Tradition 6 and Non-affiliation – Traditions Workshop – Part 5 of 10 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, my name is Herb and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, welcome to our Twelve Traditions Workshop. Please join me in the prayer for an open mind. God, please set aside everything that I think I know about myself, my brokenness, the twelve traditions, and you for an opened mind and a new experience with myself, my brokeness, the 12 traditions, and especially you. This is the forward to the pamphlet AA Tradition, How It Developed by Bill Wilson, published in 1955. How shall we AAs best preserve our unity? When an alcoholic applies the 12 steps of our recovery program to his personal life, his disintegration stops and his unification begins. The power which now holds him together in one piece overcomes those forces which had rent him apart. Exactly the same principle applies to each AA group and to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. So long as the ties which bind us together prove far stronger than those forces which would divide us if they could, all will be well. We shall be secure as a movement. Our essential unity will remain a certainty. May we never forget that without permanent unity We can offer little lasting relief to those scores of thousands Yet to join us in the quest for freedom It is the purpose of this workshop To review and discuss each of the twelve traditions So we may better understand and apply them to our fellowship And to our personal lives Please join me in a few minutes of meditation on that intention please join me in a serenity prayer God grant me the serenety to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference thank you David we're here to talk about our second legacy unity and to review the 12 traditions crosstalk is allowed in a loving and supportive manner to be informed and helpful are our only goals And as a beginning kind of a warm-up to the Traditions Workshop, we'll be talking about Tradition 6 tonight. And let's get a perspective on what that is from looking at the tradition itself, the short form, an AA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. And of course the primary purpose as we've seen from prior traditions is to carry the message to the suffering alcoholic. The long form, and it is quite long, problems of Money, Property and Authority. Interesting they change the verbiage I hope you paid attention to that it said in the short form money, property and prestige and in the long form it says money, property and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim so they've upped the ante in the same way the short and long form of tradition five were different in the Long Form of Tradition Five it said that each group is a spiritual entity and now it talks about in the long form we have a primary spiritual aim in contrast to just a primary purpose in the short form. I think these small, seemingly insignificant changes are actually quite significant. We think therefore that any considerable property of genuine use to AA should be separately incorporated and managed, thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An AA group, as such, should never go into business. Secondary aids to AAs, such as clubs or hospitals, which require much property or administration, ought to be incorporated and so set apart that, if necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence, such facilities ought not to use the AA name. Their management should be the sole responsibility of those people who financially support them. For groups, AA managers are usually preferred, but hospitals as well as other places of recuperation ought to be well outside AA and medically supervised. While an AA group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement, actual or implied, pretty strict guidelines, even implied endorsement or affiliation is to be avoided. An AA group can bind itself to no one. So I had some thoughts in preparing for tonight's discussion. The steps transform the person. It turns us inside out from the self-centered person to the other-centered version, the steps, generally. The traditions generally are byproducts of the steps. They're used by the group to monitor itself within the group, to monitor self with other groups and to monitor itself with the community at large. They're used by individuals as guidelines and principles within ourselves in terms of our own personal relationships within the group in terms of the group dynamics and within the community in terms of the general application of these principles. The goal of the steps and the traditions is unity, integration versus disintegration, both the steps and the conditions within the traditions, the unity of the individual within the individual, the steps, the unity of the individual within the community, both at the group level, amongst the group level and in the general community, a oneness integration versus disintegration. And step six has a, I mean, tradition six has a particular affinity towards step six. Step six is addressing our character defects. These are the impediments to our relationship with power. They help to reduce or eliminate even these impediments. Tradition six is a guideline for detachment of these impediments from our primary purpose to carry the message because power, property, prestige and authority are distractions from that primary purpose so we have to ask ourselves at least I did how do I allocate my time and energy because how I behave, what I do describes what my priorities are, describes what My values are. How I spend My time and My energy reveals very overtly what My priorities are. And there seems to be a reciprocal relationship The more I'm on purpose, the less distracted I am. The more distracted I'm, the more distracted I am, the lesser I am on purpose. They reside together, distraction and purpose, but it's a reciprocal relationship like a teeter-totter. The more I'm On Purpose, the Lesser Distracted, the more I'M DistractED, the Less Purpose. It's very much like the discussion on the fear inventory when we were looking at step four. And we're talking about trust versus fear, a reciprocal relationship. The more trust I have, the less fear I have. The more fear I Have, the Less Trust I Have. Mutually reciprocal, but existing together within us. And it is also a reciprocal relationship the more I trust myself the less I trust God the more I trust god perhaps the less i trust myself although even when I said that last night in conducting the tradition six at the workshop in Palos Verdes I had this insight to it that there may not be a reciprocal relationship at some level of spiritual development and emotional development the more i trust god the more i trust myself the more I trust myself, the more I trust God which was a wonderful kind of like a glimpse there at spiritual evolution and what I do know is from my personal experience the more I take care of my primary purpose my relationship with God and my service to the community, the more I am taken care of. The more I take care of steps 11 and 12, the MORE I'm taken care of. Okay so let's get into Tradition 6 by looking at the assignments and we'll go to take a look at language of the heart page 83 by the way we have a new fresh supply of language of The Heart if you don't have it we have it now and you're welcome to purchase it for your own library and use during this workshop looking at page 83 are there any highlights on that page that anybody would like to offer us and John is setting the model here for us I believe it's on and he's going right to the mic thank you i'm john i'm an alcoholic hey john yeah that that second paragraph kind of says it all this tradition declares in substance that the accumulation of money property and the unwanted personal authority so often generated by material wealth comprise a cluster of serious hazards against which an aa group must ever be on guard yeah I've seen it rip families apart when the will is read all right yeah and otherwise together family becomes falling apart when that the wealth is distributed and that's really unfortunate but it also may speak to the fact that it was a facade anyway from the beginning anybody else have George Yeah, I had highlighted that whole paragraph, but I was struck by the unwanted personal authority so often generated by material wealth, just that phrase itself. That wealth kind of imbues in somebody authority which is not necessarily warranted. Yeah, yeah. It comes with the territory, yeah, yeah So the, Nicole. Nicole Al-Anon. Strongly expressed is the opinion that even clubs should not bear the AA name, that they ought to be separately incorporated and managed by those individual AAs who need or want clubs enough to financially support them. My question here is I live in an area where I see AA in Spanish all the time And the clubs are, I mean, it's very clear what it is because it says what it is. And so is it in Spanish? It is. Do you know what it says? We had this discussion last night. Sweet. Yes, I do. Oh, what does it say? You're asking me to speak Spanish? Alcoholics Anonymous? I'm asking you to translate. Oh, it says AlcoholicsAnonymous. No, it doesn't. The club that I'm referring to had a specific reference. It had the AA logo and the AA symbol, but the Spanish underneath said something quite different. We'll have to pay closer attention to that. The Spanish underneath was translated, this is a place where AA meets. It's not an AA building. It's Not an AA club. Thank you. Yeah. so well it could be differently stated there because a lot of people aren't familiar with the traditions but that was quite in keeping with the traditions all right because we don't have a a clubs we have clubs where a a me but we don t have a clubs at least by tradition George barrel alcoholic well i see the aa symbol by itself and you know also in spanish there seem to be a lot of them in spain alcoholics anonymous yeah that by itself you know does that endorse that's a question endorse what i don't know right you'd have to see it in context wouldn't you tom alcoholic tom had an experience uh in the year 2000 i was encouraged to attend the international in minneapolis st paul and the fella suggested that i design a button because they had done that in the past it's a tradition at internationals people trade buttons from all over the world so i commissioned to have i think 3 000 buttons made and halfway through the process the person producing the button said whoa this is a copyright symbol you have to get permission uh to have this what year was that uh in 2000 and uh so i thought oh boy you know the i'm shot down so i called new york yeah and new yorke sent me a letter and they they discussed in the letter that at some time in the 80s or 90s gold jewelry t-shirts there were all sorts of items being marketed by people all over the country with the AA symbol on it and they couldn't fight and protect their copyright from each individual party that was producing these so New York decided that they would remove the symbol from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous because they didn't want to be aligned with any outside commercial operation and they said you know it's fine we surrender the money could be much better spent translating a book into yugoslavian or whatever and go ahead and make your button and they sent me the letter and i still have that letter today very interesting thank you for bringing it up because aa released the copyright because they were tired of and they said we're not going to use our time and your resources to do this so we release the copyright into the general domain and we'll take it out of the book so yeah thank you for sharing that and i hope that worked out for you at the convention hi kim allen so the end of the page we would thus divide the spiritual from the material confine the aaa movement to its sole aim and ensure however wealthy as individuals we may become that a itself shall always remain poor we dare not risk the distractions of corporate wealth and you know um once again the traditions are deepening the whole spiritual aim message for me not only in my steps because i know when i look at myself as an individual and i make money my higher power yeah then i am my life is unmanageable because i'm trying to figure everything out i'm in fear and i'm time to control it and so when so what really struck me is once again the spiritual aim you know that the spiritual life is more important than the physical life and once like that is my focus and the way i behave in all manners individually group it all comes together and i and i like that it says however wealthy that a itself shall always remain poor because there's more of a richness inside even though the monetary may not support that value right you know well and and what they mean by poor here is poor in spirit i mean i don't know what the annual budget is but it's in the millions and 10 million 10 million and they keep a reserve of one year's gross budget they keep a reserve of 10 million dollars and they have a staff of 100 120 people that they're paying so i mean there's a lot of money going through this place and you know it's a it's of well-run business but they're not attached to the money they won't receive gifts more than as we talked about i think earlier two or three thousand dollars i think they lived at the three now from any one individual per year and they will never take money from a non-alcoholic they will return it they've had wills that have left them hundreds of thousands of dollars and when the check came they returned it but i mean that's in the spirit of the traditions corporate poverty the spirit of poverty not to be poor but to be not attached to the money all right so you can be a millionaire and have the spiritofpoverty that would be my preference yes so how about page 84 do we have any highlights on page 84 that we haven't looked at please the paragraph before the last it's the message not the place it's the talk not the arms just places to meet and talk that's about all aa needs yeah the core of our a procedure is one alcoholic talking to another money he says is a necessary nuisance it's nice attitude yeah detachment from material to focus on the spiritual that's the bottom line on that please bonnie addict bonnie other organizations do a lot of good with money. Why not AA? That's a question that they ask, and they do a little bit do a whole lot of good with money as long as they don't get attached to it. And so it's in the context, George. Hi, George Browell again. The answer is in the next paragraph. Go ahead. It says, but money is not the lifeblood of AA. With us, it is very secondary. Right. Even in small quantities, it is scarcely more than a necessary nuisance yep yeah really really really okay let's take a look at tradition 6 in the 12 and 12 there's four pages here we'll start on page 155 taking a look at the highlights on that page anybody have comment that they would like to talk about all right Linda Allen on Kota the second paragraph in the middle there we gather up derelicts from skid rows sort out those who could get well and make it possible for the rest to earn their livelihood in a kind of quarantine confinement not to say that that summarizes the spirit of a lot of my flights of fancy in the way that I would fix the world right right right yeah and they're trying to be compassionate about the need and yet at the same time we need to stay focused and so some it says in fact we felt and this was in the early days before the tradition duty bound to throw the whole weight of the AA name behind any meritorious cause but know that we cannot do that there's lots of great causes and you're welcome as an individual to contribute in any way that you can and want to but not attach the AA name to the cause so you can't have a polio run for AA or AA sponsored polio runs sorry just that's not the tradition because we don't associate ourselves with anybody no matter how meritorious the situation is all right let's go to page 156 anybody have there we go again George well explains that in the middle it says yes we did dream those dreams how natural that was since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists bankrupt idealist right well i mean this line could absolutely represent my own personal passion for this thing and that is our our society of alcoholics anonymous might prove to be the spearhead of a new spiritual advance we might transform the world all right but uh i see an insight there that it's not the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous that has the responsibility. I can see however that my passion can be fulfilled by indicating that the 12 steps can in fact transform the world and therefore my workshops are open to all people who are interested in a spiritual awakening and it has nothing to do with AlcoholicsAnonymous that has nothing to do with the 12-step fellowship, completely disenfranchised from any connection, except that I do use the big book and other material, and I do talk about the 12 steps because it's a codification of a methodology for spiritual conversion. Completely outside the realm of AA, completely outside the realms of any 12-stepped fellowship at all, independently. And maybe someday I can create vocabulary that would neutralize, actually, any potential reference to its origin so that the methodology itself will be sanitized in such a way that anybody can approach it no matter what their orientation is. Please. Hi, Barbara Allen-On. Hi, Barbra. just everything um so let's see what did i do on here oh providence through a has brought us within reach of our highest expectations so why shouldn't we share our way of life with everyone um i don't know i would just i loved this i love step six too it's funny i kind of saw parallels the detachment of power money oh my god the character defects well yeah because so as an alan on i have great ideas for everybody else um and i'm sure they're anxious to hear that I really want to hear what I have to say, because I know how big is my God? How big is their God? Obviously not very big. Yeah, yeah, right. So I'm having this experience, and it's like youth transitioning out of foster care, and this woman thinks that I'm her mentor, which cracks me up. But where I have learned to relate in a different way, which is that I give her the dignity, I've heard it say, to have her own process and her own God and herown discovery, and it's not mine but that puts this alan on in a different role which is really like i trusting god that to give her the dignity i heard in a meeting it's like stealing someone's dignity it's akin to stealing like an alcoholic may steal a drug and alan on steals somebody else's dignity that's very nice yeah and i loved that and i think uh i loved both six and seven helped me as an al-anon to detach from my ego yeah yeah and uh in my relationship with this with this lovely young woman it's really like it's you talk about trust and fear it's like i it's grown a lot deeper and it's nice to see the steps reflected in my life like i feel better you know like i feels like god is helping me because i do have a big ego as an alan on to think that i know what's or maybe just as a human being even i mean i think that most of us like that have that in some fashion it might be masked in different ways but don't stay there but but the but the image that helps me a lot in terms of my usefulness to other people is i'm a lantern i'm not the light i allow the light I encourage the light to shine out through me to the path that I have walked so that you can walk the path in the light of my experience and have your own experience. I'm not the light and I want you to have your experience and I'll show you the way. That's great, thank you. Huh? Great metaphor. I'm Sarah Food Addict. Hi, Sarah. And I don't know if you shared this line that comes right before the providence that i just loved where all perfectionists who failing perfection have gone to the other extreme and settled for the bottle and the blackout yeah um and that that's what leads us to want to do to transform the world because now we have this you know idea of perfection or success with what we always were straining for before yeah and i wanted to say something about what you were talking about before about the kind of workshops that you do that are not particularly related to a specific fellowship um in the first line of the tradition uh in the in the explanation The moment we saw that we had an answer for alcoholism, the question keeps coming up for me about what is alcoholism? What is food addiction? What is gambling addiction? How important is, and I brought this up last week relative to, I guess... Singleness of purpose. that how much of it is about the substance and how much of it is about the second part of the first step and I think it's because maybe more about the second part of the first step the unmanageability of our lives that's the way I see it a major part of the disease that made us turn to the substance that makes us want to go out and transform the world. Because not everybody has a substance, or whatever your substance is, or no substance, we've all got this human condition of an ego that's gone awry. Yeah, well said. And Bill addressed that maybe in a way that he wasn't conscious of when he said, and it's in our format in the step workshop, our way of living may have its advantages for all. And he's very clear in the text of the big book that alcohol is not the problem. Now, it is a problem if it's a problem. If you're still drinking or thinking about in an assessed way, drinking, then it's the problem but you're powerless over it so you're screwed. All right? but once you've been given the grace perhaps by your cooperation and willingness i don't can't explain it and you cross over from abstinence into just living a life of abstinENCE dash that our life had become unmanageable then you're into the heart of the matter and he says it's a spiritual problem that's why the steps are a methodology he says on page 29 the steps or a methodology to find And so that's the human condition, and that's the rationale for the workshop, focusing on the second half of the first step. But the fellowships focus on the first half of the first steps, so that people can have identification and come in for that purpose. The problem with most meetings is they either do not understand or they do not address effectively the individuals the second part of the first step they either don't understand it or they don't address it because they don't know how yeah the way this in looking over the questions on the page about the personal questions the way one of the ways this affects me personally is that I'm a psychotherapist and it could be anything it could be anyway I'm a psychotherapist and so in sponsoring people sometimes I hopefully sooner than later find myself stepping over a line of a kind of materialistic way of looking at the program thinking that I can help to solve things psychologically just psychologically forgetting that this is a spiritual program and as a sponsor whether i'm a psychotherapist or not it's about helping people to find their own spiritual connection and not get into the ego business and the self-importance of like doing well it's going to be a particularly difficult struggle for a therapist who's in the program who has experienced the benefits of transformation from the program and the in this particular tradition clearly addresses wearing two hats and you have to remember which hat you're wearing yeah and there's boundaries with each of them yeah nice thank you Sarah please Dave well I swear it wasn't a setup but I highlighted in the last paragraph on this page did aa fix drunks or was it an educational project yeah was a a spiritual or medical yeah and i think it's just addressing the same issue that you were talking about where you know are we i know i've heard people go into meetings and really talk about the psychological things that are going on but it is at its roots a spiritual program at its roots and as its program itself the only purpose of the 12 steps hello hello the only purpose of The Twelve Steps is expressed by the 12th step having had a spiritual awakening having had A Spiritual Awakening as the result of these steps right it couldn't be any clearer the mission yeah and then one other point that I'd like to bring up is while this way of life may have benefits for all as an addict i need this way of life yes to save myself survival absolutely survival and i think that's what makes us different from having benefits to needing it all right yeah that's a really good point and perhaps that's where the rubber really meets the road for a person who is addicted in any way who finds this solution that their very life depends on it not just their spiritual elevation yeah okay nice thank you dave nicole alanon so sarah touched on this a bit and so did you it says so why shouldn't we share our way of life with everyone and i wrote the preface to the first edition that was my note there and i've heard it that i think in was it the fifth one of the other traditions was like like part of the whole reason why this conversation came up last time is that we aren't sharing this with just anyone and we're keeping really confined to our fellowship yet the first edition the preface to the first addition says that and it says it here so i'm just curious and obviously it's more like what besides getting alcoholics sober was this ever intended to take out into the world and share with all because that's what keeps coming up consistently through reading the book the big book through reading the traditions and it's just that one little sentence and it is kind of confusing for me I don't think it is confusing it is about priorities all right i'm doing a whole discernment about priorities it's really clear to me my number one priority is work one-on-one with alcoholics i do spiritual direction and that's important but if it comes between doing one-to-one work with a non-alcoholic even if they're in 12 step of any kind and an alcoholic the alcoholic gets first priority now there's room for everybody but it helps me in terms of my prioritization that's all it's just about priorities it's not about exclusive thank you Katie Alcoholic I just want to go back to no, no, wait oh hi Katie Alcoholics I want to get back to the Society of Alcoholics Anonymous proving to be the spearhead of a spiritual advance, we might transform the world. I actually think that's happening most specifically because we don't align ourselves with money. Oh, for sure. You know what I mean? There's a whole power in the fact that we don'T align ourselves WITH MONEY. That we have spiritual poverty or corporate poverty as one of the essences. Well, it comes down to talking one-to-one like it says in here. People really trust you. Carburetion can't survive that way, but you can go to Korea and find a person to talk with you. Thank you. All right, page 157. We're moving on, maybe. I'm stooping down. No, no, just squeeze the handle. Oh, look at that. Thank you, Rob, compulsive eater. Maybe the only line we didn't read on 156. But I don't know why I particularly like this. It stood to reason that if alcoholism could be licked, so could any problem. Yeah. The reason I really like that, it's almost like Bill Wilson writing this was prescient, like he had a vision. Like one day he knew there'd be 200 fellowships out there. He didn't really, because the whole point was talking about AA doing this work. I don'T know if he ever imagined that others would borrow the 12 steps and form their own fellowships but i saw that immediately i saw that landscape yeah all those fellowships out there and i wonder if one of the reasons again it it works that way is you know another tradition um 11 that it's a it's a program of attraction and not promotion they didn't go out to give everyone the 12 steps they just were an example right this is a serious problem yeah and we've we've found the solution Yeah. And then I don't know which, you know, problem came next in terms of 12 step fellowships or if there were any others when he wrote this. But, you Know, Al-Anon started in 1951. OK. Yeah. But I know. I mean, the story of of Owe is that the founder or co-founder of OWe, she and her husband brought a friend to a gamblers anonymous meeting, which was a very young fellowship at that time. and you know she had a notion so she went up the founder of gamblers anonymous was it there and then and she she talked to him and said do you think this could help at all with eating or and his answer was i don't see why not why don't you give it a try you know and the rest is history right yeah i mean he didn't say hey you fatty you know you You should do so. You ought to try this. He said, yeah, why not? Absolutely. Wonderful openness. Page 157. In no circumstances could we endorse any related enterprise, even by implication or association. All right. How about page 158? Any highlights on that page that you would like to talk about? I'm John. I'm an alcoholic. I just like this because it frames the... It's in the middle of the page, but that wasn't the whole story for in this case not only was an AA member to break his anonymity at the public level, he was to link the name of Alcoholics Anonymous to this particular educational project. So it's the two things. And it was an educational project for a liquor industry. Right, right, right. But that's the guideline, those two things, one, I'm an alcoholic and I'm going to advocate for this other thing, and oh by the way, you know, I am going to attach AA to it. it so yeah yeah well i was hired as the marketing director for a treatment center some six years ago in the torrance area to help them out with their marketing effort because that's my background and uh the owner was quite clear in the interview in the beginning he said you've got a terrific reputation in the aa community he said i would love that to cross over and help us you know get clients in I said well it might happen but not because I say it and not because it it's going to be advertised that way because my membership in a and the work I do in the community in a is irrelevant to the work we do here he got that there was no problem Sarah food addict how do you do this I just okay just wanted to to play with it a little bit. On page 157, did anyone say, we of Alcoholics Anonymous could not be all things to all men, nor should we try? Boy, if that isn't a statement of self-importance and being God, I don't know what is. But, yeah, we think that we can be all things to all men. Sure. Absolutely. And on page 158 he is talking about this fellow who turned down this particular position because he knew that there was an expectation that his membership in AA was to be used as part of the advertisement. But he said if he was being hired solely because of his public relations ability and knowledge of alcoholism, it would be one thing. But not because any publicity is going to be coming as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so the final line in the closing chapter just confirms that we could not lend the AA name to any cause other than our own. Really very straightforward, huh? maybe I didn't touch on it no I just John alcoholic I'm just always impressed with this idea that the point keeps on being made that while there's a legal right to do something there is a standard much higher yeah yeah yeah and George is gonna pass the basket he might need some help so anybody wants to help them we have three baskets for the three sections I did take a look at pass it on I take a Look at all the literature to see if there's any relevant references to the particular tradition that we're looking at and this has a relevant comment on tradition six let me see if I can find it oh this is about Marty Mann as you know the first edition of the big book published in April of 1939 the The title page said the story of how 100 men have recovered from alcoholism, April 1939. Well sometime later in 1939 Marty Mann, M-A-N-N, a woman who was then being treated by Bill's own psychiatrist dr. Tebow Harry Tebow came into a and and stayed and by the end of 1943 she had four years of sobriety and she said she had attended the first session of the newly founded Yale School of Alcohol Studies the country's first such educational program that summer marked a turning point in her life she became convinced that public attitudes toward the disease and its sufferers 1943 needed to be changed and that was her calling to work in the field of alcohol education she particularly wanted to help women alcoholics who she felt suffered a double stigma alcohol the National Committee for Education on alcoholism the organization Marty founded opened its offices in October of 1944, eventually to become the National Council on Alcoholism. Received an enthusiastic endorsement from the Grapevine, and in fact, on the original letterhead where she was soliciting money, she put Bill Wilson's name and Bob Smith's name as the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, shortly they got a lot of pushback from the membership. Is this AA or in your fundraising for AA or what there was a lot of confusion and another tradition developed that we can't affiliate so it took their names off of the letterhead all right so they learned by their mistakes but the point here is that Marty Mann did found the National Council on alcoholism which is still a vibrant organization today throughout the country all right so how about the sixth tradition in the pamphlet illustrated anybody have any comments on this iceberg cartoon does that mean you have a comment george all right we'll wait in the uh the second page up to the mic please the last paragraph um speak into the mic please uh george barrel alcoholic on the second page, AA members employed by outside agencies wear two hats, but Tradition 6 cautions any such members against wearing both at once. And I've had a couple of friends who were looking into this and one of them got trained and he said, you know what? I'm not going into this because there's a very high rate of relapse among alcoholics who become counselors and they lose sight of the distinction between their job and their primary purpose, and they go out. Yeah. I don't know whether it's true that there's a higher rate of relapse, but there is a danger of the confusion. We mentioned it earlier, but it says it really clear here. On the job, they may be alcoholism counselors, but they are not AA counselors. meetings they're just a age they're not alcoholism experts alright so they have two different hats the problem I see with addiction specialists who are certified and very professional or counselors or therapists even psychologists even who are they get all the way through school and they do all the training and all the therapy that's required of it and their members of a a AA for instance because there are eight or ten hours a day they're spending in therapy a lot of times with alcoholics or families of alcoholics they get a little bit complacent about and may be confused about the difference between their career and service and some of them and I know this personally for a fact feel that they've been of service all day long and the last thing they need to do is go to a meeting or sponsor anybody all right now here's the cleanest way that I can say the distinction between a vocation your career and an avocation your recovery for your career you are paid for your service you are unpaid there's no better distinction as long as you're being paid anything it's not service in the 12 step genre as long as you're being paid to anything you're not it doesn't qualify from my standpoint and I believe in the spirit of the traditions as 12 step work it might be the best 12 step work there is in terms of helping people but it's within the spirit for fun and for free to quote Chuck C to come at this from a slightly different direction. This is Linda Allen on a codependent. In some of the outreach work that I do, it's constantly necessary to say to people who write to us, I see you're a psychiatrist, I see your therapist, and you're asking us about establishing a meeting, and we want to discourage you from that. It's necessary to enter a meeting as one among many and not to set up a meeting with yourself as the resident therapist. It's a problem we encounter frequently. Setting up a 12-step meeting for their own purposes of treating their clients, you're saying. Yeah. And why call it 12-stepped? Why not just set it up and do anything you want with it and charge anything you wants with it? You don't need the flag of a 12 step meeting to establish something if you have talent. Katie Alcoholic. Katie. I'm taller now. Oh, on the first page, at the end of the first paragraph, and pity the poor newcomer straying into the group. We'll get around to you in a minute. I have been in business meetings where home group members are very involved with the Prudent Reserve or this collection or that collection, and I really appreciate the discussion. You bet. But it's not the place for a newcomer, and it is very distracting. Yeah, yeah. And it can be distracting. And I also think, personally, there's nothing like money to start an argument. Absolutely, yes. Thank you. And the final paragraph on that page that has the prose on it, it says, toward outside agencies dealing with alcoholism, the A policy is cooperation, not affiliation. A group cooperates by welcoming referrals from clinics or by sponsoring AA groups in institutions. But in one area, money for a rehab was solicited at an AA meeting, implying affiliation. See, that's a no-no. In another, AA was listed among beneficiaries of a United Fund drive. No, no, no. All right? No affiliation implied or any of them. Alex Codependent. Alex. um going back to the professional hat versus a group member i also have noticed that not professionally but um like when it's a process addiction like with codependency or love addiction i've heard people say oh well i'm being of service by helping my boyfriend or oh i'm being of service by spending time with my family and I've always kind of wondered it seems that it's it seems like that's two separate hats is that what maybe has always sat wrong with me it's uh not apples and oranges it's apples and peanuts it's so different absolutely it has no bearing at all yeah yeah that would qualify under practicing principles in all your affairs. Nicole Allenon, it's very rare that somebody is court ordered to go to Allenon but it is less rare to be court ordered to go AA. How is that not being affiliated with government? It's a huge question. It's an huge question even some groups won't sign court cards because they feel in the interpretation of the tradition that if they're signing the court card, they're affiliating with the court system. I personally don't agree with that. But I understand the issue. I've not really resolved it so I can't comment on it. Dave? Getting back to your discussion a few minutes ago about rehab centers that start up 12-step things, I think some of them the motivation is okay we've got this person for 30 days or 60 days whatever what are is going to be the tool that they have when they go back to their community absolutely and uh by setting up a 12 step and getting them familiar with it it makes a transition back to the real world oh yeah better yeah and i can see the point of doing that well there that's just good business because you're taking a resource from the community and you're establishing some biological and psychological stability, helping the person get abstinent in the first 30 or 60 or 90 days. And then you're creating a structure for them when they go outside. So we call that 12-step friendly treatment centers. They're not 12-stepped centers, but they're 12-steps friendly And their goal, like the goal of the organization I'm affiliated with, their goal is to get them embedded in the 12-step community. So they bring in panels. They love to have recommendations for sponsors. They require all of the people by their first month to have a sponsor type thing. Okay, because my home meeting is down there in Torrance at Del Amo Hospital. Yeah, sure. And, you know, that's just really made me comfortable going to other 12-step meetings. Sure. Other than that one. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you Know, some other treatment centers have different attitudes, not many, toward the 12- step, but most of them are 12-stepped friendly. If you haven't looked at the AA tradition, and each of you was given a pamphlet, and And if you don't have it, we have a supply of them back there. There is a wonderful but quite lengthy couple articles on the clubs, AA clubs. Of course, there's no such thing, but I guess we call them Alano clubs today. And they're talking about the approach to them, how they actually developed. Originally, Bill had an AA club in New York. and then they saw the truth of the non-affiliation and so they separated it out. So if you haven't read some of that material, you might like it if in fact you're connected to any clubs or interested in that whole issue. And then on page 22, it talks in a very nice summary of AA does not sponsor projects in other fields But if these projects are constructive and non-controversial in character, AA members are free to engage in them without criticism if they act as individuals only and are careful of the AA name. Perhaps that's it. Shall we try it? And so don't overlook the pamphlets, even though they're not organized by tradition. There's lots of segments and articles in there that represent some of the traditions. I'll try to bring those to your attention when we come to them. Oh, I have the old one. I have to get the new one. Yeah. Next time. Hey, Herb. I really appreciate you mentioning that because I found these articles and have been enjoying them along the way. So one little thing that was a little confusing to me because I don't know if they mean to take it literally or not, but at the top of uh 17 he writes uh the 24th street club kept right on going and is today obviously it's back then it was occupied by the aac men and i don't know if that's literally means sailors who were in aa or if that you're referring to something else no that would be the the sea from the port yeah literally yeah literally okay yeah yeah yeah they have the kind of the same situation in san pedro do you have any idea where the acronym or name olano came from i don't but it wouldn't take much imagination right yeah but there's no Yeah, alcoholic Al-Anon, possibly. Yeah, there was some like that. I think I need to Google that. Good. I've never been able to find it. You'll figure it out, Tom, I'm sure. All right. All right, no, that's great. Cooperate, not endorse. For instance, we have a very active and hopefully friendly relationship with Al-Anon. It really saddens me in a meeting of AA when the mention of Al-A-Non comes up that there's any type of a negative stir about that. It's just out of plain ignorance, alright? And so it would probably be good if you don't participate in that and sort of model better behavior. We cooperate. Use principles, I said here, and take the high road for attitude and action. Attitude and action, A-A. Attitude an action. Use principles and take a high road. My sponsees get so tired of that. What is the principle in take the High Road? Do we always have to take the higher road? No! Do you want the consequences of the low road? No! Yeah right, exactly. And then I found this from one of the pieces I was reading. Dependence is mutual, independence is equal, and the obligation is reciprocal. I'm still trying to figure out what it says, but... It's a decision for interdependence and the integrity of interdependance. this reciprocal relationship in the sixth tradition. That is, the proper place of money, property, power, authority, prestige. And in fact, I wrote some of the other names here. Money, property power, Authority, Prestige and Reputation. a phrase came to me in meditation some years ago which I use basically as a litmus test of some of my decisions and that is, is it the simplest solution and is it necessary? Is it the simplest solution and is it necessary. It really helps you kind of clear the ground on it. It detaches you from the ego and all of the other cultural drives that we have. Oh, poverty of spirit. We foster true humility. The truth, reality and a perspective. Humility is about the truth, about reality and about perspective. Poverty of spirit fosters true humility, detachment all right so let's go to question number four what is my primary spiritual aim and you can see that we're not necessarily just restricting it to aa but at work and in our personal relationships anybody answer that question they would like to either summarize it or read it for us question number 4 on the tradition 6 i put down establish and maintain and expand my relationship with god my primary purpose spiritual purpose and number two to transmit the message of recovery and a new way of living to alcoholics and all who want a spiritual way of life please jason jason alcoholic um just to kind of sum up what i wrote it seems like the ego like whenever there's something really powerful like i've seen it in my church i've seeing it the ego wants to use it you know for their own ambition really i just see it all the time and uh and so what i wrote for c i said my my family friends and everything else my family and friends are not to be used for my personal ambitions you know yeah whatever the power is yeah you know and when i look at aa the gift is recovering from your addiction it's not a gift to get a good job or to build a homeless shelter Or to establish a relationship Yeah, although that's what we can use it for There's nothing wrong with it It is not your primary purpose It's not the primary purpose And I've just seen other things get watered down muddied and then ultimately destroyed by that Thank you Well let's move on to question number five write a paragraph about these questions. How my thinking may be affected by grandiosity? Do I project my recovery experience into how other matters in my life should develop? Grandiosity. Anybody have any issue with that? All right, yeah. But we weren't going to take a roll call. Do the wave. this is our spokesperson and you're going to actually laugh okay um i hope nicole alan on i put i'm not affected by grandiosity currently not that i'm aware of anyway i'm quite comfortable as i am and then i called my sponsor today and it was very clear to me that i am totally affected by grandiosity what i have today that i didn't have before is the ability to shut my mouth and say and do nothing until i get to a place where i can approach it with humility yeah yeah and have a sense of humor about it like you did that's right no really grandiosity is always lurking underneath all my thinking feelings and actions but prayer and transparent accountability are the two methods of intervention to be rigorously honest with myself and others about my motives is an operating goal my recovery and spiritual awakening is the total benchmark by which i make or try to make all my decisions great it's katie alcoholic again and actually i've got lots of hats uh in the 12 steps But what I was interested in here, yes, I am a recovering know-it-all, too. So that's sort of grandiosity. But it was interesting, the question, do I project my recovery experience into how other matters in my life should develop? I saw that in a different way because I practice recovery tools in all my life as best as I can, including the practice of letting go of expectations. So it sort of saw it in a separate way. Right, right. Well, and that's why I think the spirit of practice principles in all our affairs. All right. Now, Bill never did give us a list of principles. But, of course, many people have created lists of principles connected to some of the steps. I've taken those and attempted to wordsmith them into a legitimate and logical connection to each of the step. which you have, and we also have the principles underneath the traditions, and we'll look at that in a little minute here. Linda Allen on Encodependent. I'm not sure about this, but what I wrote was, Yesterday I fairly trotted up to the store, and by the time the staff was checking out my purchases, I began to jerk and twitch. Did I try too hard? Did I do too much? or am I just unaccustomed to exercise? So there goes my grandiosity. One short walk does not walk off a lifetime of overeating and inactivity but what I had to say to the staff these two gals were looking at each other like what's with her? And I just had to say ladies, I jerk and twitch, there's nothing I can do about it so great ideas Humor will cover an awful lot of deficiencies, absolutely so the So the AA principle of, well not the AA, scratch that. The herb list of principles for step six is willingness and the principle for the tradition as I've interpreted is that poverty of spirit or humility which is a counteraction to power, property, prestige and authority as we saw and the action that's required is non-affiliation. I also handed out the spiritual substance of anonymity is a sacrifice and in the area of Tradition 6 we give up complexity in order to have simplicity. At least this is my thinking at some point of making those kinds of analysis and contrasts. What do you mean by poverty of spirit? It doesn't sound like a good thing to me. Is it what? It doesn' t sound like... Well, we've actually talked about that earlier. No, I know, and it didn' t sound like the good thing then. Okay. Well, all right. Since it doesn' sound right to you, the intent of poverty of spirit, Bill uses it in the literature, poverty of Spirit means detachment from the prestige and authority and money. All right. detachment from it it's very a very buddhist principle a very deeply spiritual principle when i was in the monastery i had three vows poverty chastity and obedience it didn't mean that we didn't handle money all right it did mean in obedience that we you know took direction from our the authorities and of course chastis is pretty straightforward right But the poverty was detachment from it, not acquisition, not attachment to it. Poverty as a spiritual principle. Correct. Poverity of spirit. Poverety of spirit means not much spirit. Oh, no, no. I see what you're saying. Yeah, no-no. It means you're poor. Yeah. No, this means a corporate poverty, the spirit of poverty, the spirit of poverty not yeah poverty of spirit in that sense right? I hear what you're saying yeah, yeah that would be horrible alright, number seven in sharing the solution I have found in the twelve steps how do I talk? How do I walk? yes did you do six? did I do what? I did skip six. Well, thank you. All right. Write a paragraph about these questions. How do I take others' compliments on my sharing of my message? Do they make me feel above the rest? Do I acknowledge God's grace and AA's love or do I take credit for it? All right, item number six. Anybody have a comment? Nicole Allen on what does that look like for you because I don't one of the things that's hard coming into Al-Anon is taking a compliment in general and so I'm just learning how to do that I keep it real simple I just say thank you well but what goes on inside the head do you have two hours you can expand on what you're saying that's what goes on here there you go yeah it used to be four hours i've made some substantial improvement are you getting up here kim well i just wanted to add on to that because because that is my experience currently you know you're in meetings and you're sharing and for me how that works is is i still get that rub of oh god they're giving me a compliment but i realize it's just my experience and the message yeah and so there's almost like a pause in that and so sometimes i have to pray when i'm doing it because i can feel my ego firing up you know so i'm saying i'm not less than i'm that more than you know while someone's talking to me just because I want to feel that rooted spiritual kind of process as opposed to my ego going well there you go you got it now you know and it's just like that back and forth how perceptive of you do you see my talents yeah yeah really thank you for a series of questions that really sort of ties it and not you know if you come in yeah linda alan on and coda come in feeling less than and unable to accept a compliment and hearing something as simple as you know say thank you is one thing but then as you said what goes on so when it said the last question do i take credit for it you know I'm still struggling with not hating you for giving me a compliment that I don't trust or believe yeah all right deal with it keep coming back I always feel weird sharing more than once because I'm used to the format of the meetings where it's like the beeper is gonna go off and I got my one and now like I'm up here like I feel like I're doing a show like okay that's just my head noise but that the word in that there was two things was grace it's been a word that's always kind of been a hard one for me because i often think uh why why what did i nothing that i grace is gift unearned it is it's on it's unearn there's nothing that like i have other people in my family in my life that you know and here's the ego right of course they benefit but and and i even walking by someone on the street that could be me that could mean totally um and so i often I have no idea where it comes from, how it works. But I really feel like I have been graced. And so then it's weird because yes, I have willingness. But the willingness is a grace in a way. It's not... Bingo. And so I often feel like a little weird sometimes. Even sharing, which is because it is. I feel like it makes total sense. And the two responses that I have, one is humility. Because I didn't earn it, I didn' t deserve it and I'm really grateful. So the other is gratitude. Humility and gratitude. I can't explain it. I can observe it and enjoy it. Exactly. Thank you. Please. Up here. You're not an exception. embarrassing because i think some sometimes i feel like i do earn the grace because i've worked hard in this program i've worked it so hard yeah no no i understand that and you know what you can actually i i totally respect taking credit for the work that you've done i've worked my ass off in this programme absolutely very consistently over 30 year period absolutely And the benefits are there, but the benefits are disproportionate to my contribution. There's way more in it for me than I've ever contributed. So it's wonderful to take credit for it, absolutely, in that sense, in the biggest perspective. Humility is about perspective. It's about the truth. It's About Reality. The big book has a wonderful observation in its preface forward to the second edition. It has a paragraph that says, 50% of those who really tried get it right away, 25% get it very quickly thereafter. Do the math. This is 1955. He said 75% of the people, but now here's the caveat, the qualifier, who really try. I wonder what that means. I think it means exactly what Richard said, And that is, who worked the steps and who were then consistent living in steps 10, 11, and 12, our way of life. I mean, that's the formula. All right. Well, thank you again. We had a wonderful, engaging, spirited discussion. We didn't get through all of the questions. but I'm assuming that you do reflect on them and do some work in them, especially the ones from the grapevine, which we didn't touch tonight. And we'll go on to Tradition 7 next week. Our respective 12-step fellowships help their members maintain their personal recovery and encourage them to offer to share their recovery experience freely with others who may have a similar problem. This we owe to our fellowship's future to place our common welfare first, to keep our fellowship united. For on unity depends our lives and the lives of those to come. When anyone anywhere reaches out for help, we want the hand of our fellowship always to be there. And for that, we are responsible. After a moment of silence, please join me in the prayer of St. Francis. Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace that where there is hatred I may bring love that where There is wrong I may bring the spirit of forgiveness that where There is discord I may bring harmony that where There is error I may bring truth that where There is doubt I may bring faith that where There is despair I may bring hope that where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness I may brings joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand then to be understood. To love then to be loved. For it is by self forgetting that one finds It is by forgiving that one is forgiven It is dying that one awakens to eternal life Amen. See you next week Thank you.