The Small Self and the Big Self – Tim M.

Okay, so in this part I'm going to answer three questions which came in the break and I'm I'm going to try and cover something from the last three steps. And I'm going to mention the traditions and the concepts. The three questions. The first one is, how do you forgive the unforgivable? There is a British theologian and writer called C.S. Lewis who wrote a lot about forgiveness and he wrote about forgiveness in 1944 and he said when you're practicing forgiving other people don't start with the Nazis start with your neighbor start with the minor faults of the people around you and gradually work up to the worst people. There is a very difficult exercise which has helped me to forgive everything that has ever happened to me. And it is to imagine Imagine being in the position of the person who hurt me. And to say, what motivation would this person have had? And my question is, have I ever had the same motivation? And the motivation might be greed, or lust, or anger. But behind every bad behavior is either psychosis or fear. And if I sit long enough in the shoes of the person and who harmed me and I ask God to show me what the world looks like from their point of view then eventually I identify with them I might not commit the same act that they've committed but I can identify with the emotion behind it and every bad thing I have ever done has been motivated by emotion which is beyond my mental control and so unless I forgive other people I will never forgive myself which is why it is the absolute center of the program the second question is why do I still go to AA after 25 years the first reason is that I have seen people relapse after 25-30 years of sobriety And what is terrifying is that people will leave AA gradually. And the way I left AA for two years, I didn't drink. But I ended up completely locked inside myself again. And I left AA one judgment at a time. And I forgot the first tradition, which is we are all one. Under one God. And I was placing myself in the position of God judging everyone. The ego is not something which you destroy once. It has the capacity to grow back. It's clever. It knows it. Clever, that's wise. Sorry. It is clever but insane. You used the one word in Hebrew I know. the ego has been watching carefully the whole time and it is terrifying when I realize myself my ego has rebuilt itself and it's terrifying to see it in someone else there's someone I know who is going crazy after 13 years of sobriety and what I see this person doing is being right about everything And using the traditions and the concepts to justify their position. And you know you're in serious trouble when first of all, you're right about everything and secondly, God appears to hate all the same people as you. And this is the position I found myself in after a number of years of sobriety again and again. So I need to return to God again and again and again. Because the current the current of the sea is always carrying me out. Now, I didn't design this system. I'm just reporting what the system appears to be like. There are people who claim that their ego was destroyed once. And it stayed that way. That is not my experience. And in fact, the longer I'm sober and the more I know. the more dangerous I can be because I have more information. I can't read my own writing. Oh, I know. So someone asked about they understand the principle of turning their life over to God. But now he's sober a number of years. Life is going well. The program doesn't seem so important. And why not go for money? For instance. My ego is after seven things in the world. And those seven things are sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance. And my ego gives me a plan in each of those areas. Saying if you fulfill this plan You will be happy, you will be safe And they can't get you Now the plan seems reasonable Because it is what the whole world believes But my experience of living life Based on those seven things is that it produces a tiny bit of excitement a tiny bit of comfort and a huge amount of fear frustration and disappointment and there is a point in this cycle when I start to ask the question why am I doing this to myself and at the point that I start to believe the ego has deceived me the ego deletes the question it owns the delete and this is how I end up being controlled by the ego the moment I think that I have seen through the ego it changes the rules of the game there's a game There is a game that is played in the street with three cups. And there is a P under one of the cups. And the street person moves the cups around. And you cannot win this game. And this is why I said that the ego is clever but not wise. is that when I try and play its game it always wins. But in the process it will destroy me. Can I borrow your book? So the line which is relevant is on page 61 is he not a victim of the delusion that he can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well so whenever my life is being driven by sex, money, power, prestige every time my life is driven by some kind of extra money money, sex, power, prestige comfort, thrills appearance I go back to that line and realize that I have bought a delusion and all you have to do is look around you in society and ask whether the people that have money and sex and power and prestige have peace have peace and joy and I have to ask what do I want do I need what I want or do I want peace and I can't have both so I don't trust my wanting for anything. I want to talk a little bit about the traditions because they're a system for how to relate to other people. I haven't got anything formal prepared for this so this will be pure unstructured experience. So the most important thing is tradition one. And tradition one means that I get to stay in the group even if I disagree with people in the groups. And even if I temporarily dislike people in the Because my life depends on being part of a group which means being dissolved into the group. So that I feast when I'm in the group to have my own personal identity. But I have my own personal contribution. And to have unity I must allow people to be different. So unity does not mean uniformity. I need to allow a range of experience in my home group And I don't have to correct anyone. The next tradition that has occurred to me is Tradition 4. And I'm not sure if any of you have ever had problems in a relationship with another person. but in my close relationships with my family and with my friends I have my own life which is my business you have your own life which is your business and it is only our joint activities that I may have an opinion about One more thing on Tradition 1. I do a lot of service in AA at different levels of the fellowship. And I was talking to the chair of London Region which has 950 AA groups between 20 and 100 people and the chair said the most important thing when he is chairing any committee the chair said that the most important thing when he is chairing any committee is to maintain unity within the group and to do that one must remain courteous and polite and respectful at all times And this is where Tradition 2 comes in. When a decision has to be made by the group or the area or the district or even by the fellowship as a whole each member has one voice and each voice has the same weight and I get to express my opinion once and I don't argue in fact I don' t argue with anyone in my life I have conversations where I simply say I'm notifying you of something but I'm not negotiating. That's how to set the healthy boundary. But in the group conscience the important thing is that I don't try and force my solution on the group. All I have to do is to present the idea and explain the idea but it is not my job to convince someone else it is true. So in my group when we have a decision to make each person shares once if anyone has any new information they may share twice but they are not allowed to repeat the point because that's called nagging Hebrew, not Yiddish So, this also touches on concept 12. Discussion, vote and unanimity. And if we haven't got unanimity we don't have a decision. It is only when everybody's interests are looked after that we can have a decision which everyone can agree with. When the group makes the decision to do a project for instance, my region, London region has decided to hold a workshop on service next Saturday. And I'm the chair of the committee organizing the workshop. And all I have to do is what my region wants. And this is where the concepts come in. so who is in charge is actually God that voice gets expressed in the group conscience and the point of the concept is to say how that voice gets turned into action through Through delegation of authority. So the region has delegated me the authority to organize this workshop and I have delegated tasks to other people. So one person has the task for instance of organizing refreshments. Another has the task of organizing a particular session. And this is where the democracy becomes... Sorry, I'll start the sentence again. Sometimes people think that because AA is democratic that their opinion must be heard about everything at all times. In truth, in this situation as the chair of the committee I get to hear the opinions of the people I have delegated tasks to but I am accountable to the whole region not to this one member so I've got to consider the welfare of the whole fellowship not the wishes which is of the one person who doesn't like the delegated task. So it's a limited form of democracy and all I do when I delegate is offer someone the opportunity to do some service and they can express a view I can hear the view but I have to decide. Now, what I have to decide on is the product or outcome. What they have to decide and this is concept three is how they produce the product I want. so I need a list of volunteers for next Saturday with names, telephone numbers email addresses how this person finds those names and numbers is up to that person not up to me but the result the list that of my choice so there is a line there between someone decides the product they delegate the task and then within that task that person has full right of decision to perform perform the task as they wish. And I have been on the other side of this delegation process. So the AA fellowship in Great Britain has a conference once a year which expresses the voice of the fellowship. And this is concept two. The conference made a decision to produce posters to publicize Alcoholics Anonymous around the country. And this task is then given to the board who run AA throughout the year, the trustees. But the trustees, they can't actually do anything. they can only direct and they have oversight and I'm on a national subcommittee for armed services liaison liaison between AA and the army and there are 5 million people in Great Britain who are in the army or were in the army and a high proportion are alcoholics so there is a big job here this is why we have a committee so my board trustee gave me the task to produce for AA a poster for the armed services the armed services and the first design I made I gave it to my board trustee he thought it was great he showed it to the rest of the trustees, they hated it. This was my work. My design, my pictures, my captions so it might design the pictures of the words but I needed to be I needed to be detached from the work so I was doing this service for my higher power and I wasn't attached to the results so when the board said we hate it we have these 15 criticisms my job is not to judge those criticisms but to say as I would to my higher power your will be done be done. Because they represent the whole fellowship of AA. So, seven draft posters later, the poster goes out to the whole four and a half thousand groups in AA. And the the groups give their feedback on the poster to the delegates who go to the conference and I'm one of the conference delegates so I got to hear what four and a half thousand groups thought about my poster Now, fortunately, it wasn't her poster It was the poster I had produced Exactly So, I didn't care There were some criticisms but there was a vote and everybody voted for the poster so it was fine but my job in this process was simply to do what was asked of me to produce the product that they wanted and not to possess the task or identify myself with it. And this is the model for how I operate in all areas of my life. And my job is simply to serve. there are some ideas I want to talk about from the traditions as well so this principle of anonymity what this means is that when I do something in AA whether it's service work or sponsorship or being part of a successful group the success is the honor of God, not of me. And it's this point of detachment that I am not the source of any good I'm the channel for the good and to be a channel for good I need to be empty what else tradition 10 is very important in my life and what that means is that my only concern is what I can do for God today there are other people who can run the world but I haven't been given that role by my higher power another point is attraction not promotion in tradition 11 do I say tradition 11? no and this is this simple idea in sponsorship that all I have to do is to present the program to someone whether they do it or not is none of my business if they do this or not it's not my business They will only do the program if they are attracted by what they see in my life. So, my job is not to sell the program to sponsees. My job is to enjoy my life as if I enjoy my life there is something that is attractive and if you don't want to do it the program that's your business it's not mine and this is attraction not promotion if you do want to do it I'm going to give you instructions I give you instructions that are not negotiable. It's a set menu in a restaurant. So there's no choice. It's the whole package deal which has worked for me. And that package deal is very simple. Number one, home group. Number two, sponsorship. Number two sponsor other people. Do the steps. Do service. Don't take yourself so seriously. And I'm going to stop at that point. We're very good at this. I've been told. Yeah, thank you. Surprising service taught me that I'm good at something. Thank you. They say that our disease is physical, emotional or spiritual and for that there is both physical physical, mental and spiritual. What does Shishaviz entail? Something very strange has happened to me physically since I have been in AA. When I'm in a fit spiritual state I don't get ill as much. And I was ill a lot in my first few years. There is an idea in the big book that spiritual health comes first and then mental health comes and then finally physical health comes my brain is still capable of acting like an addict's brain I just need to make sure that I don't light that fire in that part of my brain. And the physical component of the disease need never trouble me again. And I'm not a doctor so I won't say anything else about the physical side usually when there's something that's very very troublesome to me, or I have a flip, my sponsor tells me, try to see how you got to it. It's very difficult for me to identify what was in the emotional process. And I'm trying to understand in what way can I examine this thing? drinking and using were not my problem they're my solution But it was a solution which created more problems than I started with. I find sobriety or abstinence when I give up. When I retreat inside and allow God to look after me and to be under God's direction every moment of the day so my question when I act out when did I start to trust myself more than God and that's a useful question and it usually starts with thinking I'm right about something and I've got to remember what I was like when I crawled into AA and not to trust that person with my life And so humility is the answer to everything for me in AA. It's no different when I'm here and it's still relaxed we had a few sponsors on the way and the last sponsor is almost here the question is when does he know for sure that you really didn't do anything but maybe part of it is beating himself up, when does he know that this sponsor doesn't work and he needs to search for something else? I'm not sure I fully understand what the actual question is. He doesn't know if he really didn't do it as the sponsor said or he did whatever the the sponsor said and things that he didn't, it's because he used to believe in himself. Can he not leave the sponsor before reaching the point where he did 100% of what the sponsors had told him to do? if you buy a cookery book and there's a picture of a cake and there is a complicated set of instructions and you would not expect the cake to look like the picture if you missed out one of the ingredients or you did the instructions in a different order I say to my sponsors in AA do everything I suggest including completing every single amend and for one year after that point sponsor and engage in service and then decide whether you like the results it's the only way to find out whether it works I've sponsored several hundred people over the years And almost everyone has problems, not just with alcohol, but with behavior. And it is typically food, sex, gambling, control. And some people, the behavior stops somewhere around step one. Some people it happens after step five. If you're me, it happens after step 9. And so I spend a lot of my life telling sponsees who are still acting out who may still be better than they were but they are still acting out complete step 9 and then see what happens because Because I won't let go fully of the old life until I can see the shore of the new life. And if you want to know where the reference for this is in the big book, look at chapter 11. And the section about when Dr. Bob gets sober. he had to finish all of his amends before his relapsing stopped I remember about 15-16 years ago I was having trouble with the area of sex and my sponsor said to me every time you beat yourself up you're making the problem worse because you're making the choice of guilt over powerlessness because I'm either guilty or I'm powerless I can't be both and when I finally let go it is when I realize that I'm a danger to myself So I better not be making my own decisions. That's a long answer, sorry. I'm not being hired. How can you deal with being tired and tired is one of the health when sleep is not an option, but still you're tired and it's dangerous. two points when I'm at home in London I get up at around 5.30 in the morning and I'm pretty busy until 11 o'clock at night I wasn't always like that but it's what I said earlier about the pipe needs to be empty that my tiredness when I'm very tired it is always because of emotional expenditure and so I did a four hour workshop this morning and I slept for an hour and a half this afternoon I admit but during the course of my normal life I just don't get tired the way I used to because my emotions are clearer that's the first point there's a connection between the body and the spirit but it took me a long time for the spirit to clear there's a word in English for God called the Almighty that's about capable of anything so as someone in London AA says, not half mighty almighty so God is capable of keeping me sober and clean under any circumstance and I need to keep my spirit high on the hill not down in the valley there's a reason why Jerusalem is at the top of a hill this image should be familiar It's where safety lies. So Psalm 91 I know with the Psalms the numbering varies in different systems but I think 91 there's an image of being under the wings of a bird and this image when I am under stress when I'm hungry, angry, lonely, tired full of rage and when I have read the newspapers and have driven in traffic I remember that that is where safety lies and from what I've read about Psalm 91 the point is that it is a high place which is above the storms and my sponsor being American And the Americans like eagles. And I'm told that the golden eagle is able to fly above storm clouds. And that's why I need to make myself spiritually light so I can rise up. By seeing that all of these things going on in my life do not belong to me. They all belong to my higher power. And I cut the strings one by one and then I rise up like a balloon. and then it doesn't matter how tired or sick or whatever else I am because you're going to get tired you're getting sick there are going to be difficult situations so when my father died when my mother had a stroke when my sister had nervous breakdowns when my best friend in recovery relapsed and almost died I was not in a good space emotionally but because my higher power is almighty not half mighty I was safe the real danger is when I'm doing well or making a bit of money when I seem to be controlling my life who needs God then that's the danger in my life One more question, maybe? One more question. What's your name? How can I love myself after what I've done and when I'm acted or acted out? Uppercase letters and uppercase letters. So names will have an uppercASE letter at the start and ordinary words like table or avocado have got a small letter at the beginning. Now when you say love yourself you've got to know whether it's the self with a small S or whether it is self with a big S the problem is the small S self that's the little self that runs through the world with a worldly identity with all of the fear and the anger and that is the small self but that's not the self with the big S so you don't want to love the small cell you want to know the big self which is a part of the bigger fire The problem is the small self is a set of ideas in your mind that have told you that you are those ideas. So it has convinced you to act out or convinced me to act out and then tells me look at what you did the self with the big S that self can't even see the small self it can only see God and when you return to that self with the big S the dreams disappear the bad dreams disappear you know when you wake up in the morning and for five minutes you're terrified because of a bad dream an hour later you try and tell someone and you cannot remember it so in the moment the evil in my life seems like reality but when you wake up it's gone so the job is to wake up to a greater reality that's the answer Do you have any more questions? Question? So what? What? I think we're going to go to business. Okay, reset the serenity for us. if we don't want to on the front that change change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know that I can. Thank you. Oh, with the I think so Thank you We'll be right back.