Step 7 and the Seven Step Prayer as a Mantra – Carla R.

Yeah. All right. And, um, I'm going to right now I heard, um it was, I mean, things have been blending together so much and I've been doing so much walking and stuff, but I heard I was taking a walk, like one of my six mile journeys through my neighborhood, um one Sunday afternoon and I heard Carla talk and I mean she just had such a calming presence and and she was really cool um the last week i've talked to her about change times and all this stuff um so i just i'm very grateful for my new friend carla and um she's sponsors people and it's wonderful carla i'm just going to shut up now and turn it over to you thank you so much all right thanks dale thanks so much for uh for the invitation my name is carla and I'm an alcoholic. My husband's in the other room laughing at that. He thinks that's awful funny when you say calming, because my voice doesn't have the same effect on him as it does you. That might be funny only to me. But anyway, I am so glad to be here. And this talk is almost superfluous. You know, Polly said it all and Carol really kicked it off. That was such a moving talk. I really, really enjoyed that, Carol. Thank you this morning. And then Polly really broke it down in, you know, all over the place. And, you know, the funny thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, I guess I should tell you my sobriety date is September 25th, 1987. And And the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is its simplicity. And then, you know, but what's so wonderful is the fellowship. And then we can sit together, whether we're sitting at a coffee table in a coffee shop or on something like this, we can take the same experience and spread it out and lay it out for everybody all to see and then compact it all back again, which is, you know, this book is everything that we've been hearing today has been, is in this big book. And I like that. I needed that. That is the first time I have heard Polly talk many, many times, but that's the first Time I've heard that particular, this particular workshop. And I was liking that because it sort of proves my theory a little bit that if I stay in the literature this long, that the message is here. This is where the message is. And when I was about 21 years sober, a lot of my life had changed yet again. and, uh, and I was starting to feel this. I was having some physical stuff, you know, and I know if I think men go through some of the same stuff, but, but uh, you know, as a woman we go through, we're continually since childhood going through a chemical imbalance. I don't know why they make one any different, but you know it was, it was very dark. It was very dark and I had no reason, no real reason to be depressed or anything, but I needed a new view. And you know, like our inventory talks about in the big book, he talks about having to look at things from an entirely different angle. And again, that's what it is. If I don't believe only alcoholics have a disease of perception, I believe that's sort of the problem of humanity. But for me, the stakes of having a problem of perception is that first drink. And if I don' t find a solution and a way out of my emotional turmoil, then that could be what's lying ahead. The spiritual cushion that stands between me and the first drink begins to diminish, begins to shrink, and then I've got no mental defense against the first one. So I never want to forget what the stakes are for me as an alcoholic. And like Bill says, you know, these steps have their benefits for all in their simplicity, but um there are 300 about 300 fellowships that use these steps i never want to forget my first half of the first step what keeps me in the rooms of alcoholics anonymous and so that's what's at stake for me um uh when i got here i uh i heard i heard a couple of different things i heard let us love you i'm going to try not to be too repetitive here because you know what paulie said is like what Polly said, you know, and so ditto. And so I'm going to hopefully not tread over too much of that and maybe get to add to it. When I was new, I heard let us love you until you can love yourself. And that sounded nice. You know, that sounded good. And like maybe what I needed, you know for a couple of days. And then I started to hear people say, let us love you until you can love somebody else. And that's really our purpose here is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and to our fellows. And, and the methods are the same, you know, they it never changes. In steps 10, 11 and 12. That's what we're going to do. We're going to continue to the first steps one through nine got me here and got me Here to trust the process. I had an awakening, I had an awakening that I discovered was sustainable, which I never could before I got to AA. You know, when I was, when I was out there drinking, you know, I've always believed in some great power that runs in and around and through us. But but when alcohol came into my life, it became the great counterfeit power for me. You know, I could pray or I could take a drink and a drink just fix things right away. Why do I have to sit around wondering what God's will is for me? I can take a drink and I'm okay now. And so alcohol really became my spirituality. So when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I needed a sufficient substitute for alcohol that had thrown me away. It wasn't you know, it was barely a solution. I was getting about 20 good minutes out of the whole thing and a whole lot of consequences. And I love that old saying, there's a bottom below the bottom, you know because there really is. And we can stop digging anytime you want, come on in here. So I took the first nine steps and in each one, in each step there was a slight bit of hope and a slight awakening, if you will. When I became fully apprised of my condition, and our big book spends 51 pages on what our condition is, on alcoholism, this allergy of the body that happens when I'm drinking And this obsession of the mind to drink alcohol that happens when I'm not, you know, those two, I could not unlock on my own. And I came in here and you taught me to treat the spirit and I began to get better. And, and my book says, our book says that spiritual, that I came to discover that spiritual principles would solve all my problems, not AA, but spiritual principles. And we have a ton of them in here that solve my alcohol problem. And the reason that I'm beginning to start to open this up here a little bit is that the article that was written right after, that comes right after the article that Polly mentioned in the book Language of the Heart, After the Next Frontier Emotional Sobriety, is an article called Take Step 11. and um and what that began to do for me as i as i began to open up that step 11 practice was to see that that um that everybody has spirit and that and then i wasn't so alone you know but i just wasn't so alone but i had to expand i had to one more time loosen my grip on how i thought things were supposed to be um initially you know we talk a lot about the the bedevilments in on page 52 we act like you know they're only ours that alcoholics or or maybe even alanons that that the bedivulments on page 50 to belong only to us but you know really anybody could look at this and say you know that there's been a time in their life where where um you know мы had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We were prey to misery and depression. We could not make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We did not seem to be of real help to other people. It was not a basic solution of these bedevilments. More important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight, of course it was. Of course, this is in the middle of the chapter to the agnostics where, where they discuss step two. And for me, step two has always meant maybe when I'm in the darkness, when I'M in the dilemma of darkness, whether it was when I was new or all these years later, I come back to step two and it's maybe, maybe there's another way to look at this. And so to start, and I'm going to tell a little bit of my story here in sobriety because I don't know any other way except for our stories that illuminate how this process works in our lives and how we learn to expand and come back to these same steps one through nine, we come to trust the process. And then in 10, we repeat that process. One through nine is in step 10. My day starts on pages 84 through 88. It's my recipe for daily living. And for me, some say four through nine, but there's 10, you know, it wraps it around and the first three steps are at the end of that little blurb on page 85. And alcohol is a subtle foe. We've got it. We can't have it. We've gotta loosen our grip on how we think things are supposed to be. And that I can't rest on my laurels i've got to continue 11 is improving that conscious contact that has come about after entering the world of the spirit the ninth step promises um that we read at a lot of meetings are maybe the best definition of what emotional sobriety looks like you know free from self-pity um intuitively knowing how to handle something that used to baffle us i was talking to a sponsee the other day and she called and she said, this really uneventful event happened. And I said, what was that? And she said well I realized that my mortgage hadn't been paid and that I was the one who forgot to pay it so I just paid it. And you know it was no big deal and she realized that some emotional sobriety she might have grown up just a little bit. And i said yes, yes isn't that great. The absence of catastrophe, the absence of having to blame, the absence of going into self-pity like oh I'm 67 years old and I can't remember anything anymore and so blah blah blah and having to go into how Polly was talking about morbid reflection. We just learn to have a day. It's not that we don't have problems coming in but I've got to recognize that when some of this stuff is working. And, and I, and I go through my bouts. I can, if I want to sit at any given moment in my, in any, on any given day, I can sit and freeze frame my life. And if I'm having, if i'm tired or if I had just, you know, somebody did just hurt my feelings and I can freeze frame my life and look at it like, oh my god what have I been doing? I'm 62 years old and I've got nothing. I've done nothing for nobody. Nobody likes me. I can't do anything right and and there it is, and so as soon as I can recognize that, I don't have to go into anything big. I can just release it, come back onto the beam, but I think I get surprised when I hear people talking about things that happen and don't realize they're in our text. You know, this big book, there's a lot in this big book. And it's, you know, if I keep coming back to the text, it talks about, it addresses everything. We don't need any additional special nuances to add to this. We, we, you know, read the instructions in the book and we can be okay. Now, when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I took the steps. I made that first round of amends to my family when I was about nine months sober, which is incidentally when the obsession to drink alcohol was finally lifted for me. And I know that that's different for lots of people. I know that some people come in, it's already been lifted. And for me, you know, it took that time. And so I'm just living proof you can be here and not really feel like it for about nine months. And there was some grace in there where I was able to stay and not really feel liked it. And like Polly said, acting better than I felt. You know, all these years later, acting Better Than I Feel, it helps me survive being out in the world. It helps me to act right in the meetings. But what started to happen as I got older was I realized that mine is the head i go home with and i i have to do i have to come back and continue to take this personal inventory and continue to set right any wrongs that i make along the way or else my head begins to go there i begin to experience the darkness of like he says the the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again that's what's at stake all the way down the line now it may take a long time for it to get there, but I have to continue to watch this. And when that feeling in my solar plexus comes where I'm overly sad or catastrophizing or thinking that any small event is going to change the world for me, I have come back to this maybe. Maybe if I, there's a promise at the end of the second step in the chapter to the agnostics that says, When we drew near, he disclosed himself. And so this is still a continuing process of drawing near to this creator. And so what happens in pursuit of the 11th step, like Polly said, is discovering the things that are still blocking me all along the way. And, you know, in the beginning I had terrible guilt about my daughter. You know, I had left her once. I went off on a bar stool and ended up leaving her for about four and a half years. And before that, I was a frustrated, scared mother. And I hurt her. I abused her and treated her just like I said that I would never do because of the way that my stepfather treated me or that my mother treated me, which is just beautiful fodder for that fourth step compassion that she was talking about. You know, I didn't recognize that I had felt so victimized when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous by other people that I didn's realize how I was victimizing those around me. And so it took this process and coming to trust the process in the first nine steps was a big deal. I didn' t know if this was going to really work. I had had experience in church. I remember going to my mother was a Southern Baptist too And I remember going, going there and having my first drinks of Strawberry Hill out in the alley behind and, and going out into the bowling alley and handing out those, those little tracks, you know, and then smoking a joint with the pastor's son out in the parking lot, you know? So, and then I'd say C and, um, and so anyway, I have to continue to watch for those things that are blocking me. Once I, once I got to AA and I, and I saw where my faults lied, I saw where I just the, just the very beginning of my dependence on people, on what they thought, on my pride, on what I thought they should think of me. Having done nothing, you know, I mean, I peaked out at about 11 and a half and skidded across the bottom till I was 29 years old. You know, I was not someone who came here having accomplished great things. I, you Know, I wasn't someone who was I was a loser for a long time. And so coming here, making amends to this day, there's not one member of my family who'll stand in the doorway and say, no, please don't go to the meeting. They never do that. And you know, the first thing that happened in the first real implementation of really having to grind in and put this thing to test was when my daughter was 11 years old and she was starting to come home at all hours of the night, beat up and bloody. She'd been jumped into a gang. She was startingto find her sense of family and camaraderie out in the street where I used to, you know, she just, if she came home at all, you know, she's got 18 year old bottles crawling in and out of her bedroom window and she's 11. And, um, and, and boy, I just wanted to power through. I just want her to, I wanted to forget all of those things that had got me to that day. You know, I was almost two years sober when this was happening and I wanted to forget about it. You know what sort of like, yes, I've worked the steps and now here's my life and what this process of continuing to take this inventory and to practice all of these principles is that I realize that these steps have to be implemented in my actual life. This is where the rubber hits the road. That's what these steps are. And, you know, Bill, I'm just going to paraphrase something that he said is that we don't make a big project out of working these steps after a while. We get to know them, and we start to use them at any given moment, at any given day, at every given time in our life. And so when this was happening, I prayed, I asked God for help, my home group stepped in, they were giving me a lot of experience, shared experience as to what they did with their kids. And then I ended up putting her in treatment and following their direction more, you know, surrender. Some people talk about having two surrenders in Alcoholics Anonymous, but for me it's been a continued surrender. It's just a continued to surrender. And here he says it again, of course all these years later is 1958. He says, of course I haven't offered you a really new idea only a gimmick that has started to unhook several of my own hexes at depth. Nowadays, my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity or depression. I've been given a place, a quiet place in the bright sunshine. And then he goes on to write that article, take step 11. So little by little by Littleby steps began to take effect and sort of get into my soul and, and I had to actively practice them. And, and that meant learning to be kind to my daughter, she was 11 years old. And when I wanted to fight and control her with my, you know, with physical strength, I had to go another way. And there were times that I had To say to my 11-year-old daughter, you Know, I was wrong about that. I was Wrong about that, and man, that is like in the parents' guide to never, ever do That as far as I was concerned, and that's how I grew up, you don't, you Know, your parents aren't wrong, you Don't see what you see, and now it's, you know and and so learning to say i was wrong and learning how to parent through the guilt was one of the most valuable things you guys taught me and i don't have time to go into a whole big long thing about it but it was a continued practice and perseverance so this step 10 this step10 that happens on page 80 84 and 85 where i start my day every day um has to come into play where i'm just going to continue to do what i did when i got here hold on just a second i'm sorry uh honey could you do that somewhere else my husband forgets we're on zoom and now he's going to have a conversation in the living room hold on honey okay and that's that's fodder for another 10th step you know i i had to discover he's getting hard of hearing and he doesn't like it and neither do i And so I found that I have to speak really loudly to have him here. And so, I try to tell people who might hear me yelling at them that I'm just helping him here, I'm not being critical, I'm Just Helping Him Here. So, but once in a while I hear that and I feel bad, you know, and he can't hear me, but it helps. Well, anyway, yes. So here's where the, here's Where My Day Starts. And doesn't it say to do this all over again, And this thought brings us to step 10, which was the ninth step promises that brings us back here, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory. That's the fourth step. When I do a written 10 step, I'm doing the four columns in the fourth step. I add the fear inventory on page 68 to that because what that does for me is it takes me from the resentment to what I can do in the future, what I could have done instead. When I ask, when I'm asking God what he would have me be instead of fearful here in this particular situation, because from the beginning of, from just before the third step and all the way into the 11th step, doesn't it talk about fear? doesn't it talk about not running the show doesn't the essay on the seventh step in the 12 and 12 talk about fear being the chief activator of all my defects of character always boiling down to fear fear of not getting or fear of losing whether it's spiritual, material or physical not getting or losing so when I can see that oh my god I just lost my mind. Oh, yes. So it tells me to what I can do instead for next time. So it gives me a new view and pours me right into steps five, six, and seven. I'm going to talk about this to my sponsor, get another person's view of this. I'm also going to get it off my chest. We're going to divide that guilt and crap and shame and have a little me too moment usually. And then I'm gonna go into step six and seven and see this. And I love that Father Dowling said in step six, that anyone willing and honest enough to try this step repeatedly on his defects of character, to try the step repeatedly, which that tells me that we're going to have to do this more than once. Most of the time, some things go right out, but you know, I'm going to, there's going to be a lot of times given any different situation that, uh, that this, this particular fear may crop up and it may come out in selfishness. I become selfish because i'm afraid I become dishonest because i'M afraid I'm self-seeking because i' m afraid afraid of what afraid of losing or not getting it's so simple And when I walk around and start my day with this consciousness again Um of continuing to take personal inventory and all my inventories are not written But but when I do write one, it looks like four only shorter and um but a lot of times um i can i can check it on the spot which is i believe really what what uh we were meant to do too to go out in the world and when i was at my i used to work at a big corporate job and man it was fast moving and you had to deal with people and um and i couldn't stop and say wait a minute i've got to go right on this first and then i'll be back to you i couldn't do that so i so i had to check myself and ask what are you afraid of were you afraid of? Were you afraid of losing, not getting here? Maybe it was just faith. Maybe it was just I just wanted to be right. And so I could step back and look and say, well, could you explain that to me again? And find the words, find new words. Because when I got, before I got here, and even when I Got Here for the first year or so, maybe longer, maybe it was longer for other people than it was for me. But when I Get Here, everything was an F word. Everybody was an effort and everything was an F word, and that was, you know, when I cleaned up my diction, I had nothing left to say, like Van Morrison says, you know, I just, and so it's a challenge, and it's kind of fun for me to try to find the words when I'm feeling such anger based on fear that I'm going to lose face, and isn't that stupid? Isn't that, I mean, for me, it felt stupid in the light of, you know, like the guy hitting his head over, hitting himself over the head with a hammer trying to find relief. You know, isn't that just self-destructive? And so I love finding the new words. But so here, let's just read this for a second and see if we can hear all the steps here in this step 10. This thought brings us to step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. So there's eight and nine in there. We vigorously commence this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We've entered the world of the spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. And don't we, when I continue to be more willing, you know, it's just that first time going through and seeing where I could be selfish and where I Could Be Self-Seeking and where I thought about so much about what other people thought, you Know, and the embarrassment of all that went away, you know, it's almost kind of joyful. And with sponsees, when I was new, when I knew at sponsoring, I was kind of obnoxious because I'd go, yeah, self-pity about self-fitty. Can't you see it? And they're like, well, I don't think that's really that funny, you know. But I'm joyful because I know there's freedom then after that. So I kind of had to change my method a little bit. Because I certainly don't like it when people do that to me. But, uh, uh this is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime boom right there We're going to keep doing this. We're gonna keep doing it. So I better learn to take an attitude of Of okay, you know i'm gonna face it like paulie said one of my favorite sayings easy does it but do it You know, I gotta do it gotta move forward, but I don't have to you know I don' t have to changed the world overnight it just you know watch just watch and be willing continue to watch for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear there they go again and to give you just a little bit of i'm not sure why i find this so terrific maybe lots of reasons but in the oxford group they used to use the four absolutes as as a way of uh as a goal as a way of finding themselves to be maximum for the day you know when they they practiced absolute or they try sought to be absolutely pure absolutely honest absolutely unselfishness and unselflish and absolutely loving you know the four absolutes and you'll still hear some they still have some meetings in Akron like called four and twelves but so and so what are the opposites of those. Selfishness, unselfishness. The goal of that dishonesty, honesty, resentment. Well, or self-seek, I guess self- seeking is the opposite of purity and fear. Love is the opposite of love. And so, I mean, fear is the opposition to love. It's the opposite of love, yes. And anyway, I don't know a little history lesson. I guess I just botched that up a little bit. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. So there's another direction. You know, when I had to stop reading this book like it was a novel, like it was like something that happened to somebody else someday and read it like this is something that can happen for me too. If I take these actions, this can happen to me too, for me too. We discuss them with someone immediately, there's five, and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone nine then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help uh 12 love and tolerance of others is our code and we've ceased fighting anything or anyone and here's a promise promise uh that we receive if we meet the conditions that we just that we said um for by this time sanity will have returned so we're talking about step two there the promise of the second step has come true came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. But even way back then, didn't the consciousness of our belief come to us? Didn't we believe that somebody believed? Didnít we believe maybe this would work? And now all these steps later, all this time later, here we are again. We will be seldom interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as if from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We'll see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes now. It didn't just come. We had to do a whole bunch of stuff before we got here, but now we're here. So don't, don't forget that. Um, we feel as though we've been placed in the position of neutrality, safe and protected. We've not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We're neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That's how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition and it's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels now here we come right back to the first three steps we're headed for trouble if we do for alcohol is a subtle foe number one we're not cured of alcoholism what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition, to every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our willpower along this line, all we wish. It's the proper use of the will. And sometimes when I don't know what the right answer is or what the Right Way to Look at it is, I can kind of jar that apart by just saying to myself, I don't know what the truth is. I don'T KNOW WHAT THE TRUTH IS ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW, BUT I'M WILLING TO LET IT GO FOR A NEW IDEA, YOU KNOW, JUST IN THAT MOMENT AND COME BACK TO STEP TWO, MAYBE. MAYBE I CAN BE RESTORED TO SANITY ABOUT THIS. AND THEN GOING BACK INTO THAT THIRD STEP STUFF, AND I LOVE THAT EXERCISE ON PAGES 60 TO 63 WHERE WE, YOU know, it really shows us what self looks like and how I look when I'M TRYING to run the show. And frankly, sometimes I find myself into action trying to run the show when I don't even really want that particular outcome. It's just been automatic. And so I don' t want to go too fast anymore. I take steps 10 and 11 because it slows me down and it helps me examine. To be self-aware, not self-centered, you know? To be aware of how I'm affecting others, what my impact on those about me might be so that I don't look up one day and they're all trying to snatch what they can back away from me because I've been trying to run the show. And I look up and I say, what? What happened? What are you mad for? You know, and I begin to think life doesn't treat me right. And then I'm down into self-pity again because I'm in just, you know, ready fire aim. And steps 10 and 11 keep me mindful of my actions. They keep me mind full of preemptive actions. My favorite version of a preemptative 10th step was given to me by a lady named Susan when I was brand new. And she'd say, you know, when you're getting – feel yourself getting excited, just stop and breathe through your nose. Pause and breathe though your nose and what I found. So I used that, you know, a lot and it really was effective. And what I found the main reason for that was it kept my mouth shut when I would breathe through my nose. And, you Know, and again, I need to remember this inventory, not again, writing inventory can be another exercise in self-centeredness if we're not careful. We don't want to be, you KNOW, we want to have a good idea of where we're in our own way and then move on, take corrective action and boom. Um, but, uh, I do a better step 11 when I've done 10 and I do a better Step 10 when I'm practicing 11. It just keeps me awake and I don't want to go back to sleep in that way where I'm moving through the world of sleep and bumping into people and not being effective. I know what that's like and I've experienced it myself. And in fact, there was a story, you know, when I was 51 years old and about 21 years sober again. And this was during that same time when all of this depression stuff was coming up and situational and just chemically. And I had gotten this job again. I had left corporate America, a six-figure job. And boy, wasn't it fun walking around being able to buy whatever I wanted and bring the money home and all of This stuff. And then I left because it was time. and um and now i'm doing these odd jobs like driving a limo and and working in a dance studio and and doing all these you know really you know minimum wage things and i finally got a job at home depot which was regular it was a regular job and and uh and i was just thrilled to be there but they were not as thrilled to have me as i was to be here for lots of reasons i don't need to go into now. But so they didn't trust me when I first got there, I looked like white grandma, that's the best way I can describe it. And and so they Didn't they needed to get to know me first, and I needed to learn to allow that. But then, so now I'm in this minimum wage job, and I'm loving it. I'm thinking, I'm saying, here it is, you know, and because I had been ready to go off to a man a monastery, you Know, I really thought it was time for me now to just head for the hills and live in a cave or do something like that. And so I just coined the phrase Home Depot is my monastery. Here's where we're going to start again. It's again, you know, I had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable again. And so my supervisor looks about 14. He's, you Know, he's about the same age as my grandson. And so i think this has got to be a breeze, right? I know how to do this. And not even thinking. And so I'm always coming in with the help. I think he needs to, I think she needs coming in with the health by thinking needs and I can, this guy is so mad at me by the time the first couple of months I've worked with him, he has so mad and I don't know why he's just pissed and I'm like, I don' understand and how am I failing at a minimum wage job? A job that's just so simple. You wipe shelves and you stock stuff and how can I be failing at this? But I knew I was and he was mad And so I called Polly with this dilemma. You know, I don't understand. And and you know, it just took this looking at it from an entirely different angle here. And she said, well, honey, she said you she's one of the few people I allow to call me, honey. And she says, you're not trying to make your bones anymore. You're trying to help him make his bones. and, and I, and like the, you know, the ball dropped. I was like, oh, you know, he doesn't need to know what I think about his job. He needs me to do what he wants me to do. And so when I came in and instead of saying, how about I do this? Or how about I do that? Thinking I was showing initiative. You know, what would you like me to do today? What would you like me to do for you today? How can I help you today?" Oh my God. Oh my God, it changed everything. And so by the time I left there to go on to school and do something else, he was willing to work around that. They had a little party for me. They all took their lunch hour and bought me a cake and did all that stuff. But it changed my relationship with this guy and just something I just couldn't see. But I had to be willing all those years later to still laid down this pukey little stuff, you know, like God, you know, me and my orange shirt in Home Depot. And what the hell? Why can't I get this right? And yet, you know, a simple outside point of view helped get that going. But what I started to do during this time was I had always had some kind of some form of meditation going on since I was new, but I did not take it was always you know the recipe on pages 84 through 88 and then doing all of all that this said which would be you know fine it would be a great life if that's all we ever did but i gotta go deeper i've got to i like the mystery i like to i i wanna i wanna I like to read all kinds of spiritual texts from all kinds spiritual traditions try this meditation try uh try these things and And now it was time. It was time for my spiritual life to get really, really big. And I had to be at work at 4 a.m., and I was getting up at 2.30 so that I could meditate and do this. And it required that kind of commitment. And I'll tell you, you know, my life continued to change to get bigger, to enlarge, which is really where I learned to—you know, and it gives directions here. It tells us what to do at night. and tells us what to do in the morning and it tells us what to all throughout the day. It just doesn't miss a beat and I had somebody ask me one time, you know they said it's very important that you start at night and then I thought but wait a minute we're just going to be circling around so wherever you are in the day go ahead and start doing what it says where it says because you're going to circle around and get it all done anyway but um it keeps my spirit open it keeps me open to new ideas like maybe I don't know everything and I know that can sometimes just be I don t think intellectually I don d think I know everything you know that s intellectually but I sometimes behave like a person who thinks she does and you know just blast through my life ready fire aim um I want to talk a little bit about the, this, uh, this 10th and fourth step one more time, because it's just, it's so important. It's what we walk around with. And, and I love that. I, you know, act better than you feel thing. It helps me. It has helped me at work. It helped me in meetings. It helps me when I don't know what to do, um, in a situation. But again, my head, mine is the head I go home with, then I need to resolve this. I need to come to a real conclusion and a real understanding of what's happening inside of me, where I'm holding on to old ideas, where I am being self-reliant instead of God reliant, where I have not surrendered. I need to know this. And when I was five years sober, I was raped by an intruder in the middle of the night in my apartment. He came in through the kitchen window. And you know, when I tell this story, it's sort of like, why are you telling that story again, but it's what happened to me when I was five. And this is what I learned when I was 5 years sober. So I got no other story about this when I was 5. This is what happened. And the guy came through my kitchen window and I had concrete floors so I didn't hear him come into my room that night. And I was in my bed and I rolled over and as I rolledover I rolled into his hand and he put a knife to my neck and he said don't say a word or I'll cut your head off. And he took the telephone cord and he tied my hands behind my back and he raped me and he robbed me that night in my room. And, uh, you know, by that time I had had a relationship with this power that I call God for short. Um, it had been slow, but sure. And I knew that I no longer had to define or comprehend this power, but I was getting to know it through the process of these steps, through the process of letting the stuff that needs to come to the surface, come to the surface to be surrendered, just be surrendered yet again, and to take corrective action yet again. And, um, to see those parts about me that were blocking me from the sunlight or the spirit and so that I could be useful to others. And so after a couple of few hours, uh, I ran for the door. I, there was a strategic moment and I ran from the door and my own boat lock kept me in. And so we ended up having a little wrestling match. And instead of getting more angry, he went out the same window he came in. And it turned out that I knew this guy. I'd actually watched him get sober 30 days before I did. I watched him give his life, his wife, his kids and everything back. And then I watched them join the church and leave AA behind. And when he went off, he was like, He went out like that. And what I chose to learn from that is while the big book tells us to be quick to see where religious people are right, to make use of what they offer here in step 11. You know, this is what we do to make us of what the offer. Alcoholics Anonymous is the place where I learned the terms and conditions of my alcoholism. This is where I learned that I am not one of those people who can go home after a Sunday sermon and have a glass of wine. My big book says in step 10 that I will never be so spiritually fit that I can take a drink of alcohol safely in any form at all not not mouthwash form or cough medicine form or food form i'll never be that spiritually fit as far as i'm concerned i believe in the phenomenon of craving i believe that that happens that we have this allergy that 90 of the population doesn't have and in you know and i'm a very curious person like i said i love to go to a jewish synagogue and a buddhist temple and a southern baptist uh uh service or a catholic mass and and see you know what they're what they'RE DOING MOST OF THE TIME WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT IS LOVE AND SERVICE YOU KNOW WHEN IT BOILS DOWN TO ALL OF THAT THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TAKING ABOUT and um but they they talk about spirituality where everybody can get it where for everybody's purpose anyone can pick that up and use it but what we do when alcoholic synonymous here is we point spirituality right at alcoholism we aim it right at capitalism that's our purpose here we're using spiritual principles this is what we view here and then i can go anywhere i want to in the world and i'm free but i never want to forget what the stakes are here for me in an alcoholic synonymous for getting emotionally uh unsober they used to call it a dry drunk when i was new they you know getting dry without using these principles and you know there was a trial that followed and as part of the defense they had a lot of the guys i'd known years before get up and testify as to who i used to be and you no during in the meantime here the guy had scared me you know the and fear anger at five years of sobriety was still my favorite way to deal with fear like that not at every i wasn't just walking around angry all the time but when fear like that you know it came back and i was i was like using this power you know and anger is another counterfeit power it's a faulty dependency like bill talked about but and it's so diminishing to the spirit it's it provides power for just a little while and then it's and thenit starts to cannibalize my spirit so so I you know so I was using the seven step prayer as a mantra I knew that this was objectionable it was objectional both to me I I wanted it gone but it was I was so used to using it and so all I could do was be ready be willing and said the seven-step prayer And at every opportunity, I could to take a breath before I responded to anybody and practice being responsive rather than reactive. And I could feel it. I could see it vibrating off of me. And there's some of that that's PTSD and all of that stuff. But it's still this same method, you know, calm that down. It just took a while. But I needed to be able to function. I needed To Be Able To Function At Work And Function In My Life. And, and, um, and so the seven step prayer was my mantra. And, uh, so now I'm sitting in the courtroom and as part of the defense, they had a lot of the guys testify. And so now it was my time to get somebody to be a character witness for me. And by that time I was working at a big fancy investment firm, downtown Los Angeles. And that's a place I never would have walked in the front doors of years before I would have had no business being there, very accomplished people. And now I am walking right alongside them. And so the division had their volunteer to testify on my behalf. And they told them all about who I used to be. And here's where I got to get a little bit of a glimpse as to I had made some progress. And we have to stay awake. Here's the purpose of staying awake is that when I'm ready to go, when my feelings are lying to me and saying it's never going to change and why would something like this happen? You know, I'm working 12 golden steps. And even though I didn't believe it, I didn't have necessarily a new view that the division head at this new place where I was working said, yeah, but she shows up early and she stays late. And she was where she said she was. And see, that's Alcoholics Anonymous speaking for itself. He didn't Have to be coached. He just got up and told the truth as he had experienced it through me at five years of sobriety. And the biggest blessing after that was when we went back to work, it was business as usual. He didn'T ever bring that up again to me at all. and then it was my turn to testify and I'm sitting in the witness stand and I look out and I see him sitting at the defense table and it's a place where I've sat before and I could sit again five years of sobriety I had a little experience with this but now it's rubber hits the road time again and what I looked out and I saw him sitting sitting at this table and what i remembered was this was this prayer at the top of page 67 and Polly talked about that too because see there's nothing new there's this is we're talking about the same program program is the steps fellowship is the people and the steps are in the book and the Steps are in uh uh expanded on in the 12 and 12 and then all of the other literature talks about coming back to the steps that's what we're talking about anytime you got a subject relationships you know resentment emotional sobriety all about the steps we're going to talk about the Stepes and so that prayer at the top of page 67 where it says though we didn't like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us they like ourselves are spiritually sick he just like me he just like me haven't i been so out of control at some point in my life where i've caused that kind of damage to somebody maybe not rape but something equally as destructive or couldn't i again one day if i were to take a drink maybe not even maybe i could do it sober caught be so out control that I cause that kind of pain and suffering in somebody's life? Or am I somewhere now so out of control and so delusional that I don't see that I'm causing that kind of pain in somebody else's life. And what happened for us is we became two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom. I'm a big believer that forgiveness doesn't come from a spiritual hilltop, it comes when I see you and me, when I say that I am just like you in this way just as capable of causing destruction just as capable and what happened was we became two alcoholics sitting on opposite sides of the courtroom he just liked me he liked me and then I was able to get back on my own side of the street and look where you know just take care of my business and the forgiveness came, the compassion came that day. And then the healing took a while longer, you know, all of that, you know additional sensitivity and nervousness about, you know, going to sleep and nightmares and all of that kind of stuff that goes with something like that. It eventually went away to about a year and a half later. And, and you know I what I realized over time was that the consciousness of consciousness of my belief had come to me um that i that that the circumstances under the circumstances at five years sober still the thought that a drink might make any of this any better did not occur to me and that was a gift you know to realize that the magic had happened you know over time uh over and over and again in all of the circumstances in my life and i've had really some wonderful circumstances and then some really crappy ones you know went into business with a guy that ended up bankrupt and, you know, through bad choices. Polly's story about that resentment for her reminded me a lot of being so angry, just so angry and not wanting to be, you Know, just not wanting to be there and having to apply the same process and being willing. I've got to be willing. I've Got to be Willing to loosen my grip on how I think things are supposed to be and what I think you're doing to me and allow that to be reframed me, allow my view to be reframed, to be willing to see it from an entirely different angle. And then to take corrective action and you know the first 10 years of my sobriety had a little bit of emotional sobriery and a little bit not. My second 10 years of sobrietry had a little bit more emotional sobrietty and a little bit not and then the third decade has been a little bit more emotional sobretty and a little bit not because, you know, as long as I'm alive and as long as I am a human being, I'm going to make mistakes. And it's just going to be a matter of my willingness to see them and surrender them up to be corrected and to take corrective action. So I guess the words here are continue, improve, and practice. To continue to take personal inventory when I'm wrong, promptly admitted it, improved my conscious contact with this power I call God for short and to carry the message to alcoholics. Because when I've done, once I've done all the written work and I've down all the meditation and everything it means to get back out there and stick my hand out and say how you doing? Can I help? And not as a form of escape but as a from of I've done the work and now working in the fellowship and seeing how I can help often reveals the things that next need to be inventoried. And so if I'm really out there to try to learn how to help, then that's what I got to look for. Anyway, I hope I said something that was helpful. None of my business if I don't or who but I really, really appreciate getting to be part of this Dale and to get to share this time with my sponsor and with Carol who I had not heard before and I just loved her talk as well. So thanks so much for letting me share guys.