The Dilemma of Sobrietics – Workshop: 12 Steps – Part 4 of 4 – Local AA Speakers

it's called changing your mind that's what it's all about nobody that i know wanted ahead of time to spend every night of the week in a smoky church basement turned out to be just perfect and a lot of things like that points i like to make before i go into uh steps that help me is They don't help anybody else. And that is, in AA, there isn't anybody who is an expert on anything except our own story. And so there's nobody who is the ultimate authority on any of the AA principles or what's going on. We are just another group trying to share to the best of our ability what we've learned about the steps. I know that I do, and I'm sure anybody that we get to fill in over here tries to follow the AA literature to the best of our ability and carry on the AA message as close to the way it was started as possible. And I think that's a responsibility of all of us in AA is to pass on as close as we can what has been handed down because it works so well, rather than ad-libbing and coming up with some kind of a, you know, individualized thing. We start with the same basis, which is the 12 steps. And the other thing I would mention if you are new, if you hear something in the discussion or if a person is speaking at an AA meeting, you hear Something that seems that would be unacceptable to you, maybe we did it wrong. Or maybe you heard it wrong." There just isn't anything in the AA program or its principles that should be unacceptable. They were purposely assembled that way so that no one would feel that there was a reason to not pursue this. And the reason for this is, this program was put together by drunks, not college professors and these folks knew us real well because they were just like us and they knew that if they ever incorporated in something in here that was mandatory that you had to believe in that you have to do nobody would come they just knew that that's our basic nature and so it's structured in this marvelously loose fashion and all the program really is It's just trying to be a pelt and try to take you from that hell of alcoholism and get you out. And then you're on a journey, and there are some principles that have been handed down from generation to generation through philosophies, religions, psychology, medicine, and these have just been incorporated into our 12 steps and they're just very practical guidelines for living. and that is what we talk about and if there is something in the discussion that you would like to pursue come on and talk about it afterwards but don't go away. That's what we don't want your opportunity now and you get back out with that alcohol and we never see you again. We just don't guarantee you're going to get loose again from the clutches of the alcohol so we urge you to stick around and see how it turns out here compared to how it was going before you tried this and give yourself a chance to see what's really in store for you. In dealing with Step 10, 11 and 12, which is the challenge today, I would just review very quickly that what gets us started on this entire program is being powerless over alcohol. That is what opens the door to an open mind if we're powerless over alcohol there's no way we personally can get out of the box we're in our own illness of alcoholism you can't study all about it and then just climb out you can learn your way out of there you cannot set yourself free from alcoholism you have to ask for help and there's all the help in the world available there's an unlimited supply the only thing blocking getting out of the pot is our pride that doesn't like to ask for help or to admit that there's a box we can't get out of ourselves and we just spend the longest time on an ego trip each one of us going, I'm going to figure this out or we're worrying about the type of help we're going to get. Hey, what if they come in and there's bunch of people who want me to straighten my ass out? I'm not ready to straighten out yet. I don't have a philosophy that you ought to live life all the way until 83 couple months before you're going to die then straighten out you know what i mean and then you get to the same destination anyway but you have more fun along the way and it's funny how us alcoholics what we classify as fun hey how's your life oh great i'm enjoying it i'm just in charge here you know and for the outside world they don't understand why we call this fun and all those things we're doing, those drinking years. It's a tremendous struggle with surrender is what leads us in to the rest of the steps and it's just impossible if you've been working on any of these steps or principles in your life and they don't seem to be taking hold it's probably because you didn't do the first step all the way and you are partially alcoholic and therefore you partially need the steps And so the program will consist partially of doing what the program suggests and partially weaning it. And this leads to great serious problems because nothing happens. In other words, the program really hasn't come in yet. There's no entrance point, which is from the surrendering. And so we urge all newcomers to concentrate and take some time understanding the severity of your situation and don't minimize it into making AA sort of an option. You know, well, I can go over there if it doesn't start working too well, but in the basic day-to-day living, I'll just sort of keep my life the way it was and I'll try to work AA in every so often. And the best approach in the beginning is try to works the rest of your life in every-so-often to AA and shift the focus around the other way and then compare how that's working. again it comes back to results and it's a very result oriented program, a whole spiritual program is intensely practical when you talk about a spiritual program you talk About Results we'll talk about that today in 10, 11, 12 it's very, very practical and we get to look at how it is working having arrived at a surrender then it's easy to come to grips with the need for a higher power we talk about higher power, God as you understand And in any definition, AA doesn't have the slightest idea of what the higher power is. It's what each person in this room says it is. That's the definition of the higher powers. So that's not up for discussion. That's up to each individual. What we all have in common is if there isn't a higher power, we're in deep trouble. That's where we start trouble. In other words, we have a problem that only a higher powerful can answer. There is no human answer to alcoholism. At least there hasn't been one shown up yet. And we've got the scientists from all over the world. We have the visitors today from Italy, and we're delighted that they're here, who are thinking about alcoholism, thinking about its terrible impact on every society around them. We've had people speaking about how to solve the alcohol dilemma for many, many years, and there has been no human solution yet. I mean, this isn't one that there is. One that they ought to be hearing about it. We have large crowds of people going, hey, this is it. What we have is a million and a half members of Alcoholics Anonymous who are living proof that there's a spiritual solution which is quite different than your traditional medical solution or healing solution. We have a group of spiritual principles and people with this problem follow them and involve being powerless and get a higher power in their lives when they get sober and happy. And that's the track record here. so this is how what we have in common is you have a problem, the only answer to which is a higher power that allows even the most prideful person to change their mind about a higher power and still look good I mean I didn't change my mind just for the hell of it, they had a gun in my hand change your mind about higher power, I'll blow your brains out ok I'll change my minds, you don't look so bad then especially those people at the bar that you convinced me you were an atheist. Remember that discussion? I don't know if I saw it then. And, um... We even have atheists in AA. The only difference is they pray. And have sponsors and ask other people for help. And so, you know, and I think I was in that category for a number of years. I just didn't want to relinquish my grip on that. label. I liked it. It had a lot of going for it. But I think I had distorted it sufficiently to stay sober. And then, of course, convenience, I just changed it around to higher power for a number of years. Higher power. Very careful to say that, not God. I just got tired of long syllable words and just said, how the hell would a God sound better than me? It was an amazing process That's a change over a period of 10 years, going all the way from there and finally just going, okay, I'll go ahead and say that, you know. I almost called a press conference. Alcoholics changed his mind on another major issue that was affecting the entire planet. And I was totally expecting God to applaud. Oh, thank you, Evan Wood. You changed your mind. Now I can fix it. but such is the nature of self-centeredness and such is the nature of our problems which is sobriety as it turns out the alcoholic main problem is sobrietics life is too painful because we don't know how to live it we don' t have any game plan for living we do not have a way of life our way of life was drinking and now it's being taken away from us and we're left unarmed we're left without any protection between us and the world We're left without a lot of things that other people who've spent their years growing up are fully equipped for. And we suddenly find ourselves at whatever age we may arrive in AA, out there in day-to-day trying to fit in with the rest of the world and finding each day extremely painful. And meetings in the early days and months are a great oasis in the desert of the days that we struggle through. And they replenish us and nourish us at the end of the day. You notice how you come out of a meeting, you start to feel rejuvenated again. It's a very vital spiritual process. We have taken something from that meeting that we can't quite put our fingers on, but we know what it feels like. And so for us, that is the proof of the program is you can feel it inside that it's working. It leads us through the steps of coming to understand a higher power. We learn how the principle of inventory, of sharing with other human beings. We learn that when we talk about spiritual programs that have measures available to nothing, that there's no help that's available to become partially sober. And there's not help that is available to be partially honest. The problem with a spiritual program, it's very extreme. If you want to get a higher power to help you, you have to be targeting for ever and ever increasing goals in becoming a better person, becoming more useful. And we learn that it's a program of growth. And all along the way, we are changing and hopefully for the better. And that's kind of what steps six and seven talk about and then 8 and 9 enable us to clear up the wreckage of the past so that we can finally get to where we are today, the ability to live a day at a time. It's very difficult. We have a concept in our 10th step that talks about living a day-at-a-time, and it's very typical to live a day of the time and drag 1966 through 72 with you as you chug along happily a day and a time and everybody else is just bouncing around and you're dragging 6,000 pounds of baggage, which is called your past. And so we have two steps that are specifically designed to clear that up, making amends and going back on people for giving, getting rid of things and resentments and angers that we've carried around for years so that we're free now to get into this 10th step, continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Whenever I think of this stuff, I think of my old conception of what life was like and my best example remains the pinball in the pinball machine because that's how I felt life was. I was one of those balls that was down in the dark recesses of a pinball machine and you sat at the bar stool down there with some other characters and you just heard all the wanging and going around and you were just mumbling in there and complaining about the world and this and that and all of a sudden it was your turn. What the hell's going on? Boom! Another day has started, you know what I mean? Right, you're out there bam, bam, pam, pam. People are people are talking about, isn't life wonderful? What the heck are you talking about? Hey, somebody cut me off. You're over here and the lights are going on and you're looking for that little hole down there, your favorite bar where's my oasis to get the hell out of this rat race you know i'm just oh there it is you're just going to tuck in there and a flipper comes out no no not again and finally come down and they go am i glad to be back in here this is terrible out there i thought it would never end you know so i'm actually like look you were just out there who are a victim, none of them have made sense. There wasn't any no starting point. What are they talking about? It's fun, exciting, I understand it and so on and now we come into the program and we're given the missing ingredients one of them was a higher power in other words, in order to have all of this make sense we have to acknowledge the existence of something greater than ourselves and then all of us can agree that We aren't the end and beginning of life, and we can become part of something. And that was what was so painful with trying to be something as opposed to be part of something. As soon as you start, and it's just infinite, right? It's a human nature. It's as if that fundamental construction was there and trying to do something was causing me to be out of harmony with the fundamental nature of myself. The way I was really born was to be part of something. And once I got into a group and became part of it and then part of AA, got these principles and became a part of this and now I can become part of society. And then I found out as I moved around in various environments I just went in and became part of the cocktail party. Became part of the family reunion instead of me in the middle of the family reunions. You remember that feeling? It's just like me and all these strangers around, you know what I mean? Trying to screw up my faith. Remember that They're attacking my modus operandi. It wasn't part of me, and I didn't understand that. I didn' t have the power to see it. What we get here is a new vision of the same information. It's all the same. We just see it differently. We see our family differently. We see ourselves differently. And we can't have this view of life without the power. It's like this view comes from... Remember the third great vision? Remember how different things looked after the third drink? You used to say, well, things look different now. Why are you still sitting in the same place? Nothing changed. Why do you say they look different? I don't know. Third house of vodka went, and it came up, and I said, hey, it looks a lot better. And so, in a sense, we had a bottle of power. We went through a rope, and we went down, and it activated a better vision system. And we just looked around and said, well, the world always looks like this. And I make sense. And we were part of something. You were there. You just felt like you'd fallen in love with the whole bar. You were just a part of it. And we gave you a power to stop being self-centered. And you just went into it. And of course, 10 drinks later, it went out of control. And we beat the hell out of our newfound friend. But... And we kept trying to manage the amount of chemicals in there. Well, I thought if we put too much in there and mix the scotch and the wine, I'm going to use this formula so that I have that view all the time. I'd be on to something. We're just like a chemist working year after year, fine-tuning this system. I don't want to get down too low when I'm shaking and puking and coming apart. I just need to get that maintenance level. Remember all that screwing around trying to get back right view of the world? Well, this is what this program is designed for, is to give us the power, similar to Vata, only one who loves us, that is available in an infinite supply, absolutely free. All we have to do is ask for it and make ourselves ready to receive it. And this day-at-a-time program is designed to give up a basic game plan for living each day and right off the top is inventory. Inventory is one of our most spiritual principles. InventORY forces us to stop looking around at what's wrong out there and see what's going on with the grass. Oh, the view is wrong. You see, the world isn't wrong. Our view of it is. So we go, uh-oh, the world's all screwed up. Instead of going, what's wrong out there? Inventory says, now go in here and see where the glasses are. They slip down your nose. There, how's that? Oh, looks better. So we always learn to turn to ourselves to fix and see we're out of step with the rest of the world or we're out of harmony with the world. And this inventory process is the method, it is the spiritual method of refocusing on that part of the equation that can be changed, which is ourselves. It gives us the power to mix life in the possible side rather than the impossible, which was to get the whole world to adjust to us which was the old way we were living. And so it suggested that we incorporate inventories into our day. We take a spot check inventory when we get out of whack during the course of the day's events. That we take a little break for a minute or so in the middle of the day. Then when we get up in the morning, start out with a little quick review of the day. At the end of the day, take a look back on how the day went, how we might have done a little bit better. Maybe every six months or so to offer a weekend and just try and put all our hearts back in the right places and take a break from being tied into the system so much and just always keep the machinery itself and our perspective right and then everything else needs to straighten out. So inventory becomes a very practical, day-at-a-time way to live. The guidelines that are suggested, and I'm glad I wrote that down because I had forgotten the great line out of the 12 in 12, which always comes with the 10th step, is the spiritual axiom that if we are to serve no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. And when Bill wrote that, he immediately followed it with, what about justifiable anger? Which is a great drunk's reaction to hearing that first line. You know what I mean? Hey, if you're upset, there's something wrong with you. That's a little too heavy. And we counter, right? We never take this stuff lying down and go, wait a minute. That principle is not quite fully accurate. What about justifiable anger? We want to come back with, and of course for an alcoholic, our anger was justified. It's some other guy's anger that isn't justified, because we can see from out here he's overreacting. And so what this is suggesting is the way to make good decisions, the way to get through the day is to always get undisturbed first. Get undisturbd first. Then go back and see the true magnitude of the problem because generally the problem simply is you're disturbed. You know what I mean? This happened, and that guy did that, and I'm disturbed. So we're focusing in on, gee, what just happened here? He said that, or he said that. What if we get undisturbed? Then this becomes irrelevant. This was just, I forgot what it was. It was something that went here and there, and doesn't even matter now. Doesn't matter because you got undistURBED. And so we shift the focus on how can I get undISTURBed, or better yet, how can i not get disturbed in the first place? This is advanced sobriety. So, we're left with some four little guidelines that come up during the day, and they go like this. And you've got to remember now, this is involved with a higher power. It's involved with asking for these things. These things are impossible to generate by ourselves. And the first one is self-retreat. Ten steps has the top priority of everything you could ask for. You get up in the morning, you want to ask for one thing that day, ask for self-restraint. And self-restraint is the ability to have the world happen to you and then have the time to think about it before you react back. And that's a gift, because most of us, somebody goes, oh, what? And we go, oh! Oh, sorry about that. And our son walks in and goes, get out of here! Get out of there! Ooh! I don't want to have that. I would like to get that look back, because it takes years to undo that untimed look in your three-year-old son. So if you could just go, oh, and they go, hey, they're just going around. Yes, son. I could just have the time to do that. I could have that cushion because there's a lot of things I do that I really want to take back because I can't even remind about them. But they're already done. They're already out there. And I'm stuck with them. Loudly speaking, stupid answers. I didn't have a cushion between me and the world. The Bible talks about wearing the world like a loose garment. and how do you get a loose garment? How do you get a cushion between you and the world? You ask for it. Now, as an intellectual type, you go, oh, you're back to that gauge again. You ask for it, but that's practical enough for me. I want to be a fox with a loose garment in it. Check it out and I want to give you the money and then I did it. I mean, I don't like this gauge stuff where you ask for it. I mean what the hell kind of a deal is that? And then we go back to our sobriety. Where did your sobrietry come from? How did you get your sobriety? And you look about and you go, I don't know. I came to AA and I just asked for it. I said, please help me. And what did you do? I got sobrieto. What is sobriete? Did you figure out your alcoholism? No, I didn't figure it out. Well, what happened to your alcoholism?''I don't know. It just went away.' And the alcohol problem doesn't get solved. It gets removed. The big book talks about what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition. So as long as we're working on the steps, other things happen. And we're chugging along, taking inventory, making amends, and suddenly we realize we forgot to worry about drinking for a month. You can chalk it up to pellucidus. But when's the last time you as a monk forgot to think about drinking for months? When we forget to think about drinking for a month, that's freedom from booze. That is total freedom. That is what it's all about. And the same power is available on all the other things that are disturbing us. We can ask to be set free from them. And a lot of times that doesn't look like the right answer. I'm uptight about money. Good. I'll get rid of the uptightness. No, I'd rather have the money. Yeah. I don't think I like that first answer. Okay, here's the money. How do you feel? I'm uptight about losing it. What do you want? I don' t know. Do you want peace of mind or money? Why do you have to choose between those two? And when you're standing up here with a gun at your head and a million dollars in this hand, you go, I'll take the piece of money. And we finally get a set of priorities and we find out we would like sobriety at any cost. Even our choice, even our ego, even our pride, when we get rid of all those things and find out those character defects were weighing us down. We were clutching on to the very things that were the worst for us. And so spiritual answers are kind of backwards in all of these things. If the problem doesn't get solved, it gets moved and it just sounds like it's a cop-out. What kind of a solution is that? It's a wonderful solution. It's an incredibly freeing solution. You just go through the day concentrating on other things and the very problems themselves just don't occur. And as we go through life in this instance, you ask yourself for strength to have the cushion to go through today. Obviously, you can't go through day perfectly, so there are going to be incidents that occur. There are going be things where we end up disturbed and it's only going to involve other people and when it involves other people the last three items in the list of four that I was talking about go as follows if the fault is ours then we admit it immediately and straighten it out making amends immediately oh sorry about that oh okay and that fixes it gets the thing back to undisturbed gets the board erased so that we're free to go on to the next incident if we decide to fault the other person you forgive them just go Oh, well, you probably had a bad morning this morning. Well, that's it. My friend Ed Chandler likes to talk about every day he lets five people off the hook. And she just says, Well, I'm going to let five people be wrong. Okay, they're wrong. That's fine. That person's doing something wrong. That's right. That's not right. That's all right. If you're having a real bad day, let ten people be right. Let everybody be right! Pretty soon you stop keeping track of whether people are doing things right or wrong. Then you realize, Why was I keeping track of everything that's right or right in the world? Because you were God. it was your job well you are self-centered who else is going to keep track of all if I don't anyway you've just got to stop doing that okay I'll stop well how do you stop you ask for it because you can't stop on your own any more than you can forgive anybody on your own you ask for the power to forgive so this is all a spiritual program so we have to be plugged into a higher power in order for any of this to work we hear these principles and we run out and we go well I'm going to start out with a nice little cushion between me and the world and you walk out what the hell happened to the cushion. You can't generate a cushion. I would like a cushion today. Well, coincidentally, you have one. It's involved in getting rid of this pride and ego. Those two are the ones Oh, I forgot that after we get disturbed, we have to have honest analysis of what's wrong. We have to ask, and this is a serenity prayer. Serenity to understand the steps of things I cannot change and wisdom to know the difference. And if it is something that was mine, then I can make the amend. If it's something with someone else, I can ask for the power to forgive them and move on to the next item. What it does in individual little situations all throughout the day, it enables me to come out unstirred. It gives me the power to just go from situation to situation and all of a sudden you look back and you go you know, that stuff used to bother me. I think anybody who's been in the program a while has suddenly looked around and gone you know that stuff used to bother me my mother-in-law used to bother me she straightened out you know what I mean she didn't straighten out we got some power in our lives to not have that bother us and then so sobriety is going through all the million things that bother up and getting rid of it and that is where peace of mind really comes from and this is what is suggested in our tenth step in the eleventh step start your prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him praying only for a knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out obviously has to do with prayer and meditation, has to deal with a very spiritual dimension. And what is suggested here is that as we've chugged along in our first ten steps, we have found that a higher power really has had, without a doubt, some impact on our lives. Doesn't it make sense to try and get to know this higher power, our own personal one, better? It is as if we had dug around in ourselves and found a little gold mine. We found something about ourselves that we never really knew existed. It was a part of us that liked to be useful, that wanted to reach out to other people. It was the part of unskilled people that we were not used to. It was part of others that we may not ever have been in touch with before. And it is suggestive. Doesn't it make sense to try and go in and explore that even more? Why don't we get to know that part of ourselves as best as we can because won't that bring us the best results for our own lives? Yeah, it would. But how do people become closer to this part of themselves or to a higher power? The techniques that have been around in all ways of life involve prayer and meditation. They just happen to be the two most commonly used words when you talk about trying to accomplish this. And in the big book, Bill talks about moving our thinking to a higher plane. And I both like that. We have at any given moment a choice of all kinds of things to think about. You know how your brain just kind of goes, oh, see a Budweiser ad, you go, hmm. You see an air shot of the beach and all of a sudden you go hey, second by the sea is coming up pretty soon. I mean your mind just, you know, individually. isn't it and left to its own devices it'll stay at the earthy level whatever you want to call that I mean just sort of leave it there just wandering around looking at people and things and new cars and just kind of keep track of all stuff you like and don't have you know what I mean and that's where it'll just stay and that is why our literature 24 hour day book it takes it out for that plane and goes somewhere else and when we are at a different level of thinking we feel better and so meditation is a way of getting away from the standard level of thinking and moving to a higher level. Now, what happens is it moves without a self-centeredness. So that's why it feels so good. The idea of doing it never sets well. You mentioned this to most of us, and you just go, all of our instincts don't want that to happen. That means that we'll be thinking about something other than us. Heaven forbid, I might take my mind off of me for a second. You know what I mean? Which is my favorite subject. Have you ever noticed that? We just talk about it and go, oh, what are you going to do? Oh, I don't know. I think about this and that. So meditation is a technique of getting out of ourselves for a certain amount of time during the day. We start out with a 24-hour day work in the morning. It is just a very mechanical method of accomplishing a spiritual goal. Now, prayer and meditation present interesting challenges if you've never really incorporated it into your life. If you're a typical self-centered alcoholic and somebody mentioned prayer as a daily way of sustenance, you are left with the following information. If you are 43 years old and you've ever done this and so you have to explain that and your ego says well you haven't done it out of you haven'T taken this position out of stupidity right you have taken it because you know secretly that it doesn't work even though you've never tried it and this is explained, this is how you protect your ego to explain why you've ever done any of these things I remember he said the reason I haven't done it is it doesn'T work and Bill writes about this many of us are afraid to try this on a daily basis much as a scientist is afraid to perform a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong. Such is the dilemma of not wanting to change our mind, and we just are so skeptical when we get to this step. Many of us, we just go, don't give me that stuff about just going in and saying a few prayers every morning like this, you know. And part of us just doesn't want to do that. And it turns out to be a most practical, very practical thing. In other words, it is something where the benefits can be measured almost on a daily basis. You can compare a day that you don't start out with a 24-hour day book to one where you do, and sometimes they are just dramatically different. And so, one of the things that is suggested in the 12 and 12 is the prayer of St. Francis, and I always like to read this since for many of us this may be the entire meditation program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is for me. This is the Serenity Prayer of the 24-Hour Day Book, and it's on page 101 in the 12 and 12, a prayer that's been around for centuries, and it simply says Lord, make me a channel of thy peace that where there is hatred I may bring love that where There is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness that where THERE is discord I may bring harmony, that where THERE is error I may bring truth, that where THERE is doubt I may bring faith, that where THERE is despair I may bring hope, that where THERE are shadows I may bring light, that where THERE is sadness I may bring joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand than to be understood. To love than to be loved. For it is by self forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen. And here is a very workable prayer that can be meditated on and you get it and I don't know about you, the first time you get something like that you spend a little time, you look at it, better forgive with them, better to understand and to be understood, then you go, what has this got to do with not having a job? And I don't know if you're going to have those kind of thoughts when you're just sitting here and you're all fired up about what your sponsor suggested, and you actually follow its direction for a change. And you're sitting there going through this particular thing, but what has this got to do about not having a job?" And you know, you spend some time rereading this and thinking about that question, and you're meditating. You're honestly goes, what does this have to do with the problems that I'm encountering today? And as time goes by, I think we find, we start getting answers to these things. We start getting insights into ourselves that we never had before. And they seem to be associated with this process called prayer and meditation. The second half of that step simply directs us away from ourselves and the temptation to pray for specific thing. Even sometimes you go, oh, I just, I'm going to go spend my whole day praying that cousin so-and-so recovers from this fatal illness. And Bill points out, well, that may be in one hand a generous prayer. On the other hand is a degree of self-centeredness to this thing that we have determined how this must turn out. And that is certainly not our jurisdiction and can lead to a lot of frustration. And And that isn't it. We can just pray that the right thing happens. We pray for something good if it be that higher powers will. But for most of us, we have a tendency to superimpose our own judgment even into a spiritual program. You know what I mean? God, I'll tell you what the right things is, and I'm going to send you after help because it turned out that way. And I'm sure you'll see my way if you pay attention. And then it doesn't turn out that day, and we say prayer doesn't work. and so that now I've left myself very little time to wrap this up with the 12th step having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps we try to carry this message to other alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs, it goes without saying that the 12-step work that we do is most rewarding, that we find when we're able to help and carry on this message through the new person that there is immeasurable joys And that is certainly a vital part of the twelfth step. But even beyond that is the practice, these principles in all our affairs and a brief discussion of the spiritual awakening. Having had a spiritual awakening, what they use in AA, and I think it's a very good definition of a spiritual awakenings unless you get put off by it, is a personality change. It is a profound personality change, a person who was very negative is suddenly very positive about everything. A person who had no hope whatsoever is suddenly brimming over with hope and yapping away about, I'm going to get a job and I'm a real woman. You go, good, what the hell happened to that person? That's not the way they were last month. They're blabbing away and they're going to go do this and that. What happened here? We just use that term, we just spiritual awakening. Some fundamental change in the person's spirit has been changed. Their outlook on life has somehow been changed for no apparent reason. They didn't inherit a million dollars. but they didn't get a promotion. As a matter of fact, everything's very borderline. And their outlook has been changed immeasurably. And it's a gift. We don't know when this is going to occur to individuals who are arriving or who are practicing these principles. What the steps do is make us ready to receive this gift so that when our name comes up, we're there. It's like building a mailbox if you want to get mail. It's the only requirement from the post office. You know what I mean? You've got to have a mailbox. We'll take care of the rest. And, you know, some people say, well, I don't feel like building a mailbox, but then you don't get any mail. It's that simple. So the steps are a way of building ourselves so that when it arrives, there's a place to put it, and it'll arrive at the right time. And sometimes it arrives slowly, sometimes it arrived quickly, but it does arrive. There's one with everybody's name on it. It's just a question of being available to receive it. Now, as far as working the principles, due to the extreme shortage of time, I will use my favorite story in explaining. The 12th step goes into all of the problems that we encounter in sobriety. It talks about life is going to be filled with a series of events for each one of us and how you handle them is what sobriery is all about. And when I was sober about eight years, well, I was just sober about two years. I got thrown out of the Marine Corps. That was my first resentment to be squared. And I'd go to meetings every night and all these things, and then bam, I'm out. You know, six kids, and I'm just going to make a career. I had 14 years. I'm outta here. And I want to tell you, there was a resentment building. And whenever you want to keep a resentment, don't go to meeting. Go up in your room by yourself, And you can nurture it and get it out of control, if you know what I mean. Wow, wow. And eventually, that's so painful, I finally went to a discussion meeting. You know how the leader says, anybody got a topic they'd like to talk about or a problem? I had my hand up. Thrown out of the Marine Corps. Victimized. No money. Kids. Go to a meeting every night. Unfair program. God. Whatever you want to call it. And I said, fine, let's talk about Sandy's problem here today. He started with the first guy over here, he says, throw it out of the Marine Corps, serenity prayer. Hey, what the hell kind of crap is that? Serenity Prayer? I'm talking about getting thrown out of the Marine Corp. You know, I'm not fooling here this morning. So they go to the next guy and he's going, you've got to get involved helping other people. That's what I do if I was thrown out in the Marine. Hey, what about a job? What about a job? The next guy says, take an inventory a four-step inventory get a handle on all your character defects I'm not going to say I'm looking for help I'm working I'm asking for help here today on advice I'm hearing crap from these people all around the table last guy said prayer of St. Francis prayer of Saint Francis the most powerful thing in the book that's what I do about John Allen Marine Corps I just walked out of there and made two resolutions never bring a problem up in a meeting again and never go back to that group life has its way and six or seven years later I'm going through a divorce and I'm losing six kids somebody else is moving in I'm moving out it was an infinite time and I went on back and nurtured it alone for a number of months until I had it quite manageable and then went somebody said has anybody got a topic today they said I've got a top I've done a topic outrageous eight years the variety of them that I don't know and divorce and the pain and the crying so I will discuss divorces and pain and rage and everything and we see here tonight when we start around the room first guy says divorce serenity prayer answer to a divorce barely serenety prayer you got inventory yourself look at you you're a mess inventory what you have to do is forget yourself but go down to the intergroup and get on the phone and get involved with some new people that's what you gotta do if you're getting divorced. And the last guy said, prayer of St. Francis. That's what divorce people should use all the time. And I won't bore you with the details, but four or five years later due to some unfortunate business terms I was experiencing bankruptcy and all the fun of watching possessions disappear and slide away and all that. So I decided one last resort I would bring bankruptcy up at the meeting. Obviously we're not going to get anything spiritual in a bankruptcy and you know the ending. The guy was still there and he went, bankruptcy? Glad you asked. Serenity prayer. Bankruptcy. Inventory. Go up to the desk and the prayer of St. Francis and it turned out no matter what the problem was there was one answer. We see it in all of our literature for more spiritual growth today. And that is really what the 12 Steps are saying and I pasted them right at the end of the hour. I like to read this when it was in Time Magazine when John Lennon was shot and they had this song published in there it was called Watching the Wheels and I'm reading it and being captured by our 12th step when I read it it said people asking questions lost in confusion while I tell them there's no problems only solutions I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round I find I really love to watch them roll no longer riding on the merry-go-round I just have to let it go and I guess the line that caught my eyes was there are no problems only solutions And what we have in AA is a solution, and our program consists in working the solution. And when we work the solution, when we look up, there's no problems. Because we've been working the solutions, our view is always such that there aren't problems. You see, the problems are in the view. Everything is the way it's supposed to be. It doesn't look right. and what we have here is the power to see things right and when we do that it's incredibly beautiful and so I think that's what the message of these 12 steps in the hope is here you will always have the power to have a good view and when you think about it who the hell else is there that's not a bad deal where at the end of the time I remind everybody that we have another meeting in here in 15 minutes Thank you for listening.