The Second Surrender – Big Book Workshop Jan – Part 3 of 6 – Scott L and Matt C

Good morning. My name is Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. Hi, Bob. It's been a delightful weekend. We are getting in, we're approaching the home stretch, which is my favorite part of this whole deal. And if I could, stay here. Mentally? Mentally, don't get off on this afternoon and mowing or whatever it is that you got on. Some of you are already driving, I can hear you. Yeah, stay here, because we're going to, and it's better. Thanks. I want to talk a little bit more about Step 11 in a few moments of silence. Yeah. Join me in a Few Moments of Silence. we are the place where God shines through. Him and I are one, not two. I need not worry, fret, or plan. He wants me where and as I am. And if I be relaxed and free, he'll carry out his plan through me. Amen. was there a dog food commercial did I miss a dog it's that lady's fault right here it's her fault she said something nice about you it's the first time it's ever happened and I was moved wow that's once in a row I heard Chuck Chamberlain talk about sitting at his house looking out over the ocean in Laguna and he said he would watch the sailboats go from the coast out to Catalina Island. And he said, he realized that it was not the cut of the jib that determined their destination. It was only the set of the sail. And that's what we're trying to do in step 11 is to set the sail against God's grace rather than sailing against it we sail with it and it makes a total difference in the way life is I think most of us have tried to control life you know they say the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is to control and enjoy his drinking well then we quit drinking and we become abnormal thinkers and the great obsession of every normal drinker is to enjoy his sobriety and I think we're about as successful at controlling and enjoying our lives and abstinence as we were at controlling and enjoying our drinking that often in AAU years ago you would hear people talk about the second surrender that we are surrendered by the bag and the bottle and then in abstinance down the road we're surrendered by life itself, by an absolute failure on our part to rest happiness and satisfaction. And for some of us, that is when the steps start to light up in that bottom that we hit in our abstinence. It's a different approach. On page 86 at the very bottom. It says in thinking about our day, and this is when we're setting the mental equivalent for our life for that 24-hour period, in thinking about our day, we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or decision. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the occasional, what used to me the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind the concept of relaxing and taking it easy is isn't some for some of us that's kind of a new approach it's when all else fails get a hammer I mean and this takes I think takes some of us a long time to settle into being able to relax and take it easy. I think that some of us are as addicted to our own juices and the edge as we were to alcohol. The delusion of power that comes from managing your own life you know it's almost it's almost like a high stakes crap game there's a lot of excitement and some of us become as addicted to that as we ever were to alcohol and yet it never seems to there's no peace in that there's not comfort there's security and we always end up somewhere out on a limb as the book said earlier, crushed by these self-imposed crises. We could not postpone or evade. I was one who fought the clock most of my life. In the description of alcoholism, of the spiritual malady that Silkworth talks about, he talks about our condition sober as being restless, irritable, discontent. And often that expressed itself within me as a sense of urgency. Now, I don't know what I'm urgent about. But wherever I'm going, I'm in a hurry to get there, right? You know what i mean? Like what I always push and I'm pushing on life and life. The problem with pushing on Life is it pushes back. There's a principle in physics that for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction. So life isn't treating me very right. And consequently, it's not a good deal for me. And this concept of relaxing and taking it easy, to my amazement, I was just talking with someone about this. When I can do that and act as if God's plan is unfolding in my life, approach my life with a relaxed, joyous expectancy as if there's good stuff happening. You know what happens? It does. it just flows to me I don't have to do nothing it just flow I had an experience years ago that that really stuck with me I I was up I was in the process of getting a a gaming license in Las Vegas a very very privileged very privileged it's almost it's like a license to print money i mean it's a very privileged license and and very few people have them and i was very fortunate i could i couldn't have gotten one today with my record but back in those days if there were no felonies that indicated any kind of mob or illegal traffic trafficking of money or drugs or anything you could kind of still get one and and my all my stuff was I was just I wasn't a gangster I was a public nuisance so I was I so it's about a 10 month to a year process of being investigated with incredible scrutiny scrutiny it's I'm told it's the same investigation that they will do on you to allow you personally to handle nuclear weapons I mean it's a very high high investigation, and it takes the good part of a year. I'm almost done. I don't know it, but I'm at the tail end of this investigation. I'm in work one day, and I'm busy, and one of the investigators calls me up, and he says, I want you in my office. Well, they hold all the cards. You just have to do what they say. You're under the gun with them. He says, yes, sir, andI dropped everything I was doing I went down to his office, and he's an unusual-looking guy. He's got kind of a red nose, a little bit puffy bloodshot eyes, right? One of those kind of guys, right, kind of looked like me at one time. And I go in, and I sit down, and he's sitting there, and he's glaring at me, and you can tell he's angry. And he's got my file there, right. and he's going over all the arrests you know and all it's all petty stuff it never never none of it was really ever a felony but it was always just felony arrests but never felony convictions you know. And he's gone over it and he obviously can tell I was a bum and he finally he just explodes he says i've been working for this gd this gb state for 20 freaking years and i got nothing to show for it i've done everything right he says you're a bum and you're gonna get a gaming license and i can't stop you and it ain't fair and he slams his fist on the table right and i just i didn't say nothing to him i just sat there but i thought to myself well if you could surrender right you're in your own way it's apparent to me but i i don't say that because i don' t i don''t think he today can do anything to me at this point but i don'T want to I don't want to, never poke the tiger. Never poke the Tiger. So I just, and I walked out of there and they were going to give me that license and I knew that it was only as a result of my willingness, not to do this perfectly, but my willingness to keep trying to surrender to God and to serve him. And that really, this principle that we function on. The 12 by 12, it says that the effectiveness of the whole AA program rests on how we're going to try to carry out this decision in step three. In other words, self-abandonment and service. It doesn't make sense in our society, especially the way we were raised and everything we were taught, that you can get it all from giving up. You can get at all... Because we live in a, God, one of the basic premises of our country is the pursuit of happiness. Well, how many people have really put a lot of energy into pursuing happiness? Can I say it here? Anybody catch it? Right? It just kind of. Almost. Yeah, right behind. Just a little more, I think. Right, right. and yet as as we have entered into a covenant in step three when it says having a new have a new having a New Employer being all-powerful he'll provide what we needed if I can just do two things if Ican keep close to him and that's part of the ritual of AA is just to do that every morning and every night, and work the steps to keep the stuff that's between me and him out of the deal. And then perform his work well. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to read this book and figure out that what they're talking about is helping other people. If I can just abandon myself of self and help God's kids, I will be taken care of better than I could ever take care of myself absolutely I bank on that I bet my life on it every day every day the reason I do is I have I've taken the the wheel back in my sobriety it hurts it's a bad deal it's a bad and the book goes on to say that you know it's talking about we start to rely on this intuitive thing that only happens when i'm relaxed and take it easy i heard sometimes scott talks about this it's a story i heard the same story at a retreat uh that father tom put on probably 20 some 25 years ago at lake mead and he said he told the story about these anthropologists that went down to New Zealand, and they were studying the Aborigines. There's nomadic tribes in New Zealand. And according to Tom's story, he said that these two American anthropologists were walking with the tribe, and he said they noticed something very peculiar. Periodically, the tribe would just stop and just sit down and just, like, sit. It's not a bathroom break. They're not eating. They're nicht hunting. They're niet taking a nap. They're just sitting. and then after a time they seem all together as a sense just get up and move on then periodically they just stop and sit and he goes one of the anthropologists goes to the old shaman of the tribe and he says you know why are you doing what do you guys do this and he looks at this anthropologist like he's some kind of retarded child and he he says well of course we stop we have to periodically wait for our souls to catch up with us i'll tell you something i i gotta wait for my soul you can out i think you can Outrun God's grace just as I think you could be so full of yourself that there's no room for for God and so this is really learning the practice of of trying to not outrun the flow stay with the flow um the book kind of warns us though there's and this is i i heed this warning and i i want to talk about this a little bit it says being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with god i wantto tell you something even though i am sober over 30 years i get it that i am still inexperienced this and i'll tell you why if you were to chart my life and how much of it i've listened to this and how much of what i've listen to this this is way ahead of the game i mean so far ahead of the game uh that it's that my conscious my contact with god and trusting that intuition and stuff is is significant in my life as mankind is on the on the in the existence of the universe it's just a little speck so even though i would like to pride myself well i'm 30 years sober well yeah but how much of that 30 years have i been in contact with God and been listening to the still small voice and how much of that 30 years i've been listening to my head i let me tell you something in the big picture i'm still very inexperienced at this and i think this applies to me and i think it i don't think i will live long enough to get ahead of the curve as far as having more experience with intuition and god still small voice than i will be listening to my head. I don't think that's a curve I can get over. So I will always be inexperienced. And having just made conscious contact, and this is a warning, it says it's not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption if you presume that you're inspired. We Might Pay for This Presumption in All Sorts of Absurd Actions and Ideas. oh yeah I tell the guys I sponsor you get an inspiration you call me if it's a really good one you just better come over and see me because we you know it doesn't matter how long you're sober believe me the capacity for self delusion I got here's I got an ego I swear to God I can do this my ego can throw it's ventriloquist it'll throw its voice down in here and i'll think it's god i've had crazy ideas i've said thoughts thought some pretty bizarre stuff was god's will and that's one of the reasons i got a sponsor i'll tell you a couple couple examples there's a guy i may see him in may i don't know i gotta i gotta do a little research the guy that got sober in Vegas back around probably 1980, between 80 and 82, I think. So he'd be sober quite a while, named George. And George now lives in Germany. And he's really more involved in another 12-step program, but he was also going to AA. And Georgie, when he was about three months sober, probably, we're sitting in a coffee shop one night, bunch of us. And George, we're talking about God. And George wants to tell us about how he now knows about God and so George says you know I really know now that God loves me and we said well that's great George and how do you know that? And he says well you know God knew that I didn't have much self-esteem so he put a couple newcomer girls in my life to sleep with so I'd feel better about myself and we're like laughing we're and he's he's not laughing he's he's looking at us like why are you laughing he believes that I had a car I went to my sponsor in early sobriety I got my first sober relationship the only time he's ever told me to stay away from somebody and he told me, he said, she's sick. You've got to stay away from her. And I said to him, but Dick, we're all sick here. He looks at me with this look like, oh. Like I better buckle in. This is going to be a tough ride. And he says, he's shaking his head and I says listen she's god's will for me and he's looking at me like what are you crazy i said listen she drank richard's wild irish rose i drank richards wild iris rose right and he is looking at me like i'm and i had a couple little little things like that i thought oh see and my my ability to see patterns and connections that don't exist because i want to justify my position as being god's will and it it's it's that's why i have a sponsor and i call him and to my delight uh a lot actually nowadays it seems like more times than not i'll tell him my this is my sense is this and he'll say kid that's right but every once in a while he'll go are you out of your mind i just got an are you out of your mind not too long ago don't you learn from your mistakes i mean i just got that um the answer to that question is obviously not so i have a sponsor and i call him and i check stuff against him And as the years go by, I find out that I am connected to God and my intuition is solid most of the time. But if I close the door to checking it and presume that it's on the money all the time, that is an opportunity for my ego that my ego will not walk away from. It will jump on that. and i think i believe that i will always need account i will always need spiritual accountability the reason is is that i Will never be a hundred percent free of self it doesn't happen I will always live in the shadow of ego And hopefully in the light of the spirit at the same time One of my favorite stories about a guy, alcoholic. About the time I got sober, this guy was all over the news back in 78, a guy named Jim Jones. And Jim was, I think he was an alcoholic. He had a pretty bad problem with drugs and alcohol and he got saved and got born again and he had a calling and he went to divinity school and became a minister in parts of California up around the Bay Area, a little off the Bay area. He did a lot of good work. He helped a lot people. I've ran into some people in AA up there that remember some of the good stuff he did up in the Bay Area years ago. But Jim had no one to check his vision of God's will against except the mind of a chronic alcoholic, a mind that lends itself so easily to self, a mind, if you're like me, that imagines problems that don't exist, a mind that is very self-centered fear oriented and doesn't know it and incrementally slowly tiny bit by bit self and ego and all the fear and everything that goes with it started inundating Jim's consciousness gradually and he became sicker and sicker slowly and the sad part is he never got it that that was happening because the ego always justifies itself. That's why the craziest I've ever been in my life, I thought I was right, right? And the more defended I would be. And you know if Jim had a sponsor, at the very least the sponsor would have said, Jim, the Kool-Aid's a bad idea. They didn't have a sponsor. The next, it says, nevertheless, we find that our thinking as time passes will be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it. We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we'd be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially, this sounds like this is important, we ask especially for freedom from self-will and are careful to make no request for ourselves only that's pretty strong now those of you that are loophole lookers there's a loophole here and you're going to like this one it says we may ask for ourselves however if others will be helped in early sobriety before i when i picked up a little gambling addiction after i got sober i couldn't do that when i was drinking because i ain't gonna gamble away my drinking money but after i got sober and i remember running the last of my paycheck into a machine telling god that if i hit this big jackpot i will open a halfway house and help a lot of people as if i'm the only knucklehead that ever said that prayer right and i think the reason that that the word only is in the 11th step and a friend of mine says he thinks it's the most important word in all the verbiage in the 12 steps, is that anything less than only is a supposition that I know best. You know, when I was a kid we were taught the Ten Commandments and I think my view of them was very fear-based and I've changed all of that. I didn't change it, it just happened. Bill Wilson says something. I was just talking about this to somebody. Bill Wilson says something in his story that has been my experience for some time now. He says that he found that he will check everything against this newfound God consciousness within. In other words, stuff comes up and you look at it through these new eyes and some of it you go, yeah, wow, that's cool. And some of it you know, I don't know what that is. But you check it, it's in here in your heart. Your heart can't be deceived. And I looked at the second commandment with this new god consciousness within and i'll tell you it looked completely different to me i always thought that what it meant when it said thou now they we shall not take the name of the lord thy god in vain was that i was taught as a kid we're not supposed to cuss and that's probably good again fends people and i really make it a point to try not to do that because i don't want i don' t want to offend anybody and i don'T want to it's a sign usually that i'm if you catch me in a meeting and i say and i cuss it's probably because i'm scared or i'm agitated or something's going on it's a sign of something going on with me it's it's like it's a red flag right and i try not to do that but i don't think that's what that commandment means because when i think of it objectively wouldn't the vainest use of god's name would be to pray for my will to try to instruct the creator of the universe? You know, God, I know you've been running the universe for a couple billion years, but Bob's here now. And I want to clue you in on a few things. Yeah, you might want to make some notes. Yeah. And can you imagine anything vainer than that, really? That's the ultimate vanity. And so we're not trying to do, to change God's mind. We're trying to change ours. There, my friend Clint used to say that there was three types of prayers and he said they were all good but each, each one was a little bit closer. He said the first type of prayer was the help me prayer. Every alcoholic has said the help me prayer even if you're an atheist you've been in a foxhole saying help me i'll never do this again you know you we've all know that prayer it's all right prayer we sometimes it's it's opened a little channel got a little grace in our life as a result of our desperation not all bad then there's the give me prayer we say a lot of give me prayers you know the the serenity prayer is actually a give me pray god grant me this i'm asking him for something and then clint said then there's the ultimate prayer and it's simply use me just use me i think that i'm trying to move myself towards service without prejudice or opinion when they asked when we asked that question was i kind and loving towards all i mean if you can answer that yes every day then you're living a life of service without judgment prejudice or Opinion a selfless ultimately selfless service it's easy to be of service to the people you love because you get something out of it but look kind and loving towards all what an order what an order then one thing i'll talk about i'm turning over to scott is at the very very bottom of the page this you know scott was talking about how they changed the book and how things all of us you know what it is sometimes is i change and then i'll read something and it'll i've read the line a hundred times but it'll hit me in a way i've never it's like all of a sudden i connect the dots and i realize what they're talking about and i was sober a long time and i'm reading this last line on page 87 and it says we constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show we constant i remember thinking constantly why would they want me to constantly remind myself I'm no longer and I went oh god because I'm constantly trying to run the show no wonder I have to constantly remind it is my default position is to play God that I must constantly remind myself and you know how do you play you know you play God it's so subtle isn't it the way it sneaks up on you walk into your home group just full of joy in life and light. The key turns in your head. What's she walking around in the meeting for? Doesn't she get enough attention? He had four cups of coffee and didn't put any money in the basket. Oh my god do you hear what they're sharing? What's phony? Sounds like a Hallmark Cardinal Recovery Bookstore. I can't take it. And what changed except is the key-turned self I started to play, play God. So I must constantly remind myself I'm no longer running the show. Scott? Thanks. I'm Scott Lee. I'm an alcoholic. And thrilled to be here. I'll go back to my perspective for just a moment of what I do with the new guy that I'm sponsoring. One of his first assignments as I start him through the big book is to read pages 86 and 87 out loud once a day for 30 days because I want him to get it in his mind. He's already having days, and these are the directions on how to open and close. So let's start on that now. And then I'm going to backtrack just a little bit. When I get him to step 10, when we finish 9, I don't like the idea if I'm on 10, 11, 12. I don'T like blowing that off. And what I do is a two-week focus on step 10. I want him to read pages 84 and 85 every other day. I want them, if he's in a meeting and they call for a topic from the floor, ask for step 10. Now, don't do that twice in the same meeting, but do it. If you chair a meeting, your topic is step 10, I want you to pick out five men in recovery whose programs he respects that are not in our recovery lineage and ask them and say, you are someone whose program I respect and I'm assigned by my sponsor to pick five. To ask them about step 10, would you talk to me about step 10? And we take a two-week focus on it. At the end of two weeks, I sit down and review steps 84 and 85 with him in depth. And then I give him the same assignment on step 11. I just want to pass along for whatever it's worth. And on step 12, I ask him to read all of the pamphlets. Just go down to the central office for $10. bucks you can buy all the pamphlets and get one or both of the aa histories dr bob and the good old timers or aa comes of age either one and read that and uh and by that time of course he's involved either in prisons or treatment centers because that's what we do and just sort of a perspective i want to talk a little bit about my own perspective with meditation i sponsor a fellow named ron that some of you know and he's the first time i ever sponsored that lived and um he uh he just got his 23 year chip and um his first year sober he and i fished together a lot and in meditation i'm normally just kind of sitting there i do the the plan thing the way it's described here on 86 and 87 in my wife's arms before i get out of bed and then i get a shower and shave, and she puts on hot water for tea. We meet on the sofa. I read my two pages out of the big book. I red my two this morning. And she reads some Al-Anon literature. We read some other spiritual literature. And it's – I don't think it's appropriate for me to name that in this setting. If you're interested, ask me in private. I'll be happy to tell you. But I like to keep A-A-A. I'm afraid to ever cross the line. And then we sit and do one of the oriental meditation techniques and I was sitting one day meditating that way and I don't usually get visions. I know people get all kinds of stuff and I know I'm just you know sitting there counting or whatever it is and but I got one and what I saw was Ron and I were out on the river in a canoe fishing and we did that a lot. I say his first year sober and it was just this beautiful scene and uh and suddenly what the buddhist called my monkey mind began to talk to me and said well scott you rotten sob here you are out playing on the river with ron and you're supposed to be trying to get close to god this is one of the great events in my life and you don't boy you don't know when they're coming and i heard this gentle voice and i hurt it in my solar plexus it was like all of my cells hurt it but wasn't my ears said if you want to get close to me work with my people. And it startled me, and I believe the Master spoke to me because that is held true. Now, I do need, and so for the next couple of years, that rang for me. And I spent as much time as I could trying to help others because my spiritual arrogance knows no bounds. It took me two years to realize that it might mean for me to work with those who were further along than I was also and see what else I could learn. But i you know i don't get those things quickly that's just not not what i do and um but i wanted to share that with you that i don' t ever know when i'm going to get one and one of the things that came out of our first usual suspects retreat where four of us sequestered in a uh a uh state park for a weekend four men i sponsored the other three and um and we read spiritual literature and prayed and meditated and for a week-end just four of and we were sitting talking by the fire one night, and we were talking about a lady in our home group who had just come out of a coma. And she'd been in a coma about six weeks, and she said when she came out of the coma that she could feel the prayers and the love that were being sent to her. And we were sitting talking about that, and мы generalized, and all of us believed based on that because we believe her that you can send love literally. And then we began what we now know as the love meditation. And there are several here who have done that with us. And I try to visualize love as a stream about this big around coming out of heaven. It's silver, and it shimmers. And it comes down through the top of my head, and I exhale it out of my mouth and nose but also out of My chest. And I sent love to every chair in this room before I left My bed this morning. And I send it to the restaurant, and I send to the ride to the airport, and I sent it to check-in, and all the way home. And that's part of what I do each morning in meditation is I send love to the places where I'm going so there will be some there when I get there. My business was really, really strong a few years ago and I hired an assistant, this gentle Christian woman, very, very spiritual lady. And we're multi-line manufacturers reps and we had one manufacturer that was a third of our business. If we lose them, we're out of business the same day. and they had a price there was a woman there that we had to deal with constantly who handled the pricing and we were absolutely certain that there was a broom in their parking lot and uh we figured she'd been that way since that house fell on her sister it was the only excuse and i'm telling you it was amazing and we were starting every day just running her down god i hope we don't have to deal avec her today oh my god and finally one morning either on a monday or a tuesday Sheila said to me wait a minute we're doing the wrong thing here and we both know it we can't sit here and run this woman down let's do something else I said okay let's sit and for the first five minutes of our business day we're going to send her love and I described this process that was a Monday or a Tuesday on Friday of that week our phone rang and it was that woman and I hung up the phone and sat there for a couple of seconds before I forgot what had happened she had called to chat. I couldn't believe it and that whole relationship changed and the only thing we did differently was that one thing. A couple of months later I went to Chicago to our national trade show. I walked into a hospitality suite this size with this many people in it and when I came through the door she started elbowing people and knocking them down to get to me, to hug me, To tell me that I was the best rep in the country And if she had more people like me and Sheila to deal with, her life would be so much easier. The room came to a halt. They're watching. Everybody is like this. And I spent the rest of a three-day trade show with people I didn't know coming up to me and saying, How, how, how? What did you do? What? How? And I said, Well, I'll tell you, but you're not going to like it. I've got some other stories like that. but Bob described it so beautifully yesterday with the woman and the kids and the father and all that, that nothing can stand against a barrage of love. Nothing will stand. And boy, when I get crossed wise with somebody, that's what I've got to be doing. I've Got to be sending them that love. It just works for me. There's an interesting word on page 86 in the On Awakening. Let us think about the 24 hours ahead. Consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives. Divorced is an interesting word. The only things I've ever had to be divorced form were things that I at one time loved. And I at once time loved self- pity, dishonesty, and self- seeking motives. And they require a divorce. Isn't that kind of interesting? It was for me. I'm kind of off the topic, but Bob and I were talking about it this morning. I had the privilege, my wife and I are just back from three weeks in Australia doing workshops. That's my speaker gift, that hat. Do you believe it? Whoa. And Crocodile Scott. Yeah, baby. And suffer. I was in a... At this particular day, we weren't doing a workshop and we were in an open AA meeting and there were somewhere 15, probably right at 20 people in the room and they sat in a circle and it was a big book study. And what I noticed in that meeting was that they do not have something in Australia that we have in the States and that's the 13th tradition. and um i was i was really uh i was really quite impressed by that i was about halfway around the circle and as the basket came by me it was full of five and ten dollar bills see and we have a 13th tradition it's one of the sickest things we do in my humble opinion is to put one dollar in the basket when i got sober in the summer of 1984 the 13th tradition was to put $1 in the basket and that $1 would buy would almost buy two packs of cigarettes it's an interesting perspective we are not self-supporting to our own contributions by the way we as a fellowship make a profit on the big books the reason the price is what it is because we are NOT self supporting yeah I'm one of the guys I sponsor was delegate he's up for trustee he told me that annually if every member of Alcoholics Anonymous contributed $6.33 to General Service Office we could give away our big books and all their literature for free plus support the office there's a there's an interesting thing called the birthday callers and 33 cents excuse me there's some upper limit I don't know if it is raised at two thousand dollars three three thousand dollars the fellowship if you mail a check to a world services and don't include a note that your member of they'll mail it back because we neither solicit nor accept outside donations which is kind of an important piece and the most they'll take for anyone about from either one a bus is $3,000 it occurs to me that there must be a reason they had to put a limit on it because some people are in a position and care so much that they would give more if they were allowed to another piece on that fell in my home group was our GSR and he's very very wealthy guy and he and I were chatting about something and he said that he was on the way back from he'd just been to the state convention and the group was going to write him an expense check and he was goingto tell him not to. And I said you can't do that. You must accept that.You must allow them to be self-supporting through their own contributions because if you don't eventually we'll only have people in trusted servant positions who can afford to do it out of their own pocket so you're going to block that for somebody else. Now what you do with that money is up to you. You want to buy a couple of cases of big books and donate them to the jail? You want to drop it, it doesn't matter. But you must take that check and cash it. One of the guys I sponsor gets $2 bills from the bank. And when he's in a meeting, when the basket comes by, you'll see a $2 bill in there. Just trying to get that point across. And you have to do what you're comfortable with. You have to do what your okay with. Somebody said something about the price of a drink? Was that you? That that's an interesting template to use to drop the price for the drink. And I'm going to have to ask somebody because I don't know what the price of a drink is i've been gone kind of for a while but uh five bucks yeah yeah somewhere around five bucks but i don't ever put in less than two do what oh was it tommy yeah um move on to just a couple of other things and we're going to dive into the basket here when i was sober about two years i quit praying for guidance and if you're doing that it's okay with me i'm not against it but it occurred to me that a gentle loving laughing god was sending his guidance every day as a free and clear gift and i was asking for what had already been given so i changed that prayer and i asked to be open to his guidance all the blocks in the channel between me and god are at my end um and and here's a gift from my home group you know the difference between a good habit and a bad habit? Good habits are easy to break. Yeah, that's the difference. And that's why I told you I read my two pages because I don't want to have to sit up here and tell you I didn't do it yet today. It's because I was tight on time this morning. And I'm not going to situp here and have to tell you that I didn' t do it. So the way I read two pages a day, you'll never believe this, is I do it every day. If I'm going to have good habits, I have to pay the price for them. Page 87, Bob already touched on it, but it's a friend of mine in my home group, his computer at work for his screensaver, he put in the letters PWA for pause when agitated. And a couple of the earthlings that he worked with came up behind him one time and he saw this PWA dancing around his screen. He said, what is that? And he said, pause when agitated. And they said, wow. And I think that's a wow too. I asked Don, my mentor, the one from Denver, not too long before he died, what changes he'd seen in AA. And he says, he said when he got to AA, the focus was on recovery. Today the focus is on sobriety, it seems. And that the difference is that sobrietry is simply not drinking today. doesn't necessarily include recovery. Recovery is this whole spiritual thing of the steps and how we live in all that, that always includes sobriety. And I asked him what a sponsor's primary responsibility was and he said it was to maintain the integrity of the message. Yeah, and we're going to talk about that in the last session a little bit. Staying with the topic of new stuff in the big book. Page 164 was rewritten in June of 2006, or at least that's when I spotted this. First full paragraph, still you may say, but I will not have the benefit of contact with you who write this book. We cannot be sure, so God will determine that. So you must remember that your real reliance is always upon him. And then here's the part they added. He will show you how to create the fellowship you crave i love the word crave i tell my earthling friends they shouldn't use it they don't know what it means i say you want to crave is hold your breath for the next 10 minutes for the last 20 seconds of that you'll know what crave is yeah and i have craved fellowship all of my life never had it but i have craved it all in my life and it was only after i got here and and got that craving filled that i understood why i couldn't have it the rest of my life and i think the reason is because only this part of me can participate in fellowship and you see i wasn't showing you this part because i was i was always the actor pretending to be the guy i think you want me to be and and i get to hang out with you and uh but it's not fellowship because i'm not showing you the real me and i got here and i'm comfortable showing you the real meat warts and all i give i give you all anybody needs to hear the rest of my fifth step I have a seat. I don't have any problem with it at all, so I'm okay with me. And I still crave fellowship, but I'm not aware of it very often because, like Bob said, mine's being fed. Today, right now, right this second, this is the future we used to be terrified of. This is it. You guys okay? Everybody all right? Good. Good. How about now? how about now yeah i uh i complained to my sponsor when i had about six months i said i'm hearing spiritual side of the program this and spiritual sideof the program that if there's a spiritual side ofthe program it's got to be at least one other side what's the name of it he said there are two sides there is the spiritual side and the drunk side choose one i think that was accurate um a lot more we could do on 11 but we have we have i have cheated and looked through the box and we've got some fabulous questions in here they're going to take us well into the next session unless you've got something else we oh one more little piece here this is a gift from miss linda page 88 shortest paragraph in the text by the way for those of you who are like to play games with the book which i do works it really does and then it says we alcoholics are undisciplined Ms. Linda says that's why we need Al-Anons I can't speak for you but that rings real true for me I got a friend who starts his meditation in the morning and ends it at night with two words in the evening in the beginning he starts it by looking up and going whatever and at night he goes cool I'm going to tell one more story because Bob touched on it this is the only story I tell I don't have permission to tell and I'm not going to ask for it because I'd rather get forgiveness five and a half years ago when Bob and I did this for the first time was in Los Angeles and I flew into Las Vegas his hometown and we spent the night and then on Friday morning we drove, I guess it was about six hours from there to wherever we were going in Los Angeles. I'm actually pretty lost out there. About halfway across his cell phone rang and this is his side of the conversation. Yeah, hey, hi. Oh, oh, sorry to hear that. Oh, no. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm sure she means it this time. Yeah, I know you're broken hearted. Listen, it's Friday afternoon. I'll be home Sunday around midnight. I want you to have two new men to sponsor by the time I get back. You know where they are. Go get them. That is sponsorship. That is scholarship. Let's get him out of himself right now. This is one of the best examples I ever saw in my life, and I embarrass him when I tell that, but I saw it. I saw him put it on the road, and I would bet a lot that that guy had two newcomers by the time Bob got back, and it probably saved his life. Yeah. That week. Yeah. Well, you know, my Uncle Frank used to say some people are just naturally hard to help. I don't get the real Wellwoods either. Yeah. We're going to do a couple of questions out of the box here before we take the first break. I don' t know. I didn' t read it. It says, do you see? suggest to your sponsees that they make three phone calls a day attend three meetings a week and that they do the other tools i.e service anonymity read literature writing etc no uh i i don't i ask the guys i sponsor to call other alcoholics every day I ask them that they have to find somebody to help every day and I think the amount of meetings that they go to depends upon their life Scott was a pilot another friend of mine told me this pilots will talk about attitude is the angle of approach and the attitude of this is how much can I do not what's the minimum I have to. There's a world of difference between those two angles of approach, and the deal is you need to be at a meeting every chance you can get. Now, you've got to go to work. You've got certain family responsibilities, but you need to be there. If there's a meeting going on and you don't have something else going on, be there." Alcoholics Anonymous talks about demonstrations. It's not enough to say you're willing and do the minimum. You have to demonstrate willingness by – there's a big difference between a minimalist approach in AA and a maximist approach, and they can be the difference in life and death. And it has nothing to do with the amount of meetings or the amount OF service. It's the attitude. I know guys that have a maximum approach and they only can go to four meetings a week. I know other guys that Have a minimalist Approach and they go to seven. The guy with the four meetings a week is coming from a better place because he's doing every meeting he can. He just has a big, full plate. It's the best he can do. The guy that's doing sevens retired, he could go to 14. It wouldn't hurt him. World's a difference. I have to know something about his life that questions too general for me. But I trust what I get for guidance as far as sponsorship goes. I usually start them out on seven meetings a week I sponsored a guy years ago and he said I can't go to seven, I said okay why let's talk He said well Sunday is my family day and we go to church I said does church feed your spirit He said yeah, I'll take six AA meetings in one church And he said I can'T go on Wednesday nights Because we have choir practice And I sing in the choir And I said this choir practice feeds your spirit And he says yeah, he said he'll take five AA meetings One choir practice, one church I'm easy to deal with, I really am As long as I'm getting my own way And, like I said, I get reasons on the front end. I get excuses on the back end. This one's in the same handwriting. It says, does the big book mention anything about the tools of the program? This sounds like another fellowship to me. It says abstinence, telephone meetings, literature, anonymity, service, writing. I don't know where it says anything about those things as the, quote, tools of the program. My experience is that people who get a sponsor who's actually done the 12 steps and allow that sponsor to coach them through the 12 steps and stay active, all stay sober. And everybody else is a ticking time bomb. And that's my experience with that. I think all of those things are wonderful. And I have them do a lot of these things. But I don't think the text ever talks about the quote tools of the program because the word program gets thrown around a whole lot. And according to my book, the program's the 12 Steps. And that has to be the focus. But there's a lot of other good stuff that can go along with it. What do you got? When others are irritable, restless, and discontent, it screws me up inside. How do I diffuse the in your face everything is your fault, you did this to me people, when I am forced to be around them and I feel like I'm drowning? Al-Anon, do you hear them calling? I got a couple observations on that. This isn't quite – the first thing I'd like to say is Bob and I believe all of the answers in this box are the same. And the answer is we agree with whatever your sponsor said. But we're going to talk about some of this because they're good topics. I don't know who others are. I'll tell you this. I've had this conversation with a lot of people over the last few weeks. There's a great line maybe on page 102, 101, about 102, keep on the firing line of life. If you're not taking some hits, don't call me. You're not my kind of person because the people on the hiring line are taking hits. Okay? If the don't drink and go to meetings crowd isn't saying something bad about your group, you're in the wrong group. Don't call me, all right? I take hits. I'm accused of running a cult. People tell them, don't go to the back room. There are cults over there. Yeah, right? It's exactly right. And so that's the first thing for people in recovery. And my job is to make them welcome, right. I can't shoot back. I can't afford the price because when he gets back from his next slip I want to be his go-to guy and I can not send animosity but the thing on page 99 that we talked about that they just rewrote is that I can allow how he treats me to affect how I treat him if this is other people in my life then I got to consider how much time I am going to spend with them there are some people in my live who should be able to love me that can't and if I go around them and put my shields down, I get bashed. So I have learned, one, to limit my time with them, although I think to feel good about myself I have to spend some time. But when I'm there, I don't put my shield down. I put my shields down around Bob and Ken and Matt and the people that I know where my heart is safe in their hands and my name is safe of their mouth. That's where I do that. And I'll tell you, too, I learned this, too. I got crosswise when I had right out of year. And I was standing in the clubhouse, and my sponsor walked in and walked up to me and said, what's wrong? And I hadn't said anything. And I said, I just had a fight with, and I'm not going to fill in the blank because there are people here that know this name. And my God, and she's got 20 years. And I'm terrified. And he said, congratulations, you're an excellent company. I don't know anybody in this town that's got a solid program that's not crosswise with her. Well done. What? what? And what I learned was that if somebody doesn't have what I want, I can't be concerned about what these thinkers say. If somebody has what I Want, that's why I asked you for someone who disagrees. Somebody has what i want and we disagree. I get excited and they do too because there's a chance for at least one of us to learn something. I don't want to fight. I want to argue. I've been given a gift here. Someone in this room has told me he's going to send me an email. He disagrees with something I've said. I can't wait to get it. It's a chance for at least one of us to learn something. I'm in on that, and as far as those that just want to attack me, have a good time. I get calls fairly frequently from guys I sponsor in AA, and they're always going off about some person in AA that's little nuts, and, and there, and their, their offended by it, and I always i gave him the same response it's it's like now they all know it too it's not it's lost its impact but i always say read the last five words of the first paragraph and working with others and call me back and the last Five Words in the first Paragraph Working With Others is Remember They Are Very Ill Let's Never Forget That We Are In The World's Largest Outpatient clinic. Right, right. Mental health. Let's not and I'll tell you there's a promise in the book in the 10-step promises it talks about being placed in a position of neutrality. Now they're talking about the first half of the first step but I think working this program you can end up in a position of neutrality in other words you don't engage with life itself what's it say we stop fighting everything and everybody and when i i run into crazy people all the time in aa you know this guy you run into a meeting those people that they're either on meds or they should be you're not sure which right and i got five i have five six responses to them they ask, they want to get my face, talk to me. I ask, yes? They ask me a question, yes, no, really? Wow, whatever. I'm going to kill myself because I think they're coming after me. Wow. You're not really listening to me, really. Just don't engage. response without engagement it's kind of a cool thing this one says I've heard in meetings that cussing or swearing is not a sign of spiritual growth yeah I can tell you in me it's not and I think I addressed that last night this has probably been in here for a while let's do one or two more and we'll take a break this is a great There's some wonderful stuff in here, by the way. Guys, I volunteer to help at a treatment center and they prepare their guests to share a fifth step before leaving treatment. During a recent opportunity to be of service, it was evident to me that this guest was unable to concede that his ego was still overinflated and also unable to... I've never seen that happen. and turn his will and life over to a higher power. I tried to point out where my ego had gotten the best of me, but to him it was impossible to admit his powerlessness. Is it appropriate to stop the fifth step and walk away in this circumstance? Well, you know, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've had that experience with guys And I don't know that there's a right or wrong answer. I'll tell you what I'd do. I will try to let him clean as much as he can and let him know that my feeling is that he will find himself at some point coming back again and revisiting this, that he's not done. I will always applaud an effort and some people are blocked and I don't diss them for being blocked it's not their fault I will encourage them for what they've done and also try to keep them open to the fact that maybe there's more work and that I've had to do more work my first four step was life story it wasn't very good really you know nobody threw me out my sponsor did say to me he said well you I didn't get what he meant for years he said you may find you may want to do some more inventory down the road what he was really saying is that this was crap I mean but he was too kind to say he wanted to applaud my effort and encourage me to be open minded to revisit this in the future My own perspective, and I have the privilege of getting into several treatment centers on a regular basis, is I'm in there to do two things. Well, in some places it's to smuggle recovery in, but primarily two things One is to give them the definition of the program off of page 59, so the ones that are in their 11th or 3rd treatment will maybe understand why they're there. and the other one is to get sponsors for as many as possible that's what i'm there for so a situation like that be easy enough uh a guy that i sponsored managed to get himself barred from one of the treatment centers uh because he was in there here in the fifth step and it was clear to him that they'd done some kind of psychobabble four-step thingy um as he was listening to this thing so he stopped it and said how much longer you're going to be here and the guy said two weeks he said great you and i can talk on the phone for an hour every day and he took him to the fourth step strangely enough the one in the big book and um and and as he did that he put this patient in a position to argue with his counselor and win in public and that's how he got barred and that'S not good for anybody and when I sponsor someone that's in treatment whether it's inpatient or outpatient I do not start them through the steps because I it's not good for him to be able to argue With this counselor and when and thatS what I'm setting him up to do if I start him through the work. What I start him on is the slogans, I start them on reading two pages a day in the text and looking up words. If we get to page 60 before he gets out of treatment, I skip back to the stories. Let's do Dr. Bob story. And I got all kinds of things we can talk about and do. And then when he gets out, I started him into the steps. Because I'm not trying to set him up being any controversy. Do one more take a break? Listen says, Do you believe a fourth slash ninth step is done, fourth through ninth step is done only once. People stop doing another fourth step. My experience on that is that I have found a lot of things through ensuing four steps. I know some people that do the first nine once and I don't know that I would have made it that way just because of the things that I've uncovered going through the process. And there are times that I go through it and I've just gone through it. The reference that I use, interesting I did one of these weekends with a very good friend of mine, and he and I are opposite poles on that. He's one of the first nine steps once and then stays. So I don't even like the word. I won't use it, but the last three steps. And someone asked us a question out loud. Does the big book say anything about doing the steps more than once? And he said no, and I said I'll give you the page number at the same time. And this is page 64. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. And the reference I made when we were in step four is that although there's an evening portion of step 11, which is a daily inventory, there's also a once-a-year full tear-down inventory. And those have been very effective for me and for the other people that I've had the privilege of watching do it. I don't even engage in this because I think it's a matter of semantics. Let's face it. You're going to clean house, and you're goingto continue to cleanhouse. If you did it perfectly every day, you probably won't have to do a major one down the road. But no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. So you're going to do some major house cleaning periodically because you're not Buddha. We're going take a nice long break, 11 minutes and 40 seconds. I'm Scott Lee, I'm an alcoholic. Alright, we're going to dig back into the box here. What do you got? It's yours. No, it's not mine. Who is responsible for the chair of the group conscience meeting? My home group seems to run on personalities before principles. God, I'm going to open a can of worms with this one. This is almost, again, I tell you, I watched what I thought, believed was one of the finest groups and all of Alcoholics Anonymous destroy itself with monthly group conscience meetings. Bickering and tediously reinventing the wheel every single week, every single month. And I was one of the only voices that was for, let's stop this, we'll have a group inventory once a year, we elect our officers, and under the third concept, let us give them the right of decision and this having a steering committee to step in if they get away from the bylaws of the group and there's something in every alcoholic ego that loves bit you know I like to go I don't like biz the way I feel business means but I'd like to and I have never seen I watched it over a course of about five years just about destroy a group that went from 500 people down to 100 and some. And yet, the right of participation, the need for group conscience, the need of group inventory is very real. But there's a point, you know what it's like? It's like inventory. Did you ever meet someone in AA that wants to write an in-depth fourth step every month right and it becomes a narcissistic exercise right uh there's a point of overkill with some of this stuff and uh and the answer to the question is and i think one of your trusted servants should run the meeting you put it in your bylaws maybe it's your gsr maybe it'S your group secretary alcoholics have emergencies alcoholics anonymous does not yeah where's god and all this you know yeah and uh i i like the idea of anybody at any sort of business meeting in any time gets a whoa time out i'd like to recommend we have a few moments of silence in the serenity prayer and let's remember that we're all here trying to do the right thing this this is a this i've got a fabulous question here says what do you suggest for the predators in aa guys guys with years preying on newcomers and then there's some other references here and I'll just tell you what we do when myself or some of the other old-timers in my group notice that I'd like to make another observation to all the sharks aren't male when and I'm sorry I'm somebody you know I didn't kick the top off this as Aunt Hill, somebody else did. What I do when I see that is I get a couple of the other guys that have been around for a while and let's take a look here and then after every meeting as he approaches one of the ladies a couple us go with him and we give him a chance to just get started and then we say you know what, gee we're so glad you're here but I'll tell you any guy who's sick enough to try to help you is too sick to be any help at all and you need to stay away from sick guys like me and him you need to be with the ladies come on over let me introduce you to Sarah and Sally and you only do that to him four or five times and he either quits doing there to go somewhere else and I know that doesn't solve it for all of a a but it sure solves that at my group I've seen as much maybe at times more of that be initiated by women they have it seems like they have the power guys can't yeah right that's right that's a guy guys cave easier of what you know it's and I'll tell you I'll say something sad now we try to police that a little bit in a where I'm from and will and we do it through sponsorship and suggestions but you know where the deficiency is and you only see you'll see this in strong groups where there's strong women sponsorship is it that can't happen in those groups because the women surround the newer women yeah and if it's happening in your group you ought to check how you're what kind of service you're doing in your групп to the newer woman uh now you if you lay it on the guys the guys will try through sponsorship to police that to some degree but it really you know we can i i can tell you know five or six groups around the country that does not happen the reason it doesn't happen there's not a new woman that gets in that door without being surrounded by other women yeah i'd like to say something else and i got a phone call several years ago from one of the women a longtime member of my home group with a question of should she do this or should she not and she had noted that one of our younger newcomer women had the merchandise on display let me say it that way and should she address the way this lady was dressed and I said absolutely you must do that we are trying to treat her like a lady get her to look like one yeah and that that that's in the stronger groups where the women sponsorships real strong that a A girl will come dressed to a meeting like that once, and that's it. Once. And they got gals got her off at somewhere in a corner talking about what's appropriate, what's not, you know, and it doesn't happen again. We're going to move on. We've got a lot in the box. You or me? You. Okay. I've had the same sponsor for my entire time of sobriety three months. I'm just reading this. The relationship is not working for me. I'm trying to break it off, but my sponsor keeps stalking me. What do I do? It sounds funny to us. I've been around for a while. This is a very serious question. Somebody's life's on the line here. Yeah. You know, you'd almost need another sponsor to answer this question. Yeah. And the reason I say – and please, don't take this the wrong way, but I've got to tell you from my own experience that my perception of stuff when I was three months sober was very askew. i mean i couldn't really trust it about anything i needed i needed old timers in aa to to bounce everything off of and uh if if you find a guy like that bounce it off him and if he says oh you your sponsor is stalking you and this is great you need break then you follow you do that but i to i would be just too suspect of my own perception to just to do that because it might and the reason is that I have seen people that just go through one sponsor after another after another, after another and you don't want to be that guy anyway this thing about sponsorship share a little this is a funny story but I really got this my sponsor told this story about being in a meeting and he was sitting, his sponsor made him sit in the front row and his sponsor was sitting behind him and there was a speaker and he was talking to the guy sitting next to him about, and I didn't really like this speaker, and his sponsor tapped him on the back. And when he turned around, his sponsor said to him, will you shut up? If we want to hear from you, we'll stick our head in the abandoned car you're living in and ask for your opinion. Just otherwise keep your mouth shut. And then he said what his sponsor really did was go but you know after you tell yourself the story about what happened it's like the other it becomes the other you know i share something else a number of us do and you might consider this you know in some meetings there's a lot of messing around during the readings and the starting of the meeting and uh what i do and i asked him and i sponsored to do is we get our big books out. When they start reading how it works, we follow along. I've had a number of people ask me, why do you do that? You must be able to recite that. I say, I can. I want the newcomers to know that I respect that so much that I'm opening it up and following along. This one says, have you