Step 3 Is Not Tweaking — It Is Actor to Agent, Director to Channel – Damon E.

Now, when you're ready.
Good afternoon, seekers.
My name is Damon, and I am an alcoholic.
And what that means is alcohol is not my problem.
If alcohol was my problem, I would have taken the alcohol away,
and all my problems would have gone away.
But what I have is a disease of perception, as Clancy calls it.
My sobriety date is August the 10th of 2004.
And I do want to thank Jerry for inviting me to do this.
It's such an opportunity.
And also,
for the committee for putting this together.
I know they've been working a good long time,
and I do want to thank the committee for that.
Thank you all.
I want to be clear on one thing as we start out.
My opinions are not facts.
This is something I didn't realize when I came into the program.
And recently, I've begun to realize that all of my facts are opinions.
So what is going to be here is just,
my point of view on these steps and what they mean to me.
And I guess the best illustration of that is a story about the blind men and the elephant.
And the story goes, the blind men and the elephant,
one says, an elephant is like a wall.
And another one says, no, no, no, an elephant's like a snake.
No, an elephant's like a rope.
No, an elephant's like a giant leaf.
And what's happening is they're all feeling different parts of the elephant.
You know?
Now, I think when I came in here, I was on the fertilizer-producing end of the elephant.
And I thought that's all there was to life was the fertilizer-producing end of the elephant.
And when I came in here, you guys began to show me that there was another way of looking at life.
There was another way of looking at the world.
And this is some of what you've taught me.
And come again next year, and we start chatting about this,
and I'm sure some of the things I'm going to share with you today will change.
But I'm using this technique with the slides
because there are certain things that I think you can capture visually.
And I'm going to look at some of the suggestions that Bill made in the third step in 1967.
We'll get into that in just a little bit.
First of all, what I'm going to cover is how big a change did I decide to make in the third step?
I'm going to look at Bill never uses the word surrender.
He does use many forms of the word abandon.
So we're going to be talking about that, too, and what's the difference there.
We also, about the difference between victory and a word called transcendence.
Now, you may think that's a big word, but I want to point out to you it has the same number of syllables as alcohol has.
So it's a word we can comprehend, and Bill is making a suggestion that we use it.
We're going to go over pages 60 to 63, each of those sections, some of that,
some of the richest characters.
I spend about two and a half hours or more with each of the people I sponsor on that section.
I find out if we can get that section, if this decision can be made
and we can understand what the expectations are, then the rest of the steps become easy.
If there's resistance to this step, I think the rest of the program becomes difficult and we struggle with it.
And then I'm going to talk about what does it mean to me?
What does it mean to me to have made this decision?
And now what has it done as I've gone through the rest?
The steps and seen the implications of it, and then some practical tools you can take away today.
You know, whether you get this great, you know, big aha moment or whatever,
some of the things I see from this step that are very practical applications you can use today
to help make your life and the lives of the people around you better.
How big a change did I decide to make?
This is not a program about tweaking.
Any tweakers out there?
Okay. I think there may be some folks who come in.
And they're pretty much on the beam anyway, and can tweak a little bit and walk off in the happy end of the sunset.
That has not been my experience.
I've seen a lot of people who thought that.
And I'll give you the example of Bigfoot.
Now, Bigfoot is a beast that could exist.
I mean, there's enough forests around and everything, you know, it's something that could exist.
And there's been a lot of people that said they spotted somebody,
know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody that's spotted them once.
Now, what happens is I see an alcoholic.
It's anonymous people coming in, and they believe that they can come in here and learn how to drink successfully.
And I've talked with people, maybe over a thousand years of sobriety when you total it all up.
And I've asked them this question.
Have you ever known anybody who drank alcoholically, came in, got this program, and was able to go out and drink successfully?
And they all say no.
I mean, theoretically, such a beast could exist, right?
Just like Bigfoot.
But every single one of them says no.
Never have they seen it.
But what happens, everyone I see coming in here thinks they're Bigfoot.
And thinks you can tweak and then go out and be able to drink successfully.
Today, I realize that when I drink, I become a different person.
And I cannot make decisions for that guy as to what he's going to do after he takes a drink.
That's what it means for me to be powerless over alcohol.
Because I am not the same person after a drink.
It would be like me trying to decide whether you drink or not.
That's how drunk I am.
That's how different I am.
Has anybody ever been told they become a different person when they drink?
Yeah, I understand that.
Okay, so I want to take us back into the doctor's opinion.
Because I think this is where it really comes into play.
It sets the stage for what we're talking about with this change.
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.
The great news for this is that's the only why we have to worry about.
Each and every one of you drank for a different reason.
So, the why must not matter.
I take meetings into this.
Drinks matter.
I've been to the jail.
I've been doing it for over six years.
And those guys come in and they've got a lot of time on their hands to try and figure out why they drink.
And each one of them spends a lot of time and it becomes immaterial because it's unimportant if there's one solution.
Each and every one of us has found one solution that regardless of why you drank,
we can implement this one solution and we can turn our lives around.
So, I like that part about it.
So, the sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurious, that means that it does harm,
that they cannot, after a time, differentiate the true from the false.
Denial means knowing the truth and being unwilling to tell it for fear of the consequences.
I see that word creeping in.
It's not in the big book anywhere.
But we do have delusion all in the big book.
And delusion means psychotic thought in which the individual cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
That's my kind of word.
That's where I was at.
And it says here,
to them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one.
You know, I identify there.
They are restless, irritable, and discontent.
You know, I would get a little restless.
I'd get a little irritable.
Get a little discontent.
Get a lot restless.
Then I'd take that drink and,
ah, yeah, you know.
Yeah, I'm okay, you know.
I drank because of the way I felt.
I drank to shut off the past and the future,
so I could climb into the right here right now
and be okay with who I was right here right now.
But if never one was never quite enough,
because if that felt really good,
then one more would feel a little bit better.
So,
and, ah,
unless they can again experience a sense of ease and comfort,
which comes at once from taking a few drinks,
drinks they see others take with impunity,
that means without punishment.
After they have succumbed to the desire again,
as so many do,
the phenomenon of craving develops.
And what Dr. Silkworth is talking about,
the obsession of the mind is before I drink.
The craving develops when I put alcohol in my body.
I react differently to alcohol.
My sister got poison ivy,
you know, one time when she,
many, many years,
she'd never been allergic to it,
and then somebody burned it in their backyard behind her,
and now she can't go anywhere near poison ivy.
Well, see, poison ivy doesn't do anything for her,
so she has no interest in rolling around in the stuff.
Me, when I developed an allergy,
an allergy to alcohol,
it did something for me.
And I had to find something that would do,
that was a sufficient substitute.
And as Bill says in the vision for us,
vision for you,
is that it was vastly more than that.
And that's the beauty of this program,
one of the great promises.
And so, once the craving develops,
it passed through the well-known stages of the spree,
emerging remorseful with a firm resolution
not to drink again.
This is repeated over and over,
and over,
and over.
We've been there, right?
I think I'm preaching to the choir.
And unless this person can experience
an entire psychic change,
there's very little hope of his recovery.
That doesn't sound like tweaking to me.
You know?
That's what I have to find.
But here's the great news for us.
On the other hand,
and strange as it may seem to those who do not understand,
once a psychic change has occurred,
the very same person who seemed doomed,
who had so many problems,
he had a spirit of ever-solving,
suddenly finds himself
easily able to control his desire for alcohol,
the only effort necessary being that,
required to follow a few simple rules.
And Dr. Bob talked about those few simple rules.
There seemed to be a few simple rules.
He said,
we all wanted happiness and peace of mind.
He said,
but we wanted it from the alcohol route.
And I love it.
He says,
we were none too successful.
And so,
what I need to do is to find out what these simple rules are.
Later on in the book,
in the appendix,
in the spiritual experience on 567,
the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.
Personality change.
That's not just tweaking a little bit.
That means changing my habits,
changing my attitudes.
Later on he says,
and finally in the same page,
he finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration,
a profound alteration in his reaction to life.
That's what we're talking about.
And for me,
it's not so much my reaction to life as I've,
instead of reacting to life all the time,
I've been given a set of tools that help me to respond to life,
to respond appropriately.
Anybody ever told you you didn't respond appropriately,
didn't behave appropriately?
I think there was so much with it.
I didn't know how to behave appropriately.
Or I'll tell you what,
I knew how to behave appropriately,
and I didn't think it applied to me.
Half measures availed us nothing.
We stood at the turning point.
We asked his protection and care with complete abandon.
Now complete abandon sounds like fully pregnant.
I mean,
abandon is pretty complete in and of itself.
And Bill's saying complete abandon,
and this is on page 59.
Now what's interesting is that there are many pages
where Bill uses the concept.
On 15 he talks about
he and Lois are abandon themselves
to helping alcoholics in their home.
In 27 he's quoting what he believes Carl Jung said
to Roland Hazard when he said that the ideas,
emotions, and attitudes of these men
are suddenly cast to one side.
That's abandon.
48 he talks about I had to abandon my prejudice
against the spiritual and to open my mind.
Here on 59 in these pages,
pages 60 to 64,
we'll see him use words like RID,
R-I-D,
which, by the way,
is the initials for restless,
irritable,
and discontent.
Isn't that great?
I just love that.
And when I realize that what I'm trying to get rid of
is anything that makes me restless and irritable
and discontent,
and Bill uses RID a number of times.
On page 72,
as he's talking about the fifth step,
we have to do that absolutely.
We can't hold back.
Because whatever, you know,
we're only as sick as our deepest,
darkest secrets, aren't we?
On 86,
he uses a word called divorced.
We had to be divorced from self-pity.
I think when you're divorced,
you're kind of getting rid of something.
You're abandoning a situation.
And on 164,
the famous line,
abandon yourself to God
as you understand God.
Here's where we come in
is one of the reasons I wanted to show this.
This is as a page 210.
It's called Out of Bondage from As Bill Sees It.
Now, this was originally published in 1967.
It was called The AA Way of Life.
But I think,
and this is my own opinion,
is that some people saw that Bill wanted to make
a couple of suggested changes to the first 164 pages.
This is not the only suggested change he makes.
But this is one that jumped out at me.
And in that,
he's quoting the third step prayer,
and he's even quoting at the bottom of the page
that it shows on page 63 of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, the words that have changed there,
instead of saying,
take away my difficulties,
that victory over them
may bear witness to those I would help.
He says,
take away my difficulties
so that my transcendence over them.
Now, why would Bill do that?
That's a very well-loved prayer.
What's his point?
What's he trying to do there?
And let's first look at the definitions.
What is victory?
These don't sound like the recovery words to me.
Overcoming an enemy or an antagonist.
Achieving a mastery or success
in a struggle or endeavor
against odds or difficulties.
You know?
That didn't work for me.
You know?
It tells me I'm powerless.
And it appears to contradict on page 84
where he says,
and we have ceased fighting everything and everyone,
including alcohol.
Let's see what transcendence is.
Climbing or going beyond.
Going beyond a prior form or state of oneself.
Now that's what I need.
Okay?
Victory is standing in the stadium saying,
I won.
Now what?
What happens with the team
that wins the Super Bowl the next year?
You know?
The likelihood of them winning again?
They're back into the struggle again.
I'm not interested.
The obsession to drink has been removed from me.
I don't think it was a victory.
I think I was,
I was given a gift of transcendence.
On 60 to 63,
Bill suggests that I make a decision
to go from the actor, director,
you know, the actors trying to direct the whole show
to being the agent.
From being a manipulator to a contributor.
From being opinionated to humble.
From being self-centered to God-centered.
From outcome-centered to principle-centered.
From a source of power to being a channel of power.
From fear, delusion, self-seeking and self-pity
to peace of mind.
From self-serving to doing his work well.
So let's look on these pages
in pages 60 to 63
and let's look at what he's talking about here.
Being convinced, we were at step three.
Bill uses the word convinced twice.
Once in this paragraph and once in the next one.
I think it's so important, first of all,
being convinced coming in
and then the trick in this program is staying convinced.
Staying convinced that I become a different person
when I drink.
Staying convinced that arranging life
outside to suit myself
is never going to create happiness.
It's got to be an inside job.
Staying convinced,
and that's what working with newcomers
helps with me so much,
is staying convinced.
Being convinced, we were at step three,
which is that we decided to turn our will
and our life over to God.
And Brookings' definition is great,
that, you know, will is my thinking
and my life is my actions.
I also like to think of will
as being my little plans and designs.
You know?
I love that.
My little plans and designs.
There's this huge universe
and I've got this idea of how it could be better.
Isn't that a hoot?
Isn't that a hoot?
You know?
So just what do we mean by that
and just what do we do?
So this is what we're covering.
So the first requirement is that we be convinced,
there's the word again,
that any life run on self-will,
my little plans and designs,
okay,
can hardly be a success.
What's neat about it today is
I've changed my definition of success.
I thought success was getting the car,
getting the house,
getting the wife,
getting the position,
getting the recognition,
having everybody like me,
all of that was success.
When I find out today success is a state of being,
when I'm at peace with me,
when I got the car,
remember I got a Grand Am,
I was driving it out,
it was my first new car,
driving out the parking lot,
there's a Bonneville sitting right there.
Okay.
You know, something else to work for.
You know,
and whenever I got there,
I always thought there I'd be happy
or then I'd be happy
and I always got to there
and it wasn't what I expected.
You see,
because I didn't do all these things,
I didn't buy them for the things,
I buy them for the way I thought they would make me feel.
Remember, I drank to change the way I felt.
So I have to look at what the core causes
and conditions are for this.
So on that basis,
on that basis of my little plans and designs,
trying to play chess with the universe,
chess with the universe is,
you know,
chess is an okay game,
it really is,
but it has a limited number of squares,
it has a limited number of players,
it has a limited number of pieces
with a limited number of moves
and there's one end game to it,
checkmate.
The universe has got an unlimited number of players,
an unlimited number of squares,
an unlimited number of moves.
It is way beyond what the intellect can handle.
I cannot use the same tools.
I have to go onto a spiritual basis.
I cannot use the same tools.
The,
the ego,
when properly used,
we build the Golden Gate Bridge.
We send men to the moon.
I've been a caregiver for a man,
93 years old,
who was involved in the space program
and to talk about what they did
and how they did it,
and it's wonderful what the ego can do
when properly directed.
It's neat.
It's a neat tool when it's harnessed,
when instead I,
it becomes the tool for me
rather than me becoming controlled by my ego.
That's the self-directing.
So,
when I'm on that basis,
trying to make everything suit just me,
I'm in collision with something or somebody,
even though my motives are good.
I love Wile E. Coyote.
Any Wile E. Coyote fans here?
This is where it says,
most people try to live by self-propulsion.
Here's a picture of Wile E. Coyote.
He's on his Acme rocket,
and there's a roadrunner,
and look at the roadrunner's face.
He's smiling.
You know?
And here,
and what the second picture is,
crashing,
and there's his silhouette
coming out through the clouds.
He's done it again, you know?
Now, Wile E. is my disease, you know?
I go back, okay,
we've just got to get a bigger order from Acme,
you know, got to get the roller skates this time,
you know,
and just some other something I can order,
and I'm always after this one end thing.
I think what I,
I transcend into being the roadrunner.
He's got a set of tools,
and all he has to do is like step aside,
you know?
And, you know,
and that's the end of the coyote,
one little step aside.
He's there.
He's right there.
He enjoys who he is.
He enjoys the way he's made,
the way he's put together.
He's got it, you know?
I can dig Wile E. Coyote.
I can understand him.
I like to be a little more like the roadrunner.
Each person is like an actor
who wants to run the whole show,
is forever trying to arrange the lights,
the ballet, the scenery,
and the rest of the players in his own way.
It doesn't say the lead actor, by the way.
It doesn't say the director
who wants to run the whole show.
This is the point here,
authority and responsibility.
Who gave the actor the responsibility
to manage the lights, the scenery,
and the ballet?
The actor, we assume, right?
And I don't know how many plays
where they've given the actor that role.
He's taken it on himself,
and he has no authority, okay?
This is one of the great lessons for me,
is this is when Bill talks about sanity
as a lack of proportion,
an ability to think straight.
I'm out of proportion in this whole balance,
between authority and responsibility.
Let's see what happens with the actor.
Anybody here like Monk?
Oh, yeah.
If his arrangements would only stay put,
if only people would do as he wished,
the show would be great.
Everybody, including himself, would be pleased.
Life would be wonderful, right?
And here's Monk,
and he's trying to arrange
all the forks and the knives
and everything in just a certain way,
but the world is very messy.
The world doesn't seem to cooperate.
I tell you what, reality is the unexpected.
Everything about it's unexpected.
What I need is a set of tools
that will allow me to handle the unexpected,
and today I look forward to the unexpected,
because I've developed a set of tools
that have been given to me through this program
that will allow me to handle the unexpected regardless.
That's the beauty of this.
In trying to make these arrangements,
our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous.
He may be kind, considerate, patient,
generous, even modest, or self-sacrificing.
That's using principles as a weapon
to get what I want.
And here's some more.
On the other hand, he may be mean,
egotistical, selfish, and dishonest,
but as with most humans,
he is more likely to have varied traits.
I've asked this question to a number of people.
Have you ever met a truly evil person?
And I can't say that I have.
I've met a couple of people
who've been in penitentiaries
who are pretty convinced they had.
That's a very comforting thought
that they're in the penitentiary.
But I find that we are all varied traits.
And if I cannot see the good in another person,
there's something wrong with me.
So, what usually happens?
The show doesn't come off very well.
He begins to think life doesn't treat him right.
He decides to exert himself more,
thus the image of Superman on the screen.
You know, break out the big guns.
And try and just exert yourself more.
And try and just exert myself more.
And he becomes, on the next occasion,
still more demanding or gracious,
as the case may be,
depending on which weapon he needs to pull out,
which tool.
We're trying to use a set of tools
to manipulate a realm
that it just doesn't work for.
Still, the play doesn't suit him.
Admitting he may be somewhat at fault,
I love the face on this kid.
He is sure that other people are more to blame.
I'll tell you, in my business,
I was so good,
that when a project went bad,
the first thing I could do
was figure out who else's fault it was.
You know?
I was, and I'll tell you what,
I didn't make very many friends that way.
Because ultimately,
I wound up blaming everybody at some point.
No wonder I was cut off from the rest of the world.
They cut every thread that I had.
I'll tell you what,
I don't think there is a creature lonelier
than an alcoholic and his cups.
We cut ourselves so much off from everybody around us,
by all of these shenanigans.
He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying.
What is his basic trouble?
Is he not really a self-seeker,
even when trying to be kind?
He's not a victim.
Victims don't last very long in this program, folks.
We either lose our victim status,
or we go on to some place
where somebody will listen to us whine.
You know?
Here comes delusion again.
Is he not a victim of the delusion
that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness
out of this world if he only manages well?
Managing has to do with other people.
You ever known a manager who didn't manage people?
I mean, it might be a title,
but ultimately you've got to be managing other people.
And when I don't have any power to manage other people,
how can I have that happen?
I'm powerless.
My life's unmanageable.
Because I've misdefined my life.
And if I can properly define what my life is,
then it becomes manageable.
And delusion.
I am the victim of my own delusion.
That's where I'm a victim.
And this is the screaming woman looking up.
We have this effect on people.
Have you noticed?
You know?
The families around us, you know?
There are times when people just look at us like that,
or they want to scream out like that.
Is it not evident to all the rest of the players
that these are the things he wants?
And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate,
snatching all they can get out of the show?
Is he not even in his best moments
a producer of confusion rather than harmony?
We just, you know, by playing that game,
everybody else plays the game,
and then all of a sudden nobody's winning anything.
We're all losing.
Our actor is self-centered,
egocentric as people like to call it nowadays.
This is a painting of Narcissus.
It was a story of Narcissus, Echo, and Nemesis.
And Nemesis thought it was,
didn't think very much,
that Narcissus thought he was the most handsome creature
and just thought so much of himself.
And Nemesis lured him to a pond.
He looked into the pond, saw his own reflection,
and fell in love,
and withered away and died there.
And up from the ground came a flower,
which we now call the Narcissus.
See, I can get so focused on me,
so centered on me,
that I miss out on the rest of the world around me.
And my Nemesis was alcohol.
It kept driving me more and more towards there.
My Nemesis was also my opinions.
I think the Tenth Tradition is one of the greatest things
I've learned how to practice in my own life.
The fewer opinions I have on outside issues,
the less I get drawn into controversy.
This paragraph was one that confused me for the longest time.
I'm going to go over it once and then back over it.
What was its place in this whole section?
He is like the retired businessman
who lolls on the floor to sunshine,
complaining of the sad state of the nation.
The minister who sighs over the sins of the 20th century.
Politicians and reformers who are sure all would be utopia
if the rest of the world would only behave.
The outlaw safecracker
who thinks society is wrong to him.
What's that doing in there?
And the alcoholic who has lost it all and is locked up.
Let's go back up and take a look.
The retired businessman who lolls on the floor to sunshine
complaining of the sad state of the nation.
I looked it up and there are 130 million people
in the United States in 1938 when this was written.
What do you think that retired businessman knows
about the lives of 130 million people?
How does he know the state of the nation?
What's the source of his information?
I think one of the greatest things I ask myself
when I start forming opinions,
what is the source of my information?
Isn't that an incredible ego?
To believe I could understand the state of the nation?
I found out when I've gotten much more local.
Down here, I found the state of the nation
is there are a lot of seekers all around,
not only in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous,
but all around the county and the state that I've run into.
I'm almost like I've got this neon sign going,
Seeker, Seeker, you know.
And I find these people everywhere.
And I've got a lot of good stories about that,
but not enough time to tell them.
The minister who sighs over the sins of the 20th century.
Now we're talking about an entire world and 38 years.
And I also have the question is the minister,
what should he be doing?
Should he be concerned with the sins of the 20th century
or should he be ministering to his parishioners?
It's a lack of proportion.
It's a large ego.
It's believing and judging other people
when in fact I'm not doing what I need to be doing.
Politicians and reformers are sure always
going to be utopia if the rest of the world would only behave.
This is saying I know better how society should be structured.
That's incredible.
And I thought I did.
My wife turned off the cable TV about nine years ago.
She thought I was addicted to cable TV.
What I was doing was a closet drinker.
I was drinking a fifth of vodka a day
and just crashing down the couch and watching CNN
and judging the world.
And I thought I knew all this stuff
because I had a degree in history.
Yeah, I got a degree in history.
I've never been in any of these places that I read about,
but I got a degree.
I know a lot about black words on white paper, you know.
The outlaw safecracker who thinks society has wronged him.
This is me.
This is a story Bill actually tells about a safecracker,
and he said he was justified in robbing from other people
because the world had wronged him.
And there's a big equal sign here.
And the alcoholic who was lost all was locked up.
Whatever our protestations,
whether you agree with this or not,
whether any of this stuff makes any sense to you,
you can throw out everything we've said up to this point.
Whatever our protestations,
are not most of us concerned with ourselves,
our resentments, our self-pity?
See the woman with the tears in her eyes.
It's just that.
Selfishness, self-centeredness.
That we think is the root of our troubles.
This is fantastic news.
Because if selfishness and self-centeredness
is the root of my problems,
I have something I can do about that.
If you are the source of my problem,
the world is,
politics,
you know,
whatever is the source of my problems,
I'm screwed.
Because I've got nothing I can do about that.
This, I think, is this to me,
driven by a hundred forms of fear,
self-delusion,
self-seeking,
and self-pity.
We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.
And where is all this coming from?
Opinions.
The most important person I talk to today is me.
The story I tell me about,
the story I tell me about me
and about you
has changed my life.
I can tell the story that I can see everything wrong in you
or I can see you as some of the most incredible matter
on this side of the universe.
We are seeking out,
trying to find other forms of life.
And yet here we are surrounded by life around us.
I can marvel today in the ordinary.
I can climb into a state of wonder and awe
at just being alive.
And self-pity,
self-delusion,
all of those things go away
because it's no longer self-centered.
Sometimes a hurt is seeming without provocation,
but we invariably find that at some time in the past
we have made decisions based on self
that later place us in a position to be hurt.
So our troubles, we think,
are basically of our own making.
Again, great news.
They arise out of ourselves
and the alcoholic is an extreme example.
The alcoholic is an extreme example
of self-will run riot,
though he usually doesn't think so.
Anybody in here ever been in a riot?
I was in the only riot I know of.
I was in downtown Atlanta in 1968 or 9,
around the strip they called it.
And it's a place where all rules are off.
There's nobody running by principles or doing anything.
Everybody's just running around and it's chaos.
And yeah, I had thrown away all the rules.
I knew the rules for success.
I knew what I was supposed to behave properly.
I just didn't think they applied to me.
See, in a riot,
you throw away that just doesn't apply to us anymore.
That's my self-will run riot.
It's outside of the care of God.
You see, for me, the care of God is like the way
we have a lot of animals.
My wife collects species.
I was the first one she collected.
But we let the dogs out.
And one time we were away
and somebody was staying with us
and the dogs managed to get out into the street.
One of them, cute little Sam, little Corrigan,
got run over and killed.
He was outside of our care.
He got outside of the fence.
The care of God for me is staying within this fence,
within the principles.
When I practice these principles in all my affairs,
I'm within the care of God.
And I'm free to do whatever I want to do
within those principles.
See, for me, God's will isn't so much a what to do,
as a how.
And that to me is very clear for me when I look at that,
that if I can do anything I do with kindness and integrity,
the results will always be favorable.
Even though I don't know what the results are going to be.
I'm okay with that today.
I'm okay if things don't turn out the way I planned
as long as the results are beyond my wildest dreams.
Anybody okay with that?
Above everything, we alcoholics must be,
here's our word again,
rid of this selfishness.
That doesn't mean we need to tone it down a bit.
That's not what he's talking about.
Bill once said, and he said to a number of people,
the good is often times the enemy of the best.
Are your standards high enough for yourself?
You know?
That's what this step tells me.
Raise the bar.
It's because it's possible.
When I get appropriate,
when I get in proportion,
in right proportion,
it's possible.
We must or it kills us.
God makes that possible.
It's very curious.
Does he make it possible that it kills us?
I don't know.
But it also says we must be rid of this.
I think it's that God makes it possible
to be rid of selfishness.
I have to believe there's a power behind these principles
that if I live by them,
the outcomes will always be favorable.
There has to be that power there.
Otherwise, I'm back to playing chess with the universe.
And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self
without his aid.
Without knowing there's a power behind those principles,
I'm going to go back to trying making my little plans
and designs again.
Many of us had moral problems.
Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore,
but we could not live up to them
even though we would have liked to.
Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much
by wishing or trying on our own willpower.
Any wishers out there?
Wishing is sitting around,
hoping something will get done
and not taking a single action.
Like when you wish upon a star or something.
Now, philosophical convictions galore.
I was a guy who read all the books,
I was a guy who read all of these works and everything,
and I was like the man who went to the fancy restaurant,
ordered the filet mignon and ate the menu.
I had no experience to match up with it.
And when I came in, when I hit bottom,
they say that we don't find God on the mountaintops,
we find Him in the valleys.
And at 3 o'clock in the morning,
seven years ago,
when I finally made a decision,
and I said the three words that any one of us,
any one of us must have to say to really make this is,
I need help.
And that was a prayer of an atheist.
And right now I can say it worked so far.
So, we had to have God's help.
Here I was, these hands reaching out with the handcuffs,
the bondage of self.
The bondage of self for me is the chains of the chains of thought,
the chains of feeling.
I have to break the chains of thought,
the chains of feeling.
I have to have a new way of looking at the world,
a new pair of glasses.
This is the how and the why of it.
First of all, we had to quit playing God.
Why?
It didn't work.
Isn't that one of the great,
that's great reason for,
it doesn't say,
it's not very elaborate.
Why didn't it work?
What does it matter why it didn't work?
It didn't work.
It didn't work.
It keeps it very simple.
That's all I need to know.
It didn't work.
Okay.
So, next we decided that hereafter in this drama of life,
God was going to be our director.
He is the principal.
We are his agents.
What happened to the actor?
The actor is not even on the stage anymore.
We've gone from being the director,
the actor trying to direct everything,
to being the guy in the background
who's trying to make sure that all the audience
has a great, wonderful experience,
and the actors on the stage, whatever.
If the power needs some,
you know, the power goes out,
making sure it gets back on,
making sure the bathrooms are clean,
doing all that stuff,
going into being of service.
And that is playing the role that is assigned to us.
Finding out what our natural God-given talents are
and using those for the maximum amount of good
for the most number of people.
He is the father.
We are his children.
I have, my son is 27.
My daughter is 21.
And today they come to me and ask me,
if I, as a resource,
I'm just a resource for them.
And when they come to ask me for things,
and I can look and say,
is this something they really need?
Yes.
Then I can, I will do everything in my power
to provide that for them when I can.
If it's just something they want,
I may be doing a favor for them
by not giving it to them.
That's why this is such a,
it's a simple idea.
He is the father.
We are his children.
He sets those boundaries.
I can go outside of those boundaries,
but I will no longer be in his care.
I have free will.
Most good ideas are simple,
and this concept was a keystone
of a new and triumphant arch
through which we passed to freedom.
And in 552 it tells us
that the only true freedom a human being can ever know
is doing what they ought to do
because they want to do it.
Today I want to be a good father.
I want to be a good husband.
I want to,
this morning I did the dishes
and did the laundry
and I was happy to do it.
I want to do that.
And when I get in alignment there,
then I get rid of the restless,
irritable and discontent.
You know one of the things,
Ann Smith who was Dr. Bob's wife
kept a diary from 1933 to 1939
and in there she talked about
15 types of surrender.
She talked about surrender the tongue.
That's a really good one.
And the other one she said,
was surrender my rights.
And I went,
wait a minute,
this is America.
You know,
what do you mean surrender my rights?
And I think it means
I surrender my right to be upset.
If I could say,
yeah I have a right to be upset.
I also have a right to cut my leg off with a chainsaw.
Now why would I want to do that?
Because who am I hurting but me?
When I'm upset I'm hurting me.
Other people may not even care.
I must think that it's going to get something done
but it never gets anything done.
It goes back to it didn't work.
So I'm interested in freedom.
And that's what this thing is.
I've never been more free today.
Freedom from the bondage.
I can have crazy thoughts today.
I was walking the other morning.
I walk early in the morning
and I get kind of the phlegm in my throat
and I spit it out on this guy's lawn
and by the time I'm about a quarter mile
or not even a hundred yards down the road
I'm already in my mind having a shotgun fight
with this guy
about me spitting on his lawn.
And then what I can do
is all of a sudden I wake up from that
and I realize it's not real
and I can just let it go.
And it's just gone.
You know?
So many people.
Don't we identify with that?
Yeah, I've got that thinking.
But today is there something inside of me
that can watch my thinking?
That's what awakens.
That awareness that that's not real.
And I can choose to remain free.
I can choose to remain undisturbed.
When we sincerely...
Now this section,
some people call this the third step promises.
If you look very carefully,
they line up very closely with the ninth step promises.
And I've heard this described that Bill was a salesman.
And Bill is not going to give you the price
until he establishes value first.
So what he's describing is what we're going to get
by completing the following steps.
Now what Bill has been doing here in this section
is he tells us throughout the book,
he tells us the problem.
Then he tells us the solution.
Then he gives us a practical set of steps
to implement that solution.
We're really getting heavy here into the problem
and the solution.
He's about to go to the steps.
Those steps are going to require a fourth step,
a fifth step,
six, seven, eight, and nine.
You know what I mean?
Going back and paying back all the money we owe.
Yeah.
So there's a pretty heavy price to pay.
So we need to see value.
So here's the value.
So he clearly took such a position,
all sorts of remarkable things followed.
I've got to share a remarkable thing with you.
On June the 14th of last year,
my mom died of cancer.
And it was a wonderful thing,
a wonderful experience.
I was very, very close to my mom.
And I was able to be there with her.
This program had taught me
not to plan my grief,
not to imagine what it was going to be like
at the funeral,
but to be there with her fully while she was there.
And having caregiving experience,
I was able to do that.
I was able to take her to the bathroom,
help put her in bed the way she did
when I was a little baby.
You know, what a gift.
And we're at the funeral.
It's actually the viewing the night before.
And the casket, open casket,
this vehicle my mom rode around with
while she was here,
is sitting there in the coffin.
And I have my guitar there
because my mom always liked the guitar
and I'd have it there.
And this lady came in
with her three or four year old daughter
just clinging to her
because she is at a funeral
and you can't have fun at a funeral.
You know, this is not like
McDonald's Playhouse or something.
And I looked at her and I said,
can I sing you a song?
And she, the little girl,
shook her head no
and the mom shook her head yes.
So I sang for her,
I sang Marvelous Little Toy for her.
And then a raffy tune called Baby Beluga.
And she started to perk up
and then she got down
and mom was sitting on the couch
and she's on the floor
and I started singing
five foot two eyes of blue
and she's dancing.
And then don't mess with my blue suede shoes.
And here she's doing
right in the room there
with my mom in the coffin.
Just this vehicle she rode around in.
That's what my mom,
wanted me to do.
Not to grieve over her loss.
See, my mom had,
her natural state of being
was one of service.
And that's who she was.
See, that's the remarkable things
when I get out of the selfishness
and I trust this program.
We had a new employer
being all powerful.
He proved,
he provided what we needed
if we kept close to him
and performed his work well.
How would you like to work
for an employer,
very benevolent person,
got billions of dollars,
could provide anything you wanted.
If you really needed it,
they could provide it.
How would you like that?
That's what we're talking about.
That's what we're talking about.
If you really need it
and you can perform the work well,
it will be provided.
Established on such a footing,
we became less and less
interested in ourselves.
My favorite,
our little plans and designs.
More and more,
we became interested in seeing
what we could contribute to life.
This is a picture of the,
from the movie,
Pay It Forward.
I love that movie,
Pay It Forward.
You know,
the whole idea,
if one can give it
and then one,
if I do something for you
and you do that for three other people
and then somebody,
that's the way this program works.
It's this ripple effect.
We can throw one little thing
in a pond and out it goes.
There's a guy I've been sponsored with,
he's mentoring,
he's a fourth grade teacher
and he's been doing
a gratitude list for 11 years.
And he puts five things
on the list every day
with only one rule,
no repeats.
He's taken that
and the kids are doing that in school.
He's giving them one minute
of meditation the first month,
then he asks them
if they want to go to two,
if they want to go to three.
He's teaching them this
in fourth grade.
They're passing it on
to their families.
Okay?
We have a ripple effect
on our community
that we don't even see.
It's not just in the program.
It's we're beginning
to be citizens of the world again.
We're carrying this message
not only to alcoholics
but to everybody.
As we felt new power flow in,
flow in,
not source of,
I'm flowing in,
I'm channeling it.
We discovered
we could face life successfully.
As we became conscious
of his presence,
I think the greatest prayers out there
are prayers
of acknowledgement,
not prayers of gimme, gimme.
It's sort of like,
hey, big guy, take a knee.
This is the plan.
You're going to help this person,
this person, this person.
And by the way,
you can take this debt away
from me too if you can.
I think the most important one
is being very still
and acknowledging God's presence
right here.
We begin to lose our fear
of today, tomorrow,
or the hereafter.
We were reborn.
That's what we're talking about.
Being reborn.
What does it mean to me?
You know, it's all about me, right?
I ask this question.
What is it in me
that is unchanged
since my earliest memories?
Look inside yourself.
What is it about you
that's unchanged
since your earliest memories?
Take everything away
that has ever changed.
There's a life essence.
There's an awareness
of an awareness
of an awareness.
It's there.
When awake,
it is naturally aligned
with a power
I cannot understand.
When I'm in that state,
I'm aligned
with universal principles.
I don't have to work at it.
It's a natural state of being.
Meister Eckhart,
in the 1200s,
said that spiritual growth
is largely a process
of subtraction,
not addition.
That's what the fourth step does.
We subtract.
Subtract our resentments.
Subtract the things
that are causing the fear.
Subtract our manipulations
of other people
as a means to an end.
They call it the sex inventory,
but it's a real trick.
The fifth step,
getting rid of the guilt,
and then healing up the relations
in eight and nine.
Six and seven
are a total different thing.
That'll take another section
right there.
They are the steps
to separate the men
from the boys and the women.
My decision
was to spend more time
in the space
between my thoughts.
That's where
I find the God consciousness.
Between my thoughts,
I become conscious
of God's will,
power,
and direction.
See, it says in the 11th step
we sought through prayer
and meditation
to improve our conscious
contact with God
as we understand Him.
Praying only for knowledge
of God's will for us
and the power to carry that out.
Little tiny prayer,
but if you look at it,
the 10th step
is all the other steps
rolled into one.
If you look at it,
one through nine
are all the learning process
about how to do
10, 11, and 12.
That's the design for living,
10, 11, and 12.
One through nine
are the detailed explanation
of how to do it.
So when I get into 11,
I've got this little tiny prayer
that acknowledges God.
It's suggesting that meditation
should be
a pretty big part of that.
And I suggest
it's not something
where you sit cross-legged
in the morning
and go om all day.
Fine.
If you want to do that, great.
I get up in the day
and I move within
the presence of God
through each and every step
of my day.
I stay in the meditation
all day.
I come in and out,
come in and out,
come in and out.
I call it the string of pearls.
Okay?
You've got these little moments.
Each and every one of you
has had a moment today
where you were
in that thought.
Give yourself credit for that.
And the more I give myself
credit for it,
the more,
the bigger the quality
of that gap,
and the longer
the string of pearls.
And that's where serenity happens.
See?
Because this is where
I find peace,
serenity,
and unity
with my fellow travelers
beyond understanding.
The peace
that passes all understanding.
Now what are some
of the spiritual tools
I've learned
to use on a daily basis
as part of step three?
This is just some
practical stuff
that I find
works for me
on a daily basis.
And this is ways
that I can tell my ego,
my little plan maker
and designer,
I said,
it's okay to play this way.
The innermost self
can direct outward
and say,
okay,
I'll play by these rules.
Here's some of them.
Thoroughly take responsibility
wherever I'm given
the authority.
When we talk,
what have,
we had a lot of times
when we were given
responsibilities
and the authority
to do it
and I didn't do it.
You know,
not meeting our responsibilities.
We were not very dependable.
So where I am given
the responsibility,
where I do take
the responsibility
and I do have
the authority,
I need to do that thoroughly.
And my ego,
I can do that
when I have
a whole lot more time
because I'm not so worried
about what you're thinking
about me.
I'm not so worried
about what's going to happen
in the future.
I don't have the little
ya-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
going on all the time.
And I've got a lot more time
to do what I need to be doing.
And less time
trying to figure out
who I can blame it on
when it goes wrong.
It says in page 88,
we become much more efficient.
And it also tells us
on page 87,
we're not going to be
as agitated or doubtful.
What do I pause?
Everything.
And if I don't have
the authority,
I'm free from the responsibility.
I can look around and say,
who gave me the authority
to do what I'm thinking
about doing?
And they go, nobody.
Okay, then I don't have
the responsibility.
Isn't that neat?
There's a lot of freedom in that.
If I focus on a design for living
that really works,
that's the process.
If I get into the process of living
and stay out of the outcomes,
I can get out of the outcomes business.
Anybody have an outcome recently
which was exactly
what you expected it would be?
Why do we keep playing that game?
You see, I thought the world,
I thought the world had it all wrong
because it was never
what I expected.
And what I found out is
I had a broken expector.
You know?
It was never able to predict
what it was going to be like.
And I always wanted it
to be like that way
because then I would feel good
because it was going to be
just the way I wanted it to be.
And today I look forward
to the unexpected.
And I don't have to manage
the outcomes.
I can play with the outcomes.
Sure, I need to look at
financial planning
and all those other things,
but I don't get my identity
as a human being attached
to the outcome.
Because I wanted to be right.
I wanted to have accurately
predicted the outcome
and then you could see
how right I was.
I've given up my rights.
I'm okay with it being different.
Today we had the schedule
at 1 o'clock or 1.30.
We had a great meeting
and I'll tell you what,
that really helped me out
into easing into exactly
what this whole thing is about.
And it was perfect again.
The outcome was always perfect.
This moment is perfectly this moment.
There's never been a moment
that's more perfectly this moment
than this moment is.
And in fact,
you are perfectly you this moment.
There's no one ever been
more perfectly you at this moment
than you are at this moment.
Now what I'm not very good at
is being you.
I really suck at being you.
Sanity is a sense of proportion.
Bill talks about insanity
as a lack of proportion.
It must mean that sanity
is a sense of proportion.
I love the yin-yang.
It just says,
the negative and the positive
come together.
Mother Teresa
and the Giddos of Calcutta.
It's everything.
It fits together.
Seeing that in proportion.
When I see the world
is out of proportion,
I'm the one that's out of proportion.
When I'm in alignment
with universal principles,
I'm in proportion.
And to seek and rely
on God.
It says,
God could and would
if he were sought.
And I suggest
that we all do some soughtin'.
That's all, folks.