The Paradox of Becoming Independent by Becoming Dependent – Sandy B.

Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the Saturday morning live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing this morning? It's customary to start our meeting with our preamble. AlcoholicsAnonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting through our own contributions. AA's not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Does not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. and if you're new you'll hear this read at just about every single meeting that you go to and it's a wonderful reminder of exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous is and what everybody here this morning is doing and by last count at 250 other AA meetings every single day in the Washington D.C. area so there are a lot of meetings and a lot of people doing what we're doing here this morning and won't take you too long to figure out that what happens is somehow we're able to do something as a group that we wouldn't be able to do on our own. That's what happens in AEA. You leave us alone, every one of us out there was a failure as far as our lives and our sobriety was concerned. You stick all these failures in one room and instead of the police arriving, like you'd think, this miracle happens where everybody stays sober and happy and somehow we're able to help each other and we all win. And so you become part of a meeting and part of the group and when the group succeeds, you just go right along with it and that's the great miracle of AEA so keep coming back. And I think the other meetings all do the step three at a time each week. They just sort of condense them and go through them every month. You go through all 12 steps and over here, we go through one at a times and we're on step three this morning and then at the end of 12 weeks we finish the 12 steps and we have one week on the traditions of AA and then two weeks on the history of AA and how this incredible organization got started. It's a fantastic story and then we start back through again. So, we're on step three this morning and for those of you that are new let me just make a few comments before I get to step three made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. That's what step three is. First of all, the steps of AA. Let me just say that the 12 steps of AAA, that's what the program is. That's AA. So what is AA? It's the 12 Steps. Now we have meetings, we have sponsors, we have all the other things that go on in AA, but that's sort of the atmosphere. That's the support system around the 12th step. within AA we have all the individual members of AA and the way those members are staying happy and sober is by individually working the 12 steps in their own personal lives. And we have sponsors and meetings and all of that but all ofthat is to keep pushing us along the path of the 12th step because on our own we would keep coming up with other answers I mean that's what human beings do As a matter of fact, the literature talks about that this morning. Our egos want to take over. I mean, we didn't want to come to AA because we could get sober by ourselves. I mean our minds just keep telling us and they will keep telling all the way through our sobriety. Well now, this is a problem that the steps don't apply to. And I'm going to have to get in and handle this one alone. And I am going to handle this with my brain. And I going to figure it out. And then we're going to get all overpowered and confused and go to a meeting and somebody's going to say, well, have you tried the steps on it? No, I didn't. Because I could tell that the steps didn't apply and I was going to have to use my willpower and my brilliant brain. But it didn't work too well and I feel like taking a drink. And they go, well, come on to the meeting and we'll get you back on the steps and then you can take a look at how the problem looks. So we come back and we get reminded of what the solution is. We start working it again and the problem gets small or disappears or somehow solves itself and we move another day along on our journey in sobriety. But we constantly need to be reminded of what The Answer is because it doesn't look like it's The Answer and that's what the whole program is about. So, we have these meetings and today we're talking about these 12 steps. For those of you that are new, I've always liked to think of the 12 steps as a game plan for living. And its biggest function, if you're new, is to replace your plan. That's the biggest thing that happens when you come into AA. That's why you zoom ahead, is that you stop doing what you've been doing. Whatever you put together, each person, each alcoholic, whether they know it or not, has put together some kind of a survival plan. Well, this is how I get along out there. And you have sort of little internal rules that you live by, sort of a code of drinking or a code of ethics or whatever you want to call it. And it just consists of things like never trust anybody who doesn't drink. You know, those wonderful philosophical insights. Oh, I never do that. And never say the word God. never, whatever it might be never trust a Redskins fan or never trust the Dallas fans and always do this and don't share problems people will get their nose in your business you put together a whole your ideas about how to get along in this world and it's loosely called your philosophy or your plan for living and the 12 steps are another plan for living and when you come here what AA tries to suggest is that you get rid of your plan and follow this plan without discussing the merits of it without trying to analyze either plan but AA is very result oriented and what we do is we have meetings and we bring you to the meetings and we have speakers and discussion meetings we got sober alcoholics and you saw their hands up this morning all the way from 40 plus years to six weeks or one week all theway up in the back so you get to look at the product of the 12 steps and so you see the result of this plan for living that's what AA is it's just a live example for you to look AT now there's a lady with 5 years now there'a guy with 2 years and you listen to what they say and you look at the way they are and you see the results of it. And all that we're suggesting is compare those results with you. And let's look at you when you arrive here as in you are the result of your plan for living. And what we're saying is based on one casual look at you, not too many people are going to buy into your plan. You follow what I'm saying? you're not going to be able to sell your plan for living to too many people if you let them see you because you don't look too good and you're wearing a wristband I remember when I first got here I was I was an outpatient from the nut ward across the street and maybe Bethesda I had six months of sobriety I'm still wearing that damn thing because I was an out patient and I'm speaking at meetings you know my sponsor made me start talking when I had three months and I'd be yapping away and people would come up afterwards and they'd go, it's hard to listen to anybody wearing a wristband. You know what I mean? So no matter how good your package sounds, the results aren't there. And so people, you know, so that's what we're saying. We're saying if you're here, you didn't get here on a roll. People don't come to AA because things are really going good. they come here as a last resort I mean and so let's face it if you're an alcoholic life has not been good and what has been wrong has been not only the chemical alcohol but our own set of ideas about life and so what's being suggested is take that whole way that you live all knowledge that you have and put it over here leave it there and try this plan for living and your job is to compare the results. You're still in charge. You're in charge of judging how well this works compared to your plan. But totally give up your plan in order to try this. And that's what the steps are. The big thing that happens is you stop doing it the way you were doing it. and so what the 12 in 12 says is that our steps are a group of principles spiritual and nature which you practice as a way of life will do two things get rid of the obsession to drink and you've got to get rid of the obsessions thinking about drinking all the time and enable the suffering alcoholic to become happily and usefully whole to become complete person for the first time and to be happy and so I was told when I came in and I tell people this all the time. If you've been an AA any period of time and you're not reasonably happy, you're doing it wrong. You're just doing it wrong. And that sounds like a pretty heavy-duty statement. What do you mean? I've got health problems and I just got fired. My wife just left. My husband just left me. Everybody has all that kind of stuff that goes on in their lives but we find a way to be reasonably happy while all that's going on whether it's good or bad, and that's what the power of these 12 steps are. So what we're saying is it's possible to get happy no matter what the circumstances are. And the last people in the world who ought to doubt that are alcoholics. Because that's What We Did Before We Got Here. Does anybody remember that it was possible to be happy no matter the circumstances? Does anybody know Anybody remember? You just walk into the bar and you go, Do you got anything back there if you're not happy? Oh, you do? Could I have some? Boom, boom. There you are. Happy, just sitting there. And all of a sudden, everything's fine. And why is it fine? Because we've got the power into our system of alcohol to cause us to take a look at everything and just say, you know, from where I'm sitting right here, it looks fine. Nothing out there changed. It's just that we changed internally. We were given the power to suddenly, ah, to heck with that. and we just get very comfortable with life. Well, that's exactly what the 12 steps are designed to do is to give us access to a billion times more power than that. And so that's why we say if you're not reasonably happy you're just not doing it right. You are blocking out this power to enable you to be very comfortable in all types of circumstances. So that's what the twelve steps are. It's a spiritual path and it replaces the intellectual path that we were using. And it's very hard to get rid of that, and that's a lot what step three has to do with. So we start out by admitting that we're powerless over alcohol, which we talked about in step one, and that means that we are powerless when we are not drinking. That's the real area when we're powerless. It means you, when you learn all about alcoholism, when you learn all about everything, you still cannot go through life without drinking. That's what being powerless means. It means you can learn everything there is and the only difference between you then and before is now we have a smart drunk. But that knowledge won't help you stay sober. You will be drunk but you'll know precisely why. Oh yes, I can tell you the alcohol goes into the system and it metabolizes. Now we've got a smart drink but it won't help you stay sober because you will still be sober and if you think about it that was our real problem I don't know about you I had a lot of problems when I was drinking but I had bigger problems when I wasn't drinking as a matter of fact that's when the life problems really came in and so when I first came to AA and they said no drinking I said you don't understand you don' t understand Bad things happen when I don't drink. Very bad things happen. What's that? I'm sober all the time. I just walk around sober in the morning, night, redskin games, dances, weddings, meals, conversations with other human beings. That's too much for me. Isn't that strange? Our problem is at its maximum when there's no alcohol present. That's a strange thing. Our alcoholism is at it's maximum when there's not alcohol present, it's the absence of alcohol that seems to be causing the problem. Whenever I'm sober, I can't stand it. So I went and drank in order to solve a problem. Alcohol was getting a bad rap. We thought that we blamed all our problems on alcohol and And the truth was, alcohol is answering the problem. The problems were, I was uncomfortable as a human being and I needed something beyond myself in order to feel comfortable in this planet. And I got comfortable through alcohol. And it turns out, other people don't get comfortable through alcohol. For the non-alcoholics, alcohol doesn't answer any problem. They just like it. But they don't look at it as a solution to life. That's why we're alcoholics. Alcohol does something uniquely special for us. It solves our problems for us, and it makes us feel complete, and we fit in with other human beings. And that's why it's so difficult to not drink, because it was such a powerful answer. So we're left with being powerless over ever taking that first drink, and we need something to help us with that, and that's exactly what this program is. It is the spiritual power that is going to enable us to not drink and to be happy with not drinking. Some people can do it through willpower. They just don't drink, and they grit their teeth, and they just walk around, and you say, How are you doing? I'm not drinking! And you can just see the neck muscles, and you'd say, Well, could we have a little conversation? I can't talk and not drink at the same time. I have to just not drink. And it's a tremendous sacrifice and takes every bit of effort that we have. But it's possible. You talk to people, I've seen people that did it for years. That's a heck of a way to live. What happens in here is we're given freedom from that. And I'll tell you what happens toward the end of the story, if you're new. We never figure out your alcoholism. We never answer the question, why am I an alcoholic? We never learn hardly anything about that. We just work some steps that appear to have no relevance whatsoever and all of a sudden a miracle happens and we forget to worry about drinking. Now think about that you forget to worried about drinking can you imagine that in your wildest dreams if you're new that you would go through an entire week where you forgot to think once about drinking Wouldn't that be an unusual answer to the problem? It never got figured out. What happened was it got taken away. It got removed. It just goes, it's gone. It's not in your life to worry about. And that happens a day at a time if we are taking the steps that bring the power into our lives to remove the problem. as soon as we stop stop going to meetings stop working the steps it'll come back it's like a channel 5 rerun it'll become right back into your brain hey you know a drink will be good now the world is awful it's ganging up on you there's no way you can make it anymore you really are nothing remember that great thought in the final analysis you're nothing and then we go to meetings and we start working the steps again and we start getting pumped back up by this program and then we are complete again and then that thinking goes away and that's what sobriety is. It is total freedom from the problem rather than figuring it out, which is what our brain was trying to do before we got here. And that's when it's necessary in the first step is to totally surrender to the fact that you are powerless. And the reason that's so important is if you don't do that, the rest of the program is kind of optional. You know what I'm saying? It's like, well, maybe I'll take one of those steps and I could go to meetings because I'm not totally powerless. So being powerless is what makes us surrender to the fact that we have to do the rest OF these steps. And so that's why that step has to be done 100%. And then last week we talked about coming to believe that something has to give us this power to take care of powerlessness and that's where we went through the great debate, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And we're talking about a power that we can't see. We can't really explain. Kind of like alcohol. Can't really explained why it was so powerful, but it works. So you don't have to understand it, you just have to do it. And that's what we're saying about the steps. You don't need to understand a higher power, you just need to know that you just has to understand that if you take these steps, a power will come into your life that will produce all these results we're talking about and then you can explain the power to yourself. You can say, oh well that's this God from the churches that I used to go to or you can say well that is whatever gave us AA or you could say well that was the spirit of the universe but it will be your own personal experience that you are now free and able to do things you weren't able to before and you're going to have to explain it to yourself. And it's going to be beyond mere coincidence. In the beginning, it may be the AA group is your power. I go there and something magic happens in my life. But as time goes on, you're gonna come to realize this must be something bigger than that and that'll be your definition. So we come to believe in this power and it becomes a very personal relationship. So AA doesn't have a definition of God. We don't try to prove the existence of God. What we specialize in is convincing you of the need for God. That's our specialty, is to show you that unless there is a higher power, you're dead. That's all we say. Oh, you're an alcoholic? Unless you can find a higher powerful, forget it. We'll come to your funeral and all of that, but there isn't an alternative. We don' t know of any alternative. So what you have to do in step two is change your mind about a higher tower. Change my mind? Why don't you ask me to do something easy? Changing our mind is very difficult for alcoholics. Whoa, it's that difficult. We want to call a press conference. Call the family in. Well, I'm about to change my mind. Huge event. Anybody relate to that? I know I do. It's just, change my life. In order to change your mind, guess what you have to do? You have to admit you're wrong. and I never do that but you look bad when you say I'm wrong and so we really struggle with that thing but that's a very necessary process and step two is to change our mind all those old ideas we had about a higher power and having done that we then make a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of this higher power from God as we understood it huge decision made a decision to turn our will and our lives over. I mean, when you start to think about this, I'm going to turn my life over. How in God's name am I going to do that? How am I gonna turn my wife over? I mean it's just monumental. And of course we try it for about an hour some Saturday afternoon. Okay, I guess I'll go turn it over and say go up in the bedroom or wherever your turning it over room is. And I guess we're up there and turn itover. and you screw around for about an hour. Nothing happens. You don't want to tell anybody that nothing happened, so you fake it. Well, you know, it's so great to turn it over. You know what I do? I just turn itover. But deep down inside, you go, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I'm just saying... I'm not just walking around saying, Turn it over, because that's what they say in AA, and I don' t... You know, I want to look good. But nothing happened. Well, that's right. There's no way to just walk up there and turn it over. So what Bill writes in the 12 and 12 is nobody can just go turn it over, but what we can do is make a beginning. We can make a decision that this is what I'm going to try and do, that that is what my goal is, is to get out of the driver's seat and attempt to no longer be willfully guided through life. And we find that our problem with self-centeredness, if you read any of our literature and if you really get honest with yourself, we find out that we're extremely self-centred human beings and as such we just see that we have a view of the world and how it ought to be and if everybody could just listen and see that we really have everybody's best interest at heart and we know how everything ought to be, that we could straighten everything out. And the problem is that when you operate from a self-centered perspective, see, none of us is the center of anything. But when we operate from that perspective, it becomes obvious to other people that's where we're coming from. They see us as self-centered. In other words, a self-centred person, as we're growing up, we start seeing that if you really want to be able to control a little bit better, if you Really Want to Be sort of Accepted, people seem to like kindness. So learn how to act kind and then you will be accepted more. People respond to when they see people acting kind. So look around and see what kind acts are. Oh, there's somebody giving money to somebody. Oh, here's somebody helping somebody with a chair. Oh, hier's somebody saying nice things. That's what kindness is. So I'm going to learn a bunch of kind behavior and then whenever I need to use it, I'll use it. So our only attempt at kindness was to get our own way. We were manipulating the world whenever we were kind. It wasn't coming from a loving sense at all. It was just learned behavior, and people saw through it. They always saw when we were trying to be generous, when we Were trying to do whatever it was, they saw that we Were self-centered, and We were just doing this for our own ends. That none of it came from love. Because if you're self- centered, we're almost incapable of love because love isn't a commodity that I can generate on my own. It comes from a higher power and in order to experience it and in other words, in order for me to be part of it I have to be something other than self-centered. So self-centeredness and Bill writes in the big book we're like the actor on the stage trying to control everything and learning from feedback from other people what do they want and then I can be that and somehow, and it made it very hard to get along in the world and we were always not trusted. And there was never a true, honest relationship between us and anything in the World because we're always coming from a position of self-centeredness. So how do you become unself-centered? Think about it. How can you become Unself-Centered? Now intellectually, if you're new, you're going to say, You know, he's right. I am self-centred. And I'm going to do something about that. That's what we say. I'm self-centered and I'm going to fix self-centredness today. I will be in charge of fixing self- centredness. Does that sound funny? We haven't moved anywhere. The self- centered person is now going to fix self centrednes. How? So you think, well what is the opposite of self-cended? And when you think about it, what is it? How do you become un-self-centered? The answer is, there has to be another center. And it's God-centered. And it turns out that's the real center. So any time we're operating, the real Center of the Universe is a higher power. The real center of everything is a Higher Power. And as soon as we operate from that perspective, then everything is in its true perspective. And we start looking around and seeing the world as it really is. And it turns out to be a great place. And it turned out that when we communicate from that perspective, people trust us. They see that we're being honest. They see the it's coming from genuine concern. And everything changes as soon as we go from self-centered to higher power centered. And that's what this whole process is. So when we make a decision in the third step, Well, you could almost transpose, change the words and say we decided to become un-self-centered and become higher power-centered. We decided to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. We understood Him. And so in the beginning, we get a glimpse of what this might be in that we turn our alcohol problem over to AA, to the meetings, to our sponsor, and we get wonderful results. So we already learned that turning something over benefits us immensely. But our brain takes over after that. Yes, yes, I can see that with respect to alcohol, I want to turn that part of my life over to AA. But now you're suggesting that I turn everything else over? Oh man, what the hell would happen to me? I'd be nothing. Bill writes in his phone, I'd like a hole in the donut. You know what I mean? Who the hell would I be? I'd be nobody. Well, you see, your ego is screaming. Your ego is saying, hey, wait a minute. If you turned everything over, you'd have no ego and I'dbe gone. And wouldn't that be awful? And so there's a tremendous... Our ego and our intellect just screams with rebellion at the idea of going out of existence like abolishing bureaucratic jobs. Hey man, I'm in favor of cutting the bureaucracy but God damn don't cut me cut the other guy you know what I'm saying and so this ego is in there wait a minute I'll be gone so we better jump to our defense and we just put up all kinds of roadblocks against us so this is not number one this is never going to happen this is definitely not going to be easy no this is definitely not going to be easy to turn our will to get rid of our will because that's who we are is Mr. or Mrs. Willful and to get rid of that to change this entire perspective so we start coming up with all kinds of arguments now wait a minute I don't want to lose my independence I want to be an individual and we run into the second paradox of Alcoholics Anonymous right here in the third step the first one being that in the first step that you win by surrendering that's the first spiritual paradox and the second one that comes along is in the third step when it says you want to be you really want to become independent well the total solution to becoming independent is to become entirely dependent on a higher power that is how you become independent sounds like mickey mouse words there the way to independence is to becomes totally dependent but when we become totally dependent on a higher power, we get free from our emotions. We get free from being jerked around by our emotions because none of us are independent right now. I mean when you get up in the morning and you decide to do something and your fear says no, you can't do that and then you say well I'm going to really be nice to those people and then your envy and jealousy ends you up being mean to those people and you have an agenda for the day and lust says no let's not do that. Let's go do this. And we just are constantly being jerked around by forces other than our intellect that cause behavior that we later don't feel too good about, and it turns out that we were trying to live a moral life on our own. Now I think we talked about this last week. We were tryingと be spiritual, moral. We're trying to become something, but we wanted to achieve it on our own. Our ego said, whether we recognized it or not, hey, anybody that can become a better person with God, I can make it without God. See you, God. And that's what our egos were saying. You can become something totally on your own and if you do, you'll be better than people who rely on a higher power. You see, it was almost an incredible desire to rise above other mere human beings. And we failed. I mean, it's a great theory and it sounds good and it feeds the ego wonderfully. But look at it. It doesn't work not just with alcoholics. It doesn'T work anywhere. I mean Bill writes about Bill writes back in 1212 he was writing that in the 40s and here's his analysis. He said, Look at society. This is the 1940s. He's saying, Look at Society. Everybody is trying to assert their individual rights. And everybody is forming groups and subgroups and individuals and demanding what they want, and there is no harmony anywhere. That was in the 40s. And it just continues. We go down that road where we're trying to figure out who I am as an individual and all the demands that the rest of the world adjusts to me as an individual sounds wonderful, but it just produces lousy results. And we end up with just all kinds of frustrations. And here we find this thing saying, Oh, well, you don't have to do that. You can be absolutely free and independent as an individual if you will become totally dependent on a higher power. And you're going to have to do that as alcoholics in order to stay sober and wonderful fringe benefit is we get everything else beyond sobriety as a result of having to do this in order to stay sobre so then our intellect says well i don't believe in this stuff i don' t believe you know i mean how are you going to get through life well look at all the things that we have bought into as we were going along that we never see our ego just doesn't want there to be a higher power I remember when I was about 12 years old and I was in the Boy Scouts for one year and I remember going to this Boy Scout meeting and I think the third meeting I was there the scoutmaster said well today I'm going to show you something that you can use if you ever get lost in the woods and you're surviving you only have one day's worth of food and if you don't take the right way out you're going to starve to death because you'll go walking off and it'll be hundreds of miles if you go the wrong way And this thing is called a compass. And he passed out all the compasses there. He went, open it up and everybody's looking at it and needles in there and bouncing around. He said, now, the way this works, there's this big rock up at the North Pole and it has some incredible magnetic power in it. And this needle in here will point to that rock. I don't remember anybody going, would you run that by me again? Big rock at the North Pole. Do we go up and check it out? Do we see the rock? I mean, do we get to look at... No, none of that. Just big rock, North Pole, I'll buy that. Put the compass in the pocket. My whole life depends on it. I'm going to starve to death. Hey, I got no problem. I got the compass. Big Rock, North Pole. I'm out of here. I go... Right? I bought that. I bought there. There's no problem buying that. I just said, hey, Big Rock North Pole, I'll turn my life over to the Big Rock at the North Pole I've got no problem with that. Later on I got in the Marine Corps I got into flight school now I'm going to be flying and one day they said hey, you know, we're going to go flying to an airport that's in between two huge mountains and it's totally covered with fog, clouds. Impossible to see it. So we're going to fly in there? Oh yeah, you don't have to worry. We have this invisible beacon coming through the clouds. There's a radio station on the ground that sends up an invisible line through the air and all you have to do is get in the air but if you tune in that invisible line and you can fly right between the mountains. If the line wasn't there, you're dead. Did I go through this whole process? Are you sure there's a line? I want to fly that line in good weather. You know, whatever it was. I just said, You got a line on there. Where's the line? I'm going down. Right between the mountains. No line, I'm dead. Right here? No. Right down there. Come day, they said, Hey, they got this higher power. It's all God. He'll guide you through life. Oh, give me a break. What do you think I am, a sucker? I'm going to buy into the preposterous notion that there's something that put this universe together that if I learn how to tie into will guide me through life. Oh, boy, I've heard some weird ideas before. Now, there's our ego. There's our egos. Because if there is such a thing, then I don't get to guide anymore. I don't get to be in charge anymore. So, I'm going to resist this thing like the devil. But I've got to look at results. This is where theory... See, you've got just set aside your theory. Nobody's going to prove this in the sense that they prove it on a blackboard. Well, actually, if you were born at the beginning of the universe, your name was there. Therefore, in 1994, these four... Yeah, now you're buying it? No, nobody's goingto buy that. We just go, well, let me show you a whole bunch of people who are being guided by this. Show and tell, AA meetings. You go, you look, and you see, hey, see that guy? He's reasonably happy. Well, he just lost his job, but he knows he's going to be all right. Well, how could he know that? He just does. He just knows that everything will always be allright. Hmm, what's he on? He's on the steps. he's on the steps he's tied into something so all of this is and then we go now that's where they are now you don't believe in this right? right, no I'm not buying into that I know it shows it's obvious you're not buying into that you are still lost you still have no navigation system you are trying you are in the forest and you are going to go get the food and you're telling yourself it's just over the next hill. It's over the next hill, it's not there. What do you think midlife crisis is all about? Keep going over hills. I know it's over to the next hill, I can figure this out. Are you the type driver who drives around in a strange city and the person on the right seat is saying let's pull in the gas station and ask no, no, I can find it, don't worry. I'm going to go there. That's human nature, wanting to figure it out ourselves, to figure life out. I am convinced, and Bill writes about this, that intellect backed by willpower can solve life. And nobody's going to be able to prove or disprove that on the blackboard. We're just going to compare results and you're going to say, well, how is your system working? you look like you're about to have a nervous breakdown you sweat a lot your hands shake you have no friends you don't trust anybody but you don' t want to switch over to what these people are doing who seem reasonably happy so we just compare results that's all this is and that's how we make the decision part of it is out of fear part of this decision to try and to turn our lives over comes about not intellectually but it comes about because everything else we've tried fails. We finally surrender. That's part of it. And then the program of attraction. That's what AA is, the programofattraction. It's not a program of explaining or proving anything. It is a programof attraction. We just go, hey, you're here. This is where we are. If you want what we have, this is how you get there. You make a decision to turn your life over, to get out of the driver's seat to a higher power as you understand him. That's what you must do. But then comes the interesting part. It is only... And this is another one of these... It's not real paradox, but it's a real play on words. Ooh! Five after. I'll stop in three minutes. Promise. There's a sentence that says There's no way you can stay sober alone. But you alone must do it. And there's no Way that you can stay sober on willpower. No Way can you stay sober on will power. But the only Way you do stay sober is through willpower and it sounds like we're talking out of both sides of our mouth but here's the difference. We need our willpower we've been given our will power which is our choice to do certain things. It takes willpower to go to a meeting. You could go to the movie and maybe you want to go to the movies but you know you should be at a meeting so you exercise your will to get in the car and go to The Meeting. The Meeting then gives you the resources to stay sober so it was really your willpower that took you there to get you sober but you couldn't just stay home and use your willpower to stay sober. But your will power is the only thing that can get you sober. And so the same thing in the third step when it says we made a decision to turn our will over, it sounds like well that's the end of willpower but it's not. It's the correct use of will power. And if you look in the 12 and 12 you'll see this discussion at the end of the third step. We're now going to use our will power to put it in harmony with the will of our higher power. And we're going to have to take the actions that are necessary to remove all of the obstacles that block us from a higher power. We can't just walk up and say I'm turning it over because there's too many things that are blocking us from allowing this to come in, which we're gonna inventory, character defects, all cleaning up the wreckage of the past. All these things are in the way between us and a clear channel with a higher power so the third step in the final analysis is decision to do the rest of the program that's really what it is it is a decision that i really want to get in touch with this higher power and i am going to go through a lot of pain and effort to get the job done and i'm going to use my will power in order to accomplish all of this and so willpower is absolutely essential in working the program, but it's absolutely useless in using it to just stay sober. So it's one of those strange paradoxes. So the rest of the time that we're talking about the program with the inventory and character defects and all that, all of that is being done in order to make the third step work. In order to actually have the third. So the big decision was to join up. This is where you sign on the dotted line. I'm in. How do I accomplish all of this? And then the 12th step is the jackpot of the third step having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps now it's turned over and so you can see that this is the process of the step sorry to run a little bit late we're at the end of the time we have a wonderful way to wrap this meeting up with anybody who would care to join in heart in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever Amen coming back it works if you work it