The Delusion of Spiritual Disqualification – 5 Big Delusions Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Harold J.

meeting over to to our leaders for tonight harold elf from missouri and jimmy a from new jersey and we're going to continue the five delusions of alcoholism with delusion number four well good evening everybody can you hear me thumbs up all right fantastic well my name is harold i'm an alcoholic it's it's really great to be here with you tonight i'm coming to you from big mo uh st louis missouri um my sobriety dates april 7 1987. my home group is aa on the rocks and it meets tonight it's actually going on right now in saint louis city it will start here in about 20 minutes um strong three legacy group in st louise proud to be a member of that group but i'm also glad to be here with you tonight i come from a great line of sponsorships sponsorships made a huge difference in my life so i just want to make sure we cover that that being a part of what i would consider a three legacy home group uh active in that home group you know i have my have a flag planted there and i'm active in there and uh and and you know sponsored but also really committed to carrying the message to the alcoholic he still suffers those are first vote primary and and necessary for for for life that i had today so i want to make sure that we cover that but i just want to say welcome to everybody if you're brand new day alcoholics diamonds welcome welcome to spring house and all the people at spring house we're glad you're with us hey look at them all applaud that's awesome and uh welcome to uh those who haven't been here yet and then you just kind of pop in on this workshop and here we are three weeks into it we're doing a workshop called the five big delusions of alcoholism and where does that come from and why are we doing it so i'll cover that really quick just for those who aren't with this so they can kind of catch up but the this workshop was born out of the department of corrections it was born from a cpc pi corrections collaboration with the department of corrections for missouri eastern uh probation and parole board for the eastern side of the state um a lady who is now a trustee for alcoholics anonymous nancy at that time was the director of probation pro for the east side of missouri and also a warden of a 500 bed facility here in St. Louis, and Nancy, her brother was an Alcoholics Anonymous when he was still with us. He's passed along, but I sponsored her brother, heavily involved in corrections, and she asked if we could put together a team and come and educate probation and parole officers at a deeper level on alcoholism, what does it mean to be alcoholic, what is the big challenge and the big hurdles of alcoholism? And so this is how this whole workshop got born out of that that work and uh so after a lot of working and uh we narrow it down to five although there's we're not just saying there's five delusions but we just narrowed it down into five for the for the sake of of a workshop and so those five delusions i'll give them to you real quick um you know delusion number one is i'm not alcoholic right and that delusion unfortunately kills most people that have alcoholism or really cripples their life let's just put it that way um delusion number two is that we get past delusion. Number one, we can concede to uttermost selves that we are powerless over alcohol, but we, and we've come to the rooms and we'll say, Hey, my name's so-and-so and I'm an alcoholic, but it's not my fault. You know, it's just delusion of victimization and all that goes with that. And so we covered that last week in detail, you know, and and the problems that come with that and then delusion number three is I can get to a place where i can't own my stuff i can finally come to the room to say my name's harold i'm alcoholic i take full responsibility for my actions that brought me here uh but let's just be real with each other um i broke too many hearts i burnt too many bridges there's little hope that my life will ever be mount to anything really and these these mountains that i've created are too big to overcome the impossible will never become possible in my life so why even try and this delusion of impossibility this delusion that time has passed me by and the older you are when you get here the harder this delution is the more magnified this delusional you're 50 years old or 70 years old or even 80 years old it's like this deluge can really cripple you because you think it's just impossible for me to reconcile my life after so many years have passed and so that's delusion three and we covered two and three as fast as we could last one delusion number four which we're going to talk about tonight in detail is delusion of spiritual disqualification and uh we'll unpack that more in a minute and then last week or next week we'll we'll finish with delusion number five which there's no real purpose for my life um and uh and so tonight we're gonna be on talking about the delusion a spiritual disqualified and so how i want to go about it tonight is really just talking about my own experience strength and hope as it relates to this subject to bring us into this delusion we all come from different walks of life we all comes from different upbringings all those things but the ultimate delusion you know the delusion that that that we're afflicted with long before we ever pick up a drink which i talked about in week session one is this delusional inequality delusion then I'm not enough this delusions that the world and society and the culture and the context that we live in puts us in it puts us in this box and tries to define who we are what we should be in life um you know we it starts when you're young what are you going to be when you grow up you know and then you start to get defined by these things and you're defined by where you live and how many zeros are on your paycheck uh by the color of your skin your gender your sexuality you're defined by what you drive what you wear what you listen to what you watch what you read all these things try to define you, and if you get caught in that web, which we all do, it's a lost cause. It's like chasing your tail, and because we suffer from extreme self-centeredness, we're so engaged for our own self-interest that we can never live into that fully, and it creates all this stuff that we talk about and unpack in the big book, this restlessness, this irritable, this discontent feeling, this dual feeling that's going on all the time. I want everybody to pay attention to me but i want everybody to leave me to hell alone and the kicker is i want you to do it at the same time you know just impossible ask uh for in our lives and so we struggle with all this at varying degrees all this this delusion of inequality and we can continue to uh struggle with that in our sobriety and throughout our life because the world doesn't stop the world every advertisement every billboard everything's out there saying you're not enough you need to be more is something else, and it's easy to get caught up in that, and Lord knows I've chased that car too many times in my life, and it's exhausting, and it's crippling, and it can be deadly, to say the least. But anyway, so that delusion really feeds all these, but when it comes to this delusion of spiritual disqualification, I'll unpack what that means in a second, but I just want know that we all get here different different spectrums some of us come with strong religious convictions some come with none at all some come a fundamental idea of god others not so much uh it wasn't clear some watched um you know someone argued that they had religion shoved down their throat or it was it was uh it was one thing on sunday but the way it was lived out at home was totally different it was very a lot of hypocrisy in what they witnessed as far as people claiming to uh follow a god whatever that god looked like and or uh you know we come from a from a background of atheism or gnosticism all these things all of us have varying degrees of this stuff when we get here i'm going to just share my own experience with all this stuff and then jimmy's going to do the same thing but i would just encourage you to lean into it and as as the spiritual appendix says in the back of the book we can only be defeated by a rotten attitude and belligerent denial when it comes to spiritual matters and so the only thing it asks us is is how to be honest be open-minded and to be willing when it comes to spiritual matters so i really encourage you to lean into that that set aside prayer that we that catherine led us through in the beginning really important i think tonight as we go through this and we talk about all this stuff but i just want to talk about the delusion of how it impacted my life and what's taken place over the past 34 plus years to help me unpack it deconstruct it reconstruct it into something that's been vibrant in my life ultimately transform my life and that's what i want to share about tonight i was raised by a single mom i was raising by a mom who was married to two alcoholics um and uh and it led her you know the first marriage and all the dysfunction and all of the alcoholism and led her to a state mental facility where she lived for a number of years before she was well enough to get out and she got out and she gravitated right towards another alcoholic happened to be my father i came out of that marriage but somewhere between age two and three my mother just said enough she didn't have recovery she had no introduction alan on or anything but she just said i had enough and she ran my father off and she turned her will in life forward to the care of god as she understood god and uh and just said it's me a new kid no education no background divorced twice in the 60s pretty bad stigma to have on your head no education uh no no family whatsoever parents died really young and it was just her and i and uh my mom turned her willing life over to god as she understood god which was through her catholic traditions her roots her faith and she never wavered on that until the day she died in 2015. and grew into an amazing amazing woman and in my experience and i probably i'd probably say this because i'm a mama's boy but i say it with all sincerity that there's just nothing more beautiful than a woman who's walked with god for a long time it's just not the more beautiful and then that's just been my experience but my mother was one of those people she was the greatest winner and rock in my life had not been for her faith demonstration uh her life dedicated to loving service i would not be here today i can promise you that so my hats are off and my arms always go out to the single parents in the room not just moms but dads too but just single people doing the best you can to bring people through life it's not easy but what she wanted me to do we had no resources we had no economic background we lived in beat up old houses we shared a bathroom with the lady next door until i was seven she didn't bring resources but what he brought was this attitude and this faith in this demonstration and this over exuberating compassion love for me and what she wanted more than anything for me was the one to know that i was loved but number two to know this power greater than myself and that was for her it was her catholic faith and uh so i started out in a catholic school and from kindergarten to fourth grade i went to a catholics school little bitty country town less than 100 people in school and as far as i can remember i don't had the best memory of those days but what i do know is i didn't i didn' have any real objections to me you had to go to mass every day i loved it i mean to be transparent i love that stuff um i loved this so much i'd come home and play church maybe some of you did that i came home and set up tv trays for an altar and threw a cool blanket over it so it looked cool and i filled the the fruit bowl full of potato chips for the eucharist and i got some great kool-aid for the wine and i've got an old towel out of the closet for a stole and i got a bible out i can promise you we never read you know and once in a while even bring a few knuckleheads over save a few souls at the long house it was a great day you know father herald be thy name you know end uh you know that was um that was a big part of how my life started the rock opera's route some of you 60s freaks and 70s freeks remember the rock hoppers tommy and godspell and hair and of course jesus christ superstar and i could sing all those soundtracks forwards and backwards still today and they influenced me big time spirits and still do that you put any amount i can sing right along with it no one backwards and forwards so all that stuff influenced me uh at a young age and uh and so my spiritual framework foundation was that when i started out in life came with that though was all the theology that time um and and i'm in a private little school private little town um and then my world got rocked as i shared before and somewhere between eight and nine my mom said look we're moving to st willis said why are we doing that she says because you got a brother and two sisters you don't know about and so this whole mysterious part of my mom's life opened never knew about this part of her life i didn't know she came out of a state hospital and she had this previous life and so we up and moved to st louis and we moved into a trailer park and we lived in a beat-up old trailer park it lived in the back where all the they called everybody trailer trash and i was no longer in a private school and i went from a school of less than 100 to a school of thousands of people and this is where my world changed spiritually especially because i had this this you know this small framework of what this higher power looked like what god looked like and now i get walk into my first class of evolution and it destroyed my in one class my faith was watered up and tossed in the trash it literally destroyed my faith because everything i thought i knew about life about creation about being a human being about you was destroyed literally within one class session of here i am believing that the world's only maybe 10 000 years old and all this stuff that comes from scripture and and now i'm learning the world is 4.5 billion years old that's a big difference between ten thousand four point five billion and so it just rocked my world and then came with that is the theology that came behind that and i'm not talking about the vatican two days i'm talking about the vatican one days where there was a lot of emphasis you know on hell and damnation and and separation from god and punishment and uh and by this time you know my this spirit this this sin-driven life that i live this life full of all kinds of character defects of every kind we're already starting to rear their head and sexuality and masturbation and and now drugs and tobacco and lies and and booze and and and crimes and theft and going down the line all this stuff was adding up in my life and all that led you know you know you hear things like boy you're going to hell or you think it's hot now kid wait till you die you know these are things that let me hear a lot of when i was young and so it's like you know i was spiritually disqualified before i was even in double digit age you know i was already spiritually disqualified there's no way i can live up to anything anybody's talking about and so this all this led to spiritual disqualification vacation and so it's so the age of 10 i grew up you know with a single mom who has gone all the time working all kinds of jobs just trying to keep a roof over my head and i grew upon the streets i came and gone as i pleased and as soon as i could do that this this whole relationship with this power was gone. It was over. And that was it. In my life, I turned my will and life over to the dark side, to king alcohol, and that's where I remained until I came to UP. But that's the setup. That's what I came here. Now, I don't know what you came here with, but that's what i came here for. I came her with a lot of twisted perceptions. I came here without a whole lot of doubts, and I came there with a whole lot of questions. But I didn't know how to articulate any of them. and so i had this jump when i got here i also came here with this channel that we talked about that was completely clogged shut and we talked about it last week in detail this channel was clogged shut so there was nothing getting through this channel it was full of resentments full of lies full secrets full delusions it was just crammed full so i come to the rooms of alcoholics anonymous and i see god and everything i see God on the walls and the steps i see it in our literature everybody's talking about it, higher power, God, spirituality. And I just recoiled from it almost like a hot flame because I was disqualified in my mind. It's like, what are you talking about? The grace of God and forgiveness and how is that even possible? But again, I couldn't articulate that, but this is what was racing through my mind and I had God in a box when I got here. And I'd be willing to bet that you have God in the box when you got here and you may probably already have gotten a box while you sit here right now and i'll unpack that more in a minute when i'm talking about uh directly with that but but i think it's important to understand it and bill wilson had gotten the box dr bob had gotten a boxing on i'll throw us a little bit of that story in here as well and i'm not going to read or cite anything for the sake of time but i just want to let you kind of know where we're where i'm headed with also was under this zap theology that was goes on especially in the bible belt where i met right now that you come in and get saved man just come in and get saved and you and i don't know how many times i've been baptized sprinkled dunked you name it i've hit it somehow some way you know uh and and been zapped you know and uh the only thing was i didn't nothing changed you know and and if i was there next week i'd be walking up there again to get saved again because i've Been acting like a heathen all week long you know week after week and felt nothing there was nothing ever happened i never they tell me I was zapped. They tell me I was saved. Um, I didn't feel saved. I felt as lost as you could ever be. And so I had that part of that in my life too. And most of that came through the corrections department of corrections and my encounters with, with God. And I always seen, you know, through my dark lost ways, I always bounced into people that claimed to be godly people and always looked like I needed help. I can remember being at an Ozzy Osbourne counselor. I'll never forget this coming out in Atlanta, Georgia, come out I'm just crashed to do the gills after an Aussie concert, Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne. And I come out after that and there's all these God people out there and they're handing me verses and scriptures and stuff. And I wake up the next morning, I got like a God box full of all this stuff that was given to me after an Ozzy concert. I guess I look like somebody who needed God in their life at that stage of my life. But but I was far from it. But I'm not saying I had all these encounters when I got here and all this stuff and uh and so i stayed here and i came into a and i told you i was on step nine for the first three years i was here i was committed to the fellowship trying to fit in i didn't really belong to anything yet because i hadn't worked had lived into the steps or any spiritual way of life i didn' t believe the steps would change my life i didn'T believe god would change my life and i was completely closed off from this higher power at this stage in my life i fell in love with you people i came to believe in you people I still believe in people i believe in our steps our traditions our concepts but when it came to this whole higher power concept that i struggled with um and for the longest time and i hear people in meetings say you know well god really spoke to me i felt a miraculous power miraculous transformation of god i felt god's spirit i felt God talking to me and this wasn't a coincidence you know this is all about God and I'd hear all this stuff and it sounded like this to me you know it just i couldn't relate to it and i'd pray god keep me sober today and god thanked me at night that was about the book of my prayer i might say this friendly prayer with you in a meeting i might say that lord's prayer at the end of the meetings but that was the that was the the basis of my my prayer life it was that shallow uh because i didn't believe it you know i just didn't believed that i was that this power was even possible or any relationship in this and so the spiritual loss disqualification had me really i struggled with it um big time and you know i wanted to have it i i you know of course i lusted for god's blessing i wanted god's grace in my life but i still wanted to be in charge of my life i still want to live my own life and do my own thing and what's step three i mean step three says now we you know right at the end of how it works is now we're at step three and what do we mean by that and what did do we do? And it says the first requirement is that we have to be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. We have to convince. Another way to say it is I had to come to the end of myself. We all have to come to the universe, and that comes at varying degrees. Sometimes it's when I finally put down the bottle, and for many of you, that's the case. For many of us, it's not. The bottle was just one beginning, and then you come here, and you find out that drinking wasn't really even your problem. It was more of a solution than it was a problem, and then you start getting introduced to the root of the problem and what's that about, and what's the book say? Well, we had to quit playing God. Why? Because it doesn't work. Well, I could never once in my life said, I'm God. You know, I walked around with a cape on or a big G on my chest, but when it was unpacked for me and I began to understand that I was the captain of my own ship, I was a master of my old enterprise, my own terrain um you know that i could resonate with that you know no doubt about it and my actions proved that the inventory has proved that but what about this god you know what about this higher power and how do i get free from this delusion that i'm disqualified how do we get free and open up to this well i think before i unpack mine let me unpack bills if you go back to bill's story and you can remember when abby thatcher comes in 12 steps bill and he comes in i'm going to just paraphrase for the sake of time but he comes in and bill goes all right what's going on with you and he says well i got religion and bill says well okay we'll just let him go on his religious rant and as soon as he's done we'll have a drink that's what bill's saying just let them have his ranch so shut up and i'll let you rant and evy goes on this little pitch about where he's at and then uh and then he realizes he doesn't want to drink and he knews that there was some transformation in this guy's eyes he could see in his eyes he knew this guy is alive he drank with this guy so what's up with that and then they start talking about this higher power and then you hear where god what basically bill pulls out his box that he's got god in he sets it down and i call this the box of certainty and this box of uncertainty is what a lot of us struggle with and is that we're so certain that god is this way we're sure that this is who god is and where god come from and how god operates in the world we're certain of it and we're so certain of it that that that the pain of thinking differently or outside of that is so painful that we can't stand it so we'll just go surround ourselves with people that think like us walk like us talk like us act like us and our world gets really small and you see this happen in religious circles big time and you know what i'm talking about so now you're caught in this box this is the box of certainty i'm so certain this is what god is and how they operate and so i had this box and so bill wilson had this box then he unpacks it he talks about being in the winchester cathedral with his grandpa and he talks abou jesus and he talked about not too closely followed by those who follow him this is all bill's framework and his understanding of who this higher power is and the pain of that and he's bringing it out as he's telling bill this story and after he gets done unpacking this box of certainty unpacks it all right there for ebby finally says to him hey bill bill why don't you just choose your own conception of god and it transformed bill's life and it led to the where we're at today tonight sitting on this meeting if you get the book the best of bill and you read the very first paragraph on the subject of faith bill will say this and i'm paraphrasing again for the sake of time but bill will stay this god as we understand him her it whatever god is we understand god is the most important language in the vocabulary of alcoholics not that's bill wilson's own it's the most important vocabulary here and what does it do well it creates liberation it creates a space where we can take god out of this box of certainty we didn't ask for this box of certainty. It was handed to us by our upbringing, by culture, by society, but we're having it. You have some version of it. I have some vision of it here. And when the insane thing I think about it is in my own growth and spiritually is that it's the only thing we put in that box. For example, if I was to get on an airplane and fly to New Jersey to be with you in person, am I certain that when I get on that plane, that that plane is not going to go down and crash somewhere along the way am i certain of that no but do i have enough confidence in the pilot and the fcc and the faa and everybody else who's involved in air flight travel if i have enough confident in that then i can safely get on this and the odds are i'll get there safe and sound yeah so i i don't go on there with certainty i go in there with confidence same way when i drive a car from point a to point b am i sure i'm not going to slide out the road or get hit by a direct driver no i'm Not certain of that but i have enough confidence in my own ability to drive and follow the rules and and be attentive to what's going on then i can confidently go from point a to point b without any problems same way when i get married and i say i do to death do we part for better or for worse for sickness or health am i so certain this bride of mine is going to stay with me for the rest of my life i'm not certain of it i have confidence i hope that's the case but i'm not certain of that but when it comes to this god for so many of us we're so certain that god is this way and so we're closed off we're not open-minded we're honest about higher power we get here and it's jesus it's allah it's it's whatever it's hinduism it's pantheism it's its whatever whatever our worldview is whatever our theology is but it's whatever it is is this is what how you connect with god anything outside of that i'm close-minded and any thought about being outside this box creates a lot of pain, just like all the pain evolution created for me. Evolution blew up my box, you know, and so this wrestling to the point, and so that my choice is dismiss it altogether, which is what I did, or my world's going to get really small, and I'm going to do this around myself with people who think I did about this higher power, and dismiss everybody else. You're wrong. There's 5,000 religions in the world. mine's the only one that's right my idea of God how do you get to know God is the only one that is right and the rest of you are wrong and that stuff can happen inside Alcoholics Anonymous too we have seen it millions of times play out and so this is what blocks us off and this is block me off anyways what I should say so this zap theology this idea this box of certainty and so being able to take God out of that box and become honest about my doubts and we all have doubts friends be honest about my questions why am i here what happened if god is a god of love then why is there covet 19 if god has a god loved and why did i lose so many people i care about in the last two years if god hasn't got a love and and joy and all this stuff then why are they evil why is their murder why is it rape why do children abuse go on down the line and those are all fair questions i had all those questions you know if god is the god of love why can't everybody just be sober why do people have to die from alcoholism why does people have the od and die load her life up and take other people along with them so these are all questions i have when i got here i didn't know how to ask those questions but the reality is i had these questions and i had a lot of doubts and i can still have doubts today but But the beautiful part about Alcoholics Anonymous and where the freedom and liberation come from steps two and three is it allows me to take that out. And we have a whole chapter on we agnostics that helps us unpack this, and of course we could spend weeks on that chapter alone but that's what it ultimately says. That you're suffering from a spiritual illness, a soul sickness is ultimately what we suffer from. What is the soul? Great question. What is this soul? interpretation understanding of the soul it's made up of three things our mind our will and our emotions and they're all pretty broken when we get here you know and they are pretty fractured and we're just you know we're finite broken people when we come here big time and uh spiritually bankrupt on every level and spiritually disqualified and then a lot of those other delusions that come ahead of it that we've already talked about and so this is where i was at what liberated me what set me free well number one was steps two and three there's this freedom to hey we know you got this box of certainty here on but just do me a favor for right now let's set that aside can you just be open mind up that we can set that si and say that you just might not be right you might be some truth in there but it might not the full truth are you willing to subscribe to that yeah okay man and is able to set that aside and become honest open-minded and willing to go on with the rest of the steps so i mean you could easily argue that you know step three is really the decision to work the rest of the stuff but i'm actually going to pick up a pencil and paper and do an inventory for the first time and i can promise you my buddy matt says it all the time and i think he's right on don't get hung up on the god stuff just focus on working through four through nine working through the 12 steps and god will meet you on the other side now i love that ain't that awesome i mean that and that's really what happened in my life i mean it's truly what happened and so leaning into that so i started that inventory finally after three years of being here and it was when i shared step five it's when i told somebody my entire life story and i got this channel cleared i took this channel i got the resentments i got the secrets around the sex and the crimes i committed that i never been caught for i got all this junk out for the first time in my life ever and this power that we talk about this light this illumination whatever you want to call about the spirit finally was able to get through this channel and i had this experience this transforming experience and not only did it transform my life but it gave me a sense of belonging i never had up until then i really felt like i belonged here that my life mattered my sobriety mattered you mattered and and there was some element of purpose for my life. There was some element of value that I truly was forgiven, that there was this power. It was a lot of grace, amazing grace and mercy put on my life, and it's not by mistake that all this happened, but here I am, and what am I going to do about it? And so that liberation that came from steps five, four, and five changed my life spiritually, and allowed me to start having this connection and resonating with you spiritually where i where i was blocked off and disqualified before um and it was uh important but this idolatry of certainty and see this is when i say a box certain this is what we worship sometimes not really worshiping god we're worshiping what we know about god and this is where all the pain comes this iswhat i know about god i'm willing to argue with you debate with it what does 12 by 12 inside 12 and 12 says we got to withdraw from the debating society you know when it comes to this we got it put this stuff aside and so being able to do that despite our doubts decide our questions decide our twisted perceptions we had to get to that place and uh and then and then you know be and not be afraid to ask the questions i have doubts about this i have you know guys that gotta love them why do we have systemic racism why do they have you no oppression and marginalization when it comes to sexuality or gender or economic status or rate why and see these are fair questions to ask and i had these questions i was not brave enough to ask them in the beginning but as step two opened up my life i was able to ask these questions and not worry about the repercussions of it and trying to understand what you know how does this all work why is there evil and and all this stuff at the same time but what i really kind of believe more importantly than anything and what i come to understand is free will say so that i have free will i have say so in my life and so do you and you can call free will the greatest curse or the greatest gift however you want to frame it but we got it you know i can choose to get off here tonight and if i want to go drink and burn my life on the ground i can go do that i had the right to do that and there's many of alcoholics tonight that will do just that. So I have this free will, I have the SESA, and it's based on where I'm at spiritually, what is the formation of my spiritual life and development that will determine what I do with that free will. If I'm living for my own self-interest, then I'll do whatever it needs to achieve self-gratification, whether that's with booze, alcohol, sex, money, power, glory, prestige, picket, it doesn't matter. I'll go to any links for self-gratification. If I'm living for my own self-interest, if I'm living for God's interest or this higher power's interest, then something's got to change because I can't do that on my own power. You know, it's just impossible to do that. Something has to change in me. Something has to be transformed. And so that's what happened. So I have free will today. Free will is I choose to be here with you tonight. The free will is i choose to pray. I choose to do the things necessary to continue this life that's been the most amazing life I've ever lived in my life for the past 34 years, and to be liberated spiritually. So steps one through three give me the opportunity to do that. It's an opportunity to surrender, to concede to my innermost self that I'm powerless. It is also an opportunity to become honest, open-minded, and willing about my doubts, about my fears, about my questions, but also to toss this box of certainty aside and be open to other ideas about God, other faith traditions, other experiences. And friends, I can promise you, I've been to a lot of theological and religious things in my life. And the only thing I can tell you, if you want to use the language of kingdom of God, the most kingdom looking thing I've ever experienced, witnessed or watched in my Life is right here right now. And it's Alcoholics Anonymous. it really truly is you know and we don't care about where you came from where you're going what you know we just don't cares don't about what you believe don't believe your doubts your questions we don t care just come here and we love you unconditionally which is about as godly as it gets and the idea of one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic is probably about as spiritual you're ever really going to get it's the closest that that you're ever gonna get face-to-face with this power. And it's here and it's at our availability, but those things that I've looked it up that really blocked me off from that experience and they were all delusion that and then delusions are powerful and they had me in a tight spot. So the opportunities come through steps one and three but the liberation came through four through nine of take Ellen in my own life, looking at my life honestly, being transparent about it you know, and when I was able to be transparent, tell someone else my entire life story, it changed my life. It just cleared that channel, not completely, but it cleared it enough that I started to have this spiritual experience, and as page 75 of our book says, it's at this stage of our sobriety that most people will say they had their first real spiritual experience and that was mine, you know? And I no longer felt spiritually disqualified and that is an amazing feeling when you feel like hey this power that we're talking about truly does want a relationship with me and a beautiful part about that is it takes two to say yes to a relationship and the beautiful part of that is this higher power has already said yes so the million dollar question that always have the answer is will we will we say yes for this invitation when i said yes to the invitation after especially after my channel was cleared it changed my life and so 10 11 and well help keep the channel because life's going to happen the big pillars of life and resentments will happen fears will happen nothing will block your channel quicker than fear friends i mean fear will block that channel that fast pride and fear are the bogeymen we suffer from big time and and and i what i realized and i guess was was almost apocalyptic for me is that i always spent my theological idea god was god was out there somewhere and then we're all trying to get there. And if we're zapped, it really doesn't matter how we live here because we're going there when we die. But what I've come to understand is that God, we don't have to go up the mountain because God came down the mountain to meet us where we're at. And that's what happened to Bill Wilson. That's what Happened to Dr. Bob. That'S What Happened To Me. And It Came Through People Like You Is Where That Witness Came From. And IT'S Changed My Life, Friends. It Totally Changed My Life. And I Don'T Know Where You'RE At In Your Spiritual Journey, But I'M Just Telling You That spiritual disqualification, this channel that we're talking about is it. And here's the deal with the channel. If something happens to the bridge between me and God, then nothing's getting across that bridge. Are you hearing me? If there's something that gets in the channel, it's going to block me off from this power. Still today, 34 years later, I got a secret. I compromised my life. However I want to do it, it'm going to get in the canal. It's going block me all from you and this power, and it's 1011. 12 are here designed to help me keep this this channel open that's the beautiful part about our fellowship the whole fellowship is designed to keep this channel opened and here's a beautiful part we don't create the channel the channel is not even something that we create it the channel is the spirit of god and what does our book say where we find this channel deep down inside it's been there all along this channel has always been but we just delusional didn't see it uh didn't know it existed or are told we didn't qualify for it or we were disqualified from it which is where i think most of us get to and all this channel gets cleared and it leads us to our ultimate purpose and we'll talk a whole lot about that next week but that's you know my experience with this this delusion and a very short version of what it means to be spiritually disqualified how i started and how i got there and what i did to get liberated and what I do to stay liberated stay free and connected with this power so it allows me to do to to engage prayer meditation devotions connections things that we're doing studies whatever in a powerful powerful way um that keeps you know keeps this channel flowing but also it's still the key elements of honesty open-mindedness and willingness and i can come and sit in a room with people from all faith traditions all walks of life atheists agnostic firm believers whatever fundamentalist and i can sit there gracefully listen to every one of them and it'll either enhance what i'm already believing grow it more or challenge it whatever but i can i can sit in the room today and i don't have to be shut off or feel like you know this box of certainty doesn't rock my world anymore and i'm so grateful for that and i owe that to you people you liberated me and what a liberation it is so i'm grateful to be here tonight i know that was a lot i know know that was a fire hose of information uh but that's that's about as slow as i can talk it tonight and with that jimmy i'm going to pass the torch over to you that's all i got thank you thank you harold thank you hi everybody my name is jimny i am an alcoholic grateful to be alive and sober and uh i have a home group it's called the design for living group down in neptune new jersey i uh have a sponsor service sponsor sponsor a lot of guys most importantly uh sober since uh march 28 1987 and uh great to be back with you guys tonight great to see a lot of my friends on here and uh and my buddy harold and uh you know now i understand finally after doing this a few times with harold why he wanted me to do this uh since it started in corrections i guess he needed a another criminal uh to help him with this but uh but here i am and uh and what i love about this you know when we did this the first time harold like i think i explain this harold sends me the manuscript it goes here read this in four days we're going to be on virtual scotland and you got to do this with me and uh harold never told me what to do he just said read this and let spirit move you any way you're gonna uh be moved so um that's how we've been doing this you know our stories are different but they're exactly the same and uh you know i never played church when i grew up i hung out with kids that uh the only game we played was how to rob the uh the coin box in church that was the game we played uh but uh but i'm glad to be here and uh and again welcome everyone especially to silver houses uh hopefully we don't go too far over your head uh this could be uh very deep sometimes our conversations and uh and and we just we're glad you're here you know um so my talk i don't know the way i'm being moved right now is just to talk about this delusion more in sobriety more with long-term sobriete really uh not so much growing up though i'll probably who knows where i'm gonna go with this but uh but i just had some opening ideas or opening thoughts that uh happened today uh so i was putting something in my calendar in the my phone and then i realized i was in 2021 and not in 2022 and when i looked at the date i noticed that me and harold were doing this exact same thing uh that uh last year at this time and uh and what i realized was uh the day after i buried my mother this was the delusion that we were talking about and what hit me so much was how fast time has gone in one year how fast this life is moving i don't know before anyone else but it seems like it's really moving real quick and uh you know i had a long talk with my sponsor today and uh there's a good friend of ours that many of us know and uh he had a really serious operation today and and we have mike who comes on here and records uh mike's you know having a rough time in his personal health and it just you know what happened was i just started to think about how i take things for granted friendships for granted and you know it's always oh i should have called them you know what you know why do i wait to do the things i i do and uh you know i just you know and what i really was thinking about knowing that i was going to speak here tonight was rather than doing things that we're supposed to be doing how much how much time do i spend in these delusions versus what i should really be doing that's my point and uh and how much of my sobriety have i remained agnostic really you know here god here's the drink problem i'm going to handle the rest of my life and how much of myself have i really been separated from god and really been separated from my loved ones and uh you know and getting caught up with a lot of things that are not really important especially when you hear about friends going through a rough time right and i think these delusions are the things that i really got to examine maybe on more of a deeper level you know everyone on this call today has been given a gift it's called sobriety you know and the question is you know what am i dealing with the sobriete um am i still falling into these delusions am i so fallen into the victim role am i still following i'm not good enough or am i sitting here tonight thinking i'm not even alcoholic you know and this delusion tonight where you know spiritually disqualified you know uh you know there's a part of me still to this day 34 years over 63 years old that sometimes i revert back to that you know that six-year-old that eight-year old that 10 year old kid when uh you Know prior to even picking up my first drink with all the insecurity had at that young age with all the anger that i was internalizing with all these with all the fear that iwas living with with all that stuff that i had nowhere to go until i found alcohol you know there was a real uh connection i felt of the religion of my upbringing you know and that was i was raised a catholic you know and for us old guys or maybe some of your older people you well maybe i shouldn't speak for anyone the way i saw it was that that this god was going to punish me for all the sins i've done uh harold kind of alluded to that and made mention of that and uh now i've been in ai for a long time i've made all my amends many of the people that i've met a minister have forgiven me uh and with the help of the 12 steps going on and the help of a sponsor going on retreats talking to priests talking to deacons talking to brothers you know uh confessing my sins of the past you know um there are still those times when i fall back into that old idea you know driven by that old idea of why would god help a guy like me even though the evidence is contrary to every thought like that why would help why would god help a guy like me this self-defeating attitude that i don't know i have maybe you have uh why do i fall back into that why do i fall aback that i can't forgive myself for some of the things i've done even though you've forgiven me why do I fall back in to the delusion of the victim and discouragement you know i do a nighttime inventory with all the guys i sponsor i do it with Harold you know and uh you know we go through all the questions that you know the evening review asks us um we do a little different where you know as a group we read a book and we haven't we need to pick one up we haven t done it in a little bit but we read a book basically and we read it two pages at a time at the end of the inventory we ask ourselves after we read these two pages how has the reading tonight affected my heart my mind my soul you know and we've read some great books some conference approved books history books uh spiritual books and and the one book that always jumps out at me is a book that we read called the four agreements and maybe some of you guys have read that bill you know by don miguel ruiz but in that book he talks uh about belief systems you know and and and he talks about the belief systems that will be put into us by other people our parents our teachers maybe your priests nuns you know grandparents and what he calls and when he calls it it's the book of laws he calls these belief systems the book-of-laws and uh you know anytime i go against the book of laws or these beliefs belief systems or an old idea you know that it creates in me this sense of shame uh this sense guilt the same sense of remorse and when i when i start to live in the shame of things that i haven't done or things i've done or you know i start to become the you know the uh the jury the the judge the jury and the executor of my own life you know and this victimization like how harold talked about a little earlier you know this sick twisted mind and and the rabbit hole that it could bring me down you know um and that old idea that i'm going to hell for some of the things i've done and i can't believe that that still comes around once in a while this long this sober this long you know and so this deep-rooted 1960 catholic religion that i was raised on that i'm sure was manufactured by a really sick mind when i thought that was the way it was uh what it really shows me today is how i've spent most of my life with a wedge between god and a wedge between you and it could be a protective wage it could be an accusatory wage it can be an anger wage there's always been something between me and you now i said a statement when we did this the first time and harold called me out on it said i think that's a delusion too but the old timers used to say that you know alcoholism is a soul sickness caused by separation from god in a disconnect from each other now i've i've kind of looked at that as harold has said it's a delusion and yeah god has never left me but how many times have i left you how many of times have I allowed a wedge between me and you over pettiness sometimes or jealousy or envy or whatever the case may be you know and in the resistance I have to change or the resistance to bring God into that relationship or as harold's uh manuscript talks of being willing to live on terms other than my own you know that that third step decision right and i really identify when harold talked about bill and sit with evie you know and that because i have religion you know he's bringing the oxford group principles to him you know an i could feel that resistance because that's what i felt when i first came in so with the same sort of agnosticism that i've had in my sobriety and early sobriety and can today you know uh in that delusion of separation from god and from you you know you know this idea of god you know i picked up a drink when i was 13 years old i landed in alcoholics anonymous at 29 years old and for 16 years of my life i lived like a pirate i was a criminal i was at thief i hurt people i did a lot of bad things so of course when you tell me that god's going to be the solution to my problem my mind says there's no way god's been watching me i'm getting i'm going straight to hell for the things i've done you know i couldn't see the truth about that stuff you know uh walking in here with the mentality of a 13-year-old but as i started to go through the book and i started to understand what i was really up against and when i start to understand the solution to my problem you know and we come out of that chapter more about alcoholism and i think harold made a little reference to this but it's uh well it was this is more we agnostics but it s you know the closer i get to god the nearer he gets to me or vice versa however that statement goes and what i started to understand is as i was starting to shed some of these old ideas about a lot of things and i was getting closer to god i started to wake up to reality of my life you know nowhere in alcoholics anonymous does it say it's it's about getting us to quit drinking that might sound like a controversial statement what what it's really telling me what the book has been telling me is that you can't stop drinking lack of power is your dilemma you have no mental defense against the first drink and see what aa is really designed to do for us i believe is to wake us up to the great reality called whatever you want to call god yahweh higher power the beach whatever it is that's the beauty of alcoholics anonymous it's your choice but if alcoholics anonymous doesn't wake us up to that reality guess what we're all dead men walking so the chapter we agnostic is a chapter that for me i started to look at some of how i was being driven by a lot of these old ideas that created a lot of these delusions now i've heard it so many times that most alcoholics have a shame-based identity a lot of us have a lot of shame with some of the things we've done a lot of us have a lot of guilt a lot of remorse for some of the things we've done and see another delusion and we said this earlier on i mean we're talking about five but there's a there's a boatload of delusions that a lot of us walk around with and one of the delusions i had coming into alcoholics anonymous was that if i just put the plug in a drug and go to meetings all this stuff is going to magically disappear what i didn't realize was when i put the plugin the job that this stuff would come out even more than i thought and that i really had to start examining some of the behaviors and some of the things that created the wedges between me and you i had to get the stuff out of the way so i could have a relationship with god see it's really hard to have a relationship with you when i don't or with god when i don't have a relationship with you if god's will for me is to help others you know i got to get right with others i got to get the wedgers out of the place now some of the shame that i walked around with in sobriety with long-term sobriete was something that a lot of you guys have heard me share about you know it's my infidelity right i mean i was always had infidelity in relationships but you know being 10 years sober and walking out of our marriage into the arms of a woman in an alcoholics anonymous because she understands you know the truth of the matter was at that time you know i was so disconnected from power i was so disconnected even though i was showing up to aaa there were so many things going on in my life that i wasn't willing to look at and so like most cowards i took the easiest off the way and that's to jump into a relationship but why i bring that up is i can't explain to you the amount of shame i had with that See, through the years I have built a moral base. Through the years, I have built these values and vows and stuff that I thought were very important. And to do what I did really created a real spiritual and emotional problem with myself. And my thought was, why would God help a guy like me? Why would God even... Why? Why? You know, some of the other things I did growing up. A criminal, being a thief, being dishonest, stealing. You know I tell that story when I was five years sober. When I was one year sober I got indicted on two counts of grand theft. They stole $28,000. Took me five years to even talk about that with a sponsor. I thought I could tuck that away and let's not talk about that stuff until I got indicted. And then when I wrote Inventory, I had to write on that stuff. And to be honest with you, I was terrified. I was horrified. And when I had a go to court, I thought it was going to jail. And there's a whole story behind that. But getting back to that other situation that I caused when I was 10 years sober, you know uh my anger and my rage and my insecurity came flying out i wasn't relying on god it was self-will run right and what happened was you know a few restraining orders came down on me and i remember being in the courtroom 10 years over and i'm standing in front of a judge and he's got a meeting book of new jersey and he circling meetings that i'm getting banned from because of my behavior and i couldn't believe it i'm like first of all who gets banned from aa well i do uh that's where being disconnected from god took me that's Where this delusion of man i am not worthy of anything in my life i have blown up my life so bit I am the guy that the book talks about I build a beautiful spiritual structure up for me and my family and I tear it down with a senseless series of sprees and I'm here to tell you you don't need to be drinking to blow up your life in Alcoholics Anonymous so all these things that have created shame in my life you know sex conduct a failure in school getting thrown out of school jobs that I lost you know relationships because of the way I behaved you know it's a boatload and I think a lot of us have that boatload but as Harold said earlier how do I get past this you know and I think we talked about this last week the only way I'm ever going to get past is I have to walk into it and what do I mean by that that this darkness that we all have no one's immune to that that we to walk into the darkness of our lives and uncover discover and discard these things to really make that decision that it talks about the third step that you know god's going to be you know the director for the rest of my life and then i'm going to you know really an agent for god and what god wants me to really do is just help his kids but see when i'm selfish and self-centered it's really hard to help others because i'm wrapped up in me but you guys have heard me say this statement a million times because i read this every time and you know this visualization of what this looks like because the goal of alcoholics anonymous is twofold number one don't pick up the first drink the obvious one but the second one is to really live in the sunlight the spirit but in order to get out into the sunlight of the spirit i got to walk through this darkness of my life and start looking at the things that are creating the shame the guilt the remorse the resentments the fear blah blah blah but in daily reflections it talks about it's a side of myself that i refuse to look at that rules me i must be willing to look at the dark side in order to heal my mind and my heart because that's the road to freedom i must walk into darkness to find the light and walk into fear to find peace you know i read that all the time but i gotta tell you i never read the paragraph that says it above it and the paragraph above it says this since it's true that god comes to me through people i could see that keeping people at distance i also keep god at a distance kind of like i keep god in the box god is nearer to me than i think i can then i think and i can experience him by loving people and allowing people to love me and here's the line that really jumped out at me tonight but i can never i can neither love nor be loved if i allow my secrets to get in the way so really it's about uncovering discovering discarding the secrets in me from you and to allow god to work through my life you know and being vulnerable and calling my sponsor but 34 years sober and telling them how i really feel and not just giving him 30 of what's really going on the result was nil until we let go absolutely you know why can't i let go why can i why do i resist change why do i think that god has disqualified me well harold said it comes down to one word called pride and pride is the essence of myself senators and pride as the thing that justifies all my character defects you know again i thought i i thought it neatly evaded all that stuff look at all that but by going through that darkness of my life i was confronted with truth time and time again self-reliance is running the show and when self-reliance runs the show guess what these delusions are alive in my life as we as we've been saying the last couple of weeks alcoholism is not in a bottle it's in my mind and my mind will always create these delusion to block me from God and block me from you. You know, old times used to say this, if you live a lie the truth will cut your head off. I've had to examine my life to see all the lies that I tell myself. And I think this is one of the biggest lies, that I'm spiritually disqualified because the evidence is all around me what God has done for me. God has given me a life beyond my wildest dreams as we say all the time but the real question i think here is am i willing to live on terms other than my own am i going to make that decision in the second step wait we make a decision in a second step yeah we do and what that decision is do i believe or am i even willing to believe that a power greater myself could restore me to sanity you know either god is or he isn't what's your choice to be and the ego likes to step in right now and say yeah god's everything well god is everything how can i still live with delusions if god is everything why do i still have fear god is everything why am i afraid of misery and depression if guys god is editing why why do I have trouble in personal relationships and the deeper i examine that the deeper I see that I'm playing God and when I play god these delusions are alive and well my sponsor likes to say all the time that we're all human beings on a spiritual path sometimes we're going to fall off this spiritual path sometimes we're going to lose focus of all spiritual things because of our humanness and you guys have heard me say it many times when you fall off the bike you got to get back on the bike but being driven into that third step decision based on the fact that i know some things about me that i'm the director of life and that i have to get out of the director's chair and i gotta stop putting conditions on relationships that i need to become more accepting of others no matter what because that's the great news nobody has to change in my life in order for me to get well all i need to do is get rid of the secrets and rely upon god the rest for my sobriety and when i do that you know this spiritual path becomes very clear you know and as i write inventory and i start getting down to the causes conditions of the things that are blocking me from god and the common manifestations of living a lifelong self-will like the anger i have the resentments i have the fears i have you know this fear of not being good enough all those insecurities that we all walk around with and then more importantly the harms i've caused the amends process has been probably the most powerful medicine i've ever taken in alcoholics anonymous you know to go to a person and to talk about the way i showed up in your life life, you know, and to give you the opportunity to let me know how that affected you. I can't think of anything more freeing than what we get to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. But we'll sit here and we'll sit on a boatload of amends because we're too afraid. And as my old sponsor likes to say, does not finishing your amends have anything to do with you drinking again? So this process of walking through this hallway of life into the sunlight of the spirit, it's glorious it's painful hurts like hell at times but boy there's a payoff and harold talked about it it's that living in that 10 and 11 and 12 you know having that connection with god having a life of prayer and meditation then more importantly being of service to others and then the hardest part of all about this is trying to practice these principles in all our affairs you know elimination about drinking is just the beginning a more important demonstration of our principles lives in our home occupation and affairs what does that look like god gives me great power we're not powerless we're powerless over drinking drug and control a lot of other things but god gives us great power through this process to carry his will into all my affairs you know and by doing so you know we have the evidence to help that new person i hope you guys in that sober house but there's a way out it's called alcoholics anonymous but you have to be willing to put it all down and just surrender to this process and be uh as they say be patient with the process. This is not an overnight matter. So I know we're at the end, always great to be with you guys. It's always great to be with Harold and hope I made some sense but uh, you know, I love doing this with you and, you know, thanks for thanks for having us tonight. Thank you, thank you, Jimmy and Harold so we have literally a minute, you can unmute yourself and the chat is open and say thanks Thanks to Harold and Jimmy.