Step 11 and the Discipline of Sitting Quiet with Higher Power – Myers R.

carnate. They thought it was the, they weren't even going to recognize, the local intergroup office wouldn't recognize that group as a bona fide AA group because they had no discussion meetings. They had three book studies a week and dozens of commitments to carry the message other places, but they werenít going to recognise this as a real group. And I mean, it was laughable. But anyway, Chris introduces me to this guy and Iím scared, but I meet him And he asked me to stick around for a while, for a month or two. And he said, if you don't like what we're doing, you can go back to your original home group. And his group was a 55-minute drive from where I live with no traffic. Some days it would take me an hour and a half to get to that meeting. And that was my home group for 27 years before I moved here to the Hill Country. pretty amazing. I fell in love with what they were doing and the lives that they changed because of their willingness to put the basic text and the common solution that they talk about over on page 17 into the forefront. I'm not knocking discussion stuff, I am not. I think there's a perfect time and a place for it. I've said this from a thousand podiums though, I just don't know why there has to be so many of them. I love them, but the group I sobered up in, we had 32 meetings a week. Listen, 32 meetings per week, and they were all discussion meetings. We had no book studies. We had no literature-based meetings at all, and it was amazing. I mean, it was no wonder none of us knew anything. Remember that old saying, we teach what we're taught? I mean if you're in my travels around the world and the AA stuff, I'm amazed at how there'll be geographic areas where the book will be so rich and the message carried will be so amazingly deep. And then you'll go into areas county after county after County, big, huge areas like this where nobody has a book. Nobody carries any literature. Nobody does anything. And it's just, it's troublesome. Let me, about, I can't remember now how long. I'm going to guess about six years ago. There were some things that happened to me in AA and I want to talk a little bit about that stuff because they were kind of mind-blowing. They were kindof game changers for me and I didn't really see them at the time. It's funny. Y'all ever notice how some people will come in absorb stuff, get it. And they just got it. They're like little sponges. And I seem to be covered in oil and repelling everything that was coming towards me. I just didn't soak anything up and it was troublesome. I remember Clifford after he'd worked with me for a little while, he said, Myers, can I be really straight with you about a couple of things? And I said, yes, sir, go ahead. And he said, I'm concerned about you and your program. I'm concerned about staying sober. Teaching you the steps, teaching you what this program looks like may be the easiest thing in the world, truly. But man, getting you to unlearn all the old stuff that you carried into these meetings like that, these old ideas may kill you. And years later, I would appreciate his honesty more than anything in the whole wide world because he helped me to understand that at some point in time, I got to stop slinging aphorisms. I gotto stop playing those kind of games and I need to actually need to know what alcoholism is and how to teach it and how to help folks understand what their disease was. This idea of qualifying folks is such a huge help. Can you imagine how cool it would have been and how much heartache I would have saved if somebody had sat down with me and qualified me when I first came to AA instead of just letting me sit in meetings, shooting from the hip, talking hips-licking cool stuff and not really understanding any of that? Some of y'all, I think, can relate to this stuff. Um, I tend to be a crusty old guy in that I, I'm not so intellectual. I tend To Be More Anecdotal. So I will watch this stuff. If I happen, if I'm sponsoring Matt, Matt's right underneath me screen wise. If I'm sponsored Matt, um, um I'm gonna, um need to help him understand what his truth is, um and so that we can make some progress. That's the reason why Bill Wilson was so amazing in the way that they wrote that text, because it gave us this common solution. Look at how many books, how many times in the text they talk about we referred back to the chapter on alcoholism. You've got Bill's story and then there is a solution and more about alcoholism and more about alcohol is the primary chapter that's teaching us what alcoholism looks like. But listen, sometime when you're in a discussion meeting and if you think that I'm just sort of making this stuff up, drop this as a topic and ask what alcoholism is. And because Matt knows he's been there, Matt will say, hey, this is what alcoholismo is. But guess what? What happened? You'll find that within a couple of seconds, somebody will go, well, you know, for me, alcoholism, is that DWI that I got? And then all of a sudden it goes click and it shifts over. Now everybody's talking about the story stuff, the drama around what they were doing. And I was eating out of dumpsters and I was, you know, blah, blah. You all get that. The problem with this stuff is, is that all of our stories are somewhat different. And if we're not careful, instead of making things clear and helping people understand the big picture, what happens is that we produce a bunch of confusion. And then therein lies part of the problem. Five or six years ago, Sarah, my oldest daughter, joined AA. She finally, it was a bit of a cluster for a while and finally got her okay and got her some help and got her involved. How many of y'all have family members that are in the program too? Some of us have kids that are In the program, some of us have other relatives. It was a game changer for me because I could be really, really, I could sort of co-sign anything that you said. I mean, if you said the craziest thing in the universe, I'd go, well, okay, that's just his view on it and it was okay. The moment my daughter was sitting in the same room, all of a sudden it was like my hearing went to hyper stuff. Let me make a suggestion. Sometimes the next time you're sitting in a meeting, Try this. You may find it interesting. Close your eyes just for a second. Close your eyes and listen to what you're hearing in the meeting. Listen to what people are saying, and then picture yourself in a situation where your loved one is hearing the same thing. Now, come on. Some of y'all are seasoned. Some of you guys know exactly what it is that's going on like this, and if somebody gets on a tangent and heads off in one direction, you don't care because you already know the truth. You're okay, but what about these new little rascals that are in there, these little guys that are sitting there trying to figure out what the heck is going on. And you've got to be really, really careful in those situations. But it's amazing how once you become sensitive to what it is that the new guy is hearing, it will change and affect what you say and what you share in that meeting. And I think it's a great way to kind of look at what we're saying. So, we don't just fall into this same thing of telling a story every time I'm asked to share. There's a million other things that we could share solution-wise and we could try to do that. So let me, one of the other things that happened to me, it was not early on. I was probably three or four years after I was working with Clifford. And I'm smarter about literature, I'm smarter about the book and stuff. But one of the things that happened was is that one evening at a workshop thing that I was at, I was sitting on the floor in a corner kind of waiting for stuff to get set up and all of a sudden it occurred to me in a profound like, hey, God's poking you going, listen up dude. And what it was I heard was, Myers, do you realize that it's time for you to stop trying to be fed every time you go to a meeting? That maybe it's Time for You to Feed. And I went, huh, interesting. And I began to think about it like this. Listen, I've known people that are going to AA meetings for 20, 25 years, and they're still hoping that they'll get something from the meeting. and i get that i understand the thought process but at some point in time one of the coolest things that ever happened to me was that when i realized that i was there to give instead of receive i eventually got i mean i i got times 10 i got all the cool stuff that was there but but the cool part about it was was that When I began to look at the meeting as a as an opportunity to perhaps change and affect people's lives, all of a sudden it was a game changer. And it completely altered how I looked at going to meetings and doing things. It was terrific. And so I think probably it would be interesting to look at that sometime and just see if you feel the same way. Another thing that happened downrange a little bit, and it came from kind of left field, was this idea that maybe there was more to AA than just staying sober one day at a time. Maybe there was mehr than just being sober. And it's an interesting thing. When you go back and you read any of Bill's writings after the late 40s, so most of his stuff in the early 50s to the mid-50s after he got hooked up with Harry Thiebaud, who was his psychiatrist, they would talk about emotional sobriety and some of this stuff. But they started talking about some amazing stuff. And it was sort of crazy because I'd never really thought about that because I came up through the school, remember, which is just staying sober one day at a time, that kind of thing. And the reality of it was, is that the literature didn't line up with that. We stayed sober for good and for all, but we lived life one day At a time. That's what it said. And now all of a sudden it made sense. How many of y'all know a cat named Don Pritz? Don was a kind of an iconic guy from Denver, who was, he's been dead now for years and years, maybe eight or nine years. And he was fascinating. Don sobered up in the federal penitentiary system in the United States. And it was fascinating if you go back and listen to some of his old talks, there are a jillion of them out there online that you can get real easy, just a keystroke and you're there. And Don was saying in a talk that he did in the 70s, he said, I'm concerned that these days we seem to be talking more and more about sobriety and less and less about recovery. And I remember when I first heard it, I went, you know, I didn't, it just went in one ear and out the other. It didn't mean anything. And later, as I was listening to it again, I went yeah, you Know, it's interesting. I started listening to a bunch of the stuff that he had done. There was a guy named Clint Hodges, who is a slick LA attorney, another guy that's just a fascinating dude to listen to. All of these guys were talking about the same thing. they were talking about recovery, that we could recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. And then I began to pay attention to it and read back over on page 90 in the book, they actually ask you to introduce yourself as a person who has recovered. They ask you too. And yet we still have tens of thousands of people that want to be recovering forever. And I'm just saying, it's okay. I don't care if you introduce yourself as a squirrel. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me, but it's important if you were new, if it was your daughter that was sitting in the meeting, wouldn't you rather her to be in a meeting with a bunch of people who had recovered from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body or be around a bunch OF folks that are still sick 20 years into recovery? I'm just saying, guys, it's just a way to look at it, but I think it's importante sometimes to do some head scratching and think about it and just try to figure it out. The other thing I think that was a game changer for me was these disciplines of 11 and 12. Joe McQueenie, who sponsored my sponsor, Joe McHugh said one time we were having a breakfast thing. He was in Dallas visiting Clifford from Arkansas. And Joe said, Myers, let me ask you a question. Do you think you could overcome the things in your life by just exerting more willpower? And I went, yes, sir. And he looked at me and he looked to Clifford and he look back at me. And he said, really? And I said, yeah. And so you think that willpower had something to do with your recovery? and I went, yes, sir, I think. And he said, golly. And I remember him looking at Clifford and going, this dude's wearing me out. And I started laughing and I said, I don't mean to. And he says, I know, I know, but willpower, self-will is not going to overcome self. It's not going to work that way unless you can figure out a way to get this spiritual component nailed, this step 11 stuff nailed, you're going to struggle And it's always going to be a kind of a rough deal for you. And he was right. Years later, it would prove to be one of the most profound things that I'd ever heard, although I didn't recognize it at the time. But it was an amazing sort of a deal. Mark Houston years later would kind of shame me into... It's funny, the most important things in my life came when I didn'T really want them or expect them, but they happened anyway. And so, but I had to get serious about sitting quiet with God. It's funny, we could talk about it for two seconds. I don't, y'all ever stop and think about how much time you spend with God? I mean, there are times when I am so focused on spending time with God and then there are terms when I'll drift sideways and all of a sudden I'll realize it's been three days since I had any conversation with God at all. And then I wonder why my life is getting kind of grindy and kind of goofy and kindof powder dry again. And then, I'll go, oh, oh ,oh, I know what's missing and I go back and do it again. That Joe McWaney at that same breakfast told me one time, he said, Myers, I don't think you can do this. I know that you're not gonna believe this but this always boils down to the same thing and if you'll simply pay attention, your life will change forever. and I said, I'm all ears. Let me know. And he said, every day it depends on how much time you're spending with God's kids and how much Time are you spending with god 11 and 12 and I went okay I can handle it. I can I can do it. Um, and it would be it would take some discipline to to um to do that the um The other piece of this thing this working with other stuff I had a guy that showed up at a meeting in my original home group when I was sober about six months. And he said, this was kind of a quote from his, as I remember it from what he said. He said, there are good 12-steppers in AA and there are bad 12-steppers in AA. And if you're not a good 12 stepper, buddy, you need to let somebody else handle that that can do a good job. Um, and I, I remember I wanted to kiss the guy. I mean, I, because really and truly I'm convinced that I'm going to suck. I'm, I'm convince that I am just going to be horrible at this. And my head just worked overtime telling me I'm too busy. I'm to slow. I'm two you fill in the blank. Um, And, and the reality of this stuff is, is that when you read the basic text, when you start studying the book, one of the things, one of the most reoccurring themes in the big book is work and self-sacrifice for others. If you don't believe me, ask my buddy Bart Ross. He just jumped on down there. I see him down there in a corner like that. And Bart will tell you that I'm telling you the truth. Work and self sacrifice for others is huge. And I always painted it as optional. Yes, I think it's important for some people to work with others, but not me. And as a result, there's just so far that you can go. You'll find yourself in this kind of place where all of a sudden you start to kind of grind to a stop and then all of the sudden you'll find yourself kind of drifting sideways. Look, folks, we all drift. I mean, there is nobody that crawls up on some spiritual mountaintop and stays there. We all drift somewhat, but the important part is that we recognize what it is, and then realize that we have 100% control over whether or not we stay in that drifting position, or whether we come back to a transformative place as we move towards our creator. I heard this kid one time in a meeting a couple of years ago, this little guy couldn't have been more than 19 years old he was just just a sweetheart of old guy and he and he was sitting there and he said i had a conversation with my sponsor today and he did something that was kind of profound and everybody leaned forward like they were going to listen to what he said and he says my sponsor said if god was your girlfriend would she be pleased with how much time you're spending with her and I, when he's, when, when He said it, I went, wow, that is kind of profound. It truly is because it puts, it puts perspective in the, in the big picture. How much time am I spending with God? I walked up to that little guy after the meeting. I walkedup to him and I said, I appreciate you sharing that tonight. It made me smile, but it was really true. And he said, thanks. And I said, so do you have a relationship with God? He said, oh, dude, me and big homie, we're like this. And i said, what did you call him? She said, big homy. And l went, okay, Okay. I guess that works. How much time are you spending with God and how much time are you spinning with God's kids? This 12 step stuff, Clifford and those guys tricked me into going to a 12 step place. I'm not going to get into the story. It gets kind of long and drawn out, but I got to tell you this. Had I known that they were not going to show up, I wouldn't have shown up either. But I need you to picture this, how weird it was to show up at the Salvation Army in Dallas, which is huge. There's close to 200 people in that facility. And I walked in that night and there was no, expecting Clifford there, expecting the other people that were going to be there. And I was going to sit on my butt like I always do and mess with my phone like I always do. And let somebody else carry all the weight. And the reality was when I got there and nobody else was there. And I had to make a decision that said, you got to do something here. You either going to walk out and we may lose the gig or stay and see if you can help. And so I stayed. AndI got to tell you guys, I'll never forget leaning against the wall, talking to God before that talk that night, before that. These were all book studies that we were doing. I knew where we were. I'd been there the week before. I knew where to pick up like this. I just am terrified. Guys, my hands are shaking so bad that I can't hold a big book. I've got to find something to set the book down on to talk. I can't, I can' t hold it still. But it was a game changer. And I'm thinking as I got to the end of it, I remember thinking, you know, if I play this right I'll never have to do this again. And I can milk this for the next 10 years. People say, Myers, do you do 12 step work? And I go, yeah, I carried the message after that Sally one night. Yeah, I do that. That's what I wanted to do. But it didn't work that way. Guys, when we got done with the Lord's Prayer, we dropped hands and this guy goes, hey, they always call me Mr. Myers for some reason. Mr. Myers, can you come back tomorrow night? And I remember going, wait a minute. He asked me to come back. Nobody had ever done that. I mean, that was pretty surreal for me. And I said, yeah. And it was, everything changed. The next day I was on fire, ready to go. And I got to that meeting that night three hours before that meeting started because I wanted to make sure that I had all my stuff prepped and my notes out. And nothing's been the same since then, nothing. It's truly a remarkable deal. Folks, listen, if you go to a group and you don't have any outside commitments to carry the message places like that, maybe the next business meeting, maybe you could bring it up as just a suggestion and see if there's any way that maybe you Could get something like that started. treatment centers, wind up joints. One of the things that I find fascinating is that we always assume that folks will find us when they get out of treatment. And the reality of it is some guys like Bart that are in these places where they're just packed with people getting out of treatment like that. Sometimes these guys get lost so fast after treatment that they just don't know where to go. They don't. This is the reason why I love commitments. When the stupid virus hit a year and a half ago, we had 52 commitments carrying the message other places. 52 commitments. That's a lot of big books slinging out there, and it was some fun, and there were thousands and thousands of people who got a chance to hear the basic text and the life-changing program that the book describes. That's pretty amazing. I want to tell you a real fast story, and then we'll get out of here. I'm often caught off guard when I travel and I hear a lot of these groups have little whiteboards up there and you can't chair a meeting until you've been sober for six months and you cannot sponsor people until you have been sober a year. I understand the logic behind a lot of that stuff, but stop and look at what Bill says in the first days of convalescence, nothing will so much ensure immunity as intensive work with other alcoholics. In the first days of convo, I've got newspaper articles of guys in the 30s and 40s that were three weeks sober and they were already forced into sponsoring people. This idea that we have an unlimited amount of time. Listen, my problem, y'all, is that if you wait too long to get involved, you won't get involved because you will have built a case, an effective case against it. You'll let somebody else do it. You know what my favorite job in AA is of all the things that I've gotten to do in 33 years? My favorite thing to do is greet people. And I'm not a type A personality. I'm Not a get out there and go get them kind of guy like that. I's pretty shy. Um, and, um, but, but if I ask everybody here tonight, everybody in this room tonight, how many of you remember the people in your life that were kind to you? I bet you could remember that. This has nothing to do with alcoholism that has nothing to do With anything else. This has to do. It's just how, how I remember going to a, to a big fancy schmancy opening in Dallas of a big treatment place, and there must have been close to 1,000 people in that room. And I remember when I walked in, there were car problems on the freeway, and I was probably 20 minutes late. I'm never late.I'll get there the day before if I have to. But there was nothing I could do. I was just trapped. And so when I got there, I was about 20 minutes late, and i walked into this big banquet hall and all of these people are there. The speaker's already talking and everybody just kind of looks up at me. I'm standing inside the door and there is no place to sit. And I don't know whether to just walk back out of the room or what the deal is. And all of a sudden, I saw this girl get up from a seat all the way across the place. And it was a girl that I had known in AA years ago. And when she saw me standing there, she held her hand up, stood up, held her hand up and walked all the way across that room, grabbed my hand, walked me all the way back over there to their table and sat me down next to her. Now, that may not be anything to anybody, but to me, it was like, who? Who is this girl? And I will never, as long as I live, forget her kindness that day because I felt so uncomfortable standing on the inside of that thing. And she knew it. She knew how uncomfortable it was. Big, small thing. One more real quick thing. I did a talk for a big fancy schmancy group in Dallas about a year, year and a half ago. And it's an enormous group and it's just crazy. And when I got there, it was raining really hard. And there were about 25 people standing outside smoking in front of this building where they have these meetings like this. And I walked out, I got a coat and tie on and I walked up on the steps and everybody's just smoking and talking. And I stand there for a few minutes and there was a guy standing there next to me and I said, man, this rain's something else. And he goes, yep, sure is. And that's all he said. And I don't know where the door is for this place. It's kind of a big glass wall. I don'T know where I'm supposed to go. I DON'T know what to do. I don' t know where they're meeting, this kind of stuff. And I said hey, is this the so-and-so group? and he goes, yeah, yeah. And I go, okay. And I said, how do you get in? And he said, oh, the doors around on the other side. And I went, oh okay. So I walk around the other side, walk in the door. There's probably 60 or 70 people in there already. Nobody says anything. I walk in. I'm just sitting there like that by myself. Eventually one of the guys that I sponsor who brought some friends with him walked over and we sat and we had a visit like this. Um, but, um, but it was weird. I was wondering what I was going to talk about that night. I'll give you three guesses what it was. It was, it was a freaking bloodbath is what it was and I'm still kind of licking my wounds from that one. The, the, um again because I'm looking at this thing from the perspective of what if my daughter had been there? What if, I mean, come on. Two weeks later, two weeks later I go to another group over in a different town close to Dallas and when I pull up in the parking lot there must have been 30 or 40 people standing outside smoking and just visiting out this big courtyard area and I pulled away. I pulled into the parking light. I'm facing away from them so I'm not looking at them and I get out and I'm straightening my tie, and I'm in the window of my truck, and I'm just kind of getting ready to walk in like this. And when I turned around, there were 30 people standing behind my pickup. Scared the crap out of me. I thought, man, I should have put a diaper on. It scared me so bad. Anyway, I bet Dengar jumped back in the truck because I wasn't expecting they were all standing right there next to the truck. And 30 people shook my hand and walked me into that meeting and then walked me inside and then introduced me to everybody that was in that meeting? Okay. I'm just going to, it's a simple question. I just want to know if you were brand new and you didn't know anybody, which group would you rather go to? Guys, I think sometimes we just spend so much time thinking about our own stuff and our own day and our old days. Our own needs and our owns wants. And I get that. I am not judging any of it. I understand that. But goodness gracious, guys, wouldn't it be cool if we could collectively as a fellowship lean a little more into that idea of trying to be as loving as we can? I'm a big book guy from way back. I love the big book, but the big books are not the same thing. I'm not a big book without love is useless. We got to be close to these guys and we got to do what we can to try to help them. I spent years in AA when I didn't know that, I didn'T feel like I'd changed any. I remember being in my garden one time years and years and years ago, and I remember being all nervous and frustrated because I'm getting ready to go into a house and be around a woman that just doesn't dig me, and I don't dig her too much either. And I got a bunch of kids that drive me crazy and I got to go to bed early because I gotto get up and go to work. And, and the building has got my name on the side of the building, but I don'T even want to be there. I DON'T, I DONT WANT TO BE THERE. And because an old guy named Cliff Bishop cared enough to tell me the truth about this program and about the life-saving stuff there, i had a change that was miraculous years later i'd be in that same garden messing with those same stupid bugs and doing the same stuff i always do in a garden and i'm sitting there right at sundown and i'M THINKING HOW AMAZINGLY LUCKY I AM THAT IN A FEW MINUTES I'M GONNA WALK INTO A HOUSE AND I'M GOING TO SEE A WOMAN THAT I ABSOLUTELY ADORE I'M going to be in there with kids that I just, how did I have such unbelievable kids? And I'm going to go to bed really early because I'm want to get up really early and go to a business that I cannot wait to be in the same room with those employees and the work that we're doing. You see what I'm saying? Guys, do you think I changed any of that? Do you think I had to do anything with that change? No, I didn't. What changed was is that I began to recognize and realize that the founding fathers knew that if I would lean into a relationship with my creator and get off my skinny butt and go try to help somebody, that lives would change. And in the process, so would mine. That's some heady stuff right there. I think I'll stop right there thank y'all very much for letting me come tonight. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, Myers. It was great talk.