Steps 10 and 11 – And Joe H. – Prescott Big Book Study – Part 6 of 8 – Mark H.

is the effect produced by alcohol in a line of cocaine, which was instantaneous. I have gone through life expecting everything in my life to produce that kind of effect in that period of time. I go to work for the company on Monday. I'm supposed to be running it the following week. And or in a supervisor capacity, and or you should be recognizing my greatness. I meet her on Friday and a week later we're supposed to have an enlightened relationship I didn't realize I was taking that kind of an attitude into every single area of my life so when I get to steps 10 and 11 I'm taking this thing of well, I'm going to meditate two weeks and I'm not levitating out of my chair so I quit i didn't understand that i have to do this the rest of my life i started meditating daily early part of 1992 so i have 11 years i feel like i'm barely scratching the surface of what meditation can bring to me but when i first started it you know this happens all the time with people i'll work with meditation in their first week. They'll call me and say, well it's difficult, or my voice is talking to me all the time, or I can't stop my mind. I mean just, I said really? Yeah, I've had all those experiences. I probably meditated three or four years before I had a meditation at which I experienced what I call no mind. You know, I was probably meditating a year before I experienced loss of body awareness in meditation. I was probably three, four, five years into meditation before I began to have visions in meditation, but I'm not the kind of person that you said to me, okay, you're going to start these disciplines and you're gonna do them until you die, and the more that you practice them on a daily basis, the more than you'll have an experience with them. Oh, okay. See, whatever your spiritual practice is, what I've learned is do it every day let go of any kind of expectation behind what's supposed to happen, even if it's flatlined. We've all had mornings. I've had mornings like that. Alarm goes off. Jeez, upon awakening, ye in this exciting. Morning, God. Consider your plans. Yeah, yeah. I do it even if I'm flatlined, you know? I've Had mornings I woke up and I call it the brat, you He wakes you up and starts talking to you. You haven't had coffee, nothing, man. Well, that's just a bunch of horsemen. Have a good day. Oh no, one of those, right? Then you get into the meditation and chatter of the thousand monkeys is going on. Hi, how you doing? We've all been in group therapy for years, by the way. Unfortunately, we didn't have any facilitator. No guidance. You all have your own group therapy, trust me. You've got six or seven or eight. Different facilitator every morning. Yeah. The good news is as you work with 10 and 11 more and more, there's this part of you, I call it the spiritual man in my case, who more and More gets to lead the group. Thanks for sharing, Brad. Have a nice day. Oh, Mr. Sloth, you've showed up again. Yeah, thank you very much. No, today the jock is going to be Prey Valence. And you start to have some fun with this stuff. Oh, it's Mr. Worthless. I see. I'm glad you're here today too. Thanks for sharing. Those kinds of things. But 10 and 11 are incredibly new practices that you and I get to bring into our life to experience power, to be of effectiveness, to be a service, to recreate our lives. so you talk about I'll talk about the 10 step for a while and I want to read some specific lines in here that have been important to me and I'm going to share with you how I now I practice that but I'm on page 84 talks about this thought this idea of moving through your amends making your approaches. Brings me to step 10, which suggests that I continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as I go along. I view that as a spiritual instruction. These are spiritual exercises, for lack of a better word. It says I need to vigorously commence this way of living. There's those three words, the way of loving, the way to love, the ways of loving. As I clean up my past. So they're telling me there that I get to do two things, continue to make my approaches on my amends and begin to set right any new mistakes as I go along and we will make mistakes and then this incredible promise I have entered the world of the spirit the big book earlier talked about the fourth dimension you get rocketed into the fourth dimensional what this has come to mean to me is the fact that I now have an awakened spirit and that spirit is one with God and it's vibrating within me and it is alive and it is conscious contact. That's why I say that steps 10 and 11 are about new language. It's language speaking to that part of me. My next function will be to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It needs to continue for my lifetime. Now I get some more spiritual disciplines I can work with. Continue to watch. Watch is a spiritual discipline that you could work with. You could take the word watch and work with it for six months. What do you mean watch? I have an awakened spirit. I don't know if you've noticed this, but just this morning, have you noticed that there's a part of you that you'll have this internal dialogue with yourself? Haven't you noticed there's part of observing yourself talking to yourself? You had an awareness of that? Or as you move your body, don't you have an awareness there's a part of you watching you move your body? Or as you talk, don't you have an awareness there's a part of listening to you talk? Well that's your spirit. And the practice of watch is using your spirit to watch your body-mind organism go throughout this one-act play that God is directing. And watch yourself for what? Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. You can take the one word, watch, and work with watch. And when these crop up, what are you going to do? You're going to ask. Ask is another spiritual practice. Ask. Take the word ask. Work with that. Take several months. Work with the word asked. We ask God at once to removed and we discuss them with someone immediately make amends then we turn turn is another spiritual practice turn what turn my thoughts the 10th and 11th step are going to introduce you to your thought life which you have been asleep to like me i did not realize my thought life was creating very creative a single thought that i have two three four five years will manifest into reality joe and i were talking about this this morning for years he's had this idea that he would like to buy land and open a spiritual retreat center and within two three months he will be in a position that the acquisition of that will take place we've got a friend scott sitting here who right now is out in california working at a place and he's learning how to handle every aspect of a spiritual retreat center and it's joe's fault you understand the point i'm making joe had a thought many years ago and what the universe is doing the more you get connected with this power and free from your ego the more power you have to manifest those things in your life and this thought he had is slowly pulling a bunch of people in so it's Joe's fault Scott you're in California blame him but the 10th and 11th step are going to talk to you about your thought life. You better start paying attention to it because the reality that you create comes from that. I'll give you a simple example of this. In 1998, I wrote out that I wanted to open up a treatment facility for chronic relapsers on a 20-acre ranch. I wasn't sure where. That was in 1998, and I just kind of kept working with that thought. In December of 1999, I took a position as CEO on an 1,100-acre ranch for chronic relapsers. This is powerful stuff. This is why the book says, Mark, it's not about them. If your ideals are grounded in a power greater than yourself, you get to recreate your life. What do you want it to look like? Incredible, fascinating stuff. begins to take place but it starts to introduce you to this idea of your thought line turn your thoughts you learn to turn thoughts you start to wake up to this my awareness of the despicable things I have said to myself for years was amazing to me no wonder my life at times was in a toilet But the things I was saying to myself were degradating, were limiting. Oh, you can't do that. I want to write a book. Oh, You can't Do That. All these incredible things. Going to run a marathon. Oh, YOU can't DO THAT. Want to quit smoking? Oh,You can'tDOTHAT. You're going to lose weight? Oh,YOU can'tDOTHAT. And you start to wake up to this stuff. You're going to lose weight. Oh, you can't do that. And you start to wake up to this stuff and then you wonder why you have trouble in personal relationships? You're having that kind of dialogue with yourself, right? You know? And so you start to pay attention to this kind of stuff. Talks about the ten-step promises. Love and tolerance of others becomes a code. Code, a way of life. I have ceased fighting anything or anybody, even alcohol. You can't, by the way, ego. I want to give you my definition of ego. It's just the best one I've ever heard over all the years and it comes from Eckhart Tolle. But ego, mind made false sense of self. A mind made false sense of self in which from birth to a point at which you start to wake up my mind has created a false sense of self. All these different roles that I think define who I am, that can be taken away from you in a moment's notice and that are responsible for all the inventory and fears that I have in my life. Mind made, false sense itself. Book talks at this time by sanity is returned. The insanity that the book talked to me in the second step, By the time you get to the 10th step, my sanity, I've been restored to sanity. Sanity means soundness of mind, not just around alcohol. The 10th and 11th step allow you to take every area of your life and ask yourself about sanity. Now, I'll go back to a simple example right now, my own life, smoking. It is insane. Based on all my experiences and knowing what I know, it is insane for me to be smoking, but I'm smoking. Therefore, I have not been restored to sanity in that area, right? To not be working out on a daily basis for me is insanity. To not practicing these disciplines is insanity now some of you may relate to this when you are spending more than what you're making that is insanity 10 and 11 allow you to take look at every single area of your life and ask yourself would I like to be restored to sanity in this area of my life am I willing to go for that am I wanting to go through what I have to go through while I'm talking about that one of the things that filtered through yesterday I want to throw out some of you relapsers have become attached to being a relapser so you don't have to take any responsibility for your life. I agree with that. See, you've got to understand the power of your thought life. You keep telling yourself that long enough, you're going to have to make that a reality, aren't you? Heaven forbid you get pulled free from that role. Then you'd have to grow up, wouldn't you, get a job, all kinds of stuff. Oh, no. and they always use the term this time if you're new and you've been a relapser don't refer to it as this time and another phenomenon i've seen is they'll think that their experience in other periods of sobriety have some revelance revelance is relevant is relevant to this time Not Don't even refer to this time This is it You don't know you have another chance Yep So sanity will be returned I seldom am interested in liquor If tempted, eye recoils from a hot flame Eye reacts sanely normally This happens automatically Automatically Requires no thought My new attitude toward liquor has been given me Without any thought or effort on my part What an incredible promise what's the new attitude on a plane would you like something to drink no you don't have enough new attitude been given I'm not fighting it I've been placed in a position of neutrality think about that you do this work and you get placed in a situation of neutrity around alcohol and drugs I mean any of you with relapse history if you look at the book the book is trying to be clear about something you've never done probably the work necessary to be placed in a position of neutrality you're beyond human aid do the work get taken and placed into a position of neutrity we didn't even swear off what the problem's been removed what problem the book said I had a spiritual malady and when the spiritual malady is removed I straighten out mentally meaning the obsession to drink or do drugs is removed from me four through nine remove the spiritual malty therefore the problem has been removed therefore there is no choice see there's no reason to take a drink anymore can you imagine at most meetings of alcoholics anonymous if you brought up the topic i would like to hear people share their experience with being restored to sanity and the problem with alcohol being removed they'd kill you they'd shoot you they'd hang you see it's like recovery i could use recovering as another excuse to never get responsible for my life don't you understand i'm a recovering alcoholic oh no wonder you strangled your boss today oh that's okay there's special clauses for us recovering people doesn't the irs on their thing coming up what was that was there the other day huh april 1st or whatever 15th 15th Don't they have a special clause for recovering alcoholics who don't have to be responsible? You get like a, no. Get an extension. If you knew you had terminal cancer you only had a certain amount of time to live and you weren't in denial of that and somebody came along and said if you take 12 of these and 12 of this and 12 or these what are you going to do? Take half? Happens all the time in our program. I'm suffering. have you taken the necessary steps to recover no then you should be suffering at least be honest with it say listen i've made a conscious choice to not work the steps and uh and bring suffering into my life so i just want you to know that's one of them bringing to the meetings from now on every other prescription i take more than is necessary but not with this prescription i try to get away with less they said take two i take eight right not of this maybe i don't want maybe there's a part of me that doesn't want me to recover wants me to be sick maybe that's more comfortable maybe it's easier or maybe it'll kill me it's a gamble i've been to a lot of groups i spoke at a ca group not too long ago and i know them i know their founders and i and i i i shook it up on purpose i said you know a lot of your founders are here tonight and they told me that this CA group has turned into a GA group and everybody's looking at me like this how come a GA Group I said because you're all sitting around gambling with your life it's now become a gamblers anonymous meeting it's a dangerous gamble not to take the treatment talks about this is how I'll react as long as I keep in fit spiritual condition I want to talk briefly about fit spiritual conditioning it's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action rest on morals you've never looked up the word laurels look up the word laurel's is what joe and i did yesterday to maintain fit spiritual condition so i got up this morning and i gotta start anew i hear people talk about i don't know where this comes from something about insurance and its insurance bank account my aa bank account It's inconsistent with the book. I cannot rest on my laurels. Laurels is what I did yesterday. Each day I begin again to take the course of action necessary to stay in fit spiritual condition today. He says, I'm headed for trouble if I do rest on my laurel, what I said yesterday. What I did yesterday. For alcohol is a subtle foe. I am not cured of alcoholism. What I am given is a daily reprieve contingent on one thing. The maintenance of my spiritual condition, period. the maintenance of my spiritual condition and God is not responsible for that I had to call the front desk this morning and say give me a wake-up call at six so I could spend an hour doing pages 84 through 88 24 minutes in a meditation I'm responsible for that I've watched people die behind this thing of God keeps me sober if that was all it was necessary. The book would be one page. It would say, God keeps you sober. Have a nice life. It doesn't. There's 164 pages. About 30 of that has a lot of instructions and a course of action to take. You see what a trap that can be? See, there's a spiritual law. You know what it is? God will not do for me what I'm supposed to do for myself. I am responsible for my fit spiritual condition, not God. That's another thing that we wish to avoid, don't we? Well, I'm in a hurry. I don't have time for prayer. I only have my time for meditation, and I challenge people on that. Ultimately, what are you going to have time för then? A drink? Another trap in that that I'll do with people sometimes, I'll say to them, what's the most important relationship in your life? And they'll lie to me and say, God. And I say, really? Yeah. I said, okay, let's talk about that. How much time did you give the most important relationship in your life this morning? Gotta go, Mark. See, I have to spend time with that relationship that fuels and sustains me. So I spend time in the morning. I spendtime in the evening. I spent a lot of time in solitude. People have accused me of isolating. I don't care what they want to call it. I know what it is. I need time with my creator, with God. If those of you have children if you gave your children as much time as you gave God what kind of relationship would you have? See the 10th to 11th step practices allow me to have conscious contact all day long. Why? I get up in the morning the book's very clear do prayers and meditation be quick to see where religious people are right. I set a timer I do that And then I get these 10-step tools all day long and 11 to ensure conscious contact. Like what? Watch, ask, turn, vision. What is the vision of God's will before I begin any new activity? I get a new sixth sense. I'm given strength, inspiration, direction. I pause when agitated or doubtful. Free me from self-will. All day long, I get to have this ongoing conscious contact with this incredible God who guides me, gives me strength, gives my power. Then in the evening, I sit down and I review my day. Review for me has been this. Were you awake today? I've done reviews. Were you selfish today? Nope, not one time. That's called being asleep, right? That's what's incredible about all this stuff. Do you want to do it? We've said this before. Spiritual living is not easy. If it was easy, they'd have to have an amphitheater and these things would be overrun with people. little sunbeams for God, right? This is not easy. I don't ever try and soft-sell this. But here's what happened to me. The material world as I knew it left me empty, drunk and sober. Drunk and sober, the material world left me emptying my mind. Empty and thirsty. There was no sum of money, no woman, no job. Sober that could quench my thirst. and I almost died because I wouldn't seek that which would quench my thirst. Sober, I almost did that. And then I committed and began to seek that which quenches my thirst and lo and behold I begin to have experiences that another book talks about when it says, seek ye first the kingdom and the rest will be added unto you. I know exactly what that means today. Wear the world like a loose garment. Things that I did not understand. I wear the world like a loose garment today. But incredible stuff can start to happen for you in the 10th and the 11th step, and you get to do these practices daily in your life. How can I best serve thee? Fit spiritual condition. Am I willing to do that? Later on, the 10 step, it says, you've been given a lot of direction on how to get strength, inspiration, and direction from this power. If you have carefully followed the directions, you begin to sense and then they tell you about this incredible new thing that you have, a sixth sense Joe and I was talking about stirring up a meeting if you really want to get drummed out of a meeting when they ask for a topic ask people to share their experience with the new sixth sense of course they'll think you're doing peyote probably but that's all I got for now the book promises it it's either true or it's not and if the beginning of the book describes you, why can't the results of the book describe you? If it describes you without power, why can it describe you with power? And isn't this funny? I just saw this the other day. The depth of delusion, the depth of denial can be this strong. Remember when you didn't have any power and you were drinking and you thought you did? That's denial, right? You thought you had some power, you thought você tinha um controle e você não. Now there's some power in your life and you try to convince people you don't. Denial in recovery can be as strong as denial during your drinking. The denial of the grace and the power and the love of God. When it wasn't there, I thought it was. Power, control, choice. And now that it finally is, I try to convice everybody that it isn't. 20 years sober, still powerless over alcohol with an unmanageable life. but power has come into your life that stands between you and alcohol and you should have a manageable life that's the promise for a new person the message is simple if you're powerless over alcohol and your life is unmanageable and you come to believe in a power greater than yourself and you make a decision and an inventory and a fifth step six, seven, eight, nine, ten you will have a conscious contact a spiritual awakening and you will be given the power to manage your life the power between you and alcohol, there'll be power between you and another drink and the power to manage your life which is what proper use of the will is about. So when I thought I had some, I didn't. Now that I finally have some, I want to deny that it's there. The truth of my life is I'm not powerless over alcohol. I'd be drunk if I was. Now is it my power? No. But as long as I feel separate from it, I'm going to feel separate from them. the power of God has come between me and alcohol for over 20 years. The power to manage my life, which means live where I want to live, live how I want it to be, live with who I want and live with. It saddens me when people are with people that they're miserable with. Being with people is about love. Of course there's pain, loss, grief, hard times, good times, but love is love. Love is a decision. Love isn't based on emotion. What happens the day when it's not there emotionally? Love isn'T based on sex. You're all going to get older. That's going to change. Love is a decision, and once you decide to love somebody, they can't do nothing about it. They say to you, I don't love you anymore. Sorry, I still love you because I decided to. Even if you have to decide that every day. But what I fail to see is, let's say on a practical level, with fear. It asked me to watch. A lot of people think it says when fear crops up, you tell God when to remove it rather than them telling you when to ask God to remove. It a lot of people think, it says continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear when they crop up. Ask God to Remove it at once. That's telling God when to Remove it. It says ask God at once to Remove It. Big difference. They're telling you when to ask God, not when to tell God when to remove it. Right? This is practical stuff that you can use in your life. I wanted to touch on a couple things. Let's look at Bill's experience. Those of us who are on the other side, those of us who have entered the world of the Spirit, why don't we use the promises, Bill's description, as a checklist rather than carrots. You know those sponsors that kind of hold the promises out for you like a carrot and all of a sudden your work becomes selfish to get those promises? My sponsor has never used the promises as carrots. He's used them as a checklist as to my progress or my regression. How did Bill describe his experience? In the beginning, it was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself Nothing more was required for me to make a beginning. He just needed to be convinced that in and of himself he is nothing and without God he was lost and be willing to believe. I saw that growth would start from that point. Now, that means to me, now have I grown past that point? Upon a foundation of complete willingness which I believe is rooted in absolute hopelessness I might build what I saw in my friend I would have it of course I would I was convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want him enough my sponsor told me the first spiritual principle of Alcoholics Anonymous is God is not rude he only comes when he's invited at long last I saw, I felt, I believed scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes has that happened a new world came into view Has that happened? The real significance of my experience burst upon me for a brief moment I had needed and wanted God. Both are essential. There was a long time I needed God, but I didn't want him. And there was a Long Time I Wanted Him, but I Didn't Need Him. There had been a humble willingness to have him with me, and he came. But soon the sense of his presence was blotted out. You start again. Or you start from the beginning. worldly clamors within myself I think worldly clamours are out here I think the unmanageability is out here I like to keep the unmangeability and the problem out here because it's someone else's fault, the way they raised me or what they did to me or the unmaangeability today keep it out here so you don't have to see in here I humbly offered myself to God as I then understood him to do with me as he would that's an important statement as I've been understood him not as I would like to have understood him as I'd been understood and you start where you are to do with me is he would have we done that I placed myself unreservedly under his care and direction I admitted for the first time that of myself I am nothing and that without God I'm lost. I always mark that phrase because that's the phrase that will start to pull on me when my ego has begun to rebuild. That of myself I'm nothing and that without God, I'm lost. I face my sins and become willing to have my newfound friend take them away root and branch. I've not had a drink since. My friend visited me. I acquainted him with my problems and deficiency. we made a list of people I had hurt toward whom I felt resentment I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals admitting my wrong never was I to be critical of them I was to write all such matters with the utmost of my ability have you done those things if you have done those things then here's what you can start to do you can start to test your own thinking with a new God consciousness within common sense would become uncommon sense that's when paradoxes that made no sense when you were new start to make sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt. That's against my nature. When I'm in doubt, I have to do something to figure it out, work on it or make it right. Sit quietly when you're in doubt is a whole new attitude. Asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me. A lot of people pray to meet their problems as they think they should be met. Ask God to meet your problems as He will have you meet them. Never was I prayed for myself except as my request would bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive, but that would be in great measure. Has that happened? My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my creator that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Alcoholics Anonymous is not a place you go. When I was in India for the first period of time and I didn't have a home group for a while, people actually thought I had left AA because I wasn't going to a room. And I said, no, it's a way of life and I'm surrounded by alcoholics I can help and people I can health all the time. Belief in the power of God plus the willingness, honesty, and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things were the essential requirements. Simple but not easy. Here's the price you're going to have to pay. Destruction of self-centeredness. I was to turn all things into the father of light who presides over us all these were revolutionary and drastic proposals but the moment I fully accepted them the effect was electric there was a sense of victory followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known there was utter confidence a lot of people say to me you seem so arrogant my confidence is not grounded in what I can do In and of myself, I make a mess. My strength and my confidence comes from what's working in my life, whatever you want to call it. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up as though a great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound. it was pretty sudden and profound for me when you consider it was only about two years compared to 30 years of suffering before that pretty sudden not a lot of people get relief from a terminal, progressive, fatal illness by just taking some simple action so once in a while Well, it's probably not a bad idea to check those promises on page 63 and 75 and 83. And if you're in 10 and 11 and 12 and you're on the other side of all the amends you're consciously aware of to really ask yourself what those 10th and 11th step promises that Mark went over if they're happening in your life. Can I do this? Can I turn? Can I pause? Can I sit? You know, I know why a lot of you in here have trouble sitting. You hate what comes up in the silence. And some of you go into fear every time you realize you have the right to remain silent because every time he ever heard that, you went into fear. You know what? We have more than the right to remain silence. You know who we have? We have the grace to remain sound. It's not a right. In your early sobriety when you've done some work, you're going to at some point, maybe even down the road later, you're gonna start to play the game, where's mine? I don't deserve this. Your mind's gonna tell you you don't reserve the great stuff. Your mind is going to tell you you don''t deserve the bad stuff. And always remember, this ain't about justice. If this program was about everyone in this room getting what they deserved based on what they had done, this room would be empty this morning. It's not about justice, it's about grace and mercy. you haven't earned your seat man i heard a guy the other day who was just adamant about a chair he said i've earned this seat and if anybody sits in my seat i scowl at him but i'm getting a little bitter because i just scowled at him and i wait for them to move out of my seat that i mean it was just it was insane i haven't learned i haven t earned anything that i've been given. And once I realized that, man, I've been given more than I ever even dreamed. What's the old saying? You'll never get what you want, but you'll always get what you need. I bet there's people in this room like myself who has gone way past what you've needed in these last years, more than you've ever wanted and beyond your wildest dreams. I've had stuff happen beyond my wildest dream of what I should have had after the age of 30. So you check those promises once in a while and see where you're at with them in relation to page 52. 52 doesn't go away. The bedevilments don't go way we come to peace in the middle of the way they are because relationships are going to go on there's going to be ups and downs money is going to have flow up and down emotional nature usefulness with working with others feeling useful feeling useless but I think a lot of people Mark and I have been hearing about a lot of old timers 30-40 years going home and blowing their head off not even drinking you don't have to drink a lot OF people think you have to drink to die from alcoholism you don'T have to drink again to die of alcoholism but I do know this you have a choice you can die from alcoholism or you can die with alcoholism There's a big difference. We get to choose how we want to go. We're living in uncertain times right now. It's a good time to get free. It's the good time to pay your ticket. Chuck C. used to always say, we're not the chosen ones. The chosen ones have gotten free and gone on. We're the ones that haven't paid our ticket yet. Boy, the ego loves that, doesn't it? Haven't you heard that before? We in Alcoholics Anonymous are the chosen ones, the special ones. No, we're the ones that haven't gotten free of alcoholism yet. A lot of people need to die. A lot OF people need to drink again. We always look at somebody drinking again. It's such a bad thing. I can't tell you the number of people I've met that drinking again was absolutely necessary, profound, and beneficial. You know? It helped them get to that place where they were ready for the program. I remember this man, and I didn't understand it until I had gotten through my first set of amends. But he always used to say to me, if you're doing the work for the first time, enjoy it. Because you'll never do the work for the next set of amendments. You'll never get to do the first set for the first time again. Now what does that mean to me? You know how the first step through the work it seems like from each step you just get enough to do your next part. you know like from the first column you just get enough to do the second column you don't even know how you're getting through each day you've gotten something from 1, 2 and 3 that's propelled you into 4 but you enter the world of the Spirit and doing the work again is never the same and he started to talk to us about using 10, 11 and 12 to do 1 through 9 I always hear people say I'm going back through the steps you'll never be able to go back through the steps and thank God you're not going to start over you'll not be able you'll ever be able to start it over even if you drink again it's not going to be starting over it's going to be about starting from here and going on so how do you use 10, 11, and 12 to do 1 through 9 I have a daily practice I have morning practice I use upon awakening I have meditation practice I do what I do with 10 and 11 throughout the day Watch, turn, pause, be awake, fall asleep, come back, breathe in. You want to witness a miracle? Sit quietly and breathe in and breathe out. And you've just witnessed a miracle. Start to connect your prayer to your breath. Let's say you have a favorite prayer. On the first line, breathe in. I ask myself to breathe out, to build with me and do with me as thou would. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. You start to connect your prayer to your breath and there will be times when all you've got to do, you don't even have to do anything. You breathe in and the prayer will be there waiting for you. You breathe out and it'll be there with you. Try this one. when you breathe in say I love you you're receiving God's love when you breath out say I Love You and you're giving it back and see what kind of insecurities come up see how insecure you feel about that that kind of intimacy realizing that with each breath God is expressing His love to you and with each outward action and each breath out you're expressing your love to Him when I started to practice that my prayer life changed I'd like to read a couple things about meditation after 15 years of sobriety I was hitting bottom with stuff that you all were telling me I should do and I thought it was the stuff that I was doing to keep myself sober I went through the work with a guy from Denver who moved out to California and he happened to ask me as I was leaving the house the first day what are you doing currently and I told him that I was working with people and how much I was speaking and he goes my God would you be willing to quit working with others and speaking until you're done with this next set of amends and then got up and went to the bathroom these guys from Denver always know when it's time to get up and go to the bathroom because they leave you with your own mind and what my mind went through when he went in the bathroom what would happen to those poor people that I'm working with right? How can I not carry the message? Because I had turned those things into what I was doing to keep myself sober. And when I watched what my mind did while he was in the bathroom, he came back out and my thought was, you know, if I'm not, I'm probably going to drink again. And he didn't want me to quit doing that stuff to quit during that period of time. He wanted me to quite doing that for a period of times to see what I had turn that stuff into. And my ego had turned that stuff very subtly into the stuff that I do to keep myself sober rather than the stuff I get to do to seek a deeper relationship with that which already is. And my whole sense of effort changed. As long as you think there's stuff you can do to keep yourself sober, your sobriety will be really busy and really draining and really tiring because you're doing something, if you realize there's nothing you can do to keep yourself sober and that based on that hopelessness, there's a lot you can do to seek that which is already keeping you sober, the whole focus changes. There's so much with step 10. It says that it should continue for a lifetime. I like what Mark said about taking one piece at a time, that you're going to work with for a period of time until it's incorporated in your life. I think 10 and 11, if you don't enjoy it, it'll be horrible. Make the evening practice something you enjoy because it says there, constructively. Not destructively review your day for what a rotten person you were. Constructively reveal your day. See where God was there and where you were asleep. See how much fun that is. And you'll start to see that if you decide, if you can decide at any moment out of fear that you're the one that has decided into fear. You're not a victim of fear. Fear doesn't fly around in the sky and say, when am I going to drop on Joe today? Fear is based on a conscious decision to rely on myself. Then you can decide out of fear There were some essentials that I needed to begin to practice to find out about meditation. I don't like saying this. I'm not sure if it's true in this area. It was true in the areas where I've lived. It is very hard to find out about meditation in Alcoholics Anonymous. Those that have found it will say, follow your heart and go to where you're drawn. Those that haven't found it will tell you about as much as there is is praying is talking to God and meditation is listening. It's so much more. And at the time, I thought I was going outside of our program to learn about meditation until this program became a part of life and I realized I was going to see where religious people are right and making use of what they offer. But keep in mind it doesn't say there be quick to see that religious people are always right. It says be quick to see where religious people are right. A lot of religions have made a lot of mistakes and it's caused a lot of problems because of separateness. The same thing that brings people to religion is perpetuated by some of the religions that they join if they don't see that it's meant to bring us together rather than keep us separate. What's the old story? When is America more segregated than any time in the week? What is it, 11 o'clock Sunday mornings? I seek the religions and where religious people are right that bring me closer to people, not more separate. I don't believe I have found the way, the only way. I don'T believe there is only way I believe there IS within every tradition an invisible thread that connects all of them. I got off my donkey a long time ago and started looking at the vista with people from many, many traditions. I always do the same thing I was taught to do with Bill's story that made me feel so alienated was to put aside the differences and look for the similarities. Man, if we could just practice that in everything we do, we wouldn't feel so separate. The first thing I had to do to begin to practice meditation was to make time. You don't make time, it doesn't matter if you have a place. You can have the most beautiful altar and meditation room in the world if you don't make the time to go there, to go into that place. You'll miss it. The first thing is you have to make time. The second thing is I needed to make a place and from that place my mandala, my circle began to widen because I started feeling some energy around that little place, this little place I made and I thought wow, if it's in this place it must be in the whole room and if it'S in the room it must BE in the living room, the bathroom and the kitchen And if it's there, it must be when I walk out the door and it must me when I'm walking down the street. And from that center, like the circle, from that centre, more circles start to grow, whether you call it a mandala or whatever. After I had the time and a place, I needed to choose a posture. And one of my first early teachers told me meditation is not torture. Sit in a posture that you have chosen. Sit straight. Sit still. Have your eyes the way you want. If I'm turning out in the morning, I like to have my eyes open. If I're turning in in the evening, I like that. I like it to have my eyes closed. You can change that. You can do it, but make it the practice that you love. Love your practice. Do things you love if we could just do that in our life, man, we would have great. I've now committed my life to only doing things that I feel passionate about and it gets rid of a lot of stuff that if I can't bring love and passion to something I'm doing, it's a sad existence. To have 14 hours a day doing stuff you hate to do one hour of something you love, it's worthless because you're not bringing that love and compassion to your life. Make the things you're passionate about your practice. You're a mother with children? Don't use your children as an excuse that you can't meditate. Teach them to sit with you or get up an hour before they do. I've heard mothers use excuses just as much as fathers. Oh, I have to be at work at six. Get up at four. You will find one hour of meditation worth three hours of more sleep. Check that out sometime. Sleep eight hours. Watch yourself for a while. Sleep four, five, six. Take two off. Take one off. An hour of meditation, I think, is worth I don't know how many more hours of sleep. So when I make a time and I make a place and I choose a posture and then I set my intent. Maybe it's going to be just about doing upon awakening every morning and some silent time. Maybe my intent is just to do the evening review and some silent time then you start to add to that but I do know this if the morning and the evening practice become something you love whatever you might add to it to try for a period of time is wonderful you know and then what I needed was to begin to experience space and as that space starts to grow my life became more effective I believe if meditation can't be integrated into your life it's just some esoteric thing that has no connection to the job that's like sitting at work my first year of sobriety writing about 20 years ago in inventory or not writing and having a crazy day and calling Don and he would say you're having a Crazy Day because you're not writing inventory and I can't see the connection. What does writing inventory about 20 years ago have to do with how I am at work today? You'd say it's connected. So is my meditation practice. Let me just read one thing. The purpose of meditation is to awaken us in a sky-like nature of mind and to introduce us to that which we really are. changing, pure awareness which underlines all of life and everything. But the most important part of meditation for me because see I've been places where people use meditation to escape with good reason. You have to know a lot of the meditation practices come from ancient times in conditions and circumstances and weather and temperature and poverty they needed to learn how to get somewhere and you have to be really careful if you're an alcoholic whose life should be about somebody else out here that you're not using a practice to escape reality you should be using a practise that's designed to bring you into the middle of the nature of reality that you can incorporate in your life not escape I know how to use meditation like a drug but it wasn't productive I needed to use a meditation practice that was designed to bring me closer to you God and myself when I was about 10 years sober one of the best things that happened to me is I moved from Denver Colorado where I had a strong support system home group blah blah blah to Houston, Texas, where I didn't know a single soul and there was me, God, in the big book. And I was there about six months and then I went to Kerrville, Texas. And this was a little town of 18,000. There wasn't anybody in that town who had anything I wanted. That's the way that rolled out. So what I was left with was this line in the Big Book about be quick to see where religious people are right and make use of what they offer. and I was so thirsty at that time so that's exactly what I began to do I had begun to work with meditation when I look back the experience of that began to move me one of the first things that happened was a Native American medicine man actually an apprentice studying to be a medicine man came into my life as a matter of fact I just ran into him this week It was good to see him again. And I spent about two years, I went out and bought six, eight, ten books, devoured them, did a medicine circle in my backyard. My neighbor, who was a staunch Baptist down in Texas, thought I was a worshiper of Satan, called the cops. You know, I had the red road, black, and I'd go out and sit in the middle of the circle and anyhow he thought I Was Worshipping the Devil And we did sweats, and I had incredible experiences in there. And then he left meditation that had really become powerful in my life, so I got moved to instead read a few Buddhist books. Then Paramahansa Self-Realization Fellowship, some of those lessons. Did that for a year, a year and a half. Then an idea had come to me. I had become a Roman Catholic in the early 70s because this pretty little girl said if I wanted what she had, I had to become one. So I did. And I got the idea of reading an inventory to a priest. So I read that. He was an Anglican priest. And I read That Inventory to that priest. And then he asked me to consider some things. And one of the things he askedme to consider was joining the Order of St. Benedict. And I said, well, what's that about? And he said, well, why don't you study a little about Benedict? And Benedict is responsible for a lot of Western monasticism and Christianity, for that matter. And he believed that what he called lay people, who wished to have a deeper experience with God and with Christ and with the Holy Spirit, could join the Order of St. Benedict and begin these practices. so there were two options I could have took one one was uh one was to be an oblate that required a pretty serious commitment morning afternoon night two retreats a year and then the I can't remember the name on the other one but of course so I always wanted to go the easier softer way as I felt guided to do it and the guy the priest looked at me said no no you're supposed to be you know, Blake, you need to go back and pray about that some more. So I say, okay. So I do that, and then before they accept you, you really have to write what they call a rule of life. Well, A, give me a rule of life I wrote to Father Benedict and told him about my rule of wife and why I wanted to do this. So he said, okay, and me and another friend of mine who was my roommate at that time, we did that, and when I look back, it was another third step experience, but that experience took place in June of 1995, and in that day I renounced the world as I knew it. A lot of people don't know these parts about my life, and I took on, I guess you'd call it a religious name. My Christian name is Mark David, and so my quote religious name was Oblate Brother Mark David. Now keep in mind, some of you have seen me this weekend. Do I look like the kind of guy that would consciously take this path? No, don't think so. This is about this power and what this power will do for you when you begin to get to the 10th and 11th step. So then we begin to do these practices, and he and I would get up at 4 a.m. every morning, and we would spend an hour in prayer and in meditation, and their practice is, I was telling Joe, is you do all these prayers out loud, and you wind up going through scripture, You go through the Psalms every 30 days, etc. Profound things begin to happen to me through that experience. We did that about a year and a half and then on April the... It would have been April the 28th of 1996 I had, and these are the only words I know how to use to explain this. I had an experience with what I'll call Christ consciousness. And it lasted 40 days I thought I was going insane I was weeping all the time I required little or no sleep it was amazing I had a meditation room anytime anybody came in that room to work with me they would start weeping so I finally call Father Bennett of course I don't run around telling people this is going on this is not something you talk about because they lock you up for this kind of stuff I would be sitting there doing a lecture or doing something, and I was completely watching Mark do this. Weird, weird stuff. And I wasn't doing peyote either. And I was becoming a little concerned. I've told people because I thought I was losing my mind, and then as Father Benedict said, what a great gift, you finally lost your mind. So I called him somewhere around the 20th, 30th day, and I explained to him what was going on he asked me a lot of questions now this man's been a monk and a priest for now it's 31 years so he asked me a bunch of questions then he explained to me what had happened to me and he explained it from his perspective he said Mark most people and it normally happens when their children have some sense of awareness of God within some kind of experience He said, and you all in AA, you kind of call it, it happens when you get sober and you kind to call it your pink cloud when you have an awareness of God in your life. And then he said for a lot of people, he said then there's just practices that they do, might be going to church, going to mass, communion, you all do your steps. And he said, and in the middle of that you're gonna have a lot of desert experiences in which you've lost all conscious contact with God but there is a God. and uh yeah he said then what will happen he said and you don't have any say in this you get taken into what he said he called dark night of the soul it's a great book about saint john of the cross called dark knight of the sole that happened for me in 91 and 92 and he said if you live through that if you lived through that the other side of that and you again have nothing to do with this is you get to experience for periods of time a state of contemplation in which you're completely free from the body, mind organism that you would call Mark living in the presence and the power of God and he said that is what happened to you and then he started crying and the reason he started praying is he says that is why I wanted to experience my entire life that is where it led me to seek this and you get that I can make a comment on that period of time in Mark's life as an observer. He had a roommate and I was there visiting at one time and this guy and Mark were like there. His roommate stopped doing those things and Mark didn't and Mark's sober and his roommate almost died from drinking one more time. There's a lesson in that. There's also a lesson in the number of people Mark and I have seen who start doing things like that Because here's one of the familiar hooks. Whether it might be a psychological program or seminar or religious movement or spiritual movement, they will hook alcoholics with something like this and addicts are even more prone to it. You've been in kindergarten. We have the advanced course and we're hooked by words new, special, better, ultimate. and they will start doing things like that instead of rather than along with. The ones that I've seen remain healthy are the ones that are following their heart, doing different spiritual practices and no longer see that it's separate from the program but part of the program but they don't stop doing one or the other. They follow their heart and they use the foundation and they continue to do the work and they go where they're drawn to go. it was one of the things I wanted to say about the big book is very clear that God will reveal God in the manner God so chooses I've done a lot of things over the years I do it along with, not instead of I'm a fundamental orthodox member of AA who has given a spiritual path called the 12 steps I will continue wherever my spirit takes me I will do things along with not instead of when I was in the state of this I remember telling Father Benedict because my need for solitude became so intense so one day my head said well maybe you need to go be a monk so I call him and I run that by him and he starts laughing and he says no no no I don't think so he said you have a bigger ministry than any Catholic priest I've ever met we don't want you in the Moncton business. He said, you go work with them drunks that you keep working with. That's what you're supposed to be doing. That's why I'm here. That's when you've been given this power to do. So he's thanked God for that kind of guidance. So that's been my journey with this stuff. This is where you get to go have fun. Go to these monasteries. I mean, like Joe said, if you want to find out about meditation, go talk to someone who's been doing it for 30 years. See? incredible stuff go to monasteries if you want to see steps 10 and 11 go visit a monastery for a weekend there's just so much neat stuff there's a lot of neat stuff with Native American and with all these different some of the Christian mystics one of the things I'm going to do in the next year I'm coming down to Gethsemane where Thomas Merton was I want to spend a weekend down there incredible stuff that you and I get to experience I had this idea that monasteries were like where people were just like lounging around and hanging out most monastic orders have a much more rigid schedule than we live by with discipline which is like the 10th step and watching themselves and meditation and practice and community service I wanted to mention I went to this thing not too long ago and this guy said three very practical misconceptions that I've seen in my life and other people's life in this program about meditation This was a Christian man who studied with John Main. Brother Lawrence is his name. Not the Brother Lawrence that lived a long time ago, obviously, but Brother Lawrence. He said the three most misconceptions about meditation are this. Meditation is not Christian. He went through the history of Christian meditation practice to dispel that myth. now he did say the church in some places has gotten away from the meditative practice that was a rich part of the history but that doesn't mean it's not christian he said the second misconception is that meditation is selfish there's a certain group in california that believe in nothing but action they have no sense of non-action or balance and they would say things to me like, why don't you quit meditating so much and get off your ass and go do something for somebody else? And I would have to say to them, it is because of my meditation that I'm able to do anything for anybody else and that I need balance of action and non-action in my life. The third misconception is that if you truly discover that which is within you, you'll either implode, explode or dissolve if you really experience emptiness. That's not true. You will experience the essence of God. The essence of God If meditation practice for us as alcoholics We have found that modern spiritual practitioners lack the knowledge of how to integrate their meditation practice with everyday life I cannot say it strongly enough to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation. The violence, the stress, the challenges and distractions of modern life make this integration of meditation into your life even more urgently necessary. Take a 15-minute break and we have one session for an hour.