Step 6 — Ready for Change – Matt T. – New England Big Book Workshop Weekend – 2020

We have an amazing couple of hours ahead of us. We will hear from our step speakers again and then have our last breakout session of the event on Tradition 12 and a special session on Living the AA Triangle, the 12 Steps, the 12 Traditions, and the 12 Concepts. We will also hear our last keynote speaker, Kathy H. The schedule will be put in the chat for your convenience so you can take a look. 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 financial support. The link for the Wilson House donation page will also be put in the chat. Up first, speaking on step six, is Matt. Hello, everyone. My name is Matt, I'm a recovered alcoholic yet and still. Thank you again to everyone for this experience. This has been amazing. I'm always amazed that people ask me to speak anywhere because it wasn't that long ago, nobody wanted to hear what i had to say um so this is truly a gift of god so step six right we're entirely ready to have god remove all of these defects of god right and so so the the question that it asks me on the top of 76 is are we now ready to let god remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable it's funny that i get to pick or i admitted what's objectionable. And yet later, it's going to tell me that I just tell God to take all of the good and bad. But it becomes in this process of sitting after step five, that hour where I've meditated, where I have examined all of the steps that I've done thus far. Where I am in fact powerless over alcohol. That is my truth. When I start, I can't stop. When I stop, I keep starting. I suffer from this spiritual malady. The only thing that could bring me to a place of sanity would be God. I surrender to that process and then I begin to fact find and fact face to dig for the things that separate me from God. Once I've come up with that entire collection of information, I now sit with another man or woman or whatever. And I start to pour out my heart in hopes to find patterns and find the things that are now objectionable, are the things that I can look at as though I laid them out on a table and said to myself, like, okay, let's, you know, I'm doing my own inventory and okay, I've got this here and I've Got that there and I understand that this causes this and I can't have this anymore and this is heavy I'm just trying to make to organize this mess that is me so that God can present this finished product to the world right and I say finished because we're never really finished but you guys get what I mean and so like I think six gets overlooked a lot and we go straight to seven, right? And my friend Devin says, he says, six is really the workhorse step of the two. Because the most important word in step six is entirely, entirely. What does that even mean? I get all of this news in Alcoholics Anonymous from the moment I walk in the door. I learned the truth of my situation. I learned what I really think about you. I learned about the way I react to life. I learned how God works in me. Or me allowing God to work in me? And so now, I have to understand what entirely ready means. How do I come to that? Well, then I have to revisit the question that I answered in step two. Because if the goal is sanity right if the fellowship treats the physical part of my disease and the service treats the spiritual part of my disease then the recovery treats my mind it treats my thinking if i am to recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body i have to do the work necessary to change the thinking patterns mine is a disease of perception the way that i view the world the way that I react to the world, the way that I respond. My instinctual reaction in relationships and social settings, they're skewed. They're defective, right? I don't have the power to show up the way I want to show up, right. I learned in step three, and I mentioned this before, that with the best of intentions, I am a producer of confusion. I never got into a relationship with any girl ever and said to myself, I'm getting ready to ruin this girl's life. Never. I never went out drinking one night and said, you know what? I'd really like to crash my car and get arrested tonight. Right? I have to see the powerlessness or the absence of God in all of the places. So when I get to step six, as I'm sitting there and I'm looking at all of this information that I've received in four and five, I have to ask myself that question again. Is God everything or is God nothing? See, there's no gray area with God. Right? Donna sent me this beautiful spiritual reading the night before the conference that said, I don't get to decide that I'm going to keep this part of my life. God, you can handle this drink problem. And cool, maybe God, I'll give you this relationship because this girl's really driving me crazy. But God, I'll handle my finances. And God, you know what? The fears, I'll take care of the fears. I'll toughen up. I'm man up or whatever it is, whatever that you decide to put in the basket of self-sufficiency. Am I entirely ready to have God remove these things. It doesn't say, am I entirely ready to remove these things? Because as I walk and I begin to depend on God, they told me in the last step that I'm starting to feel the nearness of my creator. I'm having the beginnings of a spiritual experience. And what I start to learn is that the more that I depend upon God, the more I need to depend upon God. And so entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character. And I have to say yes, I haveと say yes or I'm rolling backwards towards living the bedevilments in my daily life. You know, I just I mentioned earlier that I just didn't did a fifth step. And so this experience is relatively raw in my mind, right? And the things that came up weren't nearly as destructive as the things That came up the last time. They weren't near nearly as harsh and they weren't as scary to share. But they also caused some sort of discord in my life. One of the things that came up is that I didn't realize I love to gossip. Good intentions, bad intentions, I just love to gossip. I just like to talk about people. And it's not in a way that I'm going to share your business. I just tell stories about my interactions with people with disregard for whether they'd want people to hear that information. And it doesn't matter what you do. It's not like I do any of that with bad intentions. I don't talk smack about people, I just talk. And I start to learn that maybe. I should give that to God, too. And start to see where it's showing up in my life. Right. And earlier it was it becomes real easy to say, yeah, God, you can have these resentments. These things are killing me. Yeah, God. You can have this fear. These things. These things, these fears, these things are driving me wild. Right And anything that I don't That I'm holding on to You see When I first came in Part of Some of my character defects I didn't want to give up I thought I was Quite the ladies man I didn' t want to Give up being lustful And all these other things I'm sharp and witty I didn''t want to Give up Being sarcastic Whether it hurt people or not These are part of My character These are Part of who I am Well, if I answer the question honestly that this is something that's blocking me between God and you, then I have to be willing to give it up if I want to move forward. And so as silly as the gossip thing sounds, I have to recognize that if it came up on paper, God wanted me to see it. And so I have to be willing to put that into the basket of this is God's business now. And here I am digging. I am just digging. and as I and as once I've come to this this this place where it's like all right God I'm entirely ready for you to have all of these things you can have the resentment fear you can happen way I show up in relationships God you can have my selfishness and self-centeredness God you can have all that now God you take the wheel then I say a prayer and I tell God that he could take all of me good and bad right? And I tell them to do these things because I want to be useful. On the next page, when we get into step eight, it says, and I've said this before, our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. And I can't do that with little or big things, right? And the humbly part of step seven is me recognizing that it's not me. Father Martin says humility is stark truth. It's understanding my place in the order of things. And I realized that I have less power and less power in more situations than I originally thought. And so it becomes easy to do things that I never thought I would have done. And things that i might not think of as big deals or little white lies and this and that, I start saying I feel this God power flowing in and I want to keep it going. And so I show up at cash register and he gives me a couple extra bucks or he gives me change for a 21. I only gave him 10 and I can turn around next to him. He gave me, you gave me some extra money. You know, I had this in the middle of going through this. I went to target one time and I bought a nail clipper and a bunch of other stuff. And the nail clapper was, was a red packaging in a red shopping cart and it fell through the crack of the thing. And so I go, I go and I paid for the thing and I'm on my way to work and I run late to work. So I come back the next day and I go and I find the same nail clipper and I come up to the register and I say to her, I said, here ma'am, I'm going to pay for this and then I'm gonna give it back to you and you can put it back on the shelf. And she says, what the heck are you talking about? I said I accidentally stole this yesterday and I don't steal. I walk around and I'm trying to live this sober man of God and I've got it. I'm not struck virtuous. I'm that struck altruistic. What happens is that I'm doing the things that you told me that are to keep this power flowing in. And I start to see that if I have these patterns that my sponsor pointed out in step five, I can watch for the patterns and pray about them as they show up in real time. Because if my mind is starting to quiet down and I'm feeling God flowing, he gives me awareness and awareness is one of the most beautiful gifts of this program. Right? My sponsor says that I have to get to the place where I can see the character defect walk in the room. And so if I have no power over this, when I see it, I pray about it and I change the behavior. Right. I can't change that. It's part of me. I canít change the way I think, but I can do the work and take the action, behavior, instance by instance, thought by thought, moment by moment, day by day. And I wake up one day in the mountain that I asked God to move has been moved. You know, one of the patterns that came up in my fifth step with my sponsor was that I was incredibly selfish with my time. And I was incredible selfish with money. I didn't pay my bills. Right? I was selfish with your money, if I'm being honest. I didn' t pay people back. It didn' d matter. It was your fault for being foolish enough to lend me money. And I didn't want to give you my time No, I can't come help you move Game of Thrones is on It was all about me I lived in the universe that didn't go past the tip of my nose Right And so my sponsor said And we read a couple books And I think one of them is not conference approved So I'm not going to talk about it But we read an article We read a book that talks about character defects And it says in the very beginning All I do is act in direct contradiction To the character defect patterns That we found in step five and so every Wednesday I went back down to the fire department counseling unit where they had their own aid meeting and in the Bronx thankfully I live in a nicer neighborhood it's not one of those places where you see homeless people lying around but down in Manhattan in New York City and other parts of New York city there everywhere and what I used to do is step over them because I couldn't see that they were sick and suffering and I would say something along the lines of well they made the bad decisions they got their life here and now I'm recognizing that I was a couple bad drinks, a couple of drug choices, a couple of bad nights away from being that guy. And Hey man, are you hungry? Like I said, I wasn't, I'm not doing this to pat myself on the back. I'm doing this because I'm desperate to not pick up a drink again. And this is what you guys told me I needed to do. And I started making a habit of this and I would just, and I Would see a guy and it wasn't always convenient. It wasn't always fun, but I could feel God pulling me to this kind of service. And so one night, the same six-year-old boy that God used as the catalyst to get me out of bed and treatment. I'm still a single father, but he's seeing a different man. And so one night we're going into a restaurant, a restaurant that we go to all the time. And you know, there's pretty girls behind the register and they wear their uniforms entirely too tight. And I'm spending them on the register. And now I'm using him as bait because he's adorable and we're flirting and we'RE laughing. And on the way in, I forgot that there was a homeless man out front who had asked me, I'd ask him if he was hungry. And he said, yeah, you know, can you get anything? And so on the way out, I'm walking out with my son and he looks at him and I look at him and there's a super long line for the restaurant. So I just run into the bodega on the corner. I put together a bag of stuff and I come out and I give them and I give the guy the bag. He's very, very grateful. Again, my car and we're driving home and it's real quiet and I don't know why the music wasn't playing because there's always music playing on Puerto Rican. And I hear my son from the backseat, he says, so dad, you mean to tell me that if somebody's hungry, I should feed them? And now this is the man who not too long ago was writing down that he was terrified about whether or not he would be a father because he didn't have a mom. I didn't know how to show up as a man in the world. I didn't know how to relate to you. I did not know how to put loving hands on another human being. My son got to see an act of God that I did not even mean for him to see. I was just scrambling to seek God because you told me that God was the answer to the problem that is me. Yeah, God. You can have all of it. Because if the magic works like that, God, If the reinforcements are going to come that beautifully, God. If the payoff is that beautiful, God, I'm in, I am buying what you're selling. What else do you need from me? Because I don't want to be resentful. Selfishness doesn't feel good anymore. Fear is uncomfortable. showing up as the toxic denominator in any relationship i'm in is not the person i came to be and if god is everything and he lives deep down inside of me then anything that does not reflect a decision to live a life according to the principles that god has set forth for me is out, entirely ready to have God and humbly ask him, God, take these things, please. And I don't know when he's going to take what. I don'T KNOW WHEN HE'S GOING TO USE MY DEFECT FOR SOMEBODY ELSE. I DON'T KNOW When I'M GOING To Wake Up One Day And Not Have To Turn My Head When A Pretty Girl Walks By. I DONT KNOW WHen I'M Going To Stop Flirting Inappropriately. I Don'T Know When these things are going to happen. But I know that if I keep doing the work and I keep examining these things and I keeping honest with you guys, and I keeps saying, God, please take this. God, please take of this. They do go away. They fall from me. Grace becomes real. And I don't have to carry around the weight of self-sufficiency anymore. I can be free. My shoulders can come back. And that exhale, that breath of fresh air that I felt when that first drink hit my lips starts to be the breath that I feel when I wake up in the morning and I say, God, surprise me today. Because as I get closer to him, he brings me closer to you. And And that's what this whole thing is about. Thank you guys. Now I gotta move. Hi everyone, Donna recovered alcoholic. I don't know, I always, I follow him. It's like, I just want him to keep on talking. Do I have to share now? Well, you know, my experiences in Step 5, you know, I felt the presence of God in a way that I hadn't before. And I always say that I was asleep to life thinking I was awake to life. And I become awakened. And so I get to six and seven. And I realize that what I saw, who I had become living life on self, I didn't need to behave that way anymore because I was pushing people away from me. And in the third step, I'm willing to be changed by God and I had the willingness to go through the process. So in step three, God, I'm willing for you to build with me as you see fit. And so I get to see what I'm going to do and what I am willing to have God remove. I know that I can't change myself. If I could, I would have. So you'll never hear me say, oh, I'm working on my character defects. Those are my limitations and my limitations are my best. See, because without thinking about it, the first thing out of my mouth is a lie. Because I want to impress you. I don't want you admit where I'm lacking. I don'T want you to think I don' t know. And I've actually watched myself just lie. Each time I get to step six and seven after a fifth step, I remember I was at work and impatience was real big for me. and my boss had asked me to do something for him and I thought that he wasn't giving me enough time and in that moment I just felt blocked from God it was a very uncomfortable feeling and I immediately asked God to please remove the impatience and show me how to be See, I don't have any experience practicing God's principles. For me to have patience, there's something that has to happen in between impatience and patience. And that's God. There's some things that I don'T feel comfortable doing. You know, with COVID, you know, I have an opportunity to work from home. Back in the day, I would have loved not having anything to do. But I was feeling real uncomfortable not being a productive worker. And I was trying real hard to try to be okay without working. And I felt guilty. And I called, I emailed my boss and asked if I could have a phone conversation with her. And I was honest. There was something that has changed in me to even be willing to be honest on that level. And she thanked me for it. I know that I wanted to be free and I want to be of use to God and I know it was real important that I'd be willing to go to any length and do what my sponsors and my step guides told me to do at the time I don't know how God works inside I just know that there has been a transformation that I can't take much credit for The only thing that I bring to the table And this is the willingness And you know willing Is indispensable I don't know how I Became A woman of integrity A woman Of courage A woman who feels That her needs are being met on the inside so I don't have to go on the outside to get them fixed. But I know God did what God did. And I can't explain it because experience didn't come from here. It's been 20 years since I've been on this journey with God and And I just know where he has brought me. See, because he brings me here. I didn't come here on my own. I sometimes don't know how to even talk about what God did in and through me in spite of me. I just knew I followed these directions. this is probably the hardest step for me to talk about because i'm just being willing and open and god does the rest whether it's experiences that i'm in that i get to see my limitations and my need to turn to God. You know, Matt had mentioned there's some things that we want to hold on to. Sometimes I don't even know what I want to hold on until I'm in that situation. Do I have that uncomfortable feeling? See, I don' t like feeling uncomfortable today. I really don' t. I was uncomfortable my whole life and see you go through this process and all of a sudden you're seeing life do a different set of eyes now I got real sick seven years in when I got in a relationship and thank god i had the willingness see willingness throughout this book willingness willingness willingness and i had an alan on sponsor take me through this work and i got to see a deeper level of truth because see there was one thing that i i didn't think i was ever going to be able to let go of forgiveness i wasn't willing to forgive this person and i really and i wasn't willing to let them off the hook and through this process i got to see why i wasn t willing to to to live those things see i wasn d willing to forgive because i didn t want somebody to just feel they can just walk off without saying they re sorry but I realize that sometimes some people can't say it at the time when I want them to say it and if I sit around and wait I just stay sick and I didn't want to let go of past hurts because I wanted to hold on to what you did to me because I didn'T want to think that I was the problem so I needed to blame somebody because heaven forbid, I find out if it was me and then what do I do with that truth? So I get to see all of this in this process and what God lets me see and the people that he puts in my life. Yes, God, you can have all of me, good and bad because see, I saw some of the assets. You know, it was real important that I can see, well, Donna, there are some things about you that you are good. Could be proud of. And so I want God to have all of me, even the days where I don't think that I need God, you have me that day too. Like Matt says, I can't pick and choose what I'm willing to give God. And see on a daily basis. I have to be humble. because see my ego doesn't want what it wants more than anything else is for me to stop turning to God it's waiting I know we're not on 10 and 11 yet but I start forgetting not forgetting just don't want to do an evening review my ego loves that so yes God have all of me good and bad. And the thing too, is when I'm not behaving the way I normally behave, because see, I'm so undisciplined. The first thought that comes in my mind, I go and do it without thought of the repercussion, how it's going to hurt you, how It may hurt me. But when I don't get my way and behave the way I normally behave, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable being patient when my default is impatient. Matt mentioned gossip. I can be on the phone and die and say something and don't say it. And it's comfortable because I've been that way all my life. but if I watch for it enough and I turn to God enough and I turn the God enough on the other side of the uncomfortability is the transformation. But see, I've got to be willing to go to any length through the uncomfortably and pain of not getting my way so I can experience the change, and I don't create the change. Like I said, I don t know the opposite of my defects because that's my default. Any given moment, I leave out here early in the morning and go to the gym. So if I get to the gym at 6 o'clock, those kids got to get to the gym earlier than me. And heaven forbid if they're not set up properly. Because all I see is me in the moment, in my best moments, I can be a master of confusion. I'm at the gym. I work two machines at the same time or not the same type of one after another. I want a machine over here. The other machine is over here on here. Somebody jumps on that machine. My thinking says what are they doing on my machine? Don't they know that I got to use it next? Come on now. In a moment. And so if I can watch and catch it, I might not say anything, but sometimes I don't say anything but I go near them and roll my eyes. See, but immediately I know I was wrong. So I offer up an apology. I'm sorry, you didn't know I was needing that machine. See, that's becoming awakened to the defects. I used to be so asleep, I would just say, well, that is how I am. If you bring something up to my attention, number one, I wasn't going to apologize because I was too prideful. Some days I'm apologizing all day long. I'm so grateful I am so grateful that these spiritual tools are laid at our feet and the only thing we need to do is pick it up because if the end game is to be of maximum service to God and my fellows there's some changing that needs to happen in and through me because coming in this door I had no intention of being helpful to anybody because if you asked me to help you, I'd have to say what's in it for me that's why God sends me people to work with But I don't say, well, not right now. I just started working with groups of people. So I have a bunch of workshops. Now it gets a little crazy when everybody's ready to do fifth steps, but God works that out too. Willingness, willingness, willingness. That's all bring willingness, open mind and honesty. and God does what God does. He doesn't need my help. What he has done in and through me, like I said, I couldn't have pulled this off. I am a different human being with the same difficulties that crop up. See, the only thing I try to do And I like to use the word work at instead of try. I work at pausing, turning, and asking. That's the try that I do in this program. More than that, I don't have any power. So I trust and rely on God. I turn, pause, turn, ask, pause. turn ask pause turn ask and there's some things that I have to ask repeatedly because they crop up more than others but I realize I don't need to manipulate my way through life anymore because sometimes the things I think that I'm supposed to be doing are not what I'm supposed to do at all and I go down a path that I find out wow being driven led me someplace that I really don't want to be. So how can I be led, not driven? Because I was driven before. And I don't have to do that today. Most times if I don' t know, I don''t do. And that's a big concept for me because I thought I had to know. I gotta be doing no if I don't know I don' do and I sit and I pause and I wait and I ask and the answers come they come so can he now take them all every one see if I say no I close myself off to the grace of God And I don't want to do that because I don' t know what God's intention is for me. I just know that what God has brought me so far is bigger than anything I could have pulled off. So you remember I told you I lived in the world of at least. Because that's about as much as I can do, at least, well, at leas, you know, at lease. So God God replaced Fear and inadequacy With courage So that's his principle Courage ain't mine Stick-to-itiveness I never was able to do that Persevere I've heard those words, but I'd never knew what it meant to be those words. But I couldn't know what I needed unless I saw what I had become on my own. See, I'm grateful for what I saw in step five when I saw that list. Number one, it was an eye awakening because, see, I told you, I thought I was this great big such a much. When I looked at that, I looked at those defects. I was like, damn. This is the best I could do. That was very humbling when you see it on paper like that. So I'm convinced God can rely on God. I know it's going to be better than this. and God my God shows off and shows out but I have to be willing to let him see God doesn't demand that we turn to him he gives us free choice but somebody told me God can hold his breath a very long time as he waits for us to want and need him enough. And I love that because I can see my God looking down at me, smiling, going, look at my poor child. If she knows that I'm right here, why does she come? So each step along the way, the experiences led me to the next step with the next experience and the next experience and what I experienced in five, that closeness and nearness to God. I wanted more of that. So if I was willing to go to any length when I started, you better believe in step six. When I was awake and every time I felt blocked off from that spirit, I was bowing my head. God, please remove this defective character and show me how to be because then I found it was blocking me from you guys. I don't know, I can't say, and sometimes I have a hard time discussing my God because I think whatever I say, it wouldn't be sufficient. I wouldn't do my God a service. I really don't think that I For him to remove my self-will defects And replace them with his own characters That's pretty powerful for me Because I had wanted To show up differently in life a long time And I realized that It wasn't me that does the changing God does the changing because the next thing I knew my outlook is different my reaction is different how did that happen how it just did I can walk in my neighborhood and I can see people they're not lazy they're disillusioned they have no hope they're doing the best that they can compassion I never had compassion I did but not enough I think there's some of God in all of us but my God qualities were so blocked so that's all i have i hope you experience my god because my god's awesome thank you excellent thank you so much donna and matt for uh sharing with us your six and seven experience it's amazing. I just, you guys are knocking it out of the park and just phenomenal.