Step 12 — Carrying the Message – Joe C. – 1998 – Session 35

Okay, we're going to talk now just a little bit about Step 12, and then we'll be done. We don't want to go through this next chapter. We don't have the time, but I do want to look at two or three things in it very briefly. Let's go to page 92. Now, this is telling us how to work with other people, how to do our 12-step call, how to sponsor and et cetera. The first paragraph says, tell him how baffled you were, how you finally learned that you were sick. Give him an account of the struggles you made to stop. Show him the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree. We suggest you do this as we've done it in the chapter on alcoholism. If he was alcoholic, he will understand you at once. See, this is what Silkworth told Bill to do. He will match your mental inconsistency with some of his own. If you're satisfied that he's a real alcoholic, begin to dwell on the hopeless feature of the malady. Show him from your own experience. It's how the queer mental conditions surrounding that first drink prevents normal functioning of the willpower. In other words, we share our story, and we show him our allergy, our obsession with the mind, our hopeless condition of the mind and body, and if he's a real alcoholic, he'll match it immediately. We get his attention that way. We tell him exactly what's wrong with him. Page 93. Let him ask you that question. If he will, tell him exactly what happened to you. Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic. He does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can use any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a power greater than himself, and that he live by spiritual principles in sharing our story and telling him what happened. Then we get the idea of the need for the spiritual experience across to him. After we got his attention, by talking about the problem. Page 94. Outline the program of action, explaining how you made a self-appraisal, how you straightened out your past, and why you are now endeavoring to be helpful to him. Talk to him about the program of action. Take him by the hand and walk with him through the program of action. You see, it's suggesting here that we do the same thing to verse 100. It's suggesting here we do the same thing the big book does. You see, the big book was the twelfth step in print. They could not go call on that person individually. So the book had to tell him the problem, tell him the solution, show him the program of action. Now, it's just as valid today, working with other alcoholics, as it was in 1939. We need to have no question about how to twelfth step. We need to have no question about how to sponsor. This chapter tells us exactly how to do it. And I said to my sponsor one time, I said, well, I'm afraid to work with another person. I'm afraid I'll hurt them. And he said, Charlie, you can't hurt them. He said, they're going to die from alcoholism anyhow. He said, there's no way you can hurt them and you might help yourself. So if you're not working with others yet, for God's sake, start. The twelfth step has three pieces in it, very briefly. The first part is the greatest promise in the book. Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps. I think that promises to me that if I apply the first eleven steps in my life to the best of my ability, I will have a spiritual awakening. Now, what is a spiritual awakening? A personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism. Bill tells us in the twelve and twelve there's many kind of spiritual awakenings, there are people in AA. But they've all got certain things in common. That is that we're able to feel, believe and do things we could never do before on our own strength unattended. I feel things I've never felt before. I feel love, patience, tolerance, compassion, and good will toward my fellow man. Before AA, I couldn't have cared less about you. Oh yeah, you can have some but as a union member, you're not going to have any other kind of take heartfelt ways. I always got mine first. I don't feel that way anymore. I believe things I've never believed before. I believe God is a kind and a loving God. I believe He stands ready to help any human being anywhere in the world the instant they're ready to give up on self-will and turn to Him. When I came here, I thought He was hell-firing brimstone. I thought He was a God of justice. Thank God He's not a God of justice. If He was, I wouldn't be here today, would I? But some of you guys wouldn't be here either if He was. Surely, surely, He's pure mercy, pure love. Believe that with all my heart. I can do things I never could do before. By God, I can stay sober. I never could do that before. And because of the fact I'm sober, I'm allowed to do many, many, many, many things that I never dreamed that I could ever do. Like being here, going to Iceland, riding under the channel, going to Paris, France. Things that I never could do before. So surely I've had some kind of spiritual awakening. Now, I'm charged, though, with a responsibility. There really are no free rides. You do have to pay for what you receive. I'm now charged with the responsibility of carrying this message to other alcoholics. Not a message, not the message, not some message, this message. What is this message? Having had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps. I'm not like I used to be. Now, if you're in AA today and you're all screwed up and you don't feel good, if you've been doing a little drinking or even thinking about doing a little drinking, I know exactly where you're coming from. That's where I came from, too. But I applied these first 11 steps and I had a spiritual awakening. I'm not that way anymore. And if you don't want to be that way anymore, then you apply the first 11 steps and you won't be that way anymore either because you'll have a spiritual awakening. It's the only message that AA's got. Some of us start fancying ourselves as healers, marital advisors, spiritual advisors, economic advisors. God, I don't know of anybody that screwed those things up worse than we have. No. We just know one thing. And let me tell you something. The one thing we know, we know it better than anybody. We know it better than anybody. We know it better than anybody. We know it better than anybody alive. You and I know more about alcoholism than anybody alive. We're the only people that's ever experienced it. We know more about recovery from alcoholism than anybody alive. We're the only people that's ever done it. I think we're the luckiest people in the world. I think surely, surely, surely, God got tired of seeing people like us die back in the 1930s. I think he decided to do something about it. And he's always worked with people through people. I believe he picked Bill and Bob, the first 100. I think he picked Ebi Thatcher and Dr. Jung and Dr. Silkworth and the Oxford groupers and that whole bunch and put it together so we could have it today. Now, if that's true and he picked people then, then we've got to realize that all those people are dead and gone. They're no longer here. If he picked them then, then surely he's still picking them today. There's not an alcoholic in this room that ought to be here. Every one of us ought to be dead. Some of us two or three times. And we said, my, wasn't we lucky last night? I don't think luck had anything to do with it. I think God picked you out, let you suffer your alcoholism so you would learn what he wants you to know. And then when he got ready to use you, he removed the obsession to drink. And that's the only reason we're here today, to be able to help other alcoholics. They tell me that 97 out of 100 of us are going to die never even knowing we're alcoholic. If that's true, 3% of us are stumbling in the doors of AA. Less than half of us are recovering. We're talking about 1 out of 100. I used to say, God, why am I an alcoholic? Today I say, God, why am I not one of those dying from alcoholism? He's got a job for me. He's got a job for you. And it's only... It's only when you fit into God's plan for you that you really become happy. I think every human being on earth today, God's got a certain purpose for them. And I think ours is to carry this message of recovery to other alcoholics. We have the ability to avert death in countless thousands and thousands of people. Very few people have that opportunity. Carrying this message is very simple. Just do it like the book says to do it. And it always works. It works for those that want it. If they don't want it, we can't do a thing about that. The final thing I have to do is practice these principles in all my affairs. Now, what are the principles? Oh, we hear arguments about this all the time. The principle of one is this, and the principle of the one, two is that, and the... No, no, I think he's referring to the steps. He said, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, he already used steps, once in step 12, so he's not going to use it twice. So this time, he'll call them principles. Another place, he calls them proposals. In the front of the 12 and 12, he says the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are a set of principles. He's referring to the steps. Now, it's easy for me to practice the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, NAA. I love you. I hope you love me. And we're going to do our best not to hurt each other. But I'm only NAA at the most an average of an hour a day. What do I do the other 23 hours? Can I practice these principles, these steps in my home with my spouse? Can I realize just how powerless I really am with that lady? Can I realize the insanity of trying to control her, knowing full well I can't? Can I make a decision and turn her will and her life forward to the care of God as I understand it? Can I inventory me and find those defects of character that keep me trying to control? Can I talk about that to another human being? Can I become willing to have God remove and ask him to do so and take those away? Can I make amends to her quickly when I've harmed her? Now, there's times I'm ashamed of me. There's times I treat absolute strangers on the street with more courtesy than I treat my own wife and my own home. Just think, if I could practice these principles there, with her and she with me, well, we might pick up 10, 12 hours a day where we could be peaceful, happy, and free in our home. If we don't practice them, we don't stand a chance where each other's throat continually. Can I practice them with my children? If I can do this with my children, what little time I have left with them is good times. If I don't, I try to control, they resist, we have no good times at all. I might pick up another hour, two or three a day there. Can I do it on the job with my co-workers? You know, if I could do it on the job with my co-workers, well, I might be peaceful, happy, and free there for eight or nine or ten hours a day. Aren't we really saying that we have a set of tools? That if we practice them in all our affairs, we can be peaceful, happy, free, and serene 24 hours a day, 365 days a year if we wish to. My sponsor used to say, Charlie, you can be just as happy as you want to be. And I'd say, you old fart, you have no idea what you're talking about. Today I hear myself saying, you can be just as happy as you want to be. You got the tools to do it with. Now make no mistake, God is not going to do this for you. Other people are not going to do this for you. But you, with God's help and the help of other people, can do it for you. You can do it for yourself. I think we're the luckiest people in the world. I really do. Joe? Where does all this stuff come from? It comes from the best of medicine, psychology, and religion. And there's a story in that other book about this fellow. He was walking around practicing these principles and carrying this message. And one night he told the people there, he said, the things that I do, you can do also and even greater. Well, a couple of guys heard this and they went back to the little village. They had a sick friend there. They brought him to the meeting the next night. Now I like to think they were alcoholics. Because they went up on the roof and they chopped a hole in the roof. And they let the guy down in there. And he looked at that guy and he looked up at them and he said, well, it's by your faith that this man was healed. See, it was by the faith of the people and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous when I arrived that I was able to hang around until I could come to believe so that I could come to take some decisions so that I too could come to have faith. The fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is extremely important to me. It was by their faith for me. Later on, he was in a little town called Cernan. And after the meeting that night and he was leading the meeting or speaking at the meeting and after the meeting that night they were standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking wine, I guess, or coffee or whatever they were doing. And they were talking. And they told him a fellow they had locked in a cave on the side of the hill. Now this might have been the first treatment center. I don't know. And he said, I want to go up and talk to this guy. I said, no, you don't want to talk to this guy. This guy is full of resentments and he's full of fear. He's harmed a lot of people. We've got him chained to the wall up there. So he won't harm himself or other people. You don't want to go up and talk to him. He said, yeah, I do. I said, what's his name? He said, his name is Legions for he is many. Many defects of character, you see. So he went up there and talked to this guy for a little while and turned him loose. Cut loose of his resentment. Cut loose of his fear. Cut loose of his guilt, shame, remorse and set him free. Now he wrote a little step for us right here. Because the other people that he'd helped, those other 12 guys he'd helped, he took them with him. And Legion wanted to go with him. He said, can I go with you and do what you do? And he said, no, Legions. He said, I want you to stay here and tell people what happened to you. I think they call that pass it on is what Bill Wilson said. Is Barbara in the room? Barbara, are you here? Where are you, hon? Yeah, stand up. I want you all to meet Barbara in case you haven't got to meet her. You can tell by looking at her why I'm in love with her. She's redheaded. Okay, let's go to page 164. It said, our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who's still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order. But obviously, you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with him is right. That's the only relationship this book has. That's the only relationship this book talks about, by the way. See to it that your relationship with him is right. And great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is a great fact for us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. We did that in steps 1, 2, and 3. Admit your faults to him and to your fellows. We did that in 4, 5, 6, and 7. Clear away the wreckage of your past. We did that in 8 and 9. And give freely what you find and join us. We'll do that in 10, 11, and 12. And we shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit. And you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until the end. We love you all. Thanks for letting us be here. Thank you.