we're going to comprehend it. You know, for those of you that haven't heard that expression, come all the way in and sit all the way down. In Alcoholics Anonymous, we begin to comprehend things that we have not previously been able to touch. And we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking, we'll slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. You remember the first time you ever felt those promises? I did the first time I picked up a drink. Those are exactly the things alcohol did for me. These promises are real, and I think we seek these things. We must have in our lives a sufficient substitute. To track down the своих keinenиг Varmal mitä jeli... To located, udjikovać Richmondi Zman prakashnice We are almost mmm triste quando Alexander There are things that even make sense in life. that for a long time, but I heard you. And I heard your attitude. And your attitudes were changing, as mine has done over a period of time. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. I was here and I was on food stamps. That was an incredible flag for you to wave in front of me. I thought we were going down the tubes any second. We were circling the drain, you know, and, and I, I couldn't be a parent and I couldn't be the head of my house. And I wasn't looking very good while I was trying to do what I was trying to do. And you laid these things out as a possibility and I had only experienced them when I drank. My fears, my anxieties, my, my, my self-centered actions were in fact the result of my drinking until alcohol did what alcohol does. Right? It eventually starts stealing the very things it had promised me. If it was still working for me, I would not be here. But it doesn't. There comes a day when all that other stuff begins to happen. And you can't throw things down the hole fast enough to go chase alcohol. You throw the kids, you throw the time, you throw self-esteem, you throw self-respect. You throw everything down the rabbit hole that is alcoholism. And without that. Right? Right? Without this kind of a coming back around, all we're left with is shame. Guilt, remorse, and all those kinds of things. And I think a lot of us hang on to that long after it's, it, we might, you know, work our steps in order to get past it to the other side. Where alcohol no longer does that for us. But in recall, how many of us have chased that sense long after it stopped working? Many of us have had a one time experience. And ten years later, we're still chasing the experience that has never happened a second time. Why don't we notice that? But we don't. We still think we have some kind of euphoric recall of how good it felt when. So I love these promises. They're not extravagant, but how do I begin to get them now through the growth steps of Alcoholics Anonymous? And. And they will always materialize. Big, big promise. So with that, we go into step ten, which is about all these directions Chris was reading. We have these things. The directions could not be clearer. You can see that. It's a list of directions. We do this. And then we do this. And then we do this. And then we do this. It's, the book is filled. Sometimes it has promises. Sometimes it has directions. We tend to not see those directions, but it's as clear as a bell when we're doing them. So in my sponsorship line, I sponsor a number of women and, and we try to get together once or twice a year. For this particular purpose of if we know each other, because they're not all at my same meeting. If we know each other, it is much easier to pick up the phone and say, I know these people. We come from kind of the same thinking. It's easy to pick up the phone and do attention. And it's time consuming. You to talk to people about many things, and we душes each other and say, we can go to this place and do a lot of other things andеры plantations. We want your support for sure. It's great that Couric produces those and Жина actually had an opportunity to tell me that Nan I'm doing now agl. at I do', in three days. Looking into two dates, we're all going to be okay growth. That. With twoanga passenger option. It is a.��, which is a nominal formula. jr. Pr Hollow lnn, you have to pick. jr. A月 sand health care. én we canjacause, and it's fully charged. And it's from وب ^^rente koinu and centralize and Psk's in the beginning. But, I usually bomb on it a small amount works out better all the way around in my life to be able to do that. But I'm not always available, nor should I be, right? A sponsor should not be the only person in a person's, in a drunk's life when we're getting sober. This is a community, and I think we need to be walking shoulder to shoulder on this broad highway. It's a very broad highway. There's room enough for every stinking one of us. But we need to be walking with our sisters and our brothers towards a common goal. So I recommend to my girls that we call each other and that we do 10 steps with each other so that we can get a straight answer from someone who is willing to hear when things happen. And I have noticed the most remarkable things happening to people who are doing daily 10 steps in the middle of the day when they pick up the phone. Some of our craziest, craziest people begin to turn around. I mean crazy. We got a guy that set fire to his own car and broke a policeman's jaw that was trying to pull him out of the car. Because you're not gonna take me anywhere. You know? And the car's in flames. You know, it's one of our beloved guys. I sponsored him for a while. And what's happening is he has been sponsored again. And sponsored by someone who's starting him on daily 10 steps. And I'm watching an entirely different human being emerge. Entirely different human being is emerging from being accountable to his life, and inviting other people in. You can't make somebody be open to another way unless they're really willing at some point, and he was finally at a place where he was willing. You know, it's beautiful to watch that kind of an example. Every one of us has success and failures with sponsees. Every one of us wants the very best for our folks. But I start out from a place where, you know, when I start working with somebody, I don't care how long you're sober, let's find out if you're an alcoholic. Because I don't know if I'm so good with other bunches of different types of 12-step things. But I do know that we need to have those kinds of conversations. It's a sponsor's job to help somebody find out what they are, right? We don't always know what we are when we get here. We often, and I'm a prime example of that, we often don't know what we are for a long time. So as a sponsor, it's my job to help us figure out, not for me to tell somebody, but for me to help somebody find out for themselves what they're doing. What they are and what they are not. And as we go through this program, we've got these 12 steps to help us figure out if we know we're alcoholic, what are we going to do about that and how we're going to live this new life, right? How are we going to live this life and change ourselves? So God is doing for us what we can't do for ourselves. We're chasing power. We're chasing access. We're chasing a spiritual experience, ultimately. And we join that shoulder to shoulder. A 10-step experience. It's a perfect example of how to change your life on a day-to-day, 24-hours-a-day basis. So people that are doing that, I bet some of you were doing that. And maybe all of you were doing that. And if you are, great. Because I think it's that powerful. We don't have a corner on that. There are other people with a conscience. There are other people that amend their lives as soon as they do it. We don't have a corner. We don't have a corner on any of this stuff. But for us, there's a deeper price. The price is that you're not going to maybe live if you don't pick up a different way of life. For my neighbor who lives that way naturally, my hat is off to her. She doesn't have her life at stake and she does that normally. Wow, we all go, look at that, and she doesn't even have a program. Like there was something spectacular about doing that. But we have a price on our head. We have a price on our head if we don't. And I think it's really a powerful thing to know that we are being saved by the very thing that almost cost us our lives. To know that we are the fortunate ones. To know that we are the ones that have been blessed with an avenue to change our life. And maybe that's part of some kind of divine plan. Maybe that's the only way God could have reached me was by giving me a chance to live. By making it such a high price that the only access to me was through you. The only access to God was through you. And I would not have heard it any other way. So thank you for that because you're responsible in a way for me finding a way to save my own life. I don't put alcoholism down particularly. I hear a lot of I hate this disease. I hate what it does to us. But for people like me, that might be the only way I've gotten here. But anything less, anything less, and I'd have missed it. So, you know, as hard as that is. So here we are at step 10. We've done a lot of work. We've looked at stuff. Maybe there's a sense of a vacuum. We've made those amends, hopefully each and every one of them. Not the ones dangling that we didn't want to make. One of the things we didn't talk about when we were doing that is that how strongly I feel that we need to make amends. Amends for things in proportion to how we have harmed people. And not, you know, I don't advise anybody to go painting my house because they harmed me over here. I mean, we make our amends in relationship to the harm we have done. And in doing that, I learn. I learn exactly through you what I've done and how I've done that. When I made amends with my sister, Chris was saying something earlier, and my sister's dead now, and she was always a really strong-willed, strong-minded, verbal person. And I was scared to death of her. And we called her Sarge when we were kids. And I have this much paper on my sister from doing inventories. I mean, she was, I just couldn't stop writing about her. And I finally asked her to meet me at a restaurant. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to meet her. So she couldn't hurt me. And then I said, now, you don't have to say anything. Meaning, for God's sakes, don't say anything, right? You know that. You're on to it. Don't say anything. And I told her all the things that I'd carefully manufactured so that I never blamed her for anything. And I took responsibility for a lot of stuff. And we got done, and she said, hmm, That's all well and good, but that's not what I've been angry at. And I took a deep breath and thought, eat your Chinese, Judy. Just listen. And because I've been well-sponsored for a long time, I know that I owe you something I never wanted to give you, and that is I listen. I never wanted to hear anybody when I say, please tell me how that's affected you. I never wanted to hear her in the first place. So we got to listen, and about five or six years ago, my sister died. And I was able to be the person that talked to her every day. She and I had a close, intimate, personal relationship in that she was mother, sister, daughter, friend. She had been in such a deep part of my life for most of my life. Most of my sobriety because of that. She made me crazy, too, and we'd occasionally hang up on each other. But we knew how we were, and we knew what we were, and that relationship was a direct result of the fact that we've been able to make amends and move on in our lives, right? I don't want to miss a minute with the people I care about. I don't want to miss a minute with the people I care about. We don't want to miss those lives. We don't want them to miss ours. And how do you keep the street clear? I've got the temperament that occasionally turns into a three-year-old. I have no frustration level whatsoever, and I get irritated at my phone, which is 40 IQ points more intelligent than I am, and stuff like that. I want to throw things. It's like I said, it's like a three-year-old. And I've fought my own temperament all of my life. We have this thing we talk about, principles instead of personalities, and I have to have a lot of principles to handle my personality. That's really clear. It takes every one of our principles, and this is full of them. This chapter is about courtesy, kindness, justice, love, patience, honesty. All kinds of principles. The book's got about 200 of them in there. Not just one for each tradition. Not just one for each step. Not just one for each concept. But there's a bunch of principles that we get to have a life that we get to live with. So how do we do that? I wish that I could tell you that it comes on to us, you know, like the Holy Spirit has just descended, and I am riven clear and pure. But the fact is I still have the temperament of a three-year-old on occasion. And I get angry. And I get angry at myself, and I get angry at the world around me sometimes. So I just want to, you know, kind of own that, that a tenth step is a critical point, because I will devolve in a moment of passion. Does anybody else revert in a moment of passion to this person you wish you weren't? And until your mother is leaping out of your, your mouth and, or something, you know. You know, it's perfect for a tenth step. Yeah. I never want to be that person. But giving a moment, given a moment of passion, or a moment of extreme excitement or fear, there it is. She shows up one more time. And we have a way to bring that back. I'm so much better than I used to be. But she's still in there. You know, I like to think that it is the daily process, the daily practice of this program that keeps alcoholic Judy kind of like a sponge, kind of dried up in the corner. And I don't want to be watering her much, you know, because my, because it's so easy to activate. So, you know, I don't think it's about years. My years here could be that I'm closer to a drink, because I'm further away from my understanding of my last drink. That's just as possible. Time is a matter of time. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. Time is not always your best, you know, stand up and claim your time. Time is not always your best thing. We get really sick here if we don't do the program with time as well. If we don't stay involved with others, thank God we're going to talk about a 12-step and sponsorship some more tomorrow, because, you know, that's the piece that no treatment deals with after you get out of treatment. You can go through steps, and then what? And we need to be able to do that. We need to be able to do that. And we need to be able to do that. And we need to be able to do that. Every one of these steps talks about we do this because it will be useful to others. We don't even get to do it because it's useful to us. It is useful to us, but we do it because it's useful to others. Make no mistake, this is not a help yourself program, but it is a program that requires us to develop a sense of unselfishness. We are required to be helpful to others. We are required to give up some of our self in order to be sober and useful, and that's a price tag. That's a price tag. And, you know, all God wants is all you got. It's easy. All God wants is all you got. And for some of us, that's not the easiest place to get to. So we have this cease fighting anything because sanity will have returned. Isn't that recovered? Yes. Yes. Yes. We cease fighting anything or anybody. We have principles by which we live. Isn't this a place of recovery? So we can react sanely and normally. As long as my three-year-old is not in control, I can react sanely and normally. This has happened automatically. So little by little, I have morphed into another person. I am not the person I came here as. Yet she's still in there. She's not gone. Our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort. So how is it that we keep this thing we've been given? I think this is a real clear example of how we keep this. We talk about, all right, you're sober. We got a spot check inventory of a 10-step. We've got a regular inventory. I've heard both people. You know, in my area, there are people who do an inventory with a new sponsor, every year. Every year. I have no opinion on that. There are people who say, I did the steps once, and now I do a 10-step. Every year, every day, I do a 10-step, and that's my program. I don't have an opinion on that. Neither of those is how I do it. That's why I have no opinion on that. I only have the right to have an opinion on stuff I've done and to share with you what that is and what it's not like. But there are people who are dedicated to doing one process or another who have stayed sober and live really productive lives. For me, I do an occasional inventory, and I try to do a 10-step inventory every day. I have some habits that you have given me. I try to meditate. I start my day with a third step before I even step foot out of bed. I spend a quiet, warm, cozy little morning meeting with God. Now, I know I'm supposed to be on my knees, but I have replaced knees, and I can't get on my knees, so I snuggle in. I do. I think it's kind of a precious time, you know? God and I are all warm and cozy, and that's what I do with my third step in the morning before I start anything is that I have this moment. And then I get up and go live my life. And I think it's a good thing. I think it's the same way with the 10-step. We go ahead and we start living our life. And we do this on a regular maintenance. The nice part is at the end of this, and it says, this business of the maintenance of our spiritual condition, every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. Every day, God's vision into how I live my life. We invite God in like you invite in your sponsor. Your sponsor, your sponsees, and the people you love the most. We invite that spirit in. This is not where I started. You've heard my story. This is not where I started. God and I were adversarial. And today, I don't even get out of bed until God and I have had a little chat in the morning. We look at my day. God is no longer an enemy to me. We're not adversarial. But I start my day because it works. And you know, we don't do stuff in AA that doesn't work. We don't. We abandon things that don't work, right? So I don't abandon this. Because my life is sweeter, my life goes better, and I have a way of getting on track when I'm off track. So what we really have is a daily reprieve. So daily, we do the things we do daily. So that I don't, you know, you all know about Dr. Tybout, right? He was a shrink. And he was a pretty smart guy. And he was, I think, at one point, one of our original board of directors. And he wrote a great little booklet that I think Hazleton talks about called, somebody probably knows exactly, The Art of Surrender on a Daily Basis, something like that. And his point was, like the phoenix rising from the ashes, you know? Harry Potter's bird on Dumbledore's office, all the feathers fall off, the bird dies, and the next morning the bird comes back. He said, that was our daily reprieve. That was our ego. That ego will begin to rebuild on the slightest of pretexts every day. We need a daily program because we begin to rebuild self-centered thinking every day. We begin to think that we have this thing under control. I know that every one of you has had the same thought that I have, that I think I'm managing my sobriety. I think I'm managing well. Something. Some days. And then that, that phoenix has filled up all their feathers one more time. Comes back. Why? Because I think I'm managing. And that is a big illusion for me. I have to get, that Judy doesn't get to manage her own life. I get to manage where I put my feet. I live where my feet go. I can decide where I send my feet most of the time. Maybe I can get my feet to a meeting. I can go to the store. I can do all kinds of stuff. But my life is not completely manageable by me. My life is turned over to the care and guidance of something much greater than I am and it's my job to fit me into God's will, not to fit God's will into Judy's will. And it's really tempting, you know, when we say God's really working for me and I thought, really? Really? . We turn to God and we say, God, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Now we got God as my personal servant. I put out an order and I expect God to deliver. And I think it's really quick. It's, it's a really quick process to think that God is showing up specifically to fit Judy's life the way Judy wants it. When in fact, I suspect it is my job every morning to try to remove me. And the way I see it now, and I'll share with you a thought I had really early on after I began to get this thing. I work best, when God can use me like a tube, right? When God can power through that fire hose. And the only way God can do that is when there's a lot more space in that tube and the bigger I get in it, the less room there is for God. So what I get to do is try to pull myself around the edges of that and ask God to filter through and let me be around the edges. Use me. So I have made every mistake on the planet. It's what makes me useful. It really is. My utility is great because of the mistakes I have made. And part of that utility is that I get to be useful to another person with a place of having been restored to some kind of sanity anyway. And my deal with God early on was I have never known how to make a good decision. I'll leap at some pretty shiny thing every time. Woohoo! There it went. Shiny! It's a story of my life. Bad decisions compounded on bad decisions. So I said in a good decision, God, you bring me what you want me to deal with. And I will do my best to show up for that. So a lot of the time what I get is this sense of, what did you get us into now? You better show up to deal with it. It's a whole different way of looking at my life because now I'm trying to be God's butler, not the other way around. God does not respond to handwritten invitations to do my will. Darn it. So my prayer reflects that. Show me how to be. Show me how to be in this life in this day. Show me how to be with you. Get me out of the way so that you can find me useful in what I do. Show me how to be what you would have me be so that I can be the person God created me to be. Not the person Judy's been trying to create all this time. It's the best I got, folks. It's just the best I've got. Little by little, that's the direction I try to go in. Sometimes it's better than others. Like I said, I got that three-year-old in there who wants equal time. So it's the beauty of the program that every day we get to do some actions every day that take away from our lives. It takes away from us the need to run, the need to escape, the need to shuck and jive. And instead we turn a useless life into one that has utility, purpose, and meaning. The very promise we read at the beginning. Surely these people are to be led to a life that is usefully whole. That's my goal. You want to finish it up? You got something you want to say? Thank you. Thank you. We haven't really talked about step 11. Step 11 is going to take a little bit more time than we have tonight. But I will touch a little bit on step 11. 11, the prayer meditation part of it. You know, Judy was talking about, and it really caught me, that there was a period of time when God was adversarial. I had the same understanding. And my logic was this. If there's an omnipotent God that is all-powerful, you know, why does my life suck so bad? It must be, you know, it must be like, or I had this crazy idea that God was like this constant, cosmic Alan Funt. And, you know, he was, oh, hey, let's let the Schroeder boy do four quaaludes and then park at the police station and ask him for directions. Ha, ha, ha! That'll be funny. You know, so, I mean, I had this, you know, and so inventorying my relationship with God and my understanding of God, you know, I had this crazy idea that I came to terms early on that I had created, I had created a God from some of the stuff I learned in Sunday school and some of the stuff I just thought. And there was a period of time where, where if you ask me, you know, what is God? The thought would cross my mind that there would be an all-powerful God, and all of a sudden, there would be an all-powerful God. And all of a sudden, there would be an all-powerful God. And all of a sudden, there would be an all-powerful God. And all of a sudden, there would be an old man up in the clouds with white flowing robes and long hair and a beard, and, you know, and next to him would be St. Peter, and they'd be keeping track of the Schroeder kid. You know, oh, sin number 374. You know, that's gonna put some purgatory time on him, you know. And so, like, like, I had this crazy vision. Now, a God like that, you know, would keep me sober a minute and a half. I had to start to become open-minded, open-minded on spiritual terms. And I believe I had to become open-minded on, you know, just what the heck my concept of God was. You know, remembering, you know, when my father died when I was 12, I remember being very, very angry at God because people had told me God is a God of love. God loves you. You know, and I thought that God took my father from me. I realize today that God probably accepted my father, you know, received my father. Now, it's just a different way to look at it, right? But I had to be open-minded on this concept. Now, step 11 doesn't mean that I'm open-minded. Step 11 doesn't mean that I'm open-minded. Step 11 doesn't mean that I'm open-minded. Step 11 doesn't mean that I'm open-minded. Step 11 is something that I think is really cool. And we'll get more into it tomorrow before step 12. But it suggests that there are priest ministers and rabbis out there that have some really good books. There's some things that you can really learn. And there's people that have come before us that have dedicated their whole lives to the study of God and the understanding of God. And there's masters who've done the prayer and meditation at a much greater level than any of us will ever touch. And there's wisdom to be gained from some of this stuff. I'm just going to touch briefly on where my mind has been, where I've been thinking about God and reality. Like over the last couple of years. I'm a fan of astronomy. I'm a fan of cosmology. I'm a fan of the Hubble telescope and all the amazing things that that's showing and all the science that's going into the study of the universe. And I'm really, really into that stuff. And I don't believe any of that goes at odds with a spiritual conception of God. Or a personal conception of God. I don't. In the early days, certainly, we were talking about this at dinner, certainly it was a Christian perspective. The Oxford group, you would be turning your will and your life over to the care of Jesus. Bill opened the door. Bill was a progressive. He was a visionary. And he was very much inspired by the New Thought people. The New Thought people were people like, like Emmet Fox. Like today, it would be the same thing as today as being influenced by Eckhart Tolle or something like that. It was the spiritual people of that decade. And he was very influenced by that. More so even than the ancient theology wrapping around Christianity. And I think there's room for our own conceptions of God. And there's room for us to develop a relationship with this power. Each of us. And I encourage the guys that I work with to develop their own relationship with God. They'll go, well Chris, what books are you reading? And a lot of times I'm hesitant to tell them that because I want it to be personal for them. I want them to come to a true understanding and communion with a power greater than themselves that they can 100% stand behind. And today, I look at the, I look at what they're studying and I look at the universe. And a couple of things just recently completely blew my mind. They tried to find the darkest patch of the universe with one of these really big telescopes. And they found what they considered the absolute darkest part of the sky. And figured like a dime on the ceiling. I mean, that's what the aperture of the telescope went at. The darkest part. And it found over 20,000 galaxies in that dark part of the sky. So the world that we live in, a galaxy, the, we live in a solar system and we live in the Milky Way galaxy and we can see maybe 1% of that galaxy without telescope. There's a billion stars in the galaxy. They're just discovering black holes of the galaxy. And there's billions, millions of galaxies out there. And so, you know, I'm looking at this and what it does is it gives me this wonder of the existence that we're living in right now. To live right here, right now. To be self-aware. To be conscious human beings on this planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy, at this particular time, is just beyond remarkable for me. And the way we waste it being like active alcoholics hiding in our room talking to our bottle when there is this we're part of the experience of God. You know, we're part of God's creation. And this may have little or nothing to do with Step 11, but Step 11 has prepared me to be in wonder of this particular experience. You know, I'm going to end with this. Thirteen some billion years ago, there was a big bang. It was all matter was compressed in a very small amount. It exploded. It exploded out. The atoms would, from gravity, would collect. They would form suns. There would be explosions and supernovas and creation of different kinds of molecules. And solar systems would start. And somehow life started. I believe that that was the touch of God. And you look at the religious and the spiritual traditions that many of us have grown up with, many of us have grown up, and you look at the Christian traditions, and you look at the book of Genesis, and it's let there be light. And I relate that today to when the big bang happened. Let there be light. And let there be creation. And to be part of God's experience, and to be part of God's experience, I пес perceived this testified to be very realistic in my life today, as that this picture isahn chapter, and to hold it and compare it back to my everyday life, and continue to believe it, in my big bang. And your confidence is Self. And this enough is enough. The changes in my five year at the age of 16 always bring as a positive change to Freeze Purity. And I feel that tinha a direct and positive impact and it could be as incredible a items in my son era or thembre to give him in this series today. So I believe that things evolved. The search got meified. I believe that wasn't like irrationalics or ever不行. But what happened to me, I Tony learned the final cycle of my life with that brainwave probably quite a thick estrans oddness. Because my brain just wouldけど me. Cons 대��, sit there with a .38 caliber handgun against my temple, just hoping I had the courage to pull the trigger and end this whole thing. And I can tell you today, oh my God, you know, what a gift. My big problem today is there's not enough time. Not enough time in the day, there's not enough time in the week. There's so many things I want to do and want to experience. And I'm enormously grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous, what Alcoholics Anonymous has done. And one of the promises in the book is the most important thing will become your relationship with God. And today, the most important thing in my life is my relationship with God. A God that I don't understand. If somebody says they understand everything there is about God, step back about three steps. You know what I mean? Because they'll, you know, they're dangerous or they'll lie about other stuff too. So it's a mystery. But, you know, I'm involved in it and I love it and I'm real grateful. I'm grateful to be here tonight and I'm certainly grateful for Malcolm for asking us and I'm grateful for the opportunity to share it with friends, especially Judy here. And I think we'll end for the night. I want two words and one of them is Malcolm and his wife have been really hospitable to us. You have a treasure in your folks and in your in the many of you who have been really rewarded. Filling our life is what I'm trying to say very inadequately. And everybody here has been really terrific to us. But I won't see Malcolm and his wife in the morning. And you guys have been just great. So I really want to say thank you. Thank you. Malcolm and his wife. I'm sorry about that. My brain did a brain fart. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't say it.