Step 2 – Matt – New England Big Book Workshop Weekend – 2020

Good morning, everyone. We're going to get started on our AM session. I want to, again, thank you. Thanks to Eduardo for an amazing guided meditation this morning. So welcome back, everyone. Welcome to the New England Big Book Workshop. My name is Maureen and I'm an alcoholic. So just a few administrative and housekeeping things for us to remember. Please keep your microphone on mute throughout the session. And please just turn off your video if you're going to be out, you know, walking around the house. To maintain anonymity, please change your display name and remove your last name. And you can do that through the participants box and then just hit rename. That'd be great. Private chat is turned off for the session. If you are having any Zoom related issues, you can chat and that'll come to you. And you and I can, we can help you through that. Or I'll do my best. Please do not record the session in any way. If you are seen using a recorder, you'll be removed from the session. Okay. And then lastly, there are two broadcast messages that we're going to pop up on the screen. One when there's five minutes left to the session. And then again, when there's two minutes left. So that's it for me, for administration. And then lastly, there are two broadcast messages that we're going to pop up on the screen. So that's it for me. Okay. Thank you. Thank you guys. If you have any questions, again, you can just chat to me. And I'm going to hand it over to Kelly to open us up. Good morning, everybody. My name's Kelly and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome back. And Welcome to those who are joining us for the first time. In addition to the STEP speakers today, we will have breakout sessions on Traditions 1, 5, 12, and a special session on Living the AA Triangle. So, please join me in sending out those breakout greetings. the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and the 12 concepts. We will also have two keynote speakers spread throughout the day. The schedule for the conference is being posted in the chat for your easy reference. We welcome donations for your experience this weekend, which will be dedicated to the Wilson House in East Dorset, Vermont. The Wilson House, like many nonprofits, has struggled during the pandemic, and we hope you will join us in providing some financial support. The link to the Wilson House donation page will also be posted in the chat. Lastly, we've had questions about the audio recordings, and I wanted to give you some information about that. The audio recordings for this event will be available in the chat box. The audio recordings will be available on Sunday night. They are being uploaded to archives.org, which is a site that provides free public access to audio recordings. We've used it before for our in-person retreats. Instructions for accessing the recordings for this retreat will also be placed in the chat. The information and links for the audio recording will be available in the chat box. Thank you. The audio recordings will also be available on our Facebook group, which is titled New England Big Book Workshop. So keep your eye in the chat box for helpful information. Delighted to introduce our speakers. Welcome back, Matt and Donna. We will begin with our step speakers, and we'll begin with Matt. Excuse me. Good morning, everyone. My name is Matt. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Thanks again to the committee. Thank you for asking us. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you, Donna. Thank you, everyone who's here. Thank you, Sarah. So step two. It's all fun and games until you've got to start first thing in the morning, and then it's like, ooh. Right? So step two. Right? When we get the... So step one is 52 pages of this book. Right? And then the only other two steps that get an entire chapter are 2 and 12. All of the other steps, three to 11, are jammed into these two entities. So why is it that this gets its own chapter? Right? It's, you know, it's the first time in the book that they really describe in, like, very simple and indistinguishable terms, like, what might be wrong with me. Right? The book asks if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. And now that just describes the physical part of my disease and the mental part of my disease. Right? It talks about, you know, like, is this my truth? Right? Because when I start drinking, do I have this allergic reaction? Do I have this phenomenon of craving that occurs that allows, that makes it virtually impossible for me to stop drinking once I've begun? And when I find myself without a drink in my hand, do I make the insane decision at some point or another, to pick it up again? Right? Even though I've told myself that that's not going to happen. And if that's my truth, right, then I may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience can conquer. Right? But, and they tell me later in the book, right, that when we seize this spiritual solution, that I straighten out mentally and physically. But do I recognize the spiritual nature of my disease? Have I tapped into the idea that I don't have any power in this situation? Have I recognized that me run on my own will, you know, reads like this? That I was having trouble in personal relationships. Right? And I was told to read my book in first person to find my truth. Right? Was I having trouble in personal relationships? Could I control my emotional nature? Was I prey to misery and depression? Could I make a living? Did I have a feeling of uselessness? Was I full of fear? Was I afraid? Was I unhappy? Could I be of real use to other people? Right? And if those things are my truth, and if that is the experience that I'm living when I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, then God has to be the answer. Right? Then the spiritual kit of tools that you guys are laying on my feet has to be what I'm driven to pick up. Right? And so when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous, right, I found, I'm a sponsor. Right? I understood my very, very first sponsor. Right? Because you guys might have heard a little bit of my story if you were here last night. Right? Alone in a house with nine women, scrambling through life, trying to latch on to alpha males or what idea of, you know, my idea of what a man is. Sorry, somebody's making some noise. Okay. So what my idea of what a man is. Right? Sent me all sorts of places. Right? It sent me into the church. Right? I chased a girl into the church. She left and I stayed. It sent me into the street. Right? I was, I, I, I was, you know, I was living this double life. It sent me hard into the books. It sent me up into the mountains. Right? I thought, you know, whatever it was, whatever, whatever appealed to me for some sort of guidance from something that knew more than me, someone that knew more than me or so. Right? And I'm searching for a solution to what I'm feeling inside in something human. And my quest was for something that, that, you know, that what, what might be some model of, of, of a man of what it means to be a man in the world of, of my, my, my sense or lack of sense of what masculinity meant. And so, so when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I walk in into a meeting and they told me in treatment that I needed to find a sponsor. And this was my first time in treatment. I've gone three times. It's just, just the detail. And so, so I, I walked in and I see this guy and he looks like, he looks like Ra's al Ghul from Batman. If anybody knows what Ra's al Ghul looks like, right. He's covered in tattoos. He's got the, he's got the, the slick back hair with, you know, he talks real tough. He's got the handlebar mustache. Like he's like, he looks like a man's man. You know, he rode a motorcycle. You know, he, we went to, we went on an outgoing one time and like, he knew all of the routes from, from a whole other town into the Bronx without hitting a stoplight because he spent so many years driving without a driver's license when he was drinking. And I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. Like he didn't stop moving. He didn't stop driving for like 15 miles. He just knew every back road. Right. And so these are my two. And so, so I said to, so, and I was all psyched up to like, all right, I'm going to ask Joe to sponsor me and God bless Joe. We're friends now. He's an amazing man. But at the time Joe said to me, he said, you know, I'm not really into these steps thing. And I didn't know much, but I knew that there was something that the steps had to do with this whole process. Right. And, and so, and so I went on to another sponsor. Right. And so when I find this new sponsor, he's the exact opposite side of the spectrum. Right. He's gay. He's a hotel concierge. He's a stage actor. Right. And so I go from the Harley Davidson riding motorcycle guy to this, this beautiful and loving man who absolutely saved my life. Because I start to learn and I understand in retrospect that my ideas mean nothing. Right. God's God's got way bigger plans for me. And so when we got to step two, we'd come to my step one truth. The first time I went through, I caught, I tried to go through the steps a few times before I finally made it to 12. And so now I've, I've gone to church. Right. I grew up in Catholic. I grew up in the Catholic church. You know, I was very active in the church. I did all of my sacraments. I was in the youth group, all of these things. And so, and then I mentioned earlier that at 18 years old, I had a girlfriend who was into a non-denominational Christian church and I chased her into the church. She left. I stayed, answered altar calls, became a very active member of this church. So when I sat down with George and he said, all right, so we're going to go over step two. My response to him was, I understand that when you say higher power, you mean God, this is not a mystery to me. Let's just keep going. Right. And what happened was, is that I missed so much in that, right? Because when I get to step two, it is not about what I know. It's about laying aside prejudice. It's about like beginning to let go of this illusion of control in the situation of my life. Right. Because the truth of the matter is right. If my life is what I read on page 52, if my life is the bedevilment, then I have to recognize that any attempt at running life on my will is going to, is going to result in that situation. That I can't navigate relationships, drink or no drink. That I can't navigate my emotional nature, drink or no drink. You know, that, that I, yeah, I can keep a job. You know, it says we couldn't make a living. Right. But I can keep a job, but I can't make it a career. I can't be fulfilled there. I can't show up there the way I'm supposed to running on my own will. Right. It says earlier in, in, in we agnostics, right. That our, our human resource, our human resources as marshaled by the will were not sufficient. They failed utterly. Right. I have to, in, in the exploration of this powerlessness and unmanageability recognize that my best decision-making on my best day found me in a church basement begging you guys to please help me put my life back together. Right. So, so how do I, from that hopeless diagnosis that I received, come to believe, right. Come to believe, arrive at the conclusion that there is something out there that is bigger than me that can bring me back into my right mind. Well, I have to kind of Quentin Tarantino it from the back of the step to the beginning. Right. Because it, it, it, it requires that I recognize my own insanity. Right. And so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, he was phenomenal. You know, he, he saw right through me. He, he took me under his wing. He was very much a mentor. And, and he would say things in class that always stuck. to me. He was an amazing man. And he said, when we were in class and people would answer questions and they would use the term insane, he always got very annoyed by that. And he would say, I need to remind you guys that insanity is not a medical term, right? Insanity is a legal term that means lacking the ability to differentiate right from wrong or true from false. And when I apply that here, taking out the idea that it's just a legal term, when I apply that here, that is absolutely my truth, right? Is that I am this fearful child dressed like a man, acting like a man, showing up with man's responsibilities with no idea how to do that. And I'm drinking myself into oblivion, right? I'm drinking myself into oblivion. I'm drinking myself into oblivion. I'm drinking myself into oblivion. I'm drinking myself into oblivion. I'm drinking myself to a space where I can't handle these things. I can't show up in the world as an adult. I can't tell what's right and wrong. I can't tell left from right. I can't tell up from down. And I sure as heck don't know what's true and what's not. And so, and so, excuse me, I lost my train of thought. So this brings me to this place of like, now I understand why I'm insane. The insanity is not, that when I start drinking, I can't stop. The insanity comes in the decisions that I make when I'm not drinking. Because the type of alcoholic that I am, when you take the drink away from me, my life gets worse, right? My life gets worse. Because I have these things going on inside of me that I've been masking with the drink, that I've been drowning in the drink, and now they come to the surface. And so at this point in the book, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, it's actually, you know, it's actually, you know, if I'm really давай, it's just veiled. You know, so that's a side note that if you're Velocity and you're asking me to lay aside any prejudices that might prevent me from being willing to say something really simple, right? You guys might be on to something. You guys might be on to something, right? It's not asking me to believe in God. It's not asking me to understand God. It's not asking me to define God. one experience make me willing to explore the idea that maybe just maybe this god thing that you're talking about might work and i start that and this is where we continue to tarantino right i start that by recognizing that i'm not god right i am not god and i don't recognize and i'll find out later if i'll find out later that like i'm playing god in all of in all of these areas of my life but i but but when i say in the step two part of my experience that i'm not god is that i can't decide right i just can't decide i don't have the decision making capabilities for a successful adult life right because no matter what i do i find my success in my life in whatever way i can use what i have to do to get that success in my life I find myself with drink in hand. No matter what I do, I find myself ruining relationships. No matter what I do, I find myself validating my existence by external circumstances, right? It's the girlfriend or it's my children or it's the job title or it's how much money I'm making or if I got that new place, right? And I'm scrambling, trying to come to believe that something other than a higher power is going to restore me to sanity. If I only got this or if I only got that or if I only made this or if I only achieved this, then I'll get my drinking under control. You know, and the book talks about, like, if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago, right? So in my quest to figure out what this power is, I read all sorts of books, right? I become a theologian overnight. I become this self-help guru stuck in that, sitting in the aisles of Barnes & Noble, right, trying to read these things. And my favorite one from my own personal experience was CrossFit. CrossFit. CrossFit. CrossFit, right? So I joined a gym and I went home. And, you know, and, like, I'm a joiner, right? Like, you catch me, I'm a joiner. Like, oh, this seems really cool. I'm in. I'm going to buy all your T-shirts. I'm going to do all of the things. And so I come home one day and I've got a headband on. I never wore a headband in my life. I'm wearing these funky, like, lime green sneakers. I've got all my paleo cookbooks. I've got all of these things, right? I'm going to eat just nuts and meat and leaves for the rest of my life, right? And I'm going to lift enough weights and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm reading all of the philosophy. I guess, or the teachings of the CrossFit community. And I'm understanding, like, how I have to sleep, how I have to eat, how I have to this, how I have to that. And I get to this paleo diet. For anybody who doesn't know what the paleo diet is, it's basically you eat like a caveman, right? And so I come home one day and my son's mother's home and I'm sitting there and she sees me going through all of these books and I spring up from my chair and I'm super excited. She says, what's going on? I said, you're going to love this one. Paleo diet. There's no alcohol. So I'm not drinking anymore. And she paused for a quarter of a second and she said, like, do you think that's going to work? You think that's going to work? Right? Because, like, I thought, I really thought, like, I could grill enough steaks and lift enough barbells that I could, I would be willing to apply. The discipline that I applied in my, in the physical fitness and in my diet to my alcoholism and I can't. Right? Hopelessness drives me into God's arms. Hopelessness drives me into God's arms. Because what I'll find out later and what they allude to here is that God is in here the entire time. God has been inside me the entire time. And some part of me. And some part of me has been looking for that all along. All along. I was looking for God in her eyes. I was looking for God in the street. I was looking for God in the church. I was looking for God in the bottle. I was looking for God down dark alleyways. And what happened was, is that. And this is to say nothing. About the church. I absolutely love religious people in the book begs me to see where they're right. Whatever flavor of religion you follow. But for me, in my experience, two hours on a Sunday with beautiful music and a lovely sermon was just not enough for me to affect the relationship with God that I needed to recover from alcoholism. It didn't deal with the inner workings of my. Powerlessness. It didn't shine a light on how unmanageable my spirit was. And until I can arrive there. There is no chance that I'm going to come to believe. And it becomes, it becomes this gradual process. It becomes this, this, you know, and, and, and, and the ninth step promises say sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but it becomes this, this move. Toward. Yeah. I can't do this. I can't do this. You can't do this. No matter what I do. No matter how hard I try. No matter how much will I apply. I fail. And so I come to this room and there's all these people who are happy and smiling. And they, they, they've got, you know, they're, they're put together. And they're telling me. That I have to. To arrive at this place where I recognize that I can't do it. And maybe just maybe God can. And that's all that's required. We're being willing to explore that idea. Right. My cat, my, my, my upbringings in the Catholic church, my ventures into a non-denominational Christian church. Right. Me poking in and out of yoga classes, all of these self-help books. Sure. I can revisit that later. And see. The things that I can see then, but to come to this place, I have to set aside all of the things that I thought I knew about God, because what this book is trying to give me is an experience with this power. That's all it's about. This book is not about stopping drinking. This book is about finding God. And it starts right here. It starts right here. When I stand in front of the experience itself and say, okay. This might work. This God, we have the same problem. Right. I'm not better than you. I'm not worse than you. Right. I'm not, I'm not incurable. I'm not terminally unique. Right. I'm just like you. I'm just a garden variety drunk. Another bozo on the bus, as they say over here. And because we have the same problem. And maybe the solution that you guys say stands on the other side of these steps might work. And the question, then there's only one question that I have to ask myself at that point, if all of these things are my truth, where do I stand if God is nothing? And this is an exercise that I have my goals, my guys go through as we go through the steps when we get to step two. And I say, and we're exploring all of these ideas. I say, I want you guys to list each one of those bedevilment. And ask yourself where you stand. If God is nothing on these bedevilment. And the answer is the same answer I found in step one, hopeless, doomed. If God is nothing, then what am I doing here? But then on the flip side of that, what happens if God is everything? What does my reality look like? How bright does the future get? How much freedom will I get on the other side of this thing if God is everything? Will I be given the inspiration to seek? Will I have the courage to fact find and fact face? Will I have the courage to act? Can this power restore me to sanity? Spoiler alert, later in the book, it does, right? But this book is filled with ifs. The book is filled with ifs. Can I lay aside enough prejudice to be willing to believe that this God thing works? That the powerlessness that is in me, the unmanageability that is in me, had to be my truth to get me here, but it no longer needs to be my truth. And then the hope and the wish is that my willingness will move to belief. And if I keep digging, and I keep working, and I keep moving forward, and if I stay on this God train, my willingness can move to faith. And as I continue to seek, and as I watch the eyes of the people around me light up, and I get these reinforcements, and I become aware of what's going on in life, and what's going on in these rooms, and I start to see the God everywhere, then my faith, it turns to trust. You know, I'd come to terms, and I'll end with this. I'd had this step one experience that I talked about last night, and I was sitting in a 10 p.m. meeting of the 79th Street Workshop. And for anybody who's been to New York City and gone around Manhattan to meetings, the 79th Street Workshop is a really cool church basement that has, it's a beautiful church, St. Monica's Church, and there's meetings there all night. It's like a clubhouse, right? 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. There's meetings all day long. And in comes the speaker from the Atlantic Group, right? And if anybody knows the Atlantic Group, they dress even fancier than I'm dressed right now for every speaking engagement ever. You know, like it could be the seediest church. You know, like it could be the seediest church in the church basement, and then walks this Wall Street-type guy about to tell you the story of God. And so just to paint the picture, right, I'm sitting on the side wrestling with the truth of my step one. There's this guy up on the podium dressed in a suit and tie, killing it, killing it. That's not to say anything about the Atlantic Group. I think it's adorable. Their speakers, their program is fantastic. Their speakers are killing it up there. There's a guy in the front seat, front seat, right front and center of the meeting, and he's covered in tattoos. He's got a bald head. If anybody's on Instagram or TikTok right now, he look like dog face, kind of. At least he did at that time. This is the guy skateboarding, singing, you know, Fleetwood Mac. And so he's covered in tattoos. He looks like an extra on like a South Central gang movie, right? And so this is me sitting in this meeting, wrestling with my step one truth, and preconceived notions, prejudices are everywhere. Judging, thinking, criticizing, and he's flirting, right? And he's acting. He's, he's, he's a, he's, he's an amazing friend. His name is Chris now. And he's flirting with putting his hand up a couple of times throughout the meeting. And he's kind of slumped in his chair. And the first thought that goes in my head is like, what's this guy going to say? And he puts his hand up. Finally, he's the last person in the meeting to share. And he says, you know, when I was out there trying to kill myself and torture everybody I loved in that process. God brought me here. He says, so now that I'm here, why would I question for a second, if God's going to see me through and boom, it clicked, God's been there. God's been here. God's been in you guys this entire time. And I made it here. There has to be something here. The answer has to be here. Thank you guys. Thank you. Hi, I'm Donna, a recovered alcoholic. Matt. Wow. You know, sometimes I don't like following you, but you know, the good thing today is that I trust my God and I love nothing better than to talk about my experiences. Being willing to believe and now having faith and like Matt alluded to, trust, you know, this book gives us four chapters about looking at our powerlessness and our unmanageability. And I love the four words because it asks, it says it's about our journey, you know, they hope that, you know, the alcoholic journeys. The alcoholics journey brings them here and at the end of the forward, it says, if nothing has, nothing else has worked, we may want to try this program and I've always been on a journey. I remember I had went back to South Bend, Indiana. I did a geographic move and did a whole lot of havoc and damage in the Midwest. And when I went to make an amends, this woman had said, Donna, you were always talking about this journey. And I've always been seeking something. I didn't know what it was. Yesterday's share, I talked about, you know, I had some of the same nervousness that Hank P and Bill Wilson had and Jim, you know, that uneasy feeling, nothing seemed to be enough. And so I come to AA and I'm presented with these spiritual tools. They're laid at my feet by a recovered alcoholic. See I didn't try to stop drinking or drugging before. I just didn't have anything else to try. And I'm convinced this day that the obsession was lifted. I didn't stop drinking. And I am convinced that God did pull me from the gates of hell. I equally believe that God saved me from me so I can be of service to him. It's just that simple. It's simple with me. So I look at how I destroyed my life. In the doctor's opinion, we start seeing what our current life is like without a drink. What kind of damage did I leave? I lost my self-confidence, my reliance upon things human. I couldn't even rely on me. My problems pile up and I become astonishingly difficult to solve. So that's what I'm left with when I come into AA. It would be bad enough if I was trying to live my life under normal conditions, but I got a hell of a reconstruction period ahead of me. I couldn't live normally. I was rallies, and even more so at weeks, in fights and bullies, or ass remind me how painful. So now I put myself in such a jam because while I'm sinking in quicksand, I'm giving two craps about the destruction of my life because alcohol and drugs had me in its grip, and everything else, I didn't think about. little bit was enough because that's all I could do. I could not get past where I was. My human resources failed me utterly, my best efforts, my goals, my ambitions. So I was lying to myself, convincing myself that what I had was enough. But see, that didn't sit well with me because somewhere, somehow I knew that God's intention for me was much better than that. Why do I know that? Because people would look at me. I've had a lot of opportunities come my way. I couldn't step up to the plate. It was the belief system that I had created about myself that I wasn't enough. I tried to think differently. And so I come into this, this, this wonderful book and see the book in the steps is not what gives me the experience. It leads me to the one who does. And so I start, this book starts coming alive for me. It says that we examine the evidence of our senses and draw the conclusion. Well, the conclusion is I'm F'd. I don't want curse. I'm really, I will curse, F'd. But see, my thinking, my mind, myself never wants to let me see the truth. I am so grateful that I did not sit in the rooms thinking that just not drinking was going to be enough. Because I knew what my life like was before the drink. During the drink, the best I can do with my life was wind up in a therapeutic community on the west side of Manhattan. The backyard was no bigger than a postage stamp, and there were rats crawling around in the daytime. And it was the first time that I honestly said to myself, look what I done. I'm 43 years old, and I'm sitting in a T.C. with people that are sitting up in there because they're beating a bid. Wanting to see me after, in group every day. This is what I have for you. This is what I have for you. And I'm thinking to myself, what the fuck? So I knew I didn't have what it takes to live. I never did. I went to Catholic school, like Matt. But I must have been absent because I had never heard about reliance on God. And see, I was suspect to the Catholic religion because they didn't even give us the Bible. Like what are you hiding? We had this catechism. And so because I became a very disobedient child. And I became disobedient because I was so selfish and self-centered because life wasn't turning out my way. I hated my parents. It wasn't until I, excuse me, did inventory, I couldn't see how my parents really struggled to pay my tuition. My father gambled. And they did their best. But it wasn't enough because I didn't have Fred Braun shoes because Fred Braun shoes was a thing back in the day. They bought me converses, but they bought me converse all with the stars on the side. I actually took a razor and shaved the stars off the side of the converse because I was so, it was so important of how you saw me. See, because my inside was so empty that I put a lot of focus on the outside. See, I always say today the biggest gift I got in AA is that I can show up and be. I could never just be. I couldn't walk in a door and not worry about what you thought about me. See, I used to be a ballroom dancer. I danced hustle back in the day. I couldn't even dance well because if I had a stocking, a run in my stocking, I thought everybody was looking at the run in my stocking. So how do I live without alcohol? Because that's what my power was. See, when I took a drink and I took a hit after that, I'm like, hey. Now that's, see, God removed that. See, I can't go back to a drink even if I could. See, because the God I serve doesn't lead me that way. So now we get to this willing to believe or am I willing, willing to believe or I am or am I willing, willing to be willing. See, some of us have to be willing to be willing to be willing. Because, see, we still want to believe the lie in our thinking mind that we're not. See, it's as any, we couldn't manage our life drunk or sober. So it amazes me why so many of us. So many of us want to believe the lie that, okay, now I'm going to go, I'm going to live. They tell us what we need to begin this process. So after four chapters, and if you're working with me, you better believe I'm asking you. I'm turning these statements into questions. And I love it at the last page of more about alcoholism. And they go once more like, damn, four chapters. And you have to end the last. The last chapter, what reminded me, because now it's about be willing to believing that there is a wonderful life. You know, in the preface, it says wholesale miracles are taking place. So when we open up the book, we already know the difference. It's just something spiritual going on. So this is what we, what we. Two. I got five minutes. Lord, that five minutes went by fast. My nose runs when I start getting. Okay, so. We have to lay aside prejudice. Matt mentioned that. We have to express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. We have to express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. We have to express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. We have to express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. Admit the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe. Admit the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe. Earnestly seek and do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms, deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. So I did, I did a current spiritual terms exercise because I wanted to have something current for this weekend. So I took all the, all the spiritual terms. Went into prayer and this is my concept of God, because the next step is step three. So what God do I believe in my creator's brotherly love supports me, loves me more than sufficient. My savior, more powerful than my thoughts, huge, more than enough ruler, internal light and love creator of all things. Reliable, trustworthy, dependable. Inner voice that guides me, a power that I hadn't known existed within truth made me uniquely me, the highest authority above all, all encompassing leads me more than enough freedom open. He's right here, carries me everything knows what's best for me. Number one comforter internal blesses me enough truth and brilliance. And I call that God, this gives me the willingness to move into step three, because I realized that I can't, like Matt says, the devil means if God is nothing, I'm left with that. And I'm right back where I started a hopeless state of mind and body. And that's not why God saved us. God saved me and you to be absurd. And I'm willing to do service to him, like I alluded before, so I'm willing to believe in God and that's all I got. Thank you so much, Matt and Donna, we're going to take a little break, and we will resume at 10am for step three. See you then.