Step 6 — Ready for Change – Free D. – FOTS – 2016

Yeah, yeah. I'm Brendan, I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is October 18th, 1991. My sponsor is Kenny D. I suppose he has a sponsor named Tim, and so on and so forth. Welcome to the Advanced Problems Workshop. There's actually a story we may get to around that. It doesn't just come from nowhere. I'm going to read a few things, quick passages out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was going to irritate some people by reading something out of the 12 and 12, but oh well. I'll do that next time, maybe. No, they're not going to ask me now. Okay, so in Bill's story on page 12, and then on Bill's story on page 13, I'm going to read a couple things there, which I'm sure you're all expecting that little paragraph, but I'm not going to read that. Okay, so it says on the last line of the, I guess that would be the third, fourth paragraph, right below the italicized stuff, it says, Upon a foundation of complete willingness, I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would. Because step six obviously talks about, you know, willingness. It always seems kind of weird that we have a step entirely devoted to willingness. You know, at first when you're like, why do I need a step on willingness? You know, but willingness is mentioned over and over and over and over in our literature. And it says that it's indispensable. Because willingness is, it's not an event. It's an ongoing process every day. So on page 13, it says down there, I was to test. I was to test my thinking by the new God consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as he would have me. Never was it to pray for myself, except as my request bore all my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive, but that would be in great measure. My friend promised when these things were done, I would enter upon a new relationship with my creator. That I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in the power of God. And here it is, plus enough willingness. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. On it is. This is where the lifetime of growth starts to come in. What it says is a lifetime process, this is what they were talking about. What it says is a lifetime process, this is what they were talking about. When I first started to do this, I looked at it from that four-step. That was just the beginning, and all I saw was the big things, right? Like the big, apparent things, like when I would go off the rails and rage and anger, because that was a big part of keeping me safe and secure. I grew up in a lot of violence. But later on, and that's kind of what I wanted to just spin to, because we won't get a lot of time to discuss all that, but the main character defects you start to see, those are pretty much right up in your face. But what starts to happen is the things that don't seem so apparent and so out front and outlandish out here, it's the little things, like the feelings of feeling superior to other people, better than, you know, that kind of thing, or the paradox of I don't care what you think, but I desperately need your approval kind of stuff, you know. And it creates some really funny relationships, and relationships, oh, we should just mention that one, right? I mean, if you want to know about character defects, the joke is get in a relationship. You'll find out all about them. Yours, not theirs. I should point that out. But what I started to do is, utilizing, you know, our program, is that I started to take in, you know, a tense step we were trying to get, this is where I start to sharpen the knife, right? Like I'm starting to try to live in the realm of the spirit, because if I can't start to see this area of my life, where I'm rubbing up against some friction here with God and my fellows, and I define my alcoholism today with my new guys, I say my definition of alcoholism is anything that stands the way between God or my fellows, right? Because that basically, if anything is in between me and you, or me and God, that means I'm cut off from the sunlight of the spirit, which keeps me sober, which means I'm in danger of drinking again. So that's pretty much how it goes. So that's how I kind of define it now. So this step is incredibly, incredibly important. When I first went through it, I thought, oh, six, seven, it's like this little tiny paragraph. It must not be that important. This is the first beginning of trying to actually put into action the self, the sacrificing of my self-centeredness and selfish behaviors. And what I started to do was when I started to see these things, I had a new awareness, like I'd, you know, somebody would be gossiping, and I'd start to join in, you know? And so I'd have to start seeing that, so I'd start to see that stuff. So I'd go at night, and if I didn't catch it then in the tenth step, the immediate, wham! Watch for these things. I would catch it in the eleventh at night, and I would write it down. So eleventh was very important when we do that review at night. And I would start taking that, what I found in my eleventh step, and I would take it into my morning meditation. And then I'd pray about that in the morning meditation, asking God to please remove what I'd seen the day before. And that I'd, because I started to see a pattern. There's certain patterns that, you know, we all have. We see them. We're all different, but we are very similar, right? So I started to see all these patterns in my life, you know? And I started to ask God, please remove these from me. And this is the thing, is that, you know, it talks about where if God can remove alcoholism from us, I mean, literally, the thing that had us in the grips and choking us and putting us underwater, and we're going to die, and we get to a point of desperation, and under this desperate plea, literally, he removes it from us. You know, obviously, God would be able to do that with other things in my life. But this is where my agnostic temperament comes out, right? Like, because I'm convinced that, well, God, I need, I have this desperation of the drink. Like, please remove this. Please remove this from me. When it happens, it's like, thank God. But then when I'm having relationship issues or stuff, I'm like, well, I need some help, but I still want to have some of the controls over here, you know? Because I know you're going to make me have this boring life over here, and I don't want that. I want this, you know? And that kind of stuff. And that's not what it says at all, you know? And what I've found lately, and this is what I've seen, so I started to get in a little bit more deeper in this. And, you know, I have, and one of my latest ones that I saw was, I was talking with some friends, and we do this once a year, we get together in Southern California or wherever we go, we have a group of guys, and just three of us, guys we grew up with. And I was talking to them, and I was talking about how I've always had this thing where I don't like to be vulnerable. One of the things that I don't like to do is I need to be secure. That's why the rage and anger was out there to keep me so you can't be close to me. But what I've seen is that, you know, I don't like to be vulnerable. So what do I do? And my behavior patterns when I looked at my inventory with relationships or sex or things like that, is I dated vulnerable women. And the reason I did is because they're safe. Because you can't hurt me. You can't touch me. Because if I'm in a relationship like this, but not head on like this, I'm safe. You know, and so what I found was that out of that, this awakening of like, this is why I keep doing this. You know, I keep ending up in this same position. You know, like why am I constantly gone to this? You know, and it's, it's not just because of the family I was raised or things like that. It's this deep-seated desires and things within Brendan, these natural desires within me. And it talks about where it's not that these things, the way my sponsor explained to me, it's not that these things aren't, you know, necessary. We have these natural desires. But it's that we demand more of our fair share is what he said. And it came directly out of our AA literature. You know, and I do, I want more than my fair share. Because if you have more, then that means I have less kind of thinking. Right? And I, and I ran around with that a lot. That's why I hated people who drove nice cars or had nice things. You know, I'd tear you down. You know, people that were happy and Alcoholics Anonymous. I hated you especially. You know, I used to call you shiny, happy people. You know, and Mr. Spiritual. You know, and, and no joke, we used to run these people literally out of meetings that we were in. We're like, okay, Mr. Spiritual. We'd interrupt them during their talk and tell them to get out. And swear to God. And you all would have been kicked out, by the way. He would have been a violent offender over here. But anyways, but what, what that was about is that they were in a position that was, I, I mistaken a lot of times. And I've heard this around the room, so you're probably familiar. But I used to mistake people that were comfortable in their own skin. And, and being able to sit there calm, you know, like, where's Mickey? He's some here somewhere. You would have driven me nuts. He's right over there. Oh, he left. Yeah, whatever. Just sitting there just all calm. Smiling. I would have been like, that guy's not an alcoholic. You know? And, you know, I, I, I, I mistake that, though. I thought it was arrogance. I really did. I thought it was arrogance. And so my, my perception on these things is completely warped. So what I've, what I've been able to do in the, in these steps, well, not me, but asking God, it's this constant repetition of throwing these things to God saying, you know, God, I am, I am willing. And I can only be willing when I see what's going on. And unfortunately, I, I wish I could say that. I just see these things on the natural instinct. Um, there are some things I've been able to see without going, destroying my life. Right. But, um, I think we can all agree that pain is a good motivator. Um, you know, and that, uh, is no more apparent than when, with our alcoholism, you know, when we come in here, but, um, with a lot of the character defects, I started to run into a lot of problems and pain was part of that. And so pain motivated me to force, to talk to people, to talk to my sponsor, to write the inventory, to look at these things. It's like, that's why. Yeah. I joke, I need special ed AA. I don't just, I don't just see this stuff like just up front, you know, um, my intuitions are there, but they're my, my thinking, my, my skews off. Um, I don't suffer from the things I used to suffer from, um, uh, a lot of them. There are some defects that are still there. They are still with me and they be, they may be forever for all I know. Um, this is about the, uh, you know, when it, you know, there's actually, I'll read one more thing where it says, um, at the end of, uh, the end of 60, um, it says that, uh, no one, no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints, but here it is. The point is that we're willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. I don't get to sit behind that and say, well, progress, not perfection. Cause it says that that progress is outlined by the principles they set down as a guide. So if I'm not following that guide, I can't claim that I'm, I'm doing this deal, you know? And I guess the simplest way I could put it, it's kind of like behind the driver's seat of a car that's parked, trying to steer it somewhere. It's not going to go anywhere, right? I have to do action. I have to do some work. I have to do some things. And these steps are about, uh, are about that. Um, I'm pretty much out of time. Um, I'm really excited to be here. I've been here in 10 years. Uh, this is my family. This is my home. It's good to be back. And, uh, I have a lot of love for, for the people in this room. Thank you. And next up we have Tanya L. from Durango, Colorado. Please help me welcome Tanya. Hi, I'm Tanya. And I am a grateful member of Al-Anon. Have been so for eight years. My sponsor has helped me through this. Uh, for the last eight years. Uh, for the last eight years, uh, for the last eight years, uh, for the last eight years, uh, for the last eight years. And she's always told me when I'm talking in front of a big group that it's not about you, Tanya. You know, of course, because I'm always, like, self-seeking and self-centered and, uh, think it's about me. And she's like, it's not about you. It's about God. So just be prayerful and allow God to fill the room. And that piece of experience has always worked for me. So thank you. Um, I also have always been, um, when I first started the program, I was sponsored by the Al-Anon. I was sponsored by the Big Book. And she told me to read the first 164 pages of the Big Book. And me, you know, being the person I am, said, well, I already read it. And she said, well, read it again. And, uh, read it and replace the word alcohol or alcoholic with people, places, and things. Because the isms are the same. And that was very helpful. And she also suggested to me to go to Open AA meetings as part of your program. So for eight years, I've been, I have a home group. I have an Allen. I have an Al-Anon home group. And I have an Open AA home group. And, um, if anybody wants to talk to me after this, I would be more than happy to tell you about the benefits of that. So I'm tasked to talk about steps six and seven. And they wanted me to pay particular attention to the word humbly in those steps. So humility. I want to kind of start from the Big Book. To get to six and seven, the steps are written in order for a reason. I couldn't go to step six and seven without having a relationship with God. And I have to, whether that relationship, whatever that looks like, whatever your higher power is, it doesn't have to be determined. I just have to know that there is something greater than me. And that can evolve on page, um, in the Big Book on page 44 of the, we agnostics at the bottom of the page. I just want to read a little quote. 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. We could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources as marshaled by the will were not sufficient. They failed utterly lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. And so. That is a necessary. Requirement for me to do step six and seven. Step six is we're entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character and seven is humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. So how do I do that? These are action steps for me. Many people think that you're not really doing anything. They're removing shortcomings or defects of character. But for me, the person who hangs on to everything and tries to control people in places and things, it actually is. An act that I had to do. I had to take my fists that were just balled up so tight and open up my hands to God and I had to take that ball that I was carrying and running with and thinking I'm the solution and I had to actually drop the ball for God to enter into my life and that's what it looked like for me. I, the question is, how do you do that? How do you do that? And that one word humbly is in there for a reason. It's intentional with humility. That's what that. Means to me. And I kind of want to spend some time talking about humility. I can't talk about humility without thinking, what's the opposite of that? Because I think humility is difficult to define, um, pride, arrogance, and self-centeredness to me is the opposite of humility. So pride is how did that look like in my life? Pride is very. For me, pride was. Self-centered. Serving. It was putting on a mask. It was only showing the part of me that I thought you wanted to see and that I allowed you to see pride has this undercurrent of shame and I have a tremendous amount of shame from this disease growing up in the disease and marrying into the disease. And what it looked like for me is five years into program, you know, life was great, but my foundation was crumbling. My spiritual self was being. Poisoned. I was dying inside five years in program. I had a sponsor. I was sponsoring people. I was going to meetings. I was checking off every box, but what I did is I isolated. I could isolate in a room full of people. I could say what you wanted to hear. I could quote the words. I could quote steps, but I didn't let you in. I put up this barrier. I could be in the middle of a party and be completely isolated. And that's what it looked like to me. It nearly killed me. It nearly brought me down. And what it was, was shame. So I had to look at my shame from my childhood and to an adult. So what is shame? Shame. I thought shame was guilt. Guilt is not feeling good about the things I've done. That's what that meant to me. It took me years to figure out what shame was. Shame is not being proud of who I am. And that was much more difficult to get over. As a child, I grew up in an alcoholic home. I was ashamed of that. I didn't let anybody know, not even my best friend in the world to this day. We've never talked about it. I was ashamed of the color of my skin. I was ashamed of my religion. I was ashamed of financial insecurity. We, we, uh, we were bankrupt and my house got repossessed and a lot of my belonging. It's got repossessed and we had to move away my senior year in the midst of being this outgoing, achieving, you know, if you would look at my life, you would never have known that that happened because I would show up every day to school and I would get A's on my tests. I was captain of my soccer team. I was an achiever, but nobody knew that shame. And I kept that hidden for years and shame in my married life. What did that look like? Everything looked great on the outside. I had a big house. I had a professional job. I was chief of my department. I was, uh, had accolades and awards, but my foundation was crumbling. My marriage was in shambles. I failed at my marriage. I felt like a failure. Um, I was traded. I felt like I was traded away. I had to deal with infidelity. I felt ashamed that I traded away my values, my core values that I always thought there's a line in the sand with that, but no, I traded those away and I traded away who I was. I took certain tools of the program, like, let go and let God or pause or respond, don't react. And I use that as a weapon to myself. I did it to the nth degree to the point where I was accepting. Unacceptable behavior. And I had traded away who I was. I was a shell of a person who was able to do a lot of things, you know, my professional life, the other things fed me, but my spiritual life, I was dying inside. And I've told people, the people that scare me the most, because this is what my experience is, it's the people who have been a program for three or six years who are doing the work. But to have that mask still on and getting to shame helps me. I want to talk quickly about the difference between shame or humiliation, you could use them interchangeably, and humility. There is, I want to, if you walk away from one piece of experience from this, I would like to say, please do not allow shame or humiliation as part of your program. It is never useful. What it does, humility may take your pride down to a level ground where you stand side by side with people, equal, shoulder to shoulder, in a circle, God right in the middle, but it doesn't make you lesser than. And that's where shame took me. There was just depths that it could take you. There's no end to that. It's like a bottomless end. Shame. Shame and humiliation will take you to those dark depths, those dark corners of your life, and if you don't clean them out and if you don't shine a light on them, you can die. You can die from it. And the only thing that saved me, which was totally wrong because I'm a child of God, is when that behavior spilled onto my children. For whatever reason, that was enough for me to say, that's it. And I was able to pull myself out of that. I was able to pull myself out of that situation with my kids, doing it for my kids, really for the wrong reason. I should have been able to do it for me. There needs to be self-love. I can't give love unless there's self-love. And I'm a child of God, and I am equal to everyone here. So that's what it took. The line in the sand was when it affected my children, and I saw it visibly in their behavior. And I just hope if you do walk away from anything out of this. Do not accept shame. And then there's the and butters in here, because I know there's and butters. So what that means is, yeah, or yeah butters, yeah, but that doesn't apply to me. You don't know what I did. You don't know the real person I am. You don't know how bad I have acted. I deserve to be shamed. Please don't go there. There's no bottom to shame. And so humility. With humility. That's what has worked for me. And I just want to say one more thing. I want to thank you all for making a decision. This program is not about getting it, but just make a decision. Make a decision to do a program. Make a decision to have a sponsor. Make a decision to be a sponsee. Make a decision to read literature. Make a decision to show up to this. Fellowship of the Spirit. By you doing that, I have learned. And I am here on my first ever Fellowship of the Spirit 2016. Thank you very much. I'm Tanya. Our third and final panelist will be Don C. from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Don C. from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Don C. from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Don C. I'm an alcoholic. Good afternoon. I also am a member of the Mohican Nation. I was born for the Turtle Clan on my mother's side. My Indian name is Tantanka Wambli. That name was given to me by the elders when I was given this responsibility to be the keeper of this hoop of 100 eagle feathers. I have nine children. Out of nine children, we now have 20 grandbabies. My wife Jean is here in the front row. Most of my children now are all sober. My grandbabies know nothing about alcoholism. My grandbabies know nothing about alcoholism. make big gains on repairing our family. We now know how to fight with honor. It's not like how it was. So things have changed. I love this FOTS program. This place is like magic. This one especially, this feels like Silverton. This feels like the old days. That's how that feeling is. The way that they're describing the work and they're connecting it to what they read, to their experience. I don't know. I'm just really moved by the speakers and those things at this time. It just has a good feeling to it. My sobriety date is August 10, 1978. I, too, was taught to go through the steps every year. I have not done that. I met this last year, but I have done that before. The three main influences I've had in my sobriety was Frank McKibben, Don Pritz, and Johnny Looking Cloud. They were the ones that brought together a foundation. Sometimes I wonder, what would it be like if I had met three others, not those three? I'm just very grateful it was those three that showed me about this program and how that worked. One of the things I've learned about the steps, even though there are 12 of them and they're numbered, one of the things I've learned is that they're all interconnected. They're interconnected in a natural order. The way our elders explain it, they say that when you started drinking, that you went out, you went out of harmony with the earth, and that the steps are 12 gentle ways to lead you to come back to be in harmony, the way it was for you in those old days. I'm going to take this time to talk about my current experience with the work. I don't necessarily do all of it like I did when I first came in. The understanding that I'm not going to do all of it like I did when I first came in, I'm going to do it like I did when I first came in. There's a number of steps before that give you the information and the power to go on to do the next step. I don't think you could just jump in and do a step six or seven without getting the power of the first five steps. There's things in there that you need to know, you need to experience in order for you to do that. Then the book does talk about that you can grow in effectiveness. Thanks to organizations, like this, like FOTS, and they attract some of the incredibly book-working people to come here to those meetings out there in the hallways and on the side. Powerful things go on there. I used to struggle a lot with steps six and seven because it always seemed like every time I got into it and I tried to work it, as soon as I did, it got worse. As soon as I tried to let go of a defect, it was like something happened, and so I'd say, you're doing it wrong, so I'd pray harder, do something different, and try it again, and it was just like I could not get that damn thing to go away. They just would stick there. Then one time, so I did all kinds of different things, but I was in a meeting one time in Denver somewhere, and I heard this guy talk, tell a story about step six, and what he said was, he said how step six and seven, what that's about is, he said it's like baking a cake. He says you got to go get an oven, you turn it on, 350, and then you got to get a pan, you got to grease the pan, you got to put the flour and the sugar, and you got to stir it and get everything ready, smooth it out, open up the oven door, 350, stick in the oven, and then while that cake is in there, then the cake, the oven bakes the cake, and he said to me, he said like when you are working steps, six and seven, he says it's like putting a cake in the oven, and you look at your watch, and you open up the door, is it done, is it done? No, it's not done yet. Okay, God, we got to really do this thing differently. This isn't right. I got to, and then you, and he said what you got to do is you got to put the cake in there, you got to do six and seven, you got to put yourself in there, then you got to let God bake you. Don't be peeking. Don't be messing with the dial. You just got to let him bake you. Just hang loose with it. And so somewhere where I was at that time, that made sense to me. I said okay, I can see I was peeking. I was trying to manage my growth and things, so I had to have a change again. But one of the things I found out is when you grow an effectiveness in the work, if you do something different, more effective in step one, then that goes all the way down because they're all interconnected all the way to step one. And then at 12, things change. And so I used to wonder sometimes why my defects of character showed up again and again and again on inventory. You get tired seeing that same old stuff in the fourth column. I do a five column inventory. And I run into a guy that showed me a technique that really helped me a lot. So I do my normal inventory first column. What they did in the second column, those seven things in the third column. Then it comes out with the things in the fourth column, my character defects. And the fifth column I use for amends. But what I found out that really has helped me a lot is once my inventory is done, then I take the character defect, let's just say shame, and I take that shame, now I put it in the first column. And then I write in the second column, this is what shame does to me. And then I write in the third column, how does it affect, how does it hurt, threaten, or interfere with my self-esteem, personal relationships, my ambition, my security. And then what pops out of that, what starts to pop out of it is fear. So I started to see behind every character defect there's a fear. Every one of them. Sometimes there's more than one fear. You have to bring the character defect under the same character defect. So as I started to bring the defect to the first column, and I'd run it across selfishness, what does that do to me? Self-righteous, what does that do to me? Anger, what does that do to me? Until I started to see what just pops out in that last column is just fear. Then out of that, the next discovery was, I found out my character defects don't work solo. They work together. And that was a surprise. Until I saw this line in the big book where it talks about self-manifested in various ways. And what I found out inside of here, there's not just me, there's a committee sitting outside there on a bench. And each of them has certain accesses to the control room in my mind. So my eyes will see something happens and irritation walks in. And it checks out the switches that it's allowed to throw. And it goes, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk, chk. And it gets me really irritated. And then it goes to the door out to the bench and it says, hey, anger, come on in. I think I got him going. So anger walks in with a toothpick in his mouth. Now, it's this guy only certain switches it can run. And it says, okay, thanks. He says, let me take over. No problem. Chk, chk, chk, chk, chk. So now I'm blowing up and telling you why I'm angry and that's not why I'm angry. And I'm going back to the IOU account and pulling things out that I remember that you did five years ago wearing the pink dress on Tuesday and throw that. And then, you know, it just really feels good. And then, of course, they go back to the committee and they say, hey, self-justification, we need you now because why don't you come on in? So they come on in and what's going on? And then throws his switches and then pretty soon there I am. You know, crazy as hell and don't know how come I'm trying to explain my way out. But it was really a discovery for me to find out they work in teams. They don't like to work alone. They like to work in teams. And then some of them becomes like the team leader, too. Like they kind of control everybody, it seems, to go that way. Okay. So, in doing an inventory like that, that changes steps six and seven. Because I discovered different things showed up in the inventory. A lot of fear. I found out things like jealousy can be caused by five or more character defects depending upon what the situation is. That's why I kept showing up. Because I did inventory maybe only the three and then next year the other two would show up and it'd be on there again. So I found out I was able to do it more thorough. So this is how I do steps six and seven today. Johnny looked at the cloud. What he taught me was that the steps was not a white man's program. That's what he said. It's not a white man's program. This is about alcohol. It's not about your culture. And so what he taught me was to take the 12 steps and to put them in a circle. Three steps in the east, like the new sun. Steps one, two, and three. Find your relationship with your higher power, God, Creator, whatever you call it. That's the first three from the east. Then you go to the south, steps four, five, and six. That's the direction where you find your relationship with you. You know your strength. You know your weaknesses. You know who you hurt. You know things about yourself. Then in the west is steps seven, eight, and nine. And that's where you find your relatives. I think some tribes call it , to all my relatives. Because in order to be right with God, I must first be right with you. So I gotta come back and tell you I'm sorry. I gotta come back and straighten those parts out. And to the degree that I do that, all of a sudden, I discover the closeness of the Creator, or God. Then in the north is steps 10, 11, and 12. And that's like the elders' teachings. You are now in harmony. If you do the maintenance steps, you learn to stay in harmony. And so that's my current experience with them. So when I do steps six and seven, where I get the information from is from the columns in my resentment. From an inventory, from a fear inventory, and from the columns in the sex inventory. So that is the source that I use for my work in steps six and seven. When I first came in, in our culture, when we're on a spiritual path or growth, we have a name for it. We call it the Red Road. And that's just how, that's the name that we have for it. It's the same thing as doing the work and 12 steps and all that, but we call it the Red Road. And so when I first came in, I found out one of the reasons I struggled with nine and, with our six and seven was, I wasn't walking the red road, I was walking the red line. So, you know, I got one foot like the cops, you know, walking one foot in front of the other, trying to be perfect. And I make a mistake and, but I went to Johnny Looking Cloud one time and I talked to him about this. And we went in his backyard and he drew this line in the dirt. And he said, walk this line. So I walked it one foot in front of the other and then he'd come by my side. He pushed me off and my footprints would go this way. He said, get back on that line. So I get back on there and walk a little bit more and he pushed me this way. My footprints, you could see seven, eight times he did that. So you could see, it's like I was staggering. Back and forth. Then he took a stick and he drew two lines on each side. And he said, what you're trying to do is walk a red line. He said, it's a road. And he said, every place that your footprints are is sacred. He said, the character defects, he said, it should be, it'd be better if you call them corrections. These are my corrections, not a defect. It's like there's something's, something's wrong. So. That the defects are sacred and the path is very, very wide. The mistakes is part of the sacredness. And so, very quickly how I do the steps six and seven is, I build an altar just like this. And then, for each character defect, I have a little red cloth. And on this red cloth then, what I do is I put in tobacco. It's called a tobacco tie. So you put for each character defect. So let's say I'm working shame. I put this in there. And all while I'm putting that in there, I'm thinking about the willingness to have the creator remove this. And I make a tobacco tie. And I put it in a bowl. And I do that for each one of my character defects. And I burn my sage. So that, to show the creator I mean it, when I, when that tobacco tie is done, I run it through the sage. Then I set it in the bowl. Then for step seven, what I do is, I light a fire. And so, I have been ready to turn the character defect over. You hear in AA sometimes people say, I want to keep this defect. I don't. I, that's bullshit. I don't want, I don't. Why would I want to keep it? Because of what? That's just some old guy talking about something. He heard somewhere. So don't buy into that. Get rid of those suckers. And so, what I do is, I build a fire. And then this is in the, I take that defect and I put it in the fire and I talk to the creator saying, I want you to take this. And now I watch and all of a sudden that tobacco tie will go just burst into flame. And something happens, you know, using those elements. Then I put the next one in there and the next one in there and the next one in there. And that's how I find out what works for me using the culture and using that step to have the defect of character taken away. Thank you very much. Thanks again to all our panelists. That was great. I think we have time for some comments from the floor. My name is Shelly, I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Shelly. Thank you, Don. I'm of a group that also, you know, of a group that also goes through the steps on a yearly basis. And I decided I wanted to do it without a set aside prayer this time and to just follow the directions. And when I got to step six, I've had many different methods. People write down my character defects. I write them down. I pray, turn statement into question and each one gets marked off. And then this time I said, why don't, you know, why don't I ask this creator that I've been seeking to tell me my character defects? And five things popped out. And when I was ready, I said my seven step prayer. But what was so interesting about it is that after I made amends, I see my character defects in my daily life. I see where I'm impatient. I see where I'm selfish. So I have a new understanding of impatience. I thought I was patient. But there are levels of patience these days. And there are levels of selfishness. And I'm grateful for that experience because I could see and I could ask God to remove it throughout the day. And I could, I really know what it is now. So it's good to be back. And I thank you all for the wonderful welcome. And thank you for being in our lives. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Mickey. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Chief. So I was told this story. So there's a little boy, and he's got his toy truck, and he broke it. And so he's crying, and he's holding onto his toy truck, and he comes running to his father, and he says, fix it. Fix it. And the father loves the little boy, and he says, it would help me if you'd let go of it. so this willingness that we're talking about is a real moment the reason there's a separate step for it is because I have to be willing to let go now this is the what am I letting go of I'm letting go of the way I do business this is the way I get through life these are my protective methods this is how I think I'm trying to get through life and I'm doing it very poorly now if I let go of that the last part of this thing I read in another book that we wrap ourselves with the bandages of ego like a mummy and then we identify with the bandages and we say that's me and we're so afraid if we unwrap the bandages there will be no us we'll be the hole in the donut and in fact if we're willing to let them go God will unwrap that and we will be who he made us and we will be who he made us and we will be who he made us so we can't take six and seven and what a bold move that we would go to the face of God and say take these things away how naked will we be we'll be reconstituted thank you hello family my name is Sam Hummel I'm a sober member of AA I'm up here from Austin Texas ATX in the house baby six and seven I don't know I work I try to come out of the book pretty clearly with that stuff and I just wanted to share my experience with that stuff and the way I carry them in that I work with through the steps when it comes to six and seven and it's pretty deliberate when I come to six and seven six is it talks about making a list right I make a six step list that's acquired by the work that I do in my fifth step right in my fourth column and as I accumulate these I am statements and I like to work with the I am statements right you know because I don't like to put it in a past tense and I don't like to put it in a in a relative term because that doesn't make any sense to me right so I like to make I put it in an I am statement especially there's a line in the book that says that I'm hard on myself and I'm considerate of others so I like in this portion of the steps I like to be really hard on myself and so I write stuff like instead of you know instead of just writing I am a liar right uh... because I'm a liar uh... I will write down I like to lie because I use the analogy of of maybe a food that you like right you know pick a food whatever food it is that you have tried and that you don't like right when was the last time you ate that right so but what about a food that you like right you probably had that yesterday maybe possibly today so if I'm doing it today I'm writing inventory on it today and I'm finding it up and it's come up more than once in the in my fifth step as I'm making this column it more likely I like to do it or I wouldn't be doing it so I put it that way I make it hard on myself because I know the work that I'm going to be doing in six and seven I want to be diligent about that I want to be painstaking right there right and where the book talks about I go home for an hour I tell my guys it's not fifty-nine minutes it's an hour be prepared to be at work for an hour doing some intensive work and be prepared to spend some time on your knees and I go at it that way and I write my prayer and I've started working with prayers of expectation right thank you prayers instead of the the prayers of supplication where I'm always asking asking asking right so I pray of expectation I thank him for removing this from me right and my prayer is pretty simple it's God I want to thank you for removing from me that I like to lie why because what's the freedom on that is a I'm going to gain understanding that I'm a liar I'm liking to do it and that he is going to remove that from me and so i get up after that hour sometimes longer it depends on where I'm at in my list right sometimes I'm halfway through my list and my hours up I don't stop I continue on to the list and if I'm really into some intense work I'll do it again because that you can't do it willingly at my best I don't want to be that man who walked in doing the sameenda into these rooms any longer right and this is the way that i i acquire that and then when i get up off my knees and i go out i walk out with a mindset that these are going to be removed guess what though sometimes they're not removed right away and the seven step prayer tells me that that he's going to remove some of them thank you i'm out of time i'm jeff and i'm an alcoholic and uh you know my experience step one and step six have always been kind of similar to me in that step one has always felt like a death sentence and step six has always felt like a life sentence and uh and like the the first forward says seemingly hopeless and i arrive at these points of truth and it seems and feels pretty hopeless at the time and so how was that fellowship of the spirit last year and three days you I took her to new york at 5 30 in the morning and she looked at me and said i'm not coming back and that was it and i thought you know i don't do good in these long-term things maybe a little more of a shift but i'm not coming back and i thought you know i don't do good in these long-term short-term thing and so i jumped out there in the field and i felt uh i found i don't play any better in that sandbox and uh i went to take a girl to a hockey game just a friend in los angeles and uh you know i have this old idea if you walk a woman to her car you're on a date you're going to kiss her so on and so forth so we got we left the game i went up to the hotel and she went to the parking garage and uh she texted me five minutes later and said why did you leave me i almost got mugged in downtown la in a parking garage and uh and i just and so this year i did a lot of work with my family and my family and my family and my family and my family and my family and i did a lot of prayers on page 70 and 71 for a month and what i came out of it was you know what i'm not kind and i'm not thoughtful and i'm not naturally and i got layers of blast shields and if you get behind that you'll find some more stuff there too and for the first time ever see i had a list of a sound ideal i wrote 13 years ago it was like sound bites i heard in the rooms that sounded good oh yeah don't date for three don't you know sleep for three months and don't 13 step but i didn't have my own experience and what i came out of that with was a list of a person who i'm really not but who i really want to be with god's help and i think that's what the book meant you got to be willing to grow towards that are you him right now no and uh so that's my ideal in my six i've been kind of living in it and thinking about it a lot for a couple weeks and it's just my current experience with the big book thanks for letting me share hi , hi there my name's mary thayer i'm an alcoholic thank you panel this steps uh six and seven have changed for me throughout my recovery uh how i look at them and how i experience them have been different for me uh i think in the beginning like it's been said we did it one way and then all of a sudden i started to really see that i would say the third step prayer and um and i said it exactly as it said but when it said so that i can better do that i will it was take away my difficulties so i can better do what i want to do and and i didn't know but my actions were that way and i didn't i didn't get it for a long time and so when i did these and as i appreciate what don said in regard to what i've found for myself is that if there's a higher power there's a lower power and i finally found it where it said that fear is an evil corroding thread shot through the fabric of my existence. And so evil sounds like a lower power to me. I wasn't raised in any religion, so I didn't have that problem. But I realized, oh, my God, I'm very familiar with this lower power. Fear, fear, huh. And so when it came in on page 68 and it talked about, you know, if God could remove these fears, if God was able to remove these fears, what would he have me be? If I wasn't being fearful, what would I be? And, you see, now I understand that fear is what has triggered all my survival skills or my defects of character. And when I went into the seventh step and I did that seventh step prayer, and the last line is what's caught me through the years. It says, God, grant me strength to go out from here to do your bidding. You see, if I had to do that, if I asked God what he, I, you know, if I wasn't fearful, what would I be? You know, I was a terrible people pleaser. I think all of us are a bunch of PPs, you know, if you really look at it. You know, and, and, you know, what that, and it was driven by fear. And when you are actually then ask God to remove this PP, this fear, you know, what would I be doing? It takes strength to be honest. It takes strength to have integrity. It takes strength to be generous. It takes strength to be genuine, to tell you who I am today. Not who I, you think I should be, but who I am today. That's a, that, that only comes from God. So I had this sponsor and her husband, they were kind of a team. And I want to just kind of close with a story. He used to stand at the podium and he would say, we are refined in the furnace of our afflictions. And I would say, what does that mean? I mean, what is that? We're refined in the furnace of our affliction. And then I finally found something on the internet. And it was a story about this woman in a Bible story. And apparently they were reading some Bible verse about Malachi. Some, I don't know, later asked me, I have that info. But basically what happened is, is they ran across this line that said that God refined you in the furnace of some, oh, the time's up. You don't even want to know what the furnace is here. But basically. All right. What basically it said at the very end is that the woman went to a silver refiner and watched the guy put the silver in the ore or whatever in the fire and then pull it out. And so the woman said, do you have to watch that in the fire all the time? She says, oh, yes, I do. And she thought about the Bible verse that God watched us in the, or refined us or whatever. The very end, she said, well, I don't know how long it has to stay in the furnace because I believe that when you do a seventh step, you get necessary pain. The false self starts to die and you have to have some strength. So it's not going to be, ha ha, everything's fine. You're going to have some pain when that false self starts to die. And he said, oh, that's the, the silversmith said, oh, that's the easy thing. He said, I watched that until I see my reflection in the silver and then I pull it out. So if you're here with, with pain, no, that you just, you have to sit still and feel that pain and you've got to wait on the Lord because he wants to have his reflection. It's about God's will, not mine. Thanks. Hello. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Herbert. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad to be at this conference. I used to hate these things. I really did. But so anyways, uh, I have alcoholism, the book Alcoholics Anonymous describes, and I drank a lot, a lot. I've been remembering, I learned more about my first step while I was drinking than I did when I got sober. I'll be honest with you. I learned the powerlessness while I was drinking and there was nothing that could get me to the stop drinking to the point where I had esophageal hemorrhaging. My, my liver still doesn't. Work right to this day, so I knew it was emphatic that something needed to happen and I was in the emergency room in Salt Lake and I snuck outside to smoke. I don't think you're supposed to do that, but you know, they give you the nightgown and the little shoes and, and that's what I knew I'd managed to put that. It's true. I've managed to get myself to that. I did a good fricking job. I'm really good at screwing stuff up. May not sound like an asset, but I think it is. So for me, step two is pretty, it's hard for me to talk about steps, not in relation to the other ones. It really is. I have difficulty with that. And step two is pretty abundantly clear and we agnostics, I read that. Okay. I get it. Okay. So step three, I was still locked up in the hospital in a, I didn't even have a sponsor then, but I read the instructions, the directions, the book has to say, and there's a lot to step three. And I honestly said that prayer. I read that prayer in December of two years ago in Salt Lake City, it was winter. So I'll get to defects as quick as I can. Um, I said that prayer and I felt warm in the winter time and I didn't have a jacket on, and I knew this is exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I felt loved by a presence. You know how it says a lack of power is our dilemma. And somewhere in that book, it says we felt a new power flow in that happened. Absolutely. There's no doubt in my mind. There's no doubt. In my mind, there's a, I'm a real alcoholic and there's no doubt in my mind. There's a power greater than myself. In fact, some of my first prayers were like, I don't know who you are, but I need your help. And I'm paraphrasing that big time, but that thing responded. So that for me, at least that pushed away enough stuff to get started on a four step. I think I started that night first column done that quick. I didn't write a dissertation, people, institutions, principles. Okay. Did the sexual inventory, the fear inventory. And finally I had to find, you know, I was balking at the fifth step. Let's put it that way. So everybody was saying, get a sponsor and this and that, you know, and I was in the hospital and the homeless shelter and I'm the guy in there doing the aid. They're looking at me like I'm nuts. They are because they've got their little workbooks. They got all their other stuff they're doing and I'm sweeping floors because I felt a new power. Floor. And I figured like if I live there, I had to show a little bit of gratitude times up. So anyways, I'll put it this way as I found a fat drunk sponsor, do the fifth step with, but I got to the seventh step that night. And if you look at step six, it says, uh, became willing. And if you look at step eight, it also talks about willingness. There's a correlation there. So when I said the seven step prayer that night, I felt that again, but I also felt like it was okay to exist. It was all right for me to be alive and I'm not having frothy emotional appeal. I'm so glad that happened. It makes me want to cry. So what, in essence, for me enough crap got taken out of myself to go be able to make amends to other people. I figured if the world doesn't owe me anything, I don't know anything to the world. That's the way I used to think. So to wrap it up, I owe, I owe Alcoholics Anonymous and I owe the world. more than I'll ever be able to repay, period. This will continue for the rest of my life. And all I've got to say for that is thank you. That's it. Thanks again to all our panelists. By group conscience, the Fellowship of the Spirit conference does not close each meeting with the Lord's Prayer. Instead, we encourage that the entire conference be treated with an attitude of continuous prayer. And we will then say the Lord's Prayer together at the close of the conference on Sunday. Please help me close the meeting by joining hands for a moment of silence.