The Difference Between Knowing and Realizing Is the Difference Between Sobriety and Recovery – Don M.
About This Speaker Tape
Don M. from Louisville leads a workshop on character defects at a Richmond, Virginia conference in September 2005. He opens with his sponsor Cherry C.'s reminder that there is only one AA program and it is numbered one through twelve — your program got you here, just like mine got me here.
The core insight of this talk is the difference between knowing and realizing. Don could quote the Seventh Step Prayer backwards after nine years of sobriety, but he had never realized what it actually says. The prayer does not ask Higher Power to remove all defects of character. It does not ask for removal of the defects that are making his self-centered butt uncomfortable. It asks for removal of every single defect that stands in the way of usefulness to Higher Power and his fellows. If he is praying for a defect to be gone because it is making him uncomfortable, he is making precisely the same spiritual mistake as praying for a bright red Ferrari — he is praying for his own comfort.
Don illustrates this with his sponsee Billy, whose secretary was stealing from him and who was sixty thousand dollars overdrawn at the bank — until cross-examination revealed the secretary had written her paycheck on Wednesday instead of Friday, and the overdraft was a standard equity line. What we call things determines what they are to us. He shares that nothing in his life has ever made him feel like doing right except going ahead and doing right when he did not feel like it. Higher Power is not going to do for him what he can do for himself. You turn a toothache over to Higher Power by calling a dentist.
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