The Bondage of Self – FOTS Step 11 Workshop – Part 18 of 25 – Steve N.

I'm Steve Lee. I'm an alcoholic and boy, I'm so grateful to be here with you guys tonight. I've had such a reflective day, though it's been a hugely busy day, but anytime I come upon an anniversary, I can't help but reflect back over the years and so many people that have played an important role in my sobriety, in my recovery and I just want to echo back to Butch what he said because he's such an important part of my life. And as he said we are good friends, we are old friends but we're close friends and close friends are hard to come by. I've got some others on here tonight and I'm grateful to see some friendly faces. I tell you that I will probably have to scroll from screen to screen for a little while just to see if I can find someone I can trust to stay awake and act interested for a lil' while. But, cause I need that kind of validation. But you know it's such an interesting time as Butch said for us during this pandemic and to begin to communicate virtually and to be together one of the pluses is to get to visit with people all over the world, frankly and be together. And that's one of the great things. One of the downsides is not to be able to really feel that energy that we often feel one with another when we're in the room but we replicate that as best we can under the circumstances. And the thing I've discovered though for us and I think we're kind of fortunate in Alcoholics Anonymous and it's not limited to us but it's certainly available to us, that our message doesn't change during these times. Whether they be the times of the pandemic, during times of social unrest, during times when people are struggling sometimes occupationally, financially, even in their health, but our message and our primary purpose does not change. And that gives me a focus every day when I get up to know that while there may be many things on my plate today, that primary focus is to stay sober and help other alcoholics. It's great. I've come in and visited a couple of the previous meetings and it's been terrific. You guys have had some great folks. I you said Teresa what a mouthful that was the topic and it is it's a it's a big it's big idea that self-examination prayer and meditation when logically related in interwoven form an unshakable foundation for life because who would want to spend all the time and energy we do to form a shakable foundation you know who who would want to do everything that we do here in alcoholics anonymous to have something that's kind of rickety that is going to uh collapse under under any strain uh i will tell you during this time i talked to a friend of mine earlier today and we've seen and perhaps some of you have uh some people struggled during this town and I said you know if you've got a if there's a crack in your spiritual boat during these times it is going to show itself and it's going to take on water and so it's been more important perhaps than at any time in my time in AA to have this unshakable foundation something I can rely upon and so what I hope to do over the next little while is I have value but taken together and logically interwoven, that's a different experience and it's sort of like diet and exercise. You can diet or you can exercise but when you do both the impact is going to be significantly better than either of those individuals. And so I'm going to touch base on self-examination, I want to touch based on prayer, and I want a touch base meditation and see how those come together. And they do tend for us to come together to be logically related and interwoven in the 11th step and some combination of the 10th and 11th steps. Those things begin to intersect with each other. It was news to me early on in my sobriety when I'm sober a month or two or three of you know on this day on June the 30th of 1989 was the day before I actually went into a treatment facility my wife and I spent this day with our daughter Abby who was five years old at the time and then I headed off to this treatment facility and somewhere and I didn't go to get sober but I went to fulfill my obligation to the legal system for the conviction of my 6 DUI. But somewhere in that treatment experience, somewhere when I was in there and going out to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and people were bringing them in, somewhere in time I identified with the fact that I had the relationship to alcohol that I heard the men and women of Alcoholic Anonymous talking about. I didn't know it before I went in there. Before I went in there I would have told you and it would have been true to an extent that I had alcohol related problems. I understood that I drank and had problems related to that. I got six DUIs, that is tangible. I've got police reports to identify that I have alcohol-related problems but it wasn't until I had been sober for a little while and beginning to go through the process of the steps and I'm easing up between that third step prayer in the beginning of the fourth step inventory in our book and I read that it says that being convinced that self in its various manifestations is what it defeated us we looked for its common manifestations that's the examination of self from which I began in that fourth step inventory. It's the next line that says resentment's the number one offender and that it destroys more alcoholics than anything but I had not recognized and it's an important sentence for me to contemplate and give thought to is am I convinced that self is what is defeated. Self in its various manifestations. Because where I am there in the book, looking at that, it has spent the last few pages, 60 through 63, providing a host of illustrations of self. It talks about self-pity. It talks abut selfishness and self-centeredness. It talks bout self-reliance. I can add self-righteousness, self-justification, a million different words that have the prefix self attached to them. And these are all manifestations of self. And when I go into that self-examination and the fourth step, this fearless and thorough self- examination, I'm going to look to see where self shows up in the relationships of my life in my fears and then my condom and uh and i will tell you until i got there i didn't realize that self is what it defeated me alcohol didn't defeat me alcohol got me to alcoholics anonymous but self is what put me in touch with alcohol self is the problem and you know that third step prayer talks about the fact when I immediately identified in the third step prayer where it says, you know, that I'm asking God to release me from the bondage of self. But for years, I interpreted that as self being held hostage. When in fact, what I'm being told there is self is the hostage taker. Self and its various forms are what are keeping me in bondage, the authentic me in bandage. And in many ways, I view that self as my defects of character. And my defectsof character, which are blocking me, which are keeping me from being my authentic self, you know, that pride, that gluttony, that envy, that jealousy, that sloth, that greed, those are all things that hold me hostage and they show up. It's almost like they're a gang. that have taken me hostage and jealousy and envy will hold me for a couple of days and then they'll say hey our shift's over greed how about you come in here and watch him for a while then greed shift is over and they'll bring in hey how about the how about sloth come come watching sloth y'all don't have to do anything just hang out for a While. And I don't recognize this certainly i go through life asleep to the fact that that i'm being held hostage to self to these variations and manifestations of self that are blocking off who i really am in that self-examination that begins in the fourth step but continues for a lifetime and is and is revisited in the 10th step and revisited in the 11th step uh those are it says are are the means by which i'm going to face and be rid of those things in myself which have been blocking me holding me hostage blocking me from the sunlight of the spirit so when i arrive uh at the 10th step and it is my belief that that when i begin going about the process of amends uh in truth i believe steps 9 10 11 and 12 all begin simultaneously certainly when we're going through the steps we stop and have the conversation, and they're numbered for a reason. And this is just my point of view. But I know when I get to the 10th step that it says I commence this new way of life as I clean up the past. So I don't wait till I make all my amends to begin cleaning up my new mistakes. Because I can make a new mistake on the way to my first amends. And I'm just supposed to stay current at that point and in that tenth step as i arrived there in the book alcoholics anonymous i'm encouraged to continue to look for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear i'm encouraged to continue do virtually everything i have done up to that point and then i get up to the 11th step and the 11 step where i am introduced certainly See, in Alcoholics Anonymous and going through the process of the steps, I've been encouraged many times to pray. It's not to – I don't wait until the 11th step to pray, I'm asking for some things all the way through these steps, right? In the third step, I give myself to this power. In the fourth step, God asks me to give me pity, patience, and tolerance so that I can gladly grant a sick friend. In the fourth step in the sex conduct, I ask God to turn my thoughts, to relieve me of these thoughts. And then I turn my doubts to someone I can help. I'm asking God all the way through these steps for power I don't have to do something I can't do. And then i get to the 11th step and to my knowledge it's one of the first times that I'm asking God for direction, for intuition. now the channel's cleaner it says now i'm arriving there and that's the point at which i begin to start paying attention to my intuition and i and and and i want to back up a little bit and tell you what because because this is such a challenge for me i was so glad lisa to hear you read from appendix two because appendix 2 in our book spiritual experience has been one of the most pivotal pieces for me because when i first got to alcoholics anonymous i wouldn't hold hands and say the lord's prayer i wouldn in my big book i went through the big book and marked out with a magic marker everywhere it used the word spiritual experience or spiritual awakening i was so had such a prejudice against that language and it made me so uncomfortable And I used to say, with my sponsor Frank's approval, I blacked those things out. But Frank told me over the years that it wasn't with his approval, but it was with his knowledge that I black them out. And because, and I wrote above everywhere in my book, it said spiritual experience or spiritual awakening. I wrote above it, personality change. Because I was willing to have a personality change long before I was willing to having a spiritual experience. And Frank said, Steve, you're hung up on language, and I want you to have an experience, and I don't care what you call it. And he said, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But see, I was locked up again by my view. And I'm not seeing in our book where I'm giving so much room, Our book says that we set aside any prejudice we may have against spiritual terms. And I get to determine what they mean to me. I getto make stuff up in AA. You're giving me real latitude to use these terms and me decide what they mean for me. Now, what I can't do is decide whatthey mean for you. But I love having that room and that gave me permission to stay and hang out so I could go through the process. He said, What I want you to do is go through these steps and what you believe about God, how you relate to God, how you describe that experience with a God of your understanding will present itself to you. And what we're doing in AA, I believe, again, this is my language, not necessarily the book's and not necessarily yours, but what I do is describe my experience as best I can. And my experience is I don't find God in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've become conscious of his presence. And the 11th step really drives that point home because at the 11st step, I'm trying to build upon this conscious contact with God. God has been there all along, but I've lacked the awareness and lacked the contact. I was blocked off from the connection to this higher power. And what I'm doing through the process of the steps, and when I get to the 11th step, I'm encouraged through prayer and meditation to improve my consciousness of God, to build upon a God consciousness versus a self-consciousness, which is how I arrived at Alcoholics Anonymous. I I get there and then I'll tell a couple of stories some of you have have who know me on here have heard me tell a couple of these till I'm sure you're tired of it but I can't help it's what molds my experience and I wouldn't hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer and man came up to me after meeting one day and he said he said Steve what what's the problem, why won't you do that? Why won't you pray? And I said, you know, I don't want to be a hypocrite. And I was serious. I said I don' t know what I believe and I'm not just going to hold hands and say kumbaya with the rest of the campers because that's what you guys are doing. And this guy had heard my first fifth step which included multiple DUIs, car wrecks, infidelities in my marriage drunk at the hospital when my daughter was born stealing time and money from a family business and an assortment of tacky tawdry things that many of us have done and he said but hypocrisy that's where you draw the line huh you've done all of that stuff but oh i'm not going to be a hypocrite he said i got good news for you and bad news for your man and i felt a little condescended to and i always say if you're new in aa and you feel like you've just you know somebody's been condescending to you it's because somebody's just been condescended to you and uh uh and and he said i got good news for you and bad news for me and i said i'll play what's what's the bad news and he says the bad news is hypocrisy is way down your list of problems and you might ought to address them in the order in which they will kill your ass and i said what's the good news and he said the good is there's room for another hypocrite and alcoholic and see for me that's good news for me today because i'm i don't have to be perfect to be here in aaa i don t have to get perfect to connect with a power greater than myself in fact it is my very imperfection and one of my favorite books And I know my buddy Butch and I were given this book by a dear friend. The Spirituality of Imperfection has been a wonderful book for me over the years. And so I'm arriving here, though, with this kind of stilted approach to prayer and meditation. I'd never meditated. So now, listen, I land up at this 11th step. and I want to talk about that prayer and meditation a little bit and how these things end up being interwoven. You know, the 12 in 12 says prayer is the raising of my eyes to God. That's a pretty simple approach. Emmett Fox talks about the fact that prayer should be understood as including any form of communion or attempted communion with God, any form. So it doesn't matter if I'm running down the street, if I're in the shower, if I read a book, that if I stop and I am making an attempt to commune with God that is a form of prayer. He says the highest of all forms of prayer is contemplation and meditation. So it's interesting to me how Emmett Fox there and our 12 in 12, to bring it back to conference-approved literature, intersect prayer and meditation. We often talk about the prayer of St. Francis in the 12 in12, but that comes under the conversation in that step about meditation. Bill writes in the 12 and 12 what about those of us who it says that many people show up there haven't had some experience in the religion of their choice with meditation says but what about those of Us Who Haven't Had That Who Don't Know How To Begin What About The Person Who Doesn't Know How to Get Started With This Meditation And Bill Says Well Let's Start With A Really Good prayer and i guess he has seen and he offers the prayer of saint francis as a really good prayer and encourages me to read each line slowly and contemplate what is there and and you know i one of the things i don't do anymore i i used to a lot i just don't debate with anybody about anything in alcoholic synonymous because everybody gets to navigate their own way but and i don't know what number you put in front of some stuff and and we'll argue whether something was a tenth step or a fourth step or 10th step or an 11th step and boy all i can tell you is what a high quality argument that is because if i'm taking the action i get on i get uninterested in what number is in front up if if i've taken that spiritual action this is not a chronological numerical life we're in it is a spiritual program we're in and and there are no numbers i understand why the steps are in order don't misunderstand me what i'm saying is if i'm taking a spiritual action i'm taking a spirituality and and what i am encouraged to do when i land at that at that 11th step is to engage in uh i mean how often do we hear somebody talk about the 10th step and incorporate into that conversation the end of day review that is over technically in the 11th step am i going to haggle with that person about what numbers in front of it or am i gonna encourage them and congratulate them for being willing to take that action uh dude i you know as i tell somebody for those golfers that are on here If you're playing golf, if I'm playing golf with you and we make the turn and I'm too under par, don't start screwing with my swing, okay? Don't tell me that I need to make a change in that swing. If somebody's getting results out of prayer and meditation and alcoholics and anonymous that they want, I'm not stopping them and giving them lessons. I'm saying, hey, tell me what you're doing, man. If that's working, I'd love to hear more about it. And there's so much room for us to find our way. but uh uh but it does give me and it says it would be easy to be vague on the matter but here's some things you might want to try how about in the morning i ask god i invite this power in that i don't have to do something i can't do to divorce my thinking from selfish dishonest self-pitying motives all that saying is move that out of my vision so i can look at today not clouded through those things that color the way I see the world. What if you could move those things over? And what would I do if I weren't afraid? What would I doing if I wasn't selfish? What would i do if i weren't dishonest? And I don't have the power to move those things out but I can ask God to shield me from that while I look at the day ahead and when considering my plans for the day why not jot a few things down and take a look at that and then I am moved toward that meditation right it says that and here's the thing I spend my days look different a lot of times I will tell you what I do on awakening what I'd do on awakening every day 95% of the time is is jot down a couple of things I'm grateful for. Then I jot down anything that I might be afraid of that day, anything that feels kind of heavy that's in my way today that I'm dreading or anxious about or uncomfortable about. It might be work-related, it might be AA-related it might, be family related but if something's in my, way I jot it down and I ask God, I invite God into that. That's my fear part of the inventory that and self-examination. And then I consider my plans for the day and I write two or three things down that I'm going to do for the Day. And, then I do a little, I do some reading and then I'd write down a few things about what I read. Now, I didn't always do that but I used to ask some of the men I sponsored to do it. If I sponsored you as a new guy, I would ask you to do that for 30 days because it would kind of help me and send it to and it would help me get to know you right and I would and now about four years ago I was sponsoring a guy a new guy and I was asking him to do that he got real excited and he said that he said man that sounds great he said so you do that and I went well I do now and uh so for the last four years I have done that virtually every day. And that's the value of sponsorship. That's what they'll teach you, right? And he moves me quickly from teacher to student, which is really where I need to be. And then I get to this meditation, which always seemed kind of odd to me. And Teresa, I haven't paid attention to my time. So just hold your hand up when I got five minutes, would you? and uh i'll come to a screeching halt i promise on time mid-sentence but uh this this meditation was something that in my language i struggled with and i and i i had ideas about it uh even though i had read in the book where bill has given me a pretty easy starting point i think bill was primarily coming from the perspective of that contemplative meditation that was a more uh western approach to meditation um let me sit around think about some stuff that's really all that is let me say it quietly and and and think of of something that i want to be maybe the focus or i want to take into my day and thoughtfully contemplate that but then i'm hearing about the eastern meditation which is maybe like emptying out your mind and and uh and a host of things in any way so i was i was struggling and uh um i know butch has heard me tell this story many times i go to uh an aa conference about 15 years ago now and uh howard p from arizona was there and howard who passed away uh just over a year or so ago and and uh and i went up to howard he was a devoted practitioner of meditation and then went up the howard and i said howard i'm struggling with meditation and uh and and i'd love to see if you could offer me some help and he couldn't be more excited and we he said let's go to my room and we went to his hotel room and would walk in the room and he turns to him and he says uh he says okay steve he said what are you doing now and i said well i'm really not doing anything now and he just cackled and rubbed his hands together and he said oh i see he said your problem's not technique it's commitment he said you're not struggling with meditation you're not meditating he said are you willing to struggle he says because in order to struggle you've got to create a time and space for that struggle to begin he says your problem is this so it's not i'm not that you are that you are struggling with meditation you are struggling with the commitment to meditate and that's where he had me and that what our book says right our book says that we're an undisciplined lot and we let god discipline us in this simple way and discipline as it's talked about in our book isn't a form of punishment. Discipline is adopting a committed approach. For those of you who may be in the martial arts, you can adopt one of several different approaches to the martial art. There are different disciplines within that. And so Howard wasn't telling me what position to get in. He wasn't telling me how to meditate. He was saying, he was saying how about carving out a committed five minutes a morning and see what happens in that time and that's what has changed over time for me is the commitment. What I do in that time varies greatly. I still struggle with meditation but I'm struggling with it and the truth is I don't struggle anymore because I'm unconcerned. I'm less concerned than ever with what happens in that space because here's what i found to be true for me i believe that the discipline has proven more important for me than what happens at that time i believe the discipline is in itself an act of humility i believe the discipline in and of itself as that prayer that many of us have seen says that god i don't know what you what you want but i believe my desire to do it pleases you i believe me carving out a little time i don't think god needs my time i think i need that conscious contact and that's what that is i'm i and then i will i will wrap up here by saying that that when we talk about this prayer and meditation and sometimes we're talking about it on awakening and sometimes we're talking about it when retiring at night, yet 98% of this relationship with God goes on during the day. 98% percent of this I have to ask myself how am I going through the day? And the book says reminding ourselves many times each day thou will not mine be done. I'm no longer running the show. How often do I do that? I had a guy that I was sponsoring and we were talking in the mornings and he was saying, man, he says, Steve, I'm getting up. I'm doing the prayer and meditation. He said, but by 10 a.m. at work, and it was a tumultuous time in his work life, he said, by 10a.m., I'm just totally wrapped around the axle and anxious and I've just lost everything that I left the house with in the morning. And I said, well, let's do this. What we did was for a week a work week there I said set the alert on your on your phone and I'll do it on mine that 58 minutes past every hour the alarm went off and we would stop at 58 minutes pass the hour and take two minutes to invite God back in to say oh yeah just from to remind myself that I will not mind be done. Just to consciously connect with God in a way that says, I'm starting to take over again. God, let's come on back in. Give me a little help. Let me recognize that thy will not mine be done. And it was amazing. Now, that's not the kind of thing I would want to do on an ongoing basis because it might be too effective and might help me too much. But we did it for that couple of weeks and and i will tell you that i'm much more often today than ever find myself during the day particularly if i'm starting to get a little worked up about something when fear shows up and boy fears you know fear is what shows up most on me i'm not a yeller or screamer usually uh i'm just a guy that'll get blocked off by fear of something and i'll do just what our book says back in the four-step inventory i'd say wait i'm living on a different basis I forgot I turned my will and my life over to the care of God. Did he get stuck? It's about our more religious members, and I'm not one of those, but call it a God consciousness. And that's what I'm – what I realize today is that in AA, hey, I'm trying to move from a self-consciousness to a God consciousness. Not through an act of will, but going through the process of the steps. The last thing that I'll say, and I just say for some of you who have heard me say this before, but from an AA speaker is, is i'll be brief and i'll end with this but uh how much time teresa you actually have like 10 more minutes oh then i won't use i won' t use but all of them it says but but the thing that that we have intuition right the book begins to tell me In that 11th step, when I'm doing that prayer, that I come to rely on this intuition. It says we will get the intuitive thought or idea because the channel is clearer than it's ever been. And it says I begin to rely upon that intuition and it tells me right up front that I'm going to make some really big mistakes in doing that. but here's the thing i've been making some really big mistakes already so why don't i start making mistakes by trying to trust that intuition rather than not trust and here's what i would say that when we get to alcoholics anonymous we often hear people tell when i'm the newcomer somebody telling me steve your first thought's always wrong first thought wrong you can't trust your things you. And that's probably right when I first get to AA. But I believe that 10 or 15 or 20 or 31 years later, if that was still true, wouldn't that be too bad? And here's what I would say has happened in reverse. It is now less likely that my first thought is wrong. It is now more likely that I will shout down the intuitive voice, that I will hear the intuitive voice and not trust it. And the example I will tell you is when I was flying up to Toronto, to the ORC, the first time I ever came up there. That's 15 years ago now, 16 years ago, and I was excited to come. I mean, number one, it's a big deal, which made me think I was a big deal. And so I packed my best stuff and headed to the airport to go to Toronto to spread the good news. And I'm boarding a plane in Nashville, and as I'm getting on – and the plane was going to go Detroit, and in Detroit I'm going to change planes to go Toronto. As I'm get on that plane in – in Nashville there was a woman in the gate area just sobbing unconsolably and talking to the gate agent she was holding a small child in her hand and the I get on the plane it was smaller regional jet 50 60 people on it whatever the number is and the flight attendant came on the plain and she said there's a woman out here whose brother has been critically injured in a car accident in Detroit she's trying to get to Detroit to to be by his side would anyone be willing to give up their seat and immediately intuitively I knew the right thing to do is give up my seat but I started thinking about it and I thought well wait a minute they paid for my plane ticket I didn't pay for it well if I don't if I get off this flight I'm not going to get there in time to do what they invited me to do. My God, the ORC could crumble if I don't get there and time to talk with those poor folks in Canada do it they don't hear from me. And just thinking through and as I'm thinking, they closed the door, nobody gave up their seat and we took off for Toronto. that's Friday night I'm standing up there in front of whatever that is 2,500 3,000 people and as I'm looking out over there I knew the man they thought they invited would have given up his seat on that airplane that I had now flown intercontinental to talk about the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous rather than take the opportunity to practice them when the opportunity presented itself and I will tell you that happens in small ways all the time and I believe now part of my challenge if I'm current if I am if I in prayer meditation if that channel is clear if I getting that intuitive voice I made a decision then to follow that intuitive boys sometimes I make terrible decisions but like I said I was making them already now the mistake I'm going to make is the first thing you know what i would say in in the final closing is that the great news to 12 and 12 gave me one of the great lines that helped me was after all this conversation i've given you after everything that's written in the big book and everything that'S written in the 12 and twelve it says but in the end it's essentially an individual adventure and that's what this spiritual adventure is for us that each of us gets in his own language from his own point of view navigate through the process of these steps to establish a relationship with this higher power and then to approach that power through prayer or meditation in whatever form we find most effective and I am I'm grateful for that it's given me great comfort I am a guy that believes 100% that I'm either connected or I'm not in any given moment. And I'm connected more often than I've ever been. And usually the way I get connected with God is to be connected with you guys. The poem I always end with is from a man, Mo H here in Nashville from that passed away in 2003. And he said, I sought my God and my God, I could not see. I sought myself, my soul eluded me, but I sought my fellow man and found all three. That's been my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. You guys have been so kind to pretend to listen to me tonight. Thanks so much.