Two Recovery Tools That Finally Brought Him Peace – Mark H.

of 1982. My home group is the Men's Stag Meeting Clean Air Group, meets every Saturday morning at 9 30 in Dallas, Texas. I am going to dedicate my experience this weekend to three of my noble friends who have passed away in the last year. They all had a tremendous impact on me in different ways. The first one was a man named Don Pritz, who carried this message to me. I met him when I was three years in the program in Denver, Colorado, and he passed away. I went to his memorial. There were a thousand people there. Amazing man. And he still lives in me. The second man just passed away on February 14th, a man known as Big Frank. Frank McGiven died with 39 years sober, ex-sheepherder turned lawyer, big guy. If you could get past your fear, get to him. I've never in my life seen a man do more with steps 10, 11, and 12 than this guy. And he had a huge impact on me. The third noble friend, her name is Carla Houston, and she was my last wife. And a month ago, she committed suicide. She was 41 years old and put a shotgun to her mouth to end the suffering that she was in. And she was a noble friend. And the term guru means to dispel darkness. And I used to joke with her, she was my pain guru. And so I have been experiencing what you experience when someone you are married to and that you love deeply leaves in that fashion. But they're all three, a lot of what you hear this weekend, the three of them are a part of me and always will be a part me. So I want to dedicate this weekend to them. When I begin these things, I like to take a little time to bring you current with me. The only reality of my life is being right here, right now. I have very little use for the past unless it is some dialogue in which I think the sharing of that information will be of some benefit to you. I have not done anything like this since June of 2003. At that time, God first started using me in this fashion in 1994. I never wanted to do this. I wanted to sit in the back of the room, but God does what God does. And you do this work, you become a hollow bone and you get used in that fashion and you don't have any say in it. But what started to happen to me, I also over the years have suffered at times deeply with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and that will manifest in me in depression. And a little over three years ago, that was moving in on me hard and it frightened me. It frightened me because at times I've made some decisions behind that which were very costly to me, and it takes me to a place that there's nothing comfortable about it. And so I begin to seek some outside help, and a very wise woman down in Alexander, Louisiana looked me dead in the eye and she said, if you do not stop, if você não stop what you're doing, you will never get better. And you know where you could possibly wind up with that. And at that time, I'm always willing to submit to a way other than my own, and I don't believe in coincidences. So I stopped. Of course, I got the kind of pals that say things to me like this, we'll see how your narcissism deals with this. So, I am so grateful I did that. I had to cut back on my involvement. It was brought to my attention in a universe of energy. Most alcoholics have their own levels of PTSD and trauma, and I was never ever being removed from it for any length of time, so I couldn't get any better, period. So I took that sabbatical and I cannot tell you how wonderful it has been. I have always done my own body of work and I continued. I continued doing steps, reworking one through nine, working with the strict spiritual disciplines of steps 10, 11, and 12. And I would say, if I could say this, the biggest thing that has happened to me in the last three years, the biggest transformation is in hindsight most of my life the only thing that I ever wanted was my insides and outsides to match. It's called being authentic. And what I can do as I sit up here tonight with you I will say to you that they match. When I had taken two years off and I accepted an opportunity to speak back in Wisconsin and do a one-hour talk, there were 1,500 people there. And I've been doing this stuff for quite some time and done a lot of it. But what you all don't know was you never knew how I was experiencing me while God was using me. And it wasn't fun for me. There was always a lot of fear and doubt, and I did it anyhow because that's what we do and that's how God works. There's none of that. I was amazed. The insides and the outsides were a perfect match. That's that peace, that level of peace that we've been talking about. So, that was me. Oh, okay. So, that's where I'm at. I will talk with you a lot about the strict spiritual disciplines of steps 10, 11, and 12 because for me, that's all the program is. One through nine is a launching pad to enter the spiritual dimension of 10,11, and twelve. And those tools of steps ten and eleven which are very broad and very, very deep allow me to stay in fit spiritual condition and remain a hollow bone. And in that place, there's great peace. And I get used in ways beyond my wildest dreams. Wildest dreams! And that's a lot of what I'm going to share with you this weekend. Dave, it's great to be sitting up here with Dave again. He and I operate in the fellowship of the Spirit. We haven't seen each other for several years. And yet we see each other and we hug each other and we just resumed the last conversation that had ended, and we finished each other's sentences again. And that's what happens in the fellowship of the Spirit. And he and I have done a couple of these together, and we work extremely well together. So I'm real excited about being up here with him. As I go through the weekend, my life, amazing things have gone on in the last two or three years. Got a book published and just a bunch of stuff that I will share with you that happens to me and through me if I will do the things necessary to be a hollow bone and to be used by God in that fashion. So a long time ago, I made a decision to third step. My life wasn't my own business because my life is my own business. I drink a lot of alcohol, snort a lot of cocaine, chase wild women, lie, cheat, and steal and deal with my insanity. And that's why the third step decision, which I made many years ago and I reconfirm every year is a very simple one for me. I'm in my 24th year, but at any given moment if you experience my thought life, you'll really understand. I'm going to introduce you to a new phrase this weekend. You're all mad. And I do not mean angry. I mean that you are mad. In the course of one day if your thoughts were reflected or written down, all of us would be locked up. It has taken me a long time to wake up to this, that I am mad, that I am not really a nice guy, that any given day I'm a psychopath sociopath and what happens is the disciplines of 10, 11, and 12 allow me to operate in this world with integrity and dignity and compassion and love. That's why I do 10,11, and twelve. And you know what? I'm at peace with being mad. I'll tell you my own theory about that. I believe that God had made a mistake with us. I believed we were not supposed to come down the pipeline. We did. St. Peter turned to him and said, God, we made a mistake with that guy. They don't have all the filters. And God said, look, I'm busy. I can't call them back. It's going to be a little tough on them, but they'll do okay. And the reason I say that is because my life experience is there's only two things that give me a lot of inner peace. There's either a lot of conscious contact with God or a lot vodka and cocaine. Those are the only two things that gives me mountains of peace. There's nothing in between. A nice house is great. A nice car is great, money in the bank's great, but that doesn't have any lasting effect on a guy like me. That's my experience and I'll talk to God about that when I leave this body. It's my own theory. I've never read it anywhere, but my experience tells me it's true. He made a mistake with me and I wish to talk to him about that. At any rate, I live in Dallas, nice two bedroom apartment with my cat Hobo and a lot of plants you know when I'm in there in the morning I do my prayer and my meditation 84 through 88, sit in the silence I meditate two times a day for 20 minutes that's my current practice I do great but the minute I open that door and I leave that apartment, Hobo, and those plants my madness starts to take over as soon as I get in my car and I got to start driving traffic with you and that's when the disciplines of the tenth step come in and I work with them all day long and then I come back home at night you know, I do real good when it's just me and hobo and those plants seriously, I'm very spiritual I'm at peace but I walk out the door there's a part of me that goes we can't cope you know we can cope, we can deal with it so God's at the heart and center of my life and my being and I'll share with you I don't have any answers you know for anybody I think what you'll get from Dave and I is we're going to share with you the things that we do to be hollow bones to face and be rid of that which has us blocked from power that's what we'll share with You and if You wish to do some of that stuff then You can have the experience that comes behind that course of action but You at the end of the day You don't get to decide whether You want to do that or not So, thank you very much. I'm Dave Fredrickson. My name is Dave Fredickson. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Dave. And my dinner was repeating on me, so I figured I'd turn that thing off so I wouldn't go across the recording for Mark, to be honest with you. Sorry about that. By God's grace, I've been sober since December 5th, 1981. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. And there was a large portion of my life where that was not. So, I was one of the people who was given this gift. It's in the big book about false anonymous when I walked through the doors. And my life got good and my ego rebuilt very quickly. And I was doing the things I was supposed to do, but I was among those people that as my life Got better and better, I couldn't say, you know, I need to go to that meeting. I don't need to do this. I don' t need to Do that. I've got it. I've Got it. I've I found myself one day where I didn't have it and I didn' t know what to do. I didn't know who to turn to, and it almost had tragic results. And then I reconfirmed what my purpose in this earth was and what my goal in recovery was and why out of all the people that don't make it into these rooms, why did I make it in these rooms? Why was I sober? And evidently I thought maybe God had a plan for me. Only it was a guy that I didn' t really know. I wasn' t talking to him on a daily basis anymore. I'd lost that daily relationship with my father as I call him today. and so I had to go about rekindling that relationship getting back to doing the nuts and bolts of the program I call It's Anonymous and it was amazingly quick at how the spark ignited again inside of me and I too like Mark never wanted to do this it's not comfortable you might as well paint a bullseye on me to do these sort of things God forbid you misspeak or something is that once that bullet's out of the barrel, you can't get it back. It's caught on digital-mastered tape, and it's embedded in plastic someplace. Without realizing it, it's going to go around the entire world and boomerang on you, and people will call you up or send you emails and ask you questions about it. It's a wonderful, humbling experience, but it's also a tremendously gratifying experience. There's a lot of people in this room that I had never met until today, but we've been conversing for years via the internet, we're talking on the telephone and we're meeting for the first time face to face at this retreat so it's a gift the last time that I did one of these was back in I don't even remember, Mark and I were trying to figure it out it's terrible getting old 2001, 2002, something like that up at the Wilson House and I too had come to the realization that it was time to take a sabbatical from doing this because speaking on a regular basis like this is a very dangerous thing to do it'll kill you because people will try to put you up on a pedestal. I'm just a drunk. I am one drunk away from being a drunk that's it. I was just like you. I have some experience that I share and God has graced me so I'm told with the ability to get the message across to others so they can understand it I speak a common language, the language of the heart and I'm very open so that's my goal here this weekend And primarily my goal for this weekend, this was, I don't do workshops anymore. This is not a workshop. If you signed up for a workshop, I'm sorry. That's not what you're going to get. This is a retreat. This is working retreat. That's why I'm here. I'm going to do step work with you as a group. That's my goal. I've learned after years and years and years, when you're speaking, after a while, you get kind of what I call groupies. They kind of follow you from workshop to workshop. and year after year and they were bringing the same resentment year after year you know it's funny I didn't even know one person in particular from New York was like three years you know I'm like six workshops in a row and I see this person they bring the same problem they come up to me and tell me about it and bad as Swiss cheese as my head is I actually remember and they said wait a minute I remember you and I remember that resentment and how did you take into step haven't you worked with that can you live it and that was when I made my decision. And that was at Fellowship of the Spirit when Mark and I were doing it. And I said, you know what? I've done my last workshop. There's plenty of workshops on tape to learn how to do the nuts and bolts in the 12 steps and the 12 traditions and the twelve concepts and all that stuff. For me now, it's about doing the spiritual work to teach people the tools because we're, in my mind, the alcoholics and all of us have failed and failed miserably is in sponsorship. We don't have sponsorship. We don' t teach how we... The tools are in the book. You can listen to a set of tapes and figure out how to find where step one is, and step two, and step three in thebook. It's how do you apply that tool? We go through life, I should speak for myself, I go through the life with an entire toolbox full of tools, and I face all kinds of little problems all day long, and it's how quick can I reach into that toolbox and take out a tool and actually use it? And what I was finding from doing workshops was these people had the tools. They had tremendous knowledge, and they were using the knowledge at their home group in their AIM meetings to keep people away from them because it wasn't as if they didn't know the right answer because they could repair the answer, repeat it back to you and tell you exactly what the answer was. But when you ask them, well, when you made that amends, how did it go? They had no answer. They had No Experience using the tool. So this weekend is about using tools. You've got whatever tools you've got, we're going to work with those and we're gonna do some more and hopefully give you some more tools. Because where the rubber meets the road is out in life. If you're here because you want to quit drinking, you're in the wrong place. Alcoholics Anonymous is not about not drinking. Yes, you heard me correctly. Alcoholics Anonymous isn't about non-drinking. Alcoholics Anonymous means about finding a relationship, a working personal relationship with a higher power, battling your own understanding so that you can get into the firing line of life to start you out. That gets you up to the starting line so that You can go out and be effective in life It just so happens that the cool, really cool byproduct of that is you don't ever want to drink a drug. You use whatever it is that got you here. That is a byproduct. A byproduct, a working spiritual life. So when I first got here, that's not what I came here for. I came hier because alcohol was a big problem in my life and I could finally identify that's a problem and I had the gift of desperation and I wanted to stop. Didn't I have? So I came her to quit drinking and what they showed me was don't worry about quitting drinking go over here and find a relationship with a higher power not take care of itself listen but you don't understand no that's the real deal go find the relationship and have it it's got to be a personal intimate working relationship if you don t have that then you missed the deal all the rest of your problems will straighten out when you have that so that's why i'm here is to help you and have you helped me so i when i sit down to do one of these things I go into meditation. And the first thing I do is I write an inventory. We just got done with January, I just finished another inventory, formal inventory, starting at step one and working through. Then I sit down to work on a retreat like this. And I go in to meditation and ask God, how can we hit this from a different angle? And whatever comes out, comes out. And I was flying from Dallas to New York, sitting in the back of an airplane. I was working on a military document actually. And it hit me. Now's the time. So I close that document and within about 45 minutes all the exercises that you're going to see this weekend came out, just fired out. I don't have the ability to do that, I can't even type that fast but that's how it works and I've just come to know that so some of these exercises I've tried myself and some of them I haven't I'm going to be taking them with you so everybody should have one of these sheets with a whole bunch of questions on it there's 49 questions on them right there should also be a sheet that says 10 meditations for effective prayer on one side and the back of this just for today all right so you should have to one of each of those they're coming around and make sure that he's got the right paperwork and then bill go on the end of the table there could you hold up one of those in one of the sheets there's shoes for ten eleven and twelve everybody should have gotten four copies that sucker for 10 11 12 if not they're at the head to the table they can be passed down there's also a box at the end of the table over there that side that has ten eleven twelve all right and really for right now as long as you've got the 49 questions you're good to go you just before we leave tonight somewhere on the break we're going to get you all the sheets because people are going to be streaming in the important thing is to get the questions right these questions are designed to see where where you're going from and normally I would have you fill in the blanks and the reason there's a reason I didn't have you filling the blank because if you want to lie you can go ahead and lie so I wanted to test your first test of your sobriety is when your mind says initially says yes and then you circle no that's why I said recommended doing it in pencil because you might want to change your answer all right I found that even as I've gone when I went through the first time I'd say initially I'd circle no and then for that nanosecond before I read the next question the hair on the back of my neck stands up and my ego says it's no dummy it's know but the truth is I know it's yes and so I have to erase it and circle yes because it doesn't matter how long you're sober your ego is still there are trying to do that to you you know and that same skill that will allow you to put no in the heart of hearts you know it's yes that's the same voice they'll tell you I can get you back under the barstool so this is your first task that's why it's not fill-in-the-blank that's five minute yes or no to make it real simple then at the bottom there's a couple of 30 word or less questions I know you can't explain to me how your family's gonna say something but put it down there you know with mine you're going to hear what my answers are for that block later on. And you can ask, because my wife is sitting right over there. That's my wife, Brenda. Can you stand up for a second? I would not be here without the loving support of my family. My mom flew from New Jersey to Texas to watch my kids and my three dogs so that we could come up here and do this retreat. That's support. That' s loving recovery in action. My wife is a black belt Al-Anon, so if you're ever interested in a question about Al-anon, that's the lady they can talk to. But make sure you understand what you're getting into, because we're walking into a bus stop. So if you walk in here to wine, you're going to hear about it and you'll get a very short comment on the answer. But if you want some serious recovery, she's got the tools and the skills. There's going to be a number of different kinds of people here at this workshop. Not everybody in this room is an alcoholic, and I'm not going to break people's anonymity and stuff. This is sort of an open deal. Everybody that's in this room, I guarantee you is interested in learning about the 12 steps as they're written. From a doctor's opinion up to the top of page 23, that's what separates us as alcoholics. That's where they talk about the physical craving. After the topofpage23 and the book and the 12 Steps are universal. So I want to, as people are here and let you know that this is a recovery workshop. It's about the big book and there's a lot of different fellowships that use our big book. So I wanted to put that out there for you. But that's my goal here. This weekend, I'll be giving out some exercises. We're going to be doing some spiritual things in here. We're doing prayer and meditation, as we've already started to do. And hopefully, we're going teaching you and giving you new skills. And we're gonna be practicing this whole weekend. We're gonna do a lot of writing. There's a whole box of pencils here. Back on the table back there, there's a pencil sharpener to sharpen your pencils. Highlighters. You're gonna need a highlighter at some point, all right? One of the people that I wanted to show, Willie, will you stand up? This is my buddy Willie. He's one of my spiritual advisors. He came all the way down from Montana. He's going to be leading the spiritual prayer meditation in the morning at 7 o'clock. I highly recommend you show up there. We're going to do some fun stuff in the evening. It's not planned out. It's wherever the Spirit's going with us. But I've never sat in a room or anywhere with that man and not had a tremendous overpowering feel of the Holy Spirit just, it moves the great creator, whatever that is whatever your concept is, it shows up when we get together and do some prime meditation so I would recommend to be here because if you've never done it and you've ever experienced it it's a wonderful opportunity you won't die from lack of sleep come on down and settle in that's all I have for right now because one of the things that I want you guys to do tonight before you go before we get out of this room before your ego gets a chance let me give you a warning right now And this weekend, we're going to wake up the beast that's within you. It's already probably awake and you've been pushing it down for weeks. That's why you're here is to come figure out how to kill the beast, right? It's the restless, irritable discontentment that's in there. It's a thought that was in your head as you were stuck in the traffic jam out there on 35E that was saying, you know, would you get out of my way, blank, blank. That's the beast. We're going reach in there and we're gonna play with the beast this weekend. We're gonna stir it up and I will give you the tools to kill the beast. But make no mistake, you're better off walking out the door right now if you're not willing to kill the beast because to start halfway down this path and play with this stuff and then walk out those doors and think you're going to go back to your blind ignorance doesn't work that way. God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. Once you know the truth, it's the same way that AA ruins your drinking. Once You Know You're an Alcoholic, You Can't Drink from Impunity Anymore because every time you pick it up, that voice is in your head saying, yeah, I know, I don't, I and it's a miserable way of life. The same way you can't sit in sobriety and say, yeah, I know what this program is about, I know when I'm supposed to be doing it, but I'm okay, I'm not going to do it. Talk to anybody that's led that. Come talk to me if I've done it. It's the worst kind of alcohol death out there. So this weekend is going to be giving you some skills that are going to hopefully prove very valuable to you. I know they're valuable to me and I'm always looking for people to help me hone those and it'S by working one-on-one when you learn those tools It's not something you go into single-handed combat and win with, as it says in the 12 by 12. Anyway, that's all I had for this initial part so that we could settle down and give you guys a chance to go take a break or whatever. Do you have more, Mark? Yeah, I want to read something. I wantto teach you all about the path of consideration. And just for my own knowledge, how many of you have five years and under? Raise your hands. Okay, how many of you have between 5 and 10? Okay, 10 and 15? 15 and 20? 20 and 25? 25 and 30? 30 and 35? 35 and 40? Okay, great. Wide variation, but you'll notice as you go higher in the numbers, there's not as many hands. I'm not removed from the fact that to drink is to die I've worked in the field of chemical dependency 15 years been more death the last 24 months than all the other time I have been in recovery 7 people I did the work with last year alone died the alcoholic death it's still there these exercises these questions are designed to find out what has you blocked. This idea that drinking is not an option, if you're a real alcoholic and sitting in this room, I don't know where you're getting that idea, but I know from personal experience, if I get diseased long enough, you better believe drinking is an option to a guy like me. And there's only one thing that prevents me from being diseased. It's critical that I not be blocked. What blocks me? Ego. My definition of ego, I like to use the word Eckhart Tolle, a mind-made false sense of self. All of this is about facing and being rid of that which has me blocked from power. I want to talk about the path of consideration. The longer you're sober, the bigger noose you have around your neck. What that noose is, is things like how long you've been sober, memories of old experiences, when I came in. It has no relevancy whatsoever today, none, you know. But the path of consideration goes like this. It's a tool that I have found over the years to get past egos. For example, I sponsored Joanne. Now, Joanne's been sober a lot longer than me. So when I began to work with her, I had to figure out a way that she could hear me because after all, she's been sobre a lot long time. She's been a lot younger than me, what does this whippersnapper have to teach me? But she couldn't help asking me to work with her. That's how God works. It's like all of you that are here, I bet a lot of you think you chose to be here this weekend. I submit to you, you did not. You were chosen, just like Dave and I were. No longer you do this, you start to understand how the hollow bone works and you get rid of this idea, oh, I'm going to go to this thing in Camp Copas in February. I've got nothing else to do. It doesn't work like that. What the path of consideration is is you're going to hear some things this weekend in some cases you've never heard before and you're attached to your old experience and maybe it's a little different than what you're gonna hear and the ego likes to dig in like an Alabama tick and say that no, he's wrong. yeah, and the dialogue starts. It all starts. So what the path of consideration is, it just opens a door and says, why don't you consider this? Another phrase I like to use to help overcome the ego is, I'm not interested in your opinion on experience you've never had. For example, on a yearly basis, I work and rework steps one through nine. If you have not been doing that, then the most you have is an opinion about what might happen if you did that. Or, for example, meditation. I started daily meditation life in 1991 because I went insane in my 10th year. My mind drove me insane. My first 10 years in the program, I did nothing with meditation. Nothing. If you have the kind of mind I did, you can understand this, your mind driving you insane. So if you're sitting in this room and you're not doing anything with meditation, I'm not interested in your opinion about what meditation might or might not do for you. Because there's, and what backs this up is the big book says that spiritual life's not a theory. I've got to live it. One thing different I discovered over the years about spiritual disciplines, it is about practice. And you do the practice and you do the exercises and you have an experience. Now you truly have something you can transmit other than your opinion, if that makes any sense. I have had people over the year say you take this very serious. Yes, I've attended a lot of funerals. They used to die in our rooms. They don't die in their rooms anymore because there's a screen of treatment centers and hospitals between us and them, but they're still dying. All you have to do is look at the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous. We're almost in our 70th year. It's less than 3 million people worldwide. Why? Why is that? I don't know. I suppose there's lots of different answers. You know, one, if you go to a lot of meetings today and you're going to work off the process of attraction, how much attraction is there to these meetings? Why aren't we talking about the incredible stuff in the 10th and 11th step like we've entered the world of the Spirit. What does that mean? The rest of your life, you're here to grow an understanding of effectiveness. What does it mean? What does is mean that you get to let God demonstrate through you what God can do? Whoa, what does that means? What does in the 10th step when it talks about the sixth sense? What is your experience with your sixth sense How do you use it from the time you get up till the time to go to bed? How do work with pause? How do your work with your thought life? Now that's some exciting, exciting stuff. very seldom talked about in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Who has it to happy? Oh, I do. I'm afraid. This program is about power. It's about the power of God in your life and a lot of what you're going to hear this weekend is 10, 11, and 12 and about that power. In the third step, I made a decision to be an agent for God. Look up the word agent. One empowered by another. I am empowered by God to act for God through me all day long in everything I do with everything that I do? It's there. This program is incredible in terms of what it says. Are you willing to stand on that? Are you wanting to do the things necessary to face and be rid of that which has you blocked from the power? That's what happens in four through nine. The first three steps are considerations. They're nothing more than that. They are considerations Do you need power? Are You Willing To Go For The Power? Do You Believe That To Drink Is To Die? Are you willing to make a decision in the third step? Now the meat and potatoes, four through nine. Face and be rid of resentment inventory, fear inventory, sex inventory. Fifth step, and I'll talk with you about my experience about what really happens in that fifth step, that magical experience. The sixth step, identification of all the defects when your ego is trying to run your life. The ego's tool kit, I call it. Seventh step, humbly take all of me, good and bad. Eighth step, make the list. Clear the amends. Why? Unfinished amends keep me blocked from my true self and you and from God. That's why I make the amens. Now I'm clean. Now, I start to work with it. I enter the world of the spirit and work with incredible disciplines of the 10th and 11th step. Let me tell you another reason a lot of people don't do much with 10 and 11 because 10 and 11 is new language. It is language designed to speak to your spirit. It has not language designed to speak to your mind. People intellectually read 10 and 11. It is new language. It is language your spirit understands and resonates with and will act upon. But if you are blocked, all we are is words on a page. I have a lot of experience with this. I didn't do anything with the steps my first three years in AA. Read 10 and11 every morning. Great words. Nice. Isn't that cute. Pause, sixth sense. Then I do the work. Whoa! Inner explosion took place and I started to experience things like intuition and the ability to pause in this sixth sense and the fear began to leave. Just amazing things start to happen. So one through five then become a launching pad to enter that spiritual dimension of 10, 11, and 12. I was talking to a gentleman earlier about, hopefully we're also going to challenge some of you this weekend on your current agnosticism. Current. I want to introduce you to the idea that if you're sitting here and your mind tells you you believe in God that you really think you do. Maybe you don't. What do you think I mean by current agnosticism? What do you think i mean by that? If you're sitting in this room and you have a lot of areas in which you're packed full of fear, that if you have fear, God is not in your life, and that's some of your current agnosticism. Maybe some of you are up against the wall in some areas. It might be finances. It might be physical health. It may be this. It might be that. Do you believe God can take you past here? Here, this block of experiences and memory. Is there more other dimensions of joy and wonder and love you know nothing about of effectiveness of understanding and power? Yes. Yes, there is no end to this. Am I willing to look at that? Can I love? Can I live at a deeper level? My capacity to love, as I sit up here tonight, is so much deeper than it was three years ago. I can't even begin to tell you. I can' t even begin to tell You. God has taken me into an area beyond my wildest dreams to love You, everyone that's in my life, exactly as You are. Not one person that's In my life has to change anything about themselves because I need nothing from them because I am whole and complete unto myself with God. so I get to love everyone exactly as they are. To be able to love like that, do you understand how wonderful that is? See, every time I'm around someone, I'm about to love them. I'm being around them new, fresh, every single time. See, like being around Dave. It's as though I've never been around Dave because I've ever shared this moment before with him now to be able of love and appreciate in that fashion, to not take anything for granted. You see? You see what is available. There is so much more. I had this experience for too long. It talks about it in the big book where the miner, where his pick struck gold. But it says I've got to mine it the rest of my life and then I've gotta give it all away. And I had too many periods in my life where I struck a little gold. You know, you do a little work and you get that God burst. Then you go, well, you lay the pick down and you walk away. About a year later, you're experiencing what I call RID, restless irritable discontent, that sense of separation. That's where I can tell when I'm really getting disconnected. I'm starting to feel separate from you. You go back in and you do this, face and be rid of that which has me blocked. I hope when you leave, one of my objectives with you all would be to have you understand working one through nine is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. It is not seriousness. Big Frank used to say, seriousness is the height of pomposity. Rule 62, don't take yourself so serious. My life theme is fun. I'm going to have fun even with serious stuff. We're going to Have Fun Here This Weekend. This is a retreat. It is a retweet. We are a spiritual body who came together for this weekend and we will have experience together. There's a quote out of scripture, where two or more gather in my name, I will be there. God is here right in the middle of us. We are a spiritual body and in that sense we have a oneness with ourselves this weekend. Hopefully you will leave here with some tools and say to yourself, yes, there's more. I want to read about, this is called The Donkey. All of us, if one of the questions on here is describe your higher power. A lot of us in this room have different ideas about a higher power, or you could think of the donkey as the different religions, and I, this just sums this whole thing about better than anything I've ever seen. It's called the donkey. It says, dismount your donkey at the summit. Some places in this world are very hard to climb, and people use animals. Each person can only ride one, and each animal might have a different name. The riders go up the trail in different orders and they discuss their varying opinions about their experiences. They may even have conflicting opinions. One traveler may think the trip thrilling, another may find it terrifying, and a third may find it banal. At the summit, all the travelers stand in the same place. Each of them has the same chance to view the same vistas. The donkeys are put to rest and grazed. They're not needed anymore. We all travel the path to God. The donkeys are the various doctrines each of us embraces. What does it matter what doctrine we embrace as long as it takes us to the summit? Your donkey might be a Zen donkey, mine might be a Tao donkey. They're Christian, Islamic, Jewish and even agnostic donkeys. All lead to the same place. Why poke fun at others over the name of their donkey? Aren't you riding one yourself? We should put aside both the donkeys and our interim experiences once we arrive at the summit. Whether we climb suffering or joy is immaterial we are there all religions have different names for the ways of getting to the holy summit once we reach the summit we no longer need names and we can experience all things directly so we're going to introduce you to the 12-step donkey this weekend that's it yeah um i uh listening to mark he's sparking a couple things you know and i remember when When I first read that paragraph out of the 12 and 12, it talks about the gaunt prospector drawing his belt into, you know, begging for gold, but you have to give away all the ore that you find. And I had that stuck in my head, and one of the things I like to do is mine the gold, but if I mine a pound, I only give away half a pound. You know? And I'll hold on to the other half a pounds. And then if anybody ever challenges me on it, oh yeah, I've been mining gold, see I I've got some right here. Here, you want some? And I'll give away maybe an extra quarter of a pound. But I'm still holding on to a quarter of the pound. You know, that paragraph, I think Bill Wilson really meant what he said, is you have to give it away. As much as you're willing to get rid of, that's how much you get. And one of my favorite expressions is you can never give away as much as your family. You can't get by giving it away, and that's part of what this weekend is going to be. There's always, every time I've done one of these, there comes a point where this spiritual body just all of a sudden gels like jello. It just, you know, you take that powder and you mix it in with the warm water and then stir it up and then after a while all of the sudden at one point you just get to see the jello just kind of within a matter of seconds and that will happen with the spiritual body. And until that happens we're all kind of a little bit uneasy because that's the standard for alcoholics. We can be in the middle of a room of our people and be totally alone and isolated. So one of the things that I'd like to do is offer you guys your first tool, and that is that on each break, you are to meet someone new. Now we've all got name tags, so tonight's a real easy one. As the weekend will progress, people forget to put on their name tag. It becomes harder and harder. Get out of your comfort zone. That's what this is about. The more you can get out of their comfort zone, the better off you'll be. Now here's how you meet somebody new. When you walk up to them, because we all are being given this exact same exercise, you announce to them can I meet you please? So that you now know what you're supposed to do. I want you to square off to each other. Face each other, it's not human nature to square off. Body language wise when you square off to each another, that's antagonistic, it means you want to fight. That's what your lizard brain says. We tend to meet people, and very often our body language will be slightly askew. I want you to be absolutely squared off. I want You to look each other directly in the eye, and when You shake hands, I don't want You to say a word. I wantYou to count for three seconds in Your own head. One 1,000, two 1, 000, three 1, 00. And while You're doing that, You're looking into the windows of that person's soul, because the eyes are the windows of the soul. This lesson has taught me more recovery and I learned it from an old time years and years and years ago because you can come up to me and say hey Dave how you doing and I'll say no thanks for asking I'm fine when in reality I'm dying inside and I'm standing in the place we're in the lifeboat and everybody here can help save me but I would rather die sometimes than let my ego say I'm really kind of lousy and I don't really know what's going on you can't hide that through the windows of the soul and you look through and you'll see into the other individual and you will see something and sometimes you will get a little click and if you get that little click after you say my name is so and so I'm from Flower Mound Texas and you get the response the whole time you are holding hands the first time you're holding with one hand the second time you reach your outside hand and you clasp from the outside so your double hand you're just holding it. You hold that for another three seconds and see what you feel in your hands down two inches below your belly button and two inches deep. If you're like me, at first it will be very uncomfortable. After you've done it for a while, you'll be amazed at how it will transition and you'll feel things that you never wanted to feel before. If we're in this room and you're in recovery, we don't like feelings. Feelings are strange to us. We spend a lot of time knocking the feelings back with any kind of move all three chemical your hands on you know that's what this is about as to getting identified with that we're going to deal with it later on as you go okay that's never understanding any questions on the meeting people not people you know if you came here with somebody no you don't try it out with them first it has to be a total stranger and we'll come back to that later on in their retreat. Pick someone you've never seen before, all right? Eye contact is critical. No offense, gentlemen here, meant, but if you're meeting a woman, eye contact. We tend to drop our eyes sometimes depending on what level of recovery we are. Eye contact, okay? You're looking in the windows of your soul, all Right? Does that make sense? Great. That's your first exercise. On each one of our breaks, I want to do that. And we're supposed to be having fun. So when we come back from our breaks i got some cheesy jokes and stuff while they're throwing those in and we'll i didn't want to jump into too much meat and potatoes because there's still people straggling in you know the the rush hour traffic is bad with the visibility that went down and some people that are flying we're going to have people from all over the place here they're supposed to be people from pennsylvania and south carolina and michigan and montana and arizona and i mean there's so they're going gonna be coming in and мы want to get them into the spiritual body before we're really jumping too much the 49 questions don't take very long try to knock those out because we're going to deal with start dealing with this stuff before the end of tonight for those of you that came in after I already announced it you need the 49 question sheet you need to attend prayer and meditation things and you need four copies of the sheets at the end of the table Bill's got them up here this gentleman in a white shirt so you can get those on the next break and then we'll start jumping into the stuff as As Mark talked about, we're going to go right in. We're going through the steps rather rapidly until we get to 10 and 11. But there's some things we need to cover. We need to talk about step one. We didn't do the power of sober alcohol when our lives had become unmanageable. And we're gonna talk about the unmanagability of where you are. But we're not gonna jump into that until the next session. So anything else? No, sir. Oh, we have a question, yes. Yes, would you please ask from the mic? Sure. Anybody who came in after we started to see me at the table back... Great. If you came in after the start of the session, show up at the tabel there, get your room keys, check in and get your name tags because I'm going to give you the exercise on a name tag. So that's it. We're going to take a 10-minute break. When we come back from the break, so you're going to hear the bell. One of the commitments of sobriety, true emotional sobrietry, and that's one of the goals for this weekend is emotional sobrietty. That's what we're all after is integrity. That means not only saying what I'm going to do, but it's doing what I say I'm gonna do. So if you're gonna make a commitment to be here and participate, punctuality is, you know, 15 minutes late, 20 minutes late, it'll throw off some of the things that we're doing as a spiritual body. So if your needs are low, get it done, but make sure you get it done in time to get a cup of coffee and get back here within a reasonable time frame because, you Know, if we say 10 minutes, I know some people take 20, 30, 40 minutes and we don't want a constant stream as we move on through the weekend. Okay, so we'll take ten. Drunk says, Sponsor, is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened? Sponser answered, As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning. Well then of what you said, the drunk are the steps to make sure, the sponsor said, you're not asleep when the sun begins to rise. We will find stability at the moment when we discover that God is everywhere, that we do not need to seek him elsewhere, that he is here, and if we do not find him here, it is useless to go and search for him elsewhere because it is not him that is absent from us. It is we who are absent from him. It ist important to recognize it is useful to seek God somewhere else. If we cannot find him there, we will not find him anywhere else. When one has this experience within, one will realize God is present in every situation and in every place. Talk about the first step. The steps are not linear for me, the steps are circular. And the first three steps are considerations. Steps 2 through 12 are about the horrific truth I discovered looking at my experience around my first step. One third of the big book is devoted to looking at your first step My experience is if one does not have a strong first step experience and continues to stay embodied and to touch that, one will not take the course of action necessary which is steps 2 through 12. Having had a first step experienced 2 through12 are like kissing the baby's rear end compared to what whiskey will do to you. A solid first step experience eliminates bulking, whining, complaining, moaning. So we're going to talk about that first step experience. When I look at what our intent is here this weekend, we're not going to sit and read the book in sentence after sentence. I'm going to take a moment to talk with you about the pages in which I look at the step, particularly the first step because there's three components to my first step. When I went on to look at the idea of do I experience a phenomenon called craving? Am I physically powerless over alcohol or whatever your first step is, maybe drugs? There's 33 pages devoted to that, 10 pages in the doctor's opinion. Then you go from the doctor'S opinion from page 1 up to page 23. 33 pages to answer one question. When I take a drink, do I lose control? That begs an obvious question. Why do they take 33 pages for me? Why do I take 33 pages to answer that, to present that? Here's why. Because in those 33 pages, they present this idea about loss of control in many different ways because you and I are looking for every reason in the world why it doesn't fit us. that's why so every time I go back through the steps and through the process I have to go back into my drinking from the very first time I took a drink when I was 16 years old to the very last time I took it I took the drink when Iwas 36 and I asked myself the question does this happen to me do I have a physical allergy of which the manifestation is craving do I go to take a drink and do I lose control and what do I think would happen to be if I took a drink today and I go back and then I remember. And I go back through those pages, and I turn statements into questions. Is this me? And I start to remember the job interviews I didn't show up for, the things I was supposed to go to that were going to turn out to my favor that I didnít make it to. I remember the time of being in Alaska, and Iím supposed to go down to Iowa. My grandmother passed away, a woman I loved, and I get on the plane and I take a drink, and six days later I wake up in St. Louis, why did I do that? And I see that I did that hundreds of times and I begin to have another experience of that first step and I can almost taste vodka again. I tell people this, I love vodka today more than most people drinking it. I don't delude myself about me and this incredible relationship I had with alcohol because alcohol in its own way did the same thing for me that conscious contact with God does today. I've served two masters. I served one for 20 years, it was called alcohol, and I've heard God sense and the effect produced. And I go back and I look at that and I remember, and I see that yes, this is me, that I experienced this phenomenon called craving, that I can never safely ever take a drink again. And then pages 23 to 43 is where I look At what is called the mental obsession. I believe the most misunderstood pages in the big book. And here's why I say that they're misunderstood. I work a lot with people that have chronic relapse history. I have to assume if there's such a thing as reincarnation, I was not a good man in my last time here and this is my penance. Because they're very difficult to work with. Their four favorite words are I know and yes but. They know the big books better than I do. And I say to them unequivocally in my first meeting do you believe that you're involved with your relapses? And every single time they all tell me the same thing. Well, of course. I go, really? What they're just telling me is in all the years that they've been around the program, they've never ever understood what the mental obsession is. What does it mean to be mentally powerless? And here's what it means when I look at what the big book says in my experience. It means that at my very best clean and sober, I have a mind that takes me back to alcohol, and I'm not involved with that. I am not involved with that, and there's three little words, at certain times, and where my mind tricks me is I think I know what the time looks like, but I don't. You see, I go back into my drinking history, andI look at all the times. Remember this, the big book from page 23 to 164 doesn't talk to you and I about having alcohol in our body. It talks to you and I about a condition we're in here tonight, which is we're sober. Why does it do that? The reason it does that is because it doesn't take rocket science research to find out if you got craving or not. And the problem is not the fact that you have craving. The problem is why do you take a drink again knowing you have gravy? If you're all like me, when I looked at drinking, I saw I broke out in a phenomenon called craving probably 10 years before I got struck sober. And I knew that time and time again. I'd go to the bar to have one, and six days later, I'm still drinking. And I knew that. And I made a firm resolution not to drink again and I drank again. What I never understood was I thought I was involved in making decisions to drink against alcoholism. To drink again. And what being mentally powerless is is at my very best clean and sober, my mind will convince me to commit the most insane act I could ever do. Think about that. The most insane acts you could ever do if you're a real alcoholic, you'll do sober. Which is what? You will drink again and therein lies my powerlessness. And link the time away from a drink does not change that. My book says there's only one reason I'm sitting up here today that I haven't had a drink since October 19th of 1982. And here's what it is. It says I am in fit spiritual condition. I'm not sitting up hier because of God because in my world there's nothing but God. If all this program was about was God, it'd be one page, it'd be one word, it would say God keeps you sober, have a good day. It doesn't. There's all kinds of spiritual courses of action that I've got to take from the time I get up until the time I go to bed to do one thing and one thing only. Keep me in fit spiritual condition. And in fit spiritual condition, I never have to worry about taking a drink because I get taken to a place the big book describes. It's called a position neutrality. We get taken there ladies and gentlemen. We don't work ourselves there. We get taken there and we get to reside there. if I stay in fit spiritual condition. Those three words. See, and I know how to stay in fit spiritual conditioning. Steps one through nine. Write inventory. Steps five, six, seven, eight. Make the amends. Clean it up. Sit in the silence. I know what I'm doing. I know where I'm going to stay in fit spirit to condition. And not only that, I'm responsible for that, by the way, not God. My first step is always the driving force to keep me fully engaged in what it takes to stay in fit spiritually condition. it is always my connection to that first step. Is this me? Have I experienced the craving of the body? Have I experience the obsession of the mind? I'm going to tell you one story, and I don't need to tell any more than this because this is the way my mind works. In addition to... I was up for five days, almost six. In addition a lot of vodka, I was involved in some legal activities they call drug dealing. And we happened to be dealing at that time what they called cocaine. And in the middle of those five days while I'm dealing, I'm also snorting a lot of it in addition to massive amounts of vodka. And fortunately for me, I was living with a gal who was a paramedic because I had what they call respiratory failure. And my heart stopped. And much like that movie Pulp Fiction, she had her kit that you have when you work for the paramedics and she pulled that needle out and she jammed that in my heart boom, called 911. They took me in a flight for life ride to a hospital and I had alcoholic poison and my heart had stopped for a while. Some of my pals contend I had got brain damage and I've never recovered. I disagree. However, I'm in that hospital five days and this is the kind of mind I got. Keep in mind, I died. I still remember to this day, on five days, I get discharged from the hospital, pal picks me up and I remember opening the hospital door and turning to him and saying let's go to Bennigan's. I really need a drink and I took a drink and I'm snorting cocaine that night and I didn't do that because I wanted to and I did that because that was the right course of action. I did that because i am powerless mentally. I have a mind that will take me back and goes against my highest good and it did that time and time and time again. And what almost killed me was I thought I was involved with that. I wasn't involved with it. That's why I'm a real alcoholic. That' s why most alcoholics die of alcoholism. I am so grateful I understand this part. This is why I do what I do to stay in fit spiritual condition. It's this thing called the mental obsession. I've seen it. One of the men I buried last year had been sober almost 17, 18 years. Helped thousands of people. Got away from the disciplines. Lost his first step connection. His thing was heroin and alcohol. Got a little toothache. Doctor gave him a little thing called Percodan. Didn't tell the doctor he was natty. Six months later, his wife finds him dead in the bed next to her. He's 42 years old. Everything in the world to live for. This thing kills. Subtle. Says cunning, baffling, powerful. It is. I know that. So when I go back, I go back and look at this. I tell you what, those of you who have been sober for a while, if you really want to touch something, take a look at the last 12 months you've been sober and look the times based on your past experience. Somebody like you should have drank. Maybe you lost a job. Maybe someone you love died. Trust me, when I got the call about my ex-wife Carla, committing suicide. I would have drank because I really loved that woman. I'd have drank just like that. All the death in my life the last year, I'd had drank. I go back over the last 12 months and look at the number of times in the situations in which a guy like me would have been drunk and I'm not drunk. What is that about? That's about fit spiritual condition because on my own power, I don't have the capacity to do that. So I That's how I go back and I look at the first half. That's the craving of the body, the obsession of the mind. And I see it and I touch it. And it's not comfortable. Some of you feel a little uncomfortable as I talk? You should. If you feel little uncomfortable, you might have also lost your connection to the first step. And so I see that and I feel that. Then let's talk about something else. Let's talk abut what's called the spirituality. As you move into the third step and into the fourth step, there's a line in there that says, because I come from a place of I have a three-fold illness. I have an illness of the body when I take a drink, I have and illness of my mind sober, my mind takes me back, and the third part of mine is what the big book calls the spirituality. And there's a promise and a warning about this thing called the spirituality and that's what, by the way, most of these questions are designed to help you take a look at. Do you have your own manifestation of the spirituality going on within yourself? But here's what it says. When the spirituality is overcome in Mark, Mark straightens out mentally and physically The other side of that is what if the spirituality is not overcoming, Mark? Here's my experience. The spirituality is what creates dis-ease. At some point in time, if I'm not in fit spiritual condition and I get dis-east long enough, my mind remembers something that will treat that. My mind will say, let's go take a drink. And since I'm Not in Fit Spiritual Condition, I take a Drink. That's the connection between the spirituality and picking up a drink and I want to read some words that I use to describe spirituality. If we don't know what our problem is, step one, then we have no solution. We will not, cannot, and do not embrace spiritual living. You're going to find out where you're at in your first step connection in regards to how you answered this. We have a three-fold illness. We have physical allergy. We take the first drink or drug coupled with a mental obsession so powerful that clean and sober my mind convinces me to go back to alcohol and drugs, and on my own power I have no defense. What is so often missed is what triggers this obsession. Our book says it's triggered by a spirituality. We have what is called a spiritual disease. ISM, internal spirituality. Here's a description of what this looks like. Although we look like full-grown adults, we're childish, grandiose, and gravely emotionally immature. Our natural state is growing anxiety, depression, and fear coupled with an intense desire for excitement. This condition is fueled by an obsessive, compulsing, controlling need for attention, acceptance, and unqualified approval. This renders us restless, irritable, and discontent with life. In the doc's opinion, we're told we're maladjusted to life in full flight from reality and we're outright mental defectives, and this is true of all of us. This affects our mental and emotional natures. Mentally, our thought life, our thinking is governed by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self seeking, self pity, all of which drive us to live our lives according to selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, inconsiderate, resentful, and frightened motives. Motives which have left unattended will arouse and engage dangers and life-threatening levels of lust, pride, anger, envy, greed, sloth, and gluttony. We turn into pigs. We want it all. This leaves us very emotionally sensitive so that everything we hear and see we take personal. We don't like criticism. We can't stand to be praised. We don't like to suffer emotionally and will not suffer emotionally alone. We couple this with a brooding perfectionism. We live defensively and guarded in fear of being found out, and because of this we rationalize, minimize, justify, and deny all of our actions by casting blame upon innocent people in a vigorous attempt to avoid detection. Therefore, we're quick to anger, slow to virtue, and we judge and criticize everybody and everything we see. Defiances are outstanding characteristic. Rebellion dogs are every step. This is who and what we are, and we base our reality on these feelings and thoughts. This leads to dis-ease. The mental obsession comes back. We take action. We activate a physical craving of the body. The only solution for this spirituality is steps one through nine. Daily work with the discipline is the steps 10, 11, and 12. There's no other answer. Now, what I did, all those words, this combination of words. I went through the 12 and 12 in the big book, and I found all these different words that describe me. Because at one time or another, every single thing I have read to you, I have been guilty of. And unfortunately, there's times that several of them show up. And I impose them on the world, and the world reacts. So this is how I go back and I look at my first step, my current first step. I'm in my 24th year. Where am I at today with all of this? These questions Dave has are fabulous. Where are you at today? The only reality of your life is your current experience right now as you sit here this evening as you take a look at these questions and get honest with yourself. That's what you're really up against as you sit and look at this. What's exciting about that is if you look at some things, if you see that your disciplines have really slacked off, what a fabulous opportunity to face and be rid of and let God come back in and take you to places you've never been before. Thanks, Mark. I'm Dave Fredrickson. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Dave. And wonderful transition for step one, talking about the characteristics. And those are the characteristics that we're all familiar with. Why do I make sheets up? Why do i do that sort of stuff? Because, I don't want to embarrass people, but I bet you that 50% of the people in this room are big book lawyers. They know what's in the book. We know those words. We're used to those words We're desensitized to those words. Give you an example. Rarely have we seen a person fail a story, follow the path. Those who do not recover, people who cannot, will not give themselves to a simple program. You know the rest of the drill. How often do we listen to what that actually says? It's read so much. I've gotten to the point now where if I'm in a group, can we stop wasting X number of minutes to read that? Because people are talking and nobody's listening. Unless you get somebody who's willing to put the meaning of the emphasis behind the world. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. You can change the inflection of your voice and really put meaning into it. Dramatic pauses, and you watch what happens in a group. People stop. People that were talking even though they've heard it a hundred times, what's that? Now you've got their attention. It changes things. So one of the things that I like to do is hit the steps from a different direction different angle all right for the people that are not big book lawyers there's a couple things that I when I take a newcomer through the work that I need to show them we talk about the physical craving and go through the doctor's opinion we talked about this that the allergy of the body that when you put alcohol in your body sometimes not every not every single time for some alcoholics but there is times that it triggers a physical cravings and that necessitates more drinking. More drinking than you wanted to do at that particular time, all right? So we cover that. One of the other emphasis points that I always make sure is I hit page 12. Does everybody have a big book? Why don't you go to page 12 just so you can make sure. I want to be thorough and don't miss anything. The little squiggly lines about halfway down the page where it says As it was only a matter of being willing to believe in a power greater than myself, nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw the growth start from that point and here's what I want to emphasize. Upon a foundation of complete willingness, I might build who I saw in my friend." Page 12 in Bill's story. Why do I point that out? Because one of the metaphors that Bill Wilson uses is that he builds an arch and when you get to page 75 after you fifth stepped at the bottom of page 75 there's a paragraph there to go home to a quiet hour and it asks you are your stones properly in place if you don't know where the stones are how are you supposed to go and check out and make sure your stones are properly in place this is the foundation back when we get to think it's page 97 it changes from the foundation to the foundation stone all right so here's your first stone it's complete willingness all right page 17 about two-thirds age we're talking about the sinking of the ship all right unlike the feeling of the ships passengers however our joy and escape and disasters in that societies are going to visual ways the feelings of having shared in a common peril is one element of the power powerful and which binds us. Well, if that's only one element, there's got to be a second element. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we haven't discovered the common solution. So the cement for your recovery is half common problem and half common solution That's why they can just not have somebody that knows the problem, they can't help you get sober because all they know is the problem. It takes somebody who's got had the problem and has had the solution that's when you have a message that carries depth and weight all right so one of the when you get to page 75 they start talking about the cement that's what your references is back on page 17 all right page 30 Right in the middle of the page. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. I don't know about you, but I've been in meetings where people have made the statement in the meeting, well, the big book doesn't really say where step one is. I know where step two is and step three and on, but it doesn't show you where step one is, it's right there, I just read it. right what does it say we have to concede to our innermost selves all right part of the problem when you first walk through the door is you're feeling a lot of pain and most of us if you're like me you knew your alcoholic refrigerator came in the rooms about college songs you knew for years that my alcohol consumption had was a problem in my life and it was doing things to me but I just wasn't ready to do anything about it it wasn't that much of a pain and I'll live with it, thank you very much. Right? I was conceding up here in my head. I knew in my hand that I was alcoholic years before I quit drinking. But it wasn't until I had been beaten under the lash of alcoholism and I was sick and tired of being sick and tried that I came into AA for myself. And that's when I would have what I call a two-foot drop from your head to your heart. I conceded to my innermost self in my gut level. That's why when you see newcomers walk into rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and you start talking to them, do you want to quit drinking? and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, I know I'm alcoholic. And they want to jump to step two. No, no, no. That's a concession in your head. A concession has to be in your heart of hearts, your innermost self. If it's not, you know how I like to talk about the source of power, the tantien? Your innermOST self, you have to be convicted in here, in your hart, to have the motivation to bother to finish the inventory, to finish The Nine Step Amends. When they get to the tough sledding, you're not going to finish that work if you had a concussion in your hand because you'll rationalize. Your ego will start to rebuild and one minus one is zero. If your concession up here, when your brain does the math, it'll cancel each other out and you won't be able to stop. You'll half measure it. Does that make sense? All right. Go back to page 16. Halfway down the page there. It says, There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seemingly worthiness and levity, but just underneath there is a deadly earnestness. That's what I'm talking about, is the deadly earnestness we have to concede to our innermost self that I am a walking dead man if I don't deal with this thing. 24 years sober, I am in walking dead man if I live with those characteristics that Mark just brought up. And I want to tell myself, yeah, I know I'm having a lousy day and I'm in a crappy mood, but I got it. I'm okay. Now I don't need to call my sponsor. Thank you very much, honey. I'll be all right. That's the voice that I hear in my head, but where is that voice talking? It's the concession in my hand. It's got to be in my heart of hearts, deep down within me. And here comes one of the most powerful statements in the big book. It's one of The Biggest Lies You'll Hear in Alcoholics Anonymous. We just don't drink 24 hours at a time. Bull hockey. What does the book actually say? faith has to work 24 hours a day in and through us or we perish that means through my core through the center of me is where the faith has how many people in this room have had faith between their ears and they're paralyzed they're just standing there saying I know I should have faith I got faith I really want it but you just you know it's the old story of you know the guy that slips he slips and he falls down the edge of the cliff and it's a long way down and about halfway down he grabs a little snag of a branch and he's bang he's got it and he starts praying real hard oh god oh god help me i need help and his voice appears and the boy says what can i do for you he says god is that you i really need help i can't hold on much longer i need to help what do i do you gotta save me and the voice says let go no no god you don't understand i'm if i let go i'm gonna die i need help here? Let go. And there's a long pause and the guy looks up and he says, is there anybody else up there? That's the deal with us. When our concession is on our head, that's the kind of stuff that'll happen. We'll try to second guess it. When faith is in and through you, it's part of you. It just is. There's no second guessing it. It's there. So when you go to step out in faith, you step out in face. There're no restriction. So if you're one of these people that's in the room and you're wondering about whether you need to be here or whether you have any of those questions going on it's because the concession is in your head and the goal is to get a concession into your heart does that make sense so why these 49 questions all right does everybody have a highlighter that did the 49 questions all right what i want you to do is i want to highlight every single yes that's on your sheet all right why are we highlighting all of the guesses and for those of you that just came in don't worry about it we'll get you the sheets you know there's a whole bunch of sheets that are gonna be coming around and you haven't missed much you'll get to see the magic of this you're just gonna have a little extra homework before tomorrow because just just where it says yes a little Y if the little Y has a circle around it it gets a tag with a highlighter all the way down the sheet and don't worry about the 30 questions I mean the 30 word questions down at the bottom okay there's a purpose for this remember how I said when you're filling out these questions listen to your intuition because when you go to put the circle around now and the little hair stands up in the back of your neck into that split second we want to say yes but you want to circle no and your ego starts to convince you that no is the correct answer, but you just know something's wrong there. If you put down yes, you're going to be busted. So you want a circle of no? Hopefully you have the faith and the guts to circle yes. If it's truly a yes, circle yes because who are you lying to? You're the person that's the walking dead man if you don't finally get down to rigorous honesty. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want to change and grow spiritually. If you're here and you don't want to grow and change spiritually, you're in the wrong place. You know? There's a purpose for why we do what we do. So don't get to the lifeboat and then not climb in the lifeboat. Don't circle no if it's truly a yes. Now that we've circled the yes and we've had the guts to circle yes, we're going to fire the bullet. Once the bullet is out of the barrel, we can't take it back. Once The Highlighter hits that little Y, there's no changing it for the rest of this weekend. The only way to change it is when we have the two-foot drop. Does that make sense? The way you're going to change is through action, not from the power of an eraser. There's no getting out. I just busted you. Homer Simpson moment. Does that makes sense? Now, I'm going to embarrass some people here. It's not my intention to embarrass you. and nobody's counting but it's a moment to be honest all right count up your number of yeses on your sheet spoken like only an alan how current do the yeses have to be if you're asking a question the answer is yes and the other question that some of the women have asked it does chocolate count yes when you got to that question about mood altering food you can alter your mood the answer is yes you know so do bubble baths so flowers I've seen people use all kinds of outside external things for guys don't think I'm picking on the ladies go into the steers you know craftsmen is it altering mood altering event it's one of those words home depot you know yeah that's mood altering for some some guys you know golf yes chasing the little white ball if you're queer from the little White Ball that's not all three you know if there's not a proper balance in your life does that make sense all right by a show of hands this is gonna be killer once again how well