Step 11 – FOTS Step 11 Workshop – Part 18 of 29 – 2025 – Chris S.

It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to be on this meeting. I've got a bunch of friends on this meeting. I know, you know, I know so many people up in up in Canada. I love I love Canada. I love going there and I'm, you know, let me really cool to do something with Katie. You know, you want to talk about somebody with some energy. She is she's one. She's a dear friend of mine. Anyway, my topic tonight is is basically, it's the last line in step 11. You know, when we know God lovingly watches over us, we know that when we turn to God, all will be well with us here and hereafter. That's an amazing statement to me. And it's a good thing that when I walked into the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1989 uh that he didn't stop me at the door and say you know alcoholism's your problem and you really you need to turn your will your life over to the care of God and and then everything will be fine when you turn your well over to God I I would have I would Have said thank you so much for the information here's a little bit of money for your basket I'm out of here you know what I me because, because that was so foreign of a concept. So, so it just, it was not the way I was living. It was not what I was believing. Uh, I'm coming in, uh, off of a 20 year run of chronic alcoholism, where every thought in my head is based around me and my pain, and how is this going to affect me? And how am I going to figure this out? And how am i going to avoid this? And How am I gonna get out of that? So to think that there's a power, a God that can solve any of my problems or bring me to a place of of comfort and be able to manage my life. It just wouldn't have made any sense. So I love how they approach step two. We came to believe. Now it doesn't say we believed. it says, we came to believe. And really, you know, how did that happen? How did that happen for me? I mean, there's a lot of people that are dying from alcoholism right now that are never going to get it. There are a lot of people who are dying of alcoholism who come into Alcoholics Anonymous a little bit here, a little bit there, really don't come in and do their job and really don'T get sober and then figure and figure they gave that aa a shot you know they gave that aa shot didn't work there's so many people like that like what what is what's different what what happened with me that i was able to grasp onto these concepts and become willing uh to to take the spiritual exercises that brought about uh a spiritual awakening and a recovery from alcoholism. Well, you know, what is it? What is it about me? How did that happen? You know, when I look back and I look at periods of time and all I can see is the paintbrush across my life of the grace of God because I was belligerent. I was argumentative. I was prejudiced. I knew more than you did without you even opening your mouth. I knew what you were going to say, and I was just belligerent denial, you know, they talk about in the spiritual appendix. That, you know, that was me. You know, what happened? Well, I'll tell you this. What happened with me was alcoholism took me down, and by the time I got into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was a mess. I mean, the last three or four years of my drinking, I was a blackout, oblivion, daily drinker. I think there's some people in here who understand what that is. When I could get alcohol, I drank it hard, I drink it fast. And I went from sober to blackout in about an hour and a half, and I went to unconsciousness within three. So when I started drinking, I just drank myself unconscious. And that's like the last three or four years of my drinking. That cuts down on your social life. You know, I loved it when I came in there. Yeah, I drank at a bar. I closed the bar every night. If I would have gone into a bar at six o'clock at night, I'd have been passed out on the bar at eight you know that's just that's the way I had I was not able to pace myself you know what I mean like there was just no control left in in my drinking if it was there it was it was going down my throat it was gone down hard so that kind of living you know if you survive it you know if he if you wake up and the clouds of delusion part just enough for you to get a clue that, you know, you're in some real trouble here, you know, and you're lucky enough to get into Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, that's basically what happened to me. And I came into AA, and it was months before I gave God any credit. It was months Before I took spiritual prayer and meditation seriously. It was it was months before I understood step six and seven, let alone 10 and 11. And, you know, step three was saying the prayer, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. You know, so so here I am. I'm up against alcoholism with no solution. and um i'm i'm treat i'm trying to treat this alcoholism trying to treat it with massive meeting attendance you know and and saying yes in the meetings you want me to pick up the chair sure you want you wantme to drive somebody home sure i mean you know i was desperate enough to do all that stuff uh but i'm tried to treat my alcoholism with with the fellowship and that that only lasted as long as it lasted and you know what happened with me was I was exposed to some people who uh who well I was exposed to a guy who gave me some cassette tapes that exposed me to some People who were doing a big book study this is like this is maybe May of 1990. And I started listening to some Joe and Charlie workshops. Then I moved on to some Joe Hawk workshops. And then I, you know, and I start listening to all this stuff because it's challenging, but it's also comforting to me. I mean, these people that were doing the workshops were speaking with authority. They were speakingwith experience, but they were also speaking with authority. And I started to trust what they were saying. And, and I started to get inspired by what they're saying.And I startedto actually do some of this stuff that they were asking, asking us to do. And through some of these early spiritual exercises, I started to come to believe that there's a power greater than myself that can work in me and through me and do for me what I can't do for myself. Now, going from the person who walked through the door to someone that starts to believe in the spiritual life, to start, to starts, starts to truly trust and rely on a God that I can't see or understand or define. I see the grace of God on that, you know? I see, I see the change in my heart and my spirit. The only way I think that would have happened, listen, And I brought the desperation, but I didn't bring the inspiration. You know, the inspiration had to come from a greater place than me. And, you know, I was inspired by some of you. I was certainly inspired by the tapes. And I'd also run out of road. I'd run out plans. So I got about the business of the steps. and step three I made a decision to do the rest of the steps and I made a decision to further a relationship with this power greater than myself in step four uh I identified and became honest and wrote down the things that had been blocking me off from any experience with the divine you know if you had resentment self-centered fear and guilt shame and remorse like me you're not you're not you know in touch with the divine what's happening is you're in a head that wants to kill you you know I'm always afraid oh my god tomorrow's gonna be tomorrow's gonna be 10 oh I can't believe I did that I can'T believe I did that so I'm always in the past or I'm always in the future and I'm never in the holy now where i can experience god i've got a head that wants to kill me i believe that the day i separated from alcohol my alcoholism became an emotional illness all right and the resentment was on me and the shame was onme and and and you know all the voices in my head trying to manage an unmanageable life and try and try to quantify my, my existence. It was just it was just too much. So I made a decision and I inventoried these things. And I found out that I was always pissed at everything. I found OUT that I WAS ALWAYS AFRAID OF EVERYTHING. And I FOUND OUT THAT BECAUSE OF MY SENSITIVITY of being a sensitive alcoholic, I'm always ashamed and guilty and remorseful over all the ways that I fell short. I shared this, all this stuff with a sponsor. I had faith in him and I had faith in the step process and I told them everything, everything, even like Tallahassee 74. I even told them that, told them everything. And then I went home for an hour reviewing what I had done, you know, are my stones properly in place? You know, have I tried to skimp on the spiritual process? And I have to come to terms with I did the absolute best that I could at that period of time. And I came to and understanding that this thing called life is going to be too much for me to be able to manage moving forward. Just not going to being able to manage myself moving forward, I would have done it, you know, if I could have done a hell of a lot, I wouldn't have been living with mom in 33, you know what I mean? If I could manage my life, so, you know, okay, am I willing to have God remove these defects of character you know uh yes uh and i humbly ask god you know god you know take take it all dude there's you know my the good and the bad i'm you know the milkman could could manage my life better than i've been doing it you know so so here it is you know have have fun you know you got got your work cut out you know i i know i know you You made the universe in two or three days, but it's going to be a real challenge, you know, trying to figure me out. So here you go. And then I understood not only because of the step work, but I understood intuitively by this point in time that I need to set right, however I can, the records that have caused in the past. Basically, because I am not going to get past the shame. I'm not going to get past the guilt. I'm Not Going To Get Past The Remorse If I Don't Take Some Action On This, You Know, And All These Things Are Things That Are Blocking Me Off From The Sunlight Of The Spirit, A Clean Shot, You know, With The Experience Of The Divine. So I Actually Set Out And I Actually Started To Make Some Amends. I Made A Ton Of Them. old bosses, old wives, you know, old friends, just it just went on and on and on stores that I'd stolen from, you know, all kinds of things. And I went and you heard a lot of this out of me, you know, knocking on the doors. And I went in and I made amends and something something had changed by this time, you know, I'm a year and six months sober, a year and three months sober. And I have changed. I mean, the they talk about the educational variety of the awakened spirit in the appendix. Well, I had changed by this period of time, there was confidence, there wasn't calm, you know, I wasn't like, like, you're ready to explode at any second, You know, everything was kind of cool, you know, and people started to ask me to sponsor them. And I started sponsoring a ton of people. And then, you Know, and then I look at step 10, which is applying all of these spiritual principles into a reactive way of life. You know spiritual life is not a theory we have to live it, you KNOW, and in step 10 I'm really trying to start to live it. And please understand me when I, when I tell you, I did none of this pertinent. I'm not even going to say perfectly. I did non of it adequately. You know what I mean? The guardrails are so wide in Alcoholics Anonymous. The grace of God is so overwhelming that you can, you can make a lot of mistakes. You, you know, as long as you're willing and you're taking action, I believe, if, you know, there's a clear road ahead because I did so many things wrong. And, you know, the mistakes I made should have been fatal ones, but they weren't, you know, because I kept trying. So, you know, I was no perfect example of this recovery process. I don't even know if I was an adequate one, but I was really, really trying. And let's now talk about step 11. My first experience with praying and meditating was I was sober about three or four months and my life exploded. I mean, you know, like states were catching up with me for warrants and you know, I was losing jobs, all kinds of stuff in a very short period of time. And I remember going over to my sponsor's house and he asked me this question. I thought it was a very stupid question. He goes, Chris, do you pray? And I'm like, what? You know, what in the world does that have to do with fleeing to avoid prosecution, Phil? What does praying have to do with zero balance in the checking account? I don't understand how those things equate with each other. But he was pointing me toward our solution and he got me to agree to start to pray. Well, as I move through these steps and my spirit starts to awaken, prayer becomes more organic. Meditation becomes more Organic. And what I mean by that is it becomes normal. It becomes something that I'm comfortable with. And I'd say by the end of 1990, I was praying and meditating on a regular basis. When I would get up in the morning, I would have a prayer discipline and a meditation discipline. And I've kept that going. I've keep that going for a number of years. And I can tell you today that I pray and meditate more today than I did last year at the same time. And I prayed and meditated more last year around this time than I did the year before. Uh, so it's, it's become, it's becomes, you know, an organic expression of my being. I mean, it-it's just, it's part and parcel of, uh, of what I do in the, in the 11th step. Now I've always been kind of a reader. I've also been the guy who's always interested in things. And there's a line in the in the 11th step in the big book, you know, there's some great books out there, you know, ask some priest ministers or rabbis about some great books. So very early on I started to read spiritual literature and then I started to read a lot of spiritual literature and here's what I've learned from 2,000 spiritual books, that when you read a spiritual book, it can make you feel very comforted, very centered for a short period of time if what you've done is read it. If you're lucky enough or disciplined enough to take certain parts of that spiritual literature and actually put it into practice, working practice, that's when the gifts start to show up you know i i uh i know so many people out there i've sponsored a lot of guys over the years and i know some people out here who have been people out There that it's very very easy for them to learn this step stuff to study the big book and really learn and understand it at at granular level right those aren't the people that stay sober, the people that stay sober and stay in recovery are the people who take the spiritual exercises and actually do them. And here, this is this is the thing, you know, I had a meditation this morning on it, on understanding recovery. I was just meditating very deeply on it this morning. And it's not a bad thing to really know, you know, what Bill really meant, you know, in this paragraph. That's absolutely wonderful and really interesting. And there's big book studies out the zoo now. When I first got sober, there was nothing like that. Now there's a big book. You can go to a 24-hour big book meeting on Zoom and you can get fed that. And it's like reading a spiritual book. It will be comforting and it will make you feel centered for a short period of time. It's the people who actually take these steps that get the real benefit from it. And the tricky part of this is, how do you know what you don't know? You have to take the steps to understand why you should have taken the step. You have to take the step to understand what the benefit of the step is. You have two upon awakening, you know, we review the day ahead, you know, and, and all the exercises that it says for, for us to do in the book, you have to do that for a while until you understand why you should do that. For a while. You know what I mean? And, and I'm one of these, I'm one of these guys that really wants the cliff notes. I want the book. I wanna be able to speak intelligently and in an informed way on this stuff. I'm not really sure that taking the step will really be necessary. Do you understand what I'm saying? You know what I mean? And thank God I was in front of some people who didn't allow me to get away with that. I wish I had a dollar for, you know, every person I've seen that really at core, when they're looking at their amends, thinks, you Know, I don't really think that's going to be necessary. and it may it may not but consider this make the amend put alcohol back in your body you know what if it's a or b and there's no door number c you know so those are the type of people that i was put in front of and that's another aspect of the grace of god working in chris's life. You know, there's a lot of wonderful instruction in Step 11. Now, here's the funny thing. Probably two-thirds of the verbiage in Step11 are promises, you know? There's a short amount of sentences as far as the directions we're supposed to take in Step 11. When we retire at night, we constructively review our day, you know, constructively the way my head, my unrecovered alcoholic head would review a day would be like this. I can't believe or I should have done this. You know, how stupid, you Know, that's not when we retire at night, constructively review our day. You know, there's an old saying and I started hearing it in like third grade and I forget who it's attributed to, but it's so true. An unexamined life is not worth living. And so much of the recovery work is us examining and then re-examining our life, and then asking God to help us do it better next time. You know, the 12 steps really are spirituality 101. They're incredibly intuitive and incredibly practical. And this praying and this meditating, this praying and meditating is a powerful, powerful experience. I see people get caught up in a couple of other things that I have some experience getting caught up in myself. One of them is, all right, tell me more about this God. Tell me more about what God is. I need to know more about this God, and knowing more about God is the booby prize sometimes. It's what we're supposed to do is seek God. You know, God is such an enormous, if God is everything, this is an enormous concept that I don't know that the human mind is even calibrated to understand. You know what I mean? I'm not even sure we're calibrated. We're calibated to understand there are people who pretend to know everything. there is to know about God, and they'll need $200 from you every month. You know what I mean? I just know that this concept of God is so large that what I'm seeking is I'm not seeking knowledge. I'm seeing experience with this God. So I can honestly say this, I absolutely know there's a God because I've personally experienced it. And I know countless other people, many of them, you know, in these Hollywood squares tonight who have experienced the power of God. So I'm going to seek through prayer and meditation, I'm going to see through prayer meditation to broaden and deepen my experience with the divine. It's the perfect solution for alcoholism because the true nature of alcoholism is being disconnected, not in unity with, not in concert with, always on the outside looking in, feeling apart from. That's at heart what alcoholism is. It's an illness of dislocation. It' s an illness of disintegration. We're the only people in the world that will treat our loneliness with isolation. You know, that's just part of alcoholism. Alcoholism wants to cut you out of the herd. And getting in unity with, getting in connection with this experience of the divine is the perfect solution for alcoholism because at the end of the day, how you feel inside is, all is well. All is well, like it says in this. We know that when we turn to God, all will be well with us. And so there's a peace, there's an integration into where we truly are supposed to be as human beings, as the result of these steps. So you know, here I am, I'm reading just tons of books, you know comparative religion, you know I'm you know I mean all this kind of stuff and it's all wonderful stuff and what it really has done for me is it's improved my vocabulary when I'm talking about spiritual principles. What has really changed me is upon awakening, as I move through the day, when I retire at night, it's as simple as that. That's what really changes me. That'S what gets me connected to God. You know, there's some wonderful promises in our literature, and they're extraordinary, right? They're extraordinary. No matter what your present circumstances are, you'll live in a new and a wonderful life. You know, the most satisfactory years, your most satisfactory years lie ahead of you. The consciousness of the presence of god is going to be the most important thing in in your in your life and i just believe today that that's what being a recovered alcoholic is it's someone who has developed this intuitive relationship with the divine and i love that alcoholics anonymous especially the big book in the 12 and 12 there's you know catholicism is sprinkled in there which you know that's i'm not a judge but this particular book alcoholics anonymous is completely a non-sectarian you know i mean it's just talking about the basics of god the basics of spirituality, the basics of connection to this divine. And that's what's really, really important. And you can get to that. You can practice religions. You can practice all kinds of different religions. You can practise all kinds of different philosophical traditions and practices. As long as, you know, this is the basis of, uh, of practice. So this, this becomes integral to your operational methodology. You're going to, you're going be fine. And you can go all over the map with all kinds of different things. You can wear robes and hand out flowers and knock on people's door at six in the morning on Sunday, you can do all those things. And it's all cool. It's, you know, it's All well and good. the core needs to be this stuff and you can also be non-religious following these practices you're going to be spiritual you know because this is spirituality this solution uh but the guardrails are just so wide all of us can find a way all of this can find away seeking through prayer and meditation to gain a better contact with this God of our understanding. And in this book, Bill uses so many beautiful descriptions of father of light, the great reality, a power greater than ourselves. You know, I mean, you know, wonderful, wonderful terminology, which is open to all, you know it's broad it's roomy it's all-inclusive come on in and let's recover but the only thing the only that you will stub your toe on and not get any further is if you have belligerent denial if you just reject these concepts as being silly or not necessary you know you're gonna you're going to have a hard time with this recovery thing, you know? Willingness, open-mindedness, honesty. Let's go. Let'S go. Because I got to tell you, die an alcoholic death, live life along spiritual lines. You know? I mean, come on. I know it's a tough decision in the beginning, you know. Could you give me a little bit more information on that alcoholic death? You know, does that take a while? But I mean, come on, let's live life along spiritual lines, die an alcoholic death. You know what? What's our choice going to be? God is everything or God is nothing. What's her choice going To be if God is the most important thing in our lives, and many of us say that, right? Let's prove it upon awakening as I move through the day and when I retire at night. And that's about all I got. I'm 11 steps out. This has been a fun meeting to be at. Thanks a lot. Leanne from Winnipeg, come on up, please. hey ali thank you so much you are blessed and the speaker tonight is getting me hurt choking here a little bit and i loved what he said thank you so very much for the spirituality and the love here thank you Ali bye thank you Leanne thank you for being here next person Brother Rico good evening family friends welcome newcomers my name is Rico Cruz I'm a grateful recovered alcoholic we are blessed to be here today thank you ollie for bringing chris man i've seen chris before chris i i just want to thank you i have another question i want to think you were telling the truth i came to alcoholic synonymous but no god didn't want to be bothered with god and i fought it all away to uh to step two and had a choice between maybe trying something i don't want To be bothered with or going back to that dumpster i had been eating out of and you're right absolutely the big book of our college synonymous it's spelled out clear precise directions on how to access that power and tonight you gave a great demonstrations of it's not difficult it's real easy so i want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for telling the truth and if anybody has trouble with the higher power deal don't let that stop you because never stop you can get loaded so just stay with this program and it'll work for you there's a lot of people here so I'll shut up thank you Chris Ali I love you man thank you love you brother thank you man Ralph come on up buddy my name is Ralph White I'm an alcoholic Mr. Schroeder thank you sir it is always wonderful being in your presence I have a question for you make it sound easy, and we've been doing this for over 30 years. And so, okay, this God thing, I got this me and God hand in hand. Over the course of your recovery, have you ever had a crisis of faith? And if so, what'd you do and how'd you get through it? You know, there's been a number of spiritual books over the years that were written on this exact topic uh ralph i know you're you're if you're probably aware of them uh um a dark night of the soul uh what what happens is when you have a strong connection with god there are times when that connection can break and uh and you can feel like you're in the wilderness like you just you're just not connected. I can't honestly say I've had any long periods of time, but there's been periods of times where my emotional illness came back strong, the resentment, the self-centered fear, the guilt. And I think it had a lot to do with me not doing my job, not being consistent with meetings, steps, service, sponsorship, those things. Because when I got back into all that, you know, things turned around. I hope that it's great to see you too, Ralph. You rock. Thank you, Ralph Coach Michael, come on up, please. You got on mute, buddy. I just want to thank you so much for delivering a powerful, clear, precise, for me, Analyzation Of I got sort of like a comment And question at the same time You know, I've always felt Very Religious I think I froze I think I froze for a second But my comment was I've Always felt Like I was A religious person and I never really abandoned my practice but I just realized like once I put the alcohol down and got into the spirituality kind of took off to another level yeah okay of course michael i'm just going to put you on hold by the internet's bad i turned off your video hopefully that'll help you and then i'll come back to you because just hang on please colin no come on up please hello can you hear me okay colin alcoholic please go yeah thank you ali teresa and the background guys for the meeting it's wonderful to be here and and thank you chris uh for your i came into aa and um i saw them steps on the wall and i resisted every step apart from step 11 it just it just i just just i knew that i needed to have that conscious contact with god and i set aside time for meditation every day i pray from the moment i i wake up um but um i i feel that sometimes my meditation can be a bit self-centered and what i mean by that is that you know it can it can it makes me feel good even if it doesn't feel like i'm feeling good during the meditation after the meditation i feel good and i'm just wondering um chris what do in your meditation do you focus your mind on something or do you just let their thoughts come and let them go i'm just just interested and always interested to know what other alcoholics meditate on thank you there's a, there's a ton of ways to meditate. You know, I'll just share currently what, what I do. You Know, I start off with a prayer. I'm a little backwards. They, they tell you in step 11 to meditate and then pray. I usually do a prayer to kind of center me that, you know, get me in the right spot. And if it's upon awakening, then I really do. I try to concentrate on the day? You know, what is the day going to look like? What am I going to accomplish? And I don't struggle. I just try to stay quiet and try to be constructive about what's going on. You know the meditation that they describe in the book Alcoholics Anonymous is really contemplation. It's a contemplative practice. You know I got screwed up on this early on because I thought meditation was sitting in a lotus position, burning incense, and listening to Ravi Shankar or something. It's purposeful. The Alcoholics Anonymous meditation is purposeful it's meant to help gain access to intuition that will help us take the right course of action and make the right decisions in our day. And I'm not great at it. I don't have a how to meditate course online for $99.95. I'm Not saying I'm, you know, I'm a master meditator, but that's what I do, and it works very, very well for me. I hope that helps. Thank you, Chris. Howard, Howard Ebert, please come on up here. Yep, my name is Howard Eber and I am an alcoholic. Thank you, Chris, I love you. Sorry, I've been having a lot of my, I had computer problems. I'm logged on for the third time. I couldn't get on any other way, but thank you. You know, I'm, I celebrated 10 year anniversaries three times in recovery. There aren't too many blockheads who could say that. And when I came back this last time in 2006, I had all the desperation in the world, but it wasn't going to help me. I was really contemplating suicide when I became back last time because I thought recovery was just inaccessible to me. And it took my listening to Joe and Charlie and Chris Schroeder to give me the inspiration I needed. You said that tonight, and it just struck me, the difference between desperation and inspiration. A lot of people come in with the gift of desperation, but it doesn't turn into inspiration. And I think that's our responsibility, that we are supposed to be giving that newcomer that inspiration when they come in and not let them go out thinking it's about don't drink and go to meetings. Or like Charlie Palmley used to say, they come into meetings feeling bad and they come out leaving feeling worse. It's up to us who are here to give them that inspiration. and uh you said something tonight i really loved we we you pointed out that we treat our loneliness with isolation and that's so true so so true and the paragraph we were reading from the first line in that paragraph addresses that for me it says perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us because it really makes me feel connected And I don't want to take any more time, but I do have a question for you. And I could always call you later. But what the hell do you mean by saying being $200 away all the time? Well, Sam Howard, I don'T remember ever saying that. Did I actually say that? You said I was always $200 a month away from this guy or he was always $200 month away for me. I, I honestly, I've got the ADD. I'm sorry. I don't recognize that. Thank you, Howard. Calvin, my brother, come on up, please. Hello everybody. My name is Calvin. I am an alcoholic. Chris, it's good to see you. No doubt. You know, um, you know, what a good message you brought tonight. And you always, I always, when I listen to you, I always walk away better than before I got to you, man. And I was thinking about like, you know, the hand, the flimsy weed becomes the hand of God, you know? And but what I really like what you said is more so if you could answer the difference between information and transformation. You know, we come in and we think if I can just get smart enough, I can learn enough information, learn the book and just learn all the stuff it says, you And then sometimes we can let the letter crush the spirit. Because when we come in and we really start learning this thing and we start to learn how to love, but when you talk about information, transformation versus information, if you could just tell me a little bit about that. My friend Bob B from Minneapolis says something that is very profound to me. He goes, you can starve to death reading the menu and i understand that you know what i mean like like a big book workshop is only temporarily beneficial unless you put what you've learned in that workshop into action and it's it's almost universal with alcoholics we really think that we need to figure this out well recovery is working this out it's taking action so uh again you know um that's really all i can i can say and calvin it's great to see you buddy thank you calvin kimia come on up please yes thank you ali and co-hosts uh my name is kimia i'm a grateful member of big book um group and chris beautiful what a huge lead in my life to have heard you tonight because you brought forward some beautiful points about the essence of this program and the fact that god either is or isn't the seeking that also goes in understanding that entity could become very much so a part of this disease i understand and that seeking today i stopped seeking going anywhere and i embrace that in any moment that i am somewhere that if i seek to escape the present moment i will never escape the problems of the past and you are a great reminder in understanding that and an understanding that the spiritual life is definitely not a theory it has to be lived so you're marrying practice in theory today and your miracles are speaking to that my question goes where do i delineate or where do you delineat the line between spiritual awakening and spiritual elitism in this in this program and sort of how we fall back on a new drug of choice which is dispensing unsolicited advice in this very program. How do I become rid of that ego and I pocket that every day through some of the spiritual practices that I would love to hear you actualize in a regimented way? I often have newcomers asking me this, so what do I do from the moment I open my eyes? A review of that will go a long way for all of us. Thank you so much. i'll uh i'll do my best um spiritual awakening spiritual elitism i'll just i'll just talk talk on that when the when the step book was written the 12 and 12 steps 12 traditions was written there was a theme that went through the steps and the theme was a steam of humility and and i think bill as an alcoholic with however many years he had really was coming to terms with he needed to stay stay humble he needed to stay right size because because elitism or big shot ism or whatever it could be the death of you so so uh there people have a capacity to listen to their applause or whatever and and you you you can you can get a little bit grandiose and that's a dangerous place to be so maybe that's spiritual elitism and it's really to be avoided a spiritual awakening i believe is just what it says being awake you know it's not being a perfect person you know if if you know having had a spiritual wakening you're now perfect and will never make any more mistakes you know that's not that's the case but you're awake now you know truth for true from false you know, right from wrong. And, and, you know you're, you're thinking clearly and the awakened spirit is, you, you know, you can, you can feel the spirit within you through intuition and through this prayer and meditation. And you know I think that's really the difference between a spiritual awakening and, and what can what can look like somebody that's spiritually awake but you know has uh has a motive um that may not be a spiritual motive and you know alcoholics anonymous has every kind of person in the world i would never change that it's it's got every time you go to a meeting and you know you're gonna you're going to see every type of person there is uh i think uh i think we just, we personally have to, there's a coin that we get. I know you get poker chips and we get coins in the Northeast. And on one side of the coin, it says, to thine own self be true. And I think that's a very, very good saying, to thy own self be true? Thank you, Kimia. Coach Michael, I see your face again. We'll try one more time. Yeah, I apologize. It's so unstable here. It almost discourages me to share because it always goes out when I share that. I'm sorry, my brother. It's in and out of recording. Sorry, brother. Maybe another time. Appreciate you though. Tamara Bradford, come on up, please. Hello, everyone. I'm Tamara and I'm an alcoholic. And I just wanted to say that that was a great speech. It really touched me in so many ways because I really needed to hear it. And my question was to Chris. So when you were like six months, was that a time when prayer and meditation was really important? and if you were to slack off like where would you see yourself in your day or months from now you know if you didn't continue you know to do that process so um yeah that's my question all right so so i'll take that as two questions around six months when i i started to pray my sponsor gave me an exercise, and it was a beautiful exercise. He said, Chris, I want you to hit your knees every morning, and I want You to pray every morning. Ask God for the strength and direction to stay sober. And he goes, listen, I know you. There are going to be days you don't do that. There can be days You do it, and You remember to do it. And there's gonna be days you don't do it. Pay attention to what happens the days you don'T do it, and oh man, it didn't take me long, didn't take me too long to learn. It might have been coincidence, it might not have been, but the days were always worse, the days that I didn't pray. All right, so fast forward today. You know, I believe the spiritual life is a life of discipline. The spiritual life that we're asked to live in Alcoholics Anonymous has a lot of step work, and a lot of practices and a Lot of spiritual exercises. I believe, I believe it's a life of discipline. We're very undisciplined people. But for one reason or another, I've been doing this long enough that it has become a discipline to me. So I can't tell you that, you know, three months ago, I didn't pray and meditate for a week. I don't miss a day. And it's just because of this habitual discipline that I've gotten myself into. And it is not out of virtue, you know? It goes all the way back to exercise. My sponsor asked me about pay attention when you don't do it. You know what I mean? it's, I don't do this step work out of virtue. I do it because I'm an alcoholic and, uh, and it's a, it's about, it's survival and sanity. Thank you for your question. Sherry, come on up, please. Hey everybody, Sherry here, alcoholic Chris. Thank you so much. i appreciate you so much hey so you mentioned holy now and i know of course in miracles the verbiage there is holy instant and uh eckhart tolle of course does like the power of now you also talked about experience experiencing things so i wonder could you share an experience where you are not in the present moment and you're in your head whether past or future how do you actually bring yourself back to the holy now what what do you tell yourself is it a certain prayer um what's the experience like for you to get back to the present moment you know that's that's going to be a struggle for me it always is going to be a struggle for me because I've got a mind, I've got a stream of consciousness. And the exercises that I've got, I'm gonna, I gotta sponsor his name is Brad. He's, you know, he's down the road from me spiritually, you know, many miles. So, so I've put myself under his care and direction for spiritual exercises. And he has me doing a specific exercise for just this. Two exercises, actually. One of them he has is, Chris, you've got a stream of consciousness. Picture a stream. Thoughts are going to come into your head that are going to be attached to negative emotions. When they crop up, thank them for sharing and push them downstream. And then look up. I'm like, look up? He goes, yeah, look up. Look up into the sky and understand that at this moment you're in God's cathedral. You know, and that's one of the spiritual practices I'm using right now to try to stay in the holy now. And you're right. I pulled the holy instant out of the Course in Miracles because, like I said before, all this spiritual literature has enabled me to be better with the verbiage. I wasn't ever able to put anything in the Course of Miracles into my life. It was much too demanding. Thank you, Sherry, for your question. My friend Roger G. from Cali, come on up, please. Thanks, Ali. Chris, thank you very much. I'm Roger, an alcoholic. Chris, of all the thousands of books that you've read, are there any that you continually find yourself going back to? I rarely reread anything. But there's a couple of authors I really like. Cornfield, I like a lot. I like Marcus Borg. There's, there's a number of them, but you know, I don't want to get too into it because here's the thing. I believe that we are guided. So go to Barnes and Noble and intuitively grab a book, find what, find what works for you, find what's comforting for you. You know, the books that I read may not speak to your soul as much as the books that you on your own go and find you know what i mean so like when my sponsors come up and ask i'll give them a book here or there but i want them to really i want him to find their own their own spiritual path because then they can own it then it's you know then it is theirs it's not like somebody told them to do it you know i mean we we like things that we own thank you roger cheryl come on up please hi i'm cheryle i'm from new hampshire i just wanted to say thank you and i um i mean normally a night shift person so i don't normally get to to join but uh i'm home tonight so uh but i did really enjoy how you said that you think that the the highway has um um very wide uh guide rods or guide rails that you've made many mistakes that you could have been fatal but you're learning from your experiences and it's all through the grace and the mercy of something bigger than you i i personally am very similar to a lot of people in the program when i come in i hated the god word didn't want anything to do with it and if somebody said i had developed a spirituality i would have just been walking out the door um but i do really believe it's me being open and willing and trying i share a quick experience uh the first time i everybody's like go ahead and talk to the air or believe because I believe. And the first time I actually was walking my dog and, and I guess I was praying or saying something, somebody that was part of the program that a meeting that I had been down had walked, I had driven by when I was walking my dog. And waved at me. And so that I screamed out, is this some damn like sign? Well, from that point every time i pray and even if i say that you know i'm i'm angry that i need to have this relationship i have a peace of mind and i it's become a routine and and it's something that i need to do every day and how i practice it is but just stopping stopping and stopping my head and practicing that pause and uh sometimes just taking a breath before i actually have any type of reaction. And I just ask for guidance and direction, whether I'll follow it or not. I hope that I will, but I asked for guidance in direction and for the willingness to keep trying. So thank you very much. Thank you, Cheryl. We got Linda S from Los Angeles. Come on up please. Hi, I'm Linda. I'm an alcoholic. Great to be here. Allie, we love you. Thank for all you do for us. 146 people tonight connected because of your service, thank you. Just I'm in a really windy area and I find for anyone this might help if you cut out if you just leave zoom on and shut all the your other browsers close everything out you might get better reception. Chris thank you so much. My question to you is this. So I love the instructions for the 11th step on awakening. You talked about that, and what I'd like to hear you talk about is you start your day. It's probably going pretty good, like many of us, and then you get trapped, hijacked by your mind in the middle of the day. something happens or someone, some, something happens and you get upset. How do you tether back to what you know is real? Talk about what I'd like to hear what you do. Um, you know, the, I'm, I'M not like a perfect person with relationships and with people. And there are times when I act, well, let me just put it this way. Every once in a while when I'm acting a certain way, my wife will call me Mr. Spiritual. Okay, Mr. spiritual, you know? And I don't think perfection is what we're going for here. I think it's progress. And I think it's the continuing application of the spiritual principles. So, you know, I get off track. Something will happen and my emotions will rise up. But what used to be resentment, what used to be, I'm going to get that son of a bitch. You know, what you what used to translate into really, really bad behavior on my part has gotten way better. You know, so I'll say a cross thing or my voice will raise or whatever. But really, really quickly, I'll understand that I'm taking something personally that I shouldn't be taking personally. you know you know what I mean I'm way easier to get along with uh today so um so the the best way for me to describe it is I went from being a hundred percent maniac to you know I'm I'm in the 20s now you know as far as maniac and and I can bring it down to like 10 sometimes you know and things are good. But, you know, I want to share this. This is a current experience. You know, it was talking to somebody who's going through some stuff with their wife. And I've had this discussion with many, many people over the years. And what it is, is as alcoholics, I will say as recovered alcoholics were difficult to live with. Okay. I married somebody who never had a crossword to their husband never yelled never got upset she marries me i'm 20 years sober working the steps like a maniac and and and she and i and because of chronic uh uh chronic proximity to me she needed to to work an al-anon program okay so so i mean there's just something about the alcohol we're wonderful don't get me wrong we're wonderful people but we're difficult to to be with and i think it it comes down to that default setting that that that foundation of selfishness and self-centeredness we need to continually work on all this step work so that we can be compassionate and understanding and considerate it doesn't come natural to us so i i went off on a tangent there but i hope that helped Philly Kawada please hi good evening my name is Philly I'm an alcoholic grateful to be sober by the grace of God thank you thank you very much Ali for the wonderful service and everybody else that has a service commitment here at this meeting and I want to thank Chris I want to thank you very much for a beautiful share uh no question at this time um i i just wanna wanna thank you i you i have listened to some of the audios that i found either on youtube or other um other sites and when i was like three or four months into the program i i you know i thought i had it going on and then i listened to one of your uh wonderful shares about uh step one and i was like wow amazing so that was so so cool you know uh i was like very confused about step oneand you share uh you share it and you explain it So an alcoholic like me could understand it, you know. And so I always go back and listen to it again and other tapes that you have available too. Also working with others too, you now, that has really inspired me in my recovery to be available to carry this message. And of course, when I go back and listen what you just shared about Step 11 and so yes forever grateful uh with you chris thank you very much may god bless you always thank you philly and uh last but not least elizabeth b from louisville come on up my friend please and thank you hi thank you ollie thank you chriss um i'm elizabethth alcoholic like and oh my gosh I'm so glad I finally got to hear you I've seen your name like for you know a long time and what a powerful message thank you so much I am so appreciative of you pointing out the difference between you know going to meetings or reading a book and it's temporary versus actually doing the work and anything that you know points out that important combination of inventory and the spiritual aspect of the program you know like you can't have one you have to have both and um i was going to ask you actually i am part of a home group now that hosts as emmett fox sermon on the mount study and i'm getting so much out of it and i never would want to read this book alone i wouldn't read it read it alone i wondered if you consider if you would consider ever doing a study like that with any of the books that you read because of how much it's added to my recovery to do this. And if there, you know, if you would ever do that or anybody else here would ever be able to do it, I would love to know more about that. You know, I haven't, I've been personally done in anything like that. I don't have a, have any, any plans. I'm, I'm kind of like locked into the conference literature of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. People have even asked me to, to, to do uh you know as bill sees it or whatever and i i think i'm just i'm good with i'm good with my lane uh meeting wise now personally you know personally like in groups outside of alcoholics anonymous studies like that i think are i think they're all good hey i'm telling you anything that we can do uh to to spend time and put effort into the spiritual life, we get a benefit. And Emmett Fox is funny about him and Emmett Fox. You know, when, when Bill was writing the big book, Ruth Hawk, his secretary used to love to go see, you know, different people at Madison square garden, give spiritual talks. And, you Know, one of them, one OFM was Emmett fox, you know? So, so when you read Emmett box, you feel like you're in the neighborhood of recovery stuff And you are, you know, so many people have gotten an incredible amount of wonderful things from the Sermon on the Mount and 365 Days or whatever with Emmett Fox. Love that stuff as well as the Alcoholics Anonymous literature. Never instead of, you Know, as well As. You know, but it's all good. And, you know, we're all just we're all just walking each other home here. You know, we're we're all just like trying to trying to back up each other, have each other's back spiritually. And the more time we spend together and the more effort we put into it, I think, you know what I think? That's why we're here. You know what? I think it's why we're where we have we have the consciousness of self-awareness you know to learn these type of uh effects anyway that's all i got