Steps 6 and 7 – The Four Seasons Workshop – Part 4 of 8 – Don A.

It's always step six and seven, it seems to be worse. Then it gets better. That's because of that tunnel that we go through. So the will is transformed right here. Now very often we really struggle in steps six and seventh. You see, there's a story, it says about this person who's baking a cake. So they get all the flour and sugar and all that and they put it in this pan, you know. Turn on the stove, get to 350, get that stove all heated up. and they pour that batter into this pan, smooth it out with a spatula or whatever. They take it to the stove, open up the door, they stick the cold cake in there and close the door. Now if you want that cake to bake, what you have to do is leave that door shut. Well what would happen if I would put that thing in there and go, well how is it? Well how's it doing? And I open it up. If I keep messing with it, in other words I keep examining it and keep questioning it, Well, when are you going to do it? Well, obviously this isn't today. It's been going on now, it's been floating out. If we keep doing that, in other words, you have to put yourself in the oven and don't peek. Let the Creator bake you. Whatever happens, even like you get pissed off, that doesn't mean the step didn't work. It just means you become pissed off. But if we take that and then we start to peek in that, trying to do something about ourselves see the step says you just become you just say to the creator I am willing to have you remove it that's it that's like nothing more to do let him handle it but if I start to peek in there you keep interfering with it then it takes longer so So, we get the list of character defects in step 6 and 7, column 5, and then there's, I think, column 4 in the sex inventory is a list of the amends for step 8 and 9. And it's from 8 and 8 where we make our amends. So when we look at that process of looking at the steps in a circle, Then it says, we are now at that point in the steps where in 8 and 9, that's where we start to set ourselves right with other people. First we set ourselves, we find a relationship with the Creator. Then in the sauce, with ourselves. And then step 7, 8, 9, we look at our relationships with others. That's where мы старт to... See, at the level of spirit and intent, if you remember that, if I'm out of harmony with you and we're interconnected, I'm also then out of harmony with myself. So when I go and set myself right with you, then I set myself right with me. So I really get the ability to be at one with the Creator from you. It's by setting myself with you if I have an amend to make see i cannot pretend like i can't be mad at you and pray myself into being at one with the creator because we're interconnected so it's when i set myself right with you then all of a sudden i set myself right within me and that's why we need to look at making those amends and then we set ourselves right with others then we come to these maintenance steps steps 10 and 11 and these are the steps where then we maintain that new picture. It's a daily maintenance step where we pray every morning, check ourselves during the day and then we also constructively review the day in the evening. In the twelfth step it says we go give this away. So the steps are just an interconnected system in a very orderly fashion. these are all laws that allow us to change ourselves. So can you see where this would be damaging? You know, it's like finding the pay value to do the step. That's why you can't skip around because there's information that you need from the one before it to go ahead and to make it work so see then that's why I started to see like the they would say do them in order but but it didn't make sense to me until i started to see the whole picture now i now i like you know indians are stubborn as heck sometimes now i understand why it has to be done in order now i'm willing to do that because i didn't know it was interconnected you see in this way and that around that whole circle is how all these things would happen so now i say i'll do it i want to do it like that so is there any questions on this interconnectedness of a step um In the relationship to what? Yeah, you always start in the east. At least that's the entry point. And we start there again. so you're going to start the steps over Yes. So your question is, do I need to go make all those amends I made to someone else again? No. But did you miss any? Obviously, I must have missed the old one, otherwise I wouldn't have gone in. This is why I'm finding it very fascinating, and looking at it from a different angle. Well, maybe when we get through that, we'll talk about slipping and how does it happen virtually. Any other questions on this? All right. Then the last thing we want to do is look at Look at the enemy through the steps that isn't an enemy once you see what the enemy looks like. Quite seems like an enemy and that enemy is ourself. But every time, like when we make any type of a change or we look at going for something, You notice that sometimes there's this tension or stress system, it just starts to kick in and you just see if it feels like this, it can't be right. So one of the things we want to look at next is we want take a look at how information is stored within our mind and then what happens to us after that information is stored in our mind? What happens to it if we start to mess with it or make changes? So we're going to take a brief look at that. So, we're gonna look at thought process. How thoughts are processed. There's three parts to a thought process One of them is a conscious process one is our subconscious and one is something called the creative subconscious So how information gets inside of us It's through our senses, our eyes, hearing, smell. So in other words, as I go through the day, I'm always looking, I'm only smelling, I'm almost listening. So I have like a little radar system that's constantly scanning the seen world. So I sense this for the seen-world, then I have a sixth sense for the unseen world. So I am able to sense in the unseen worlds But the biggest value of these senses are just so I don't run into tables and if I don' t stumble into things. Other than that, there's not a whole lot of value in terms of trusting that what I see is really there. But I do have the ability to function in the seeing world, listen, smell, taste, touch. So, it's through my senses that information comes into me. Then I take that information that I see and I store it in terms of beliefs, habits, attitudes, expectations or maybe I could call that my version of truth. So you'll hear us say, let me tell you a fact. Let me tell you the truth. Well is it really the truth or is it just your version of it? is it in terms of the truth or maybe we could call this uh it stores and it creates a reality so i'll put these in quotes because it may not really be reality it may only be my version of it so as i perceive a situation there's two questions that we as human beings are constantly asking ourselves all the time so one of the questions i'm always asking myself this thousands of times the day is, have I seen anything like this before? So I'm always doing some type of an association. Have I heard anything like just before? Have I smelled anything like this before?" So my mind has a following system so as it watches during the day it's always asking that question so it knows where to put it. It's a following system. So I am always asking, have i seen anything like this before. So let's say, for example, that I live next to somebody here in Albuquerque who's next door. They're really a jerk. Geez, I just can't stand them. Right next door, you have nothing to do with them. You just ignore them. So, let's see, one night the phone rings and a friend from Denver calls up and says, hey, guess what? I just won the lottery. Party time. Come on up. I'll pay for it. So you hop on a plane. You go up to Denver. You're going to stay with that friend early Saturday in the evening, you hear a little noise downstairs, got your snagging clothes on, see? Go downstairs, go in the kitchen, get a little drink, little snack and you walk into the living room where the noise is and all of a sudden you see this person looks like that friend that lives or that person lives next door to you at home, that jerk. And you look like that at that person and you step back into the kitchen you you know, lean against the wall. You chug your drink and you say, I don't believe it. I thought God would only make one, but He surprised me. He made two. One in Albuquerque. Now here's this jerk standing there in the living room. Now you know absolutely nothing about this person. Not truth. It's the first time you've seen him. You haven't even talked to them. But see the mind? Have I seen anything like this before? Yeah. One in Elbuquerique. Now here is another one. Right? Then it goes on to ask another question that we usually don't know consciously, but we're doing a type of evaluation. So we're always asking ourselves, we perceive, we associate, and we ask, is this going to be good for me or will this be bad for me? Bad for me. Then we decide, I'll have nothing to do with him either. It doesn't matter if I talk to him. I can smell jerks. This one is a jerk. Now you really know nothing about them. Right? Now let's just say, for example, another one is that, let's say I've been in six relationships over the last two years. It seems like I can get those little hummers but I can't keep them. So I get in relationship number one, you know, where you smile at her and she smiles at you and you do all this and everything is really good and then you have a little snot and a little fight and then your makeup gets a little bit worse and you bow and you promise to stay together and then pretty soon the knock down drag out comes and zippo that one's gone so all of that experience is recorded here all the things you think about what is going on is recorded here in relationship number one and you get out of it saying no problemo a lot of fish in the sea for me nothing let it go so then you go down to the place and you find relationship number two whatever that is. So you get relationship number two and you go through relation number two and there's a all the and then you irritated me then you break lose them Zippo that one's gone I just hunt in a different part of the ocean there's lot of fish in the sea so each one of these relationships all six of them you go through them over a period of two years and pretty soon you say I got to get myself together here. I got to take a little break from relationship." So you decide to take your break. You get out of the bookstore, you get all the stuff out books. I'm okay, you're okay, your dysfunctional, I'm dysfunctional you know. You get all these books, these self-help books, you know, to get yourself together and you read them all. And then you stay home painting, you know, learn a little music or whatever but you do nothing so you say you're out a relationship six months. One night you sit and your phone rings. Jesus, it's your friend from Denver. Do you never believe this? I won the lottery twice. We're going to really party this time. Why don't you come on up and say, hot dog, I'm ready. See, I've been on my own six months, so you fly up to Denver, see, same deal, upstairs, hear a little noise downstairs, put on a snagging clothes, come back into the kitchen, get a little drink, a little snack, and you walk into the living room with your drink and your snack and all and you perceive this relationship. She's looking at you with a big pearly show, and see? You're not sure it's you, so you look to make sure. You've got to always do that. Make sure that it's YOU because we've all seen that before. And as soon as you sense that it is you, well, the senses perceive a relationship. Have I seen anything like this before? Uh-huh. Six times. And what is this leading me towards? Well, nothing good. You know something? You tell yourself. There are no good Indian men left. You know some? All the good ones are taken. There ain't none left. In fact, so-and-so said, so-an-so else said. There's none left in the world. In fact there ain't no good men left anywhere. They're all junk. I am destined to live forever with junk. All the men are bad. Now is that the truth? Well have you talked to you know those 80 million that you have not met yet? Well, no. See, but have you seen anything like this before? Uh-huh. And what is this leading me toward? See, nothing good. So we decide. Now, we need to realize that this version of truth that's recorded in our minds also is recorded in three dimensions. It's recorded in words that trigger pictures that have with it a feeling or emotion. So you have the words that picture in guilt, feelings. Words picture joy feeling. Words picture fear feeling. So this version of truth is always recorded, you see, in three dimensions as my version of the truth. And we are always asking ourselves, now the point we need to know about how this thought process works is we are ALWAYS making NOW TIME DECISIONS based on PAST PREVIOUSLY RECORDED INFORMATION. Right? We're always evaluating what's going on now based on past previously recorded information. We need to know we work that way. Now, when we look at this creative subconscious it has some functions. functions. One of them we're going to talk about is, one of the functions of the creative subconscious is to make sure that I maintain sanity. Sanity means that whatever my version of truth is, this creative subconscious' job is to make sure I act like that version. And anytime I act different than that version of truth, it will introduce anxiety, tension, or stress into my system. Anytime I act different than the picture. So I have, for example, many pictures or images of who I think I am. As long as I act like that picture, I'm okay. If I start to act different than that picture tension anxiety or stress occurs in my system if I start to think about acting different tension anxiety stress will start to occur in my systems so if I'm saying that I walk a long time on this black road and I just started thinking becoming spiritual I start thinking about soon as they even start thinking of all its tensions starts to occur into system you see this creative subconscious, it's job is to always make sure I act like the picture. Like for example, let's say for example I have a picture or an image here that I believe I'm a shy person. I can't talk in front of people and that's the picture, the creative subconscious, this job is always to make sure act like that picture. But let's, say for some reason I got to get up and talk in front of the people. Ever notice what happened? See, as you get up to talk in front people a little while before you get your palm starts to get sweaty, real sweaty palms. Then you'll notice that your stomach will start to flutter, you get like butterflies in your stomach. Well it sends a signal from the brain to release gas or juices into the stomach even though there's no food and it starts to make it flutter. It'll even affect your respiratory system so pretty soon your breathing just gets out of sync, you just can't seem to get your breath. Now go to your mouth and it'll shut up the flow of saliva. So you get what's called cotton mouth, right? No spit. Your tongue gets big. You grab a glass of water, you drink it, and you swallow it and nothing gets wet. It just goes straight on down. And it'll go to your vocal cords and it will stretch the muscles in your vocal cord so it stretches so when you talk your voice cracks so it sounds funny. And even though you have the information about the subject of which you want to talk about, it might be something just love and you know a lot about it, it will shut down the function of recall. When you get up there so all of a sudden your mind goes blank. So there you are there ready to be sweating and ready to puke and you're making funny noises you can't remember shit you know and all of a sudden you see now what is going on why does that happen? The creative subconscious when the senses see you acting not like you that's when it happens. It goes to correct for the mistake that's how it does it. Psychologically, physiologically, it'll do things to your body to get you back to act like the person you believe yourself to be. If there is a fight between success and sanity, which one do you think wins? You You can count on it. Sanity always wins until I change the picture. So you see, when we come in and we start working steps, we need to know this is going to go on. And what we're going to really be looking at is not the truth about us. We're goingto be looking about the junk. We want to find what is inside of our mind what words, pictures, and feelings, what situations, Where have I been living my life out of harmony? I want to know that. What is causing my life to be unmanageable? Give me the name, give me the story. I'll take it. Because I need to know that in order to fix it. So we need to know that this process is going on inside of our mind. So when you get that fear feedback, that's not fear. It's just a tension system. It's a feedback system inside of our minds. Just the thought of changing sometimes. He will do it. Let's say, for example, you have somebody who has been in an abusive relationship. Say for, I don't know, five, six, seven years. Just had to hell beat out of them. Stomped on makeup. I promise, I love you if you don't. But over a period of time, You just really end up with an image of self or feelings of low worth and all that. Then, let's say you dump that person. Take a break, go to St. Paul's or wherever, get everything back together. Then you say, well, I'm going to start dating again. Have you ever noticed people who have been abused, what type of relationship do they usually end up in again? Very similar. Or one that's married to an alcoholic will go and marry another alcoholic. But you'll notice that if you know some of them, let's just say that one of their dating that they say an abuser, they end up with a person who's just really good to them. Jesus' guys, he sends them flowers and always trying to hug them and touch them and be intimate. You'll notice very often what will happen there. They will sabotage that relationship very creatively and do something to drive that relationship away. And your friend will come by and they'll say, excusez-moi, that one was the keeper. That was the one you should have told him the mama. Why did you do that? I don't know. You know, he just drove me nuts. He just irritated, touching me and telling me this shit. You know what? I don'T know. I DON'T know! It just drove Me crazy. but do you see if you have that picture and you know how you should be treated and your senses see you being treated like you shouldn't be treated what's going to happen the creative subconscious will put anxiety tension or stress in your system to correct for the mistake it's a mistake for you to be treated good it's the mistake for you to be treated kind they're very creatively go things to do to correct for it you see somebody who's been abused can go into a room of, say, 500 healthy men. Three of them are sick. They can walk in that room, just stand there. And if there's three sick ones in there for them, they'll have them lined up right in front of them in about 30 seconds without saying a word. How the hell do I get so lucky? I always pick the same one. And very often your friends will say, you know, that's the seventh one you picked. The only thing you change is the color of their hair. Everyone's always the same. They are not. This one's different. And then six months down the road, you say, how come I didn't see it? How can I be comfortable with somebody like that? You can be comfortable living in hell once you get used to it. You can become comfortable being treated like crap. To be treated good can be uncomfortable. You've got creative subconscious always correcting for the mistake until we change the picture. so when we look at these steps all that we're doing is we're going and looking at misinformation not the truth about who you are but the junk that keeps us in a way you take many of us are raised in native communities what kind of mistruth do we have in there about who people told us that we were and we believed it you know the story you see on television the story The Wizard of Oz everybody see that There's Dorothy, the scarecrow, the tin man, right at the line. They got lost. They wanted to see this good witch or whoever it was. They said we're lost. They said, well, go to the land of Oz. There's a wizard there that can help you. He'll help you get back home. So off they went to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz They went off to see the wizard because of the wonderful things he does. He's got the power, you know. Would you suppose he could? Oh yeah, the wizard could. Yeah, he can do that. So if you remember when he got to that land of Oz, first of all, that wizard didn't have the power. That wizard was a fake. He even had to hide behind a curtain. So the lion got up there. The wizard found out the lion was a coward. And the lion said, or the wizard said, he says, for all the great things you've done for Dorothy and Toto, I, the wizard of Oz I grant you this medal for bravery. Now if you went, you see, in the morning as a coward, talked to a whostead, a wizard said, changed his belief and off that line went thinking the truth. I now have it. See, scarecrow had no brain. The wizard said every smart person has a diploma. I, the Wizard of Oz, I grant use this diploma to be smart. So our lives sometimes are very, very impacted by these wizards, these who-saids. But I don't know what I don' know. Now I know what I do know. You take a person that goes to medical school, say, for example, and one week before they graduate you wouldn't go to one of these students and say, hey, I need an operation, right? Do something to me. Patch up my stomach. No, you wouldn't think so. Seven days later, no more training except they go through a who-set. They have their little circumstance, right? They put on their gowns and their tassels and have music playing and bands and all this stuff. As they walk across the stage of this who-Set, by the power given to me by the state of New Mexico, I grant you this diploma to be a doctor. Now go cut them open. and we let him see how come not because they know him or it's because the wizard said now it's okay before then the wizard didn't say cut you open but now he said you could now we let them you see the tin man he had no heart so this wizard said anyone that has a heart you can hear it tick so he gave him this clock and affirmed you see the alien heart now the difference between Dorothy the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man in many of us, many of US native people is they went to see a positive wizard. The wizard they went to see that they gave the power to when he had a problem gave him brain. When he had problem gave him courage. But too many of Us were raised by are married to hung around with counseled by negative wizards who said of the greatest magnitude that told us the truth and told us and told and told and it could have been a dad who was a teenage 40 year old teenager telling us the true who are you to think you will amount to anything and there's other messages that we get as native people you nod but it's because I love you I tell you this see and we start accumulating all of this this crap belief inside of ourselves. Could have been a counselor shouldn't have been counseling telling you the truth. Could have been a older brother see an older brother two years older than you is a Hussein, right? A twelve year old is a hussein to a ten year old. So we have a lot of stuff in here a lot of images, a lot of pictures built within ourselves, and that is not who we are. That is junk information that some negative wizard told us, and we somehow sanctioned it and put it inside of ourselves. And that's what we're straightening out in the steps. It's really finding out who we really are. It is like if I told you, and you didn't see me do it, I said there a pencil behind my hand." Well, I don't see it. Honest to God, there is a pencil behind my hands. Well,I don't feel it. You are one of the most beautiful, creative, beautiful children of the Great Spirit. You're just something awesome. Well I don't fear. The steps is about removing that blockages. Oh, now I see me. That's what we get restored to in step two. It was there all along. So the steps is about removing those blockages, not about becoming something but discovering that which has been inside of us all the time. You see this information it blocks us our ability to be able to see that. Then this causes certain results in my life because once I get the image and I start to act different than than an image, tension or anxiety occurs in my system. So let's say I have an image, I can't talk, I have no feelings but you've been whooped upon, beat upon, all that other and often you can't talk, you can feel. Well what happens when you try it? Tension, anxiety or stress occurs in your system. I just can't do it. This doesn't feel right to me. So when we When we take a look at these steps, this is what we need to know that this process is going on. But I'm able to look at that in the step knowing what I'm looking at is not the truth but it's the truth about the junk. Does that make sense? That's how our minds work in relationship to these, to these steps. Any questions on this? We want to use this tool called, to do the workshop, we want to use a tool called mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way of taking notes using whole brain. It's a whole brain way, very, very quick easy fast way of gathering information. So we'll go through a quick example how to do it and then we're gonna break up into groups. Let's say that I have a friend that is going to be speaking say to some University and they're going to talk say this one particular night at 730 so they asked me they say would you come over and support me because I'm going to be giving this speech I'm kind of frayed talking in front of people that's sure I'll be there what time we'll be there by seven so they got to talk at 736 yeah okay do go down to the place where they're at and as you walk in a door when the bell hops gives you this note little envelope and you take the envelope you open it up this from your friend that had an emergency. Sorry, I have a favor. Will you give the speech?" So here you got a very short amount of time and this is PS. Talk about anything you want and by the way you got to talk 20 minutes. So what I need to do is figure out how do I gather a lot of data or information very, very short? So let's say that what I decided I would talk about is sailing. That would be the subject I was going to talk about so I got together a lot of information about sailing very, very quickly enough to organize and put together information. So the rules of mind mapping instead of doing line list sequence logic order, instead of doing it that way, the mind map process works is that you draw a picture or an image of the subject that you're going to talk about in the middle of the page. So let's just say this was a sailboat. I'll put a little flag on it, and maybe I'll also put a heart around it because I love sailing. Now if I say sailing what is one key word that would trigger in your mind? Water. So then I would draw so my Line mapping says then, you just draw a line and you put that key word on there, water. What does water trigger? Waves. What else does it trigger? Sharks. So I'll put jaws, that's a shark. What else? Does water trigger cool, cool blue? What else does it trigger? Fishing? Okay. What does fishing trigger? Huh? Eating? Alright. What might be another key word about sailing? Wind. What, what does wind trigger? Clouds. I'll draw clouds to me. See, my math is kind of nice. You use symbols or whatever. What else does wind trigger? Cold. Cold could trigger rain. I'd rain. Somebody is not? What else? Storm. What might be another word sailing would trigger? Sailor. All right. Drowning, so I could make a wave and put a person underneath the water. Now do you see that mind maps remember the mind always remembers by association by association by association alright what does see wind would trigger storm what does storm trigger fear what does fear trigger what does anger trigger what does stress trigger pardon panic what does panic trigger so do you see when you use that key word the natural process, it tells you in the mind where the next association is filed. Now even my associations alone is what would trigger but you will trigger different ones than you. We won't trigger the same ones that's because we're all different. So do you see that in a very few minutes I could accumulate enough information to give a 20-minute speech? So then I can take a look at it so I'll talk about this first, and I'll talk about fishing. And I'll talk about sailors, I'll talked about wind, I've talked about storm. So using the mind map process, I'd be able to gather a lot of information very, very quickly. Sometimes the information that I want to hook on to might be second or third level information. Does that make sense? It would be further on down. So this is what I'd like us to do, is I'd like us to count off verse by four. Can we start here? Where did we leave off? One, two, four. Are we all the way through? Where's the number? With four to be number one and two. All right. Now I want you to break into these groups. Did we miss back here? So we left out the two, so... Is there group three? You're number three? Four? Okay. Does everybody have a number? So, where did we leave off? You want to be number group one? All right. Now, I want you to get in these groups and I want to give you a little bit of time and I also want you to do some mind maps. And this is what I'd like you to do the mind maps on. Group one, you know the first half of the first step we admitted we were powerless over alcohol? Okay. It's because I just thought of something. I want to just change the rules again. I would like men on this side and women on this side. Two groups. I want two groups. Amen. All right. Okay. This is what I want you to do your mind maps on. As we get into looking at the steps, as the first half of the first step says, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. I would like you to then take your piece of paper, draw a symbol over that subject. It could be alcohol or whatever. But then I want you to do a list of key words that to you mean powerlessness over alcohol How did you know that you were powerless? What was going on? So I would like you to explode your ideas for you on how you experience powerlessness over alcohol. You get the idea? All right. Whatever your symbol, you have to have an object or symbol. The topic is we admitted we were powerless over alcohol so whatever that picture or symbol you choose in the middle is good then start doing those key words. How did you know? How were you able to admit powerlessness over alcohol? Alright? Okay, so you'll need someone to do the mind map or more than one. Okay, do I have a pen? Is there one you can see from... I map on was looking at powerless over alcohol and we looked at it from two perspectives one you'll see we look at it from a male perspective and other you'll see we looked out from a female perspective so we'll see if there is a difference in how even gender wise we look at difference in powerlessness over alcohol in the first half of the first step so Jerry would you be willing to go over what the men's group did in looking at powerless so if I remember from the thought process it says things in the being it will cause certain results that we will see. So if you could go over some of the key words. Okay, we started with the eyeball. Degradation, lying, cheating, stealing, even fraud and fraud, they're feeling awful in jail we have no choice orders repulsion defiance helplessness intimacy sadness homelessness shame emptiness dirty stinky and moved on hospitalization dauntless adultery AIDS cirrhosis and hepatitis another self-category guilt shame and slimification we'll talk about that I'm happy drunk we'll relate to that bewildered tired Immoralized. Impending annihilation, loneliness, arrogance, willful, scared, fear, anger, depression. Anger again, for anger drops along the line. Vomiting, blood, ulcers, hissing in the pants, frozen. DC, wine stores, plasma center, hustling. Suicidal, homicidal matricide, patricide with revenge. Resistment, anger, jealousy and self-will. Misery, sick, addicted, uncontrollable. Egotistical, foolish, false pride, So you get that sense or the feeling of powerlessness, I mean a bloodshot eyeball. So I'm looking at that first half of the first step, you see there's this process. It says, recognize, acknowledge, forgive and change. So when, say I'm working this, understand what we're doing here is just working together to get an idea of everybody's experiences to get an idea of what various words triggered for powerless over alcohol. So a person could even personalize this, but when I look at admitting powerless over alcohol, I have to admit this is me. I have to recognize what that is. I need to acknowledge that's me doing that. That is a result in my life. It's not her fault or its fault. So when we admit we are powerless over alcohol, that when I look at these things, am I able to admit that? That this is powerlessness. Could we have the women come and look over or share what they look in terms of their powerlessness? Cyclone, Kynosome. It tells how our life, as it starts at the bottom of the bottle, when we start drinking, there are certain things that we feel like we feel good, we feel euphoric, we We're still a part of, we feel accepted, we still powerful, we're still sexy, intellectual, fearless, we are still in control, we'll still challenge you. We still like that we're a good driver, a good dancer. Someone said the best dancer. Better than best. I feel like I can talk a lot more, a lot easier. Sex is a lot better. Let's see, you feel brave. These are the things that, you know, after we start drinking, we felt like this is how it made us feel. But then as we continue to drink more and more, the turmoil began to start inside of us and it just exploded. And powerlessness, to us, with no self-respect, one word was speed, d-u-i, depth, cops, and then the powerlessness over our bodies, Bad room habits, eating habits. We were powerless over our behaviors. We were powerless over our language, families, values and love and our sense of relief. Powerless over spirituality. Just powerless over life as a whole. The other word was misery, which was the sadness in the facial appearance. Suicide, love, misery, depression, and cigarettes. Then another word was relationship abuse, which out of the relationship abuse come the black, sexual, mental, physical abuse, no separate sex, generationally, divorce, murder, jail, loneliness, prison, sexual promiscuous, incest, rape. The truth was just totally obliterated. There was no truth in who we were and what we represented. Stealing, lying, cheating, put ourselves in physical danger, couldn't see that abusive relationships was harming us, and as a result, we're totally spiritually bankrupt. Does that make sense? Yes. See you. Good job. I really like how you brought that out of the bottle. I haven't seen that approach before because that really puts it in perspective because it kind of was that way at first and then just slowly it gets worse. And I don't know how anybody else sees this, but I have watched in AA, sometimes you just watch. I think that the women, when they go downhill like that, they really go down. And God, they come in there so painful. I don't think that men understand the pain that the women come when they come to the program. It's just, I think they just go down faster and they go down further. I think their pain intensity of that is just awesome from what I can see, you know? It goes that way. But you see even like how men, women look at it a little bit different from one another in some regards I think that's why it's good that when you get help in the steps women work with women men work with men you know for a general guideline because it's not the same it's uh it's different but when a person can recognize that acknowledge this is this is what it done that then I'm able to admit powerlessness over alcohol that makes sense and you know that doesn't need to be analyzed a lot of times when we work the steps you know what we do sometimes is we analyze too much see this is about process it's sort of like you know that you ever get lost in some town like see where the rental car or something some strange time you get lost then you open up the goth department and you get a map out and when you open that map there's two pieces of information is needed before movement can take place what is the two pieces the information? Step one is where I am. Step two is where I'm going. That's a relationship, that's a two pieces of information that is needed before movement can take place and I think sometimes this happens you see the mind is only interested to move you know to get going it's interested in two things where am I now in relationship to where am i going it needs step one where is it broke and what's the fix we're gonna look at that next but too often one time I was stuck I was stuck in this place you know this one elder just really helps me a lot but he does it in such ways that I never forget it like he draws things on the ground in things by when I was talking to him about a problem one time and his one showed me he stood as a to move there's two things that you need to know where you are and where you're going soon as you have that then everything can move so you can't move if we just have this you can move if you just have that you need to have them both but he said to me he said what you do too much he said, is, you ask the question of why. He said, no, that's a different place. Why? He says, it's like there. So what I really want to know is where am I now in relationship to where I'm going. But he said Don, he says, what you do. He says you. Why did I do that? Why did that happen? Why? He said you do that. Why dance? He was getting his drum like, why? Why? Why? Why, why, why? And sometimes we whine for months. Sometimes for years. But that is an ego trick question. It is. See the ego don't want you to grow. It wants you to stay. It knows that if you get these two answers you will grow and start to move. See, why is an insane question. I'm talking about in terms of moving. What happens if I know why? Then you'll say, well, why that? Why? Then I have to dance again. So when we come into these steps, it's about coming on that red road. So in step one, you locate. In step two, you create the vision. And then it allows you to go on, you see, to the next step. So does that make sense? But why? Boy, a why question. We dance sometimes for a long time. We don't need to do that. But sometimes people even guide us to that why dance too much. It's too much! See we have in recovery, we have to get ourselves well so we can help our people. And we don't need to, you know, why it? Why our way there? Any questions on that? So do you think that you could in this manner personally do the first half of step one? The mind map works pretty good because it triggers levels even. You know, if you take them out two or three levels, it's pretty easy to do in doing that work. All right. Then we want to go on to the next exercise. And if you look in this book on page 13, these questions, there's nine questions. these questions come out of the big book on page 52. And these are what's called from the paragraph called the unmanageability paragraph. So I'll just read it really quick. And it says in this paragraph, some of you will recognize it. It says, We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view. That's like the mouse and the eagle. our readiness to change look at it differently then it makes nine statements it says we were having trouble with personal relationships we couldn't control our emotional natures we were a prey to misery and depression we couldn' t make a living we had a feeling of uselessness we were full of fear we were unhappy we couldn''t seem to be a real help to other people that's called the unmanageability paragraph so all he's done is taken those statements we were in trouble with personal relationship and flip them into a question. You might have problems with personal relationships. I need to locate in that area of unmanageability what are the results currently going on in my life in the terms of relationships. How am I doing? In that area. So, what we want to do is to break into work groups again and do another mind map so we want to all together there's nine questions here so we wanna break the men into two groups this time and the women into two groups so we would like the men's group we would like you to take a look at unmanageability in personal relationships so and we want the group one of the women to also look at unmanageability in personal relationships. So, one way to do that is you take a look at relationships. Like one way sometimes I look at the second part of step one is I say to myself there's nine islands if I could look at my life that way there's 9 islands one is personal personal relationships the second question says my emotional nature full of fear misery depression let's say that I could get in a helicopter and I would look at my island of personal relationships and that I could like from the point of view of the eagle so if I just get like in a helicopter and I say today I'm going to go look at I'm gonna observe me in relationship so I get in that helicopter go up in the air I fly over to that little island that's got all the people that I've been in relationships with then I could just stop that helicopter you know you just look down and I could watch myself and another person to say it would be I would just could hover over that. So I would look at me and my children. Then I could move over just a little bit and I'd look at me and my mate. And I'd look at me and somebody at work. And what I want to look down and see is how am I managing that? So you think back to your experiences. So say it's you and your spouse. And you think back to like how do you handle that? Do you see them do something? Then you watch you how do you do it? Am I trying to maneuver them? Am I trying to hit one of their buttons? Am i trying to make them get pissed? Do I put fear in them? My withholding information? Do i give them the silent treatment? I want to take a look at when it's going on there see how do I do my children or whatever that relationship is but when I observe it I don't want to see what are they doing only. What I'm really looking for uh-huh And when they did that, how am I reacting to what they're doing? Do I lie? Do I manipulate? Am I cheating? Am I attacking them? Am i withholding? Do i get angry? Do I run? Do attack? How do I handle that conflict in relationship? Get the idea for that? But I want to look at me, my part of it. So you look at the whole thing and then... So when you look at unmanageability in relationships, then I want you to do a mind map on how are you reacting to what is going on there. I need to know what to own. Now, you say, yeah, but they're doing this. That's true. And what they'redoing is unfair. That's truth. But how areyou reacting towhat they are doing? It doesn't matter what it is. And the thing is, is to don't judge it, you know. This isn't about judging what's going on, it's just about observing it. We'll all be done. Look at it, look at it. I need to get an idea of how am I behaving and reacting. Not the reasons, but I just need to see what my behavior is. Does that make sense? The second question is this, we couldn't control our emotional nature. So that you will see is in the question. How do I do my emotional nature? So what I want to look at emotionally is when I'm in it, when I am in the emotion then how do I react? What do I doing? So I would take that little helicopter ride and I would go to the next island, the emotional nature. So all I would do is look at, when I get over there, say one of my emotions is anger. So I just watch. What do I do? See? I see it taking place. I get that tension feeling inside. Slam the door. Out the door I go. I won't talk. I come back and I look, because you don't talk for a month and you won't say anything. See, you freeze up. Or you go and you retaliate. You know how sometimes you leave a place or whatever and you sit in your car and I'm going to go back and kick their ass and then I'm gonna do this and I'll go there and I am going to trick them like the arrow of their tires and then... You know, you just go fantasizing and all the stuff you're going to do to them. You know that could be a way that I react. How do I behave when an emotion is there? What happens when I'm happy? Do I start to look around, oh no, when's the other shoe going to drop? You can't stay like this. Do you get the idea of that? Just to look at some emotions and see how are we... Are we controlling it or is it controlling us? When I get angry, when I look at it, do I just have to do what it says? Do I make like after it's done, do I feel really shameful? Like after I run my lips or whatever, then afterwards I make a little vow. I'm not going to do this again. I'm now going to go back to the beginning. I'm going to not do this skin. I promise. Then the next time, I do it again. Then I feel more guilt and more shame. Or does it lead me to the drink? Or does it lead me to drugs? How does that work? So we would like, if we can just get the men over here and the women over there, that would be the easiest. We divide them into two groups then, and give one of them personal relationships and the other one emotional relationships. The one they did on the personal relations. Uh-huh. I think yet most of us can say we spend half the money on other things. It caused them hardship. Someone mentioned that their stepchildren caused them to have safety fears, gave them a lot of double messages, conditional love, couldn't love them. They did something good or bad. We gave them our love depending upon what they were doing. It was very frustrating as a parent because of us, if we go back to our parents, didn't learn how to be this kind of parent. So there's a lot of frustration in that because anger, shame, guilt, remorse and sadness, jealousy, abandonment, neglectful, selfish, trying to be perfect, abandon them emotionally, intellectually and physically. So we started out with our children like that. Some of the people didn't have kids, but they did some of the same things with our parents. Where did we go? From there we went to men. We had two different things. Some relations with men. We chose men who were alcoholics. Other people chose men who were codependent, who were saviors, rescuers. In all of it, we were manipulative, trying to change them, calm them, control them. Some people were super responsible because they're alcoholic men weren't. There was a lot of emotional shutdown, a lot pain which caused to act out. Very abusive, sex addicts, lying, cheating, stealing, having affairs, threatening, a lot of fear of rejection, and we'll applaud his murder for every one of them. Trying to make them miserable, and continually keeping confusion in the relationship. Lots of confusion. Also very self-righteous. Playing the victim to the student there, playing mom. Lots of fear. And it changed them. Let's see, where did we go from there? I think we went to ourselves, how we felt for ourselves, how we reacted to ourselves. We were very fearful, disappointed in our behaviors and actions, There's a lot of shame and guilt, self-inferior to others, low self-esteem, growth, a lot of self-pity, why is this happening to me, bewildered, what is happening to you, fear, suicidal, a whole lot of anger and self-hate towards ourselves. Towards our creator, a little bit of self. A lot of us said that it was non-existent. there was no no feeling of a creator a lot of fear a lot of aloneness real big about any kind of relationship that there may be um testing how powerful that that person might be mistrustful ambivalent uncaring punishing anger sense of loss powerless undeserving and unworthy part of that was was um that that the things that we had done the things that we've experienced and how we were um caused us to cause us to be real mistrustful and and believe that no matter what we're going to have no matter where there was going to be no higher power that was going gonna help us because of the things that we have done the way that we were towards the parents the relationship with the parents reactions a lot of guilt a lot of shame, abusive, neglectful, abusive emotionally, spiritually, physically, sexually. There's a lot double messages, a lot conditional love. We found that it was real generational with the children, generational dysfunction and abandonment. A lot of the same things in our relationship with the children, our marriage, our relationship with the parents. Of course the employer, out to get me, never satisfied, became workaholic, RR, perfectionist, lied, skipped work, stole money, jealous of coworkers, irresponsible, self-justified, just not putting in whatever it was that we were supposed to do most of us got fired some what way down the line. We went ahead at the end, since there was some time, and tried to think about how we were today. And with ourselves, forgiving, nurturing, self-acceptance, learning or teachable, willing to learn and accepting, someone self-incriminating for days. so and with our creator understanding opening accepting loving kind producing strong not alone prayerful try to learn the lessons as they come people said their best friend it felt very loved and it was awesome also there's still that willful that soft will which causes an unmanageability in certain areas of our lives same mistakes get um said over and over and so a lot of students jump What do you think? Well, let's see. The relationship between step one and two is what? Where are we now in relationship to where are we going? So, you're listing your perfection is causing unmanageability. Is that what this is? we're looking at the second half of the first step as we're look at unmanageability so are these issues causing unmanagability in your life can perfectionism cause unmanigability so what was your question so you're really looking at in that step is when I look at the results in my life today these are the results this is what's in the water coming from the lake these are the results that I see does that make sense these are the results that I am experiencing and that's the best I've seen in terms of looking at the results that what can can happen just in you know in personal relationships because it just drives you nuts trying to, you know, very, very time-consuming, energy-consumming, loss of sleep, just feeling insane and powerless and trying to whatever. Did we have the men do theirs on relationships? I'm George, I'm an alcoholic. The group of men that I sat with, we centered ourselves of ourselves we started with self looking down from the view of a helicopter we tried to examine how we felt and how we've used things during the past because the guilt self-hatred lack of confidence self will self-confidence control of our emotions are all mostly out of control okay with that in mind we move to our family life with a new wife or girlfriend and there we discuss the possibility of a financial situation there's never enough money for me my dear what the hell you need a few more diapers, use a handkerchief. Very gay, very selfish. A lot of money. Withdrawn. Didn't want to share anything with anybody. The reason for getting drunk is that the wife was always nagging at me. The ex-wife was always Nagging. Sexual relationships were either too much or not enough. I wasn't happy. A lot of fighting, a lot of jealousy. When you turn on some other man and look at her, you're not jealous of him, not her, but him. Anger, it's all anger. Then I move over to our relationship with our children, and there was a lot of not getting support, physical support as they were working on the school project, so I couldn't be bothered with that. But I'm thinking for the group, when I say I, I mean a group. It couldn't be bothered with it. I just want to sit in the pickup here and go and go in there. I've had times where he would follow two times and it's known now. It's a cool project. What else have we up here? A lot of backhands. A lot more backhairs. There is one right here. Just ignore him. They were just a piece of furniture that was in the way. You could say, how about it? I don't have time to be bothered when you need to get drunk. Then we talked on down to our parents and how we sort of looked at them. There was a lot of anger. We were jealous, rebellious. We defied them. No matter what they said, they were wrong. Another reason to go get drunk or skip school or whatever they assumed we had to do at the time. We touched on love. a big exclamation point shouldn't be a question mark love was there but we couldn't show it and this goes for the children and then the wife or girlfriend in this environment it was there we had a bad aspect of ways of showing that it didn't work it didn'y work uh we moved over to co-workers and employers there was a lot of jealousy involved backstabbing creating term models, trying to get ahead in the political game at any corporate or industry level. But then again, I always do more than that other one, so I have to take more type of things. Which ended up into a dispute with the administration. It's a fire. environment neighbors in the community life we've always had disputes uh fast passing turn your horses loose let them feed on a neighbor's apple trees he won't care because that tree it was a god damn many years anger agreement fear self self-will against in the community i personally was a small community eventually about 20 22 years out there and i couldn't be bothered with them i couldn's go vote on the news and change the name of the post office or any of that stuff that was my personal experience with the community my neighbors i ignored them until i needed something friends friends i think we're the first to classify as neighbors in the community although i had no friends in my neighborhood again i'm speaking for myself all my friends were somewhere else and then you've done it anyway one thing that i feel that we should have touched on we didn't apologize we neglected what the ladies did i thought up here the creator That was a good one. It just flew past us. Any questions on it? Is there any questions on that one? I think it's really good we're looking at this gender-wise. It just feels very comfortable. Yes? I felt like looking at the unmanageability of my life back in the day was not nearly so useful as it has been focused on today. How is my life unmanable? Well, now that I don't drink anymore, does my life suddenly become manageable? and, you know, can I now manage my life in sobriety? And that exercise seems to me would have been more helpful today to help me acknowledge, yeah, my life is unmanageable today. So, you don't know what am I going to do about the person I wasn't here with or the person trying to work today. Well, the purpose of that is to give a format that you can go do it personally. Somebody who's been maybe six months or a year, they will have that. if you're sober longer you probably will have you tend to have almost as much but you'd have different content in it but still be an issue yeah or a degree of that you had something Oh, yeah. And then it gets down to all those times when these things are all there and on top of each other. And that's what makes it so awesome, is when you can relate to each other as a whole universe. You know, you don't have all the AAs, all the AA's, all two together at once. And that relates to the change. But it's the change that keeps us together. Okay. Do we have the women who did the one on emotional nature? We couldn't control our emotional nature. We started with the image of the Vapna, thinking of it in several different levels, and the bottom level we thought were our childhood or real primitive or early emotions that all got together in here, and there are good ones and bad ones. unworthiness, powerlessness, ecstasy, joy, love, guilt, and spirituality, the neglect, abandonment, terror, violation, and trauma that we suffer, fear, shame, inadequacy, trust, hope, and rage. And the image being that this is all under there boiling away. And that the mountain itself of the Gapino is all those things which we put around ourselves to protect us from all those feelings underneath and all those motives underneath. And what we get is sex, what we came up with in here was development of sexism, need for control, whatever that is, prejudice, justification of all these things, no self-esteem or low self-esteem. substance abuse from security, codependency accomplishment greed, envy and this is our river of denial here and all these things will also cause cracks our things are made up our mountain is made up of these things but they also break out of our river denial and cause cracks and violations. But while we're still under pressure here, different things come out. And our masks come out, our masks covering ourselves, codependency, emotional walls, anger, depression, dormantism, physical ailments. On the top of the list is TMS. Migraines, stomach ulcers, vision problems, cancer, lines on our face, gray hair, diabetes, overweight, arthritis, anorexia, bulimia, nervous tics. We become lonely. We are isolated. We have self-pity. We use creativity as an outlet of emotions but good things can come from that. escapism manipulation religious fanaticism as opposed to spirituality uh shopping soap operas sex gambling the need to have things possessions pulling us in we become overachievers or underachievers we run we are spiritually bankrupt at that time we use charm we enable and we take care of people and this is what's happening and the result of which is when our temperature here on the side goes up and it flows we can experience evil in our lives through others and through ourselves and at that point we become spiritual or we die We have suicide in our lives, strange mental blank spots, uncontrolled rage, binge eating, or all kinds of obsessions, psychotic break, total recklessness, irresponsibility, screaming, unhealthy relationships, basically entire breakdowns of all things. Good thing. That's good, huh? Good job. That's really good.