We Agnostics and Step Two – Workshop – Part 3 of 4 – Bill L.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Mike and I am an alcoholic. Hey, Mike. For those that are new, this is our seventh week of this work group. This is not considered an official AA meeting. The only requirement to come here, the only requirement for membership here, is a desire to work the 12 steps out of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. So that means we have a potpourri of afflictions, so to speak. So what we've done for the past six weeks is the first week we just did some introduction stuff. We took a look at the circle and triangle. We went through the table of contents. And we looked through and discussed the preface and the forewords. I believe it was the second week that we started with the doctor's opinion the next week we took a look at Bill's story and there is a solution from there we we looked at chapter 3 more about alcoholism and we wrapped up that chapter last week last week we did a wrapper on step one as we've been going through the weeks we've broken up the third step into three parts we've taken the first part of the first step that you see off the wall we admit it we're powerless over alcohol and that's everything before the dash we've taken that and broken it into two parts the butt the dash the body and the mind we took a look at the body to see how the alcoholic reacts differently to alcohol than normal people, whatever normal is. As Dr. Silkworth says, when a real alcoholic puts any alcohol in his system whatsoever, it sparks off what he called the phenomena of craving, which means I have one or two drinks, and I have to have more. We looked at what we call the second part of the first step as being the mental obsession, how my mind reacts to alcohol or let's say alcoholism. I don't think like a normal social temperate drinker. The book terms it as insanity, the book terms the thought that precedes the first drink as insanity. The lie that I can drink again or the lie that this time it will be different or I can get away with it. Or we don't even think that much at all before we drink and we hit something called a strange mental blank spot or suddenly or even in some cases as we discussed, I believe, a couple weeks ago. Some people in here have had a sober blackout, so that happens too. So insanity is not the crazy, mixed-up, stupid things we did while we were drinking. It's not the loss of marriages. It's Not the crashed cars. It's NOT all those things. Of course, all those thing are insane, But they happen as the result of a chemical, a result of a toxic poison called alcohol. When the big book talks about insanity, it's talking about the thought that precedes the first drink. And then last week we got into, I don't want to say my favorite because I really have no favorites. But I guess just what Bill and I have a lot of current experience with and that's the spiritual malady and personally I like to call that the third part of the first step or if you will, the missing piece the piece that we just don't really hear too much about in meetings you hear about all the symptoms of the spiritual Malady but you don't realy hear a lot or at least I don't hear a lot of what that exactly is what is the crux of the problem And we found out that the crux of the problem is our selfishness and self-centeredness. And we'll find out more about that in step three. But the spiritual malady, if you want to refer to the step on the wall or take a look at page 59, it's anything after the dash that our lives have become unmanageable. So we like to use the term spiritual malady, unmanageability, untreated alcoholism, the root of our troubles. We use all these things interchangeably. And with that, we put a wrapper on the first step. Last week, we discussed a little bit about an exercise that Bill gave out the previous week called the Step 1 Unmanageable Exercise. which everyone who did it had a lot of fun with, including myself. If you need a copy of that, if you're interested in doing that, to see where you are currently with your inward condition with the spiritual malady, either Bill or myself can email it to you. We don't have any extra copies of that do we? No. Okay. So as a method of hope or a method of vision in today's packet, and I'm sure Bill will review the packet later on. In today's packet we have this step two exercise which can take us from the exercise we did in step one and give us some hope and help us build a vision for all those negative things we saw in the first step. We can build a vision for if we didn't have those things in our life, if those things weren't a part of us, what would our lives look like? And we're going to talk a little bit about that in step two. My name is Bill. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bill. Welcome to the people that I know. Why don't we start off with the set-aside prayer? It's on the top of the handout this week. if we could just pause for a few seconds and then we'll say that prayer together as a group just that top paragraph Dear God Please set aside everything I think I know about myself, my disease the big book, the twelve steps the program, the fellowship the people in the fellowship and all spiritual terms especially you God so I may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things please help me see the truth and I don't know if we had I think we had done this once before but that prayer isn't necessarily out of the book verbatim but the parts of the books that point to it are mentioned below also in the handout is, on the next page is this cool thing that I had found called water. I usually open this chapter by reading this but since everybody has it you can read it at your leisure. This is actually the first thing I ever found that I really loved that I started handing out to people. It's gone way too far with the handouts by this point in my life but that's another story. Then on our next page there's two groups of people mentioned in We Agnostics One is on page 52, which is a group of people that are spiritually blocked off. And the first group of People are those that are spiritually connected. So I had thrown this together like a year ago, asking which one more closely describes your current experience. And then the step two exercise that Mike mentioned. For those of you that haven't been here before or didn't do the step one unmanageability exercise, that needs to be done first before you do this, because this builds upon that. This takes those same 15 areas and says okay, now that we're moving towards the second step, if you want God to restore you to sanity, in those 15 areas, what does sanity look like? It's sort of like, in the first step we find out where we are, in the second steps we find OUT where we want to get to and in steps 3 through 12 are how we get there. Again, this builds upon the step 1 on manageability exercise and that step one unmanageability exercise sort of catapults us into step two and that sanity exercise catapult us into step three and that's pretty much it with the packet last week we closed with the first paragraph of We Agnostics and also that one paragraph on page 52 well I guess I assume we'll touch upon it again tonight but the first paragraph I think is the best overview of the first step captured in a couple sentences it says in the preceding chapters you have learned something about alcoholism we hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic And then now is where it does the review. It says, one, if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. And that's because of the obsession. The obsession as well as the spiritual malady which drives us back to the obsession or two, if when drinking you have little control of the amount you take because of a craving then you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer like we'll see later on when we read how it works probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism and this is also pointing to that, that you may be suffering from illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer here we go to one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster especially if if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. And again, as we've been doing for the past six or seven weeks, we take statements in this book and turn them into questions to answer for ourselves. So a good way for this one is, is it possible that if I continue as I am without a spiritual experience, this will mean disaster? and I can ask myself, am I an alcoholic of the hopeless priority? And I believe in Bill's story we found a really good example of an alcoholic or a hopeless priority. So to be doomed an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. But the screwy thing about that is they're the only two we got. we have a buddy named chris and he always says that uh this is door number one and door number two and there ain't no door number three what's interesting too is that the second time he said it was back on page 25 he said that uh we had but two alternatives one was to go on to the bitter end blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could and the other was to accept spiritual help so for me how i like describing that is if you're an alcoholic there's only two directions you can go in either a lot of booze or a lot of God but it isn't so difficult about half our original fellowship were of exactly that type and they're talking about atheists or agnostics at first some of us tried to avoid the issue hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics you know they're trying to avoid the issue of God here. Hoping against hope. Can you imagine hoping against hope? That's like a double negative. But after a while, we had to face the fact that we must, of course there are no musts in AA, we must find a spiritual basis of life or else. I kind of get the picture of when I was a little kid, my father pointing a finger at me, you better do this or else, but I don't think that's what they're trying to do. And, of course, that or else is kind of a little bit of a warning there. And that's also another statement that can be turned into a question. So we believe that we must find a spiritual basis of life. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up. Something like half of us, again, they're saying about 50% of the original fellowship were atheists or agnostics. They had problem with the God thing, so to speak. something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics but our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted or you need to be or you may not be upset if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism many of us would have recovered long ago ask yourself in my past have I had philosophies that I tried to use in my life? Or did I try to live my life by a code of morals, the Ten Commandments, you know, on and on and On and On. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how much we tried. And dare I even say that the 12 steps can also be termed as a code of morals or a better philosophy for life. You know, if they're just sitting up there on the wall shade or if they'RE just sitting in the book, you know, they look like a pretty good set of morals or a pretty good set standards. What I need to be doing with those 12 things is taking the actions. And then I'm just not living, I'm not, there's not just a set of morals and a code of ethics there, it's a way of life. And that's what Alcoholics Anonymous gives us. It's a it's away alive so that we can have a spiritual experience or spiritual awakening and we don't have to think about whiskey and a whole lot of other things in our life the way we once did. We could wish to be moral again, ask yourself these questions. We can wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. That's why I couldn't make, you know, we talked about 52 last week. That's Why I Could Never Make a Happy and Successful Life for Myself. I Could Never Do Any of Those Things that Page 52 Says. You Know, That's why I was full of fear. That's why I suffered from depression and on and on and on because I did not have the needed power. I tried to live my life by willpower, but I didn't have God power. And that's what AA offers us. That's Why the whole God thing is thrown in the middle of the steps or in the beginning of the Steps. Us trying to be good on our own power. Ask yourself if that's worked in the past because I know it never did for me. I always felt on the outside i always felt dishonest and i always felt um fear drove me to do things that i just had no control over but uh you know starting this chapter is basically all about step two and starting at this point is when we need to ask our higher power to come in and help us with this instead of us just doing it on our own our human resources as marshaled or directed by will add one word to that if you don't mind self. So I'll re-read that. Our human resources as directed by our self will were not sufficient. They failed utterly and if you can become convinced of that statement, if you can become convinced that your self will never has is not now and never will be sufficient to live your life and that your self-will has always failed you utterly, then you're going to be in a heck of a lot better position when we get to inventory. If you can start seeing that now, if the hopelessness of step one can catapult you into step two, and see, we said it last week, you can't go from step one to step two in a very good mood, or else why would you want to? Why would you wanna do the rest of the steps if the first step is just about acceptance. If I could just accept my alcoholism, then I would go to AA meeting after AA meeting just accepting my alcoholismo and accepting the fact that I just can't drink. My problem is I need a little bit more than that. And the interesting thing is if you can't accept this fully now, you'll see it fully when you do your fourth step. Lack of power. That was my dilemma. I had to find a power by which I could live, and it had to be a power greater than myself. Notice that power greater than ourselves is in italics, so that's probably pretty important. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this power? And I'm really grateful that this next sentence is here. They never just leave me hanging in this book. It says, well, that's exactly what this book is about. The book's main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. You mean the problem of alcoholism can be solved? You mean any problem in my life today which is usually created by my self-will, which is easily created by the spiritual malady that I suffer from, which comes from my internal condition. You mean to tell me that if I apply spiritual principles to my life that those problems can be solved? Boy, what a great statement of hope that offers. Also notice it doesn't say that it's going to help you solve the problem. It says that this power will solve the problem So that means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral and as far as I can tell, in the context of the big book, every time that Bill Wilson writes the word moral, it just means truth. It just means truth. So this means that we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as truthful. And it means of course that we're going to talk about God. I wish we had the echo effect. Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship and they're giving us some 12 step tips here, what we've been trying to do as we've gone along in these weeks is not only bring each other through the steps because that is the purpose of this work group so that we can all together including Bill and myself have a new experience with all 12 steps together as a group not only have we been trying to take the steps together but we've been trying to point out some of the 12-step tips that that we call um that are interwoven all throughout this book and uh so again it says many times we talk to a new man who watches hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship and of course we do that in the first visit to to a man or a woman but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters and that's why it tells us in in chapter seven working with others that we don't want to exactly get into the the spiritual feature uh right away you know talk to them about the hopelessness of alcoholism talk to them a little bit about your experience give them a bit of a sketch about the fellowship and then you can tell them exactly what happened to you then you can tell them how how by taking a course of action the power and grace of god came into your life and you overcome and you overcame alcoholism but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters especially when we mention god for we have reopened the subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored we know how he feels we have shared his honest doubt and prejudice some of us have been violently anti-religious. To others, the word God brought up a particular idea of God which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a power beyond ourselves with somewhat weak even cowardly so you can see as as we read along in this chapter that they give enough examples to suit every person you know for me i wasn't um i wasnít particularly brought up with any religion uh i was born a protestant and after birth it just about ended right there so it was never really uh impressed upon me it was ever really forced down my throat but I have met a lot of people in the fellowship that they've had the exact opposite experience than I have. And they did have a certain concept of God which was really oppressed upon them in their childhood. So I'm really glad that this book gives all different kinds of examples. We look upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity with deep skepticism. We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could a supreme being have anything to do with it all? And who could comprehend a supreme Being anyhow? Yet in other moments, and I have had this experience, and I had it when I was drinking, yet in other movements we found ourselves thinking when enchanted by a starlit night, who then made all this? There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost. And in my case, that feeling was fleating and soon lost because I just sat out of hell with it and went back inside and got another bottle of Southern Comfort. Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to, one, lay aside prejudice, and two, express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results. Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully defend, fully define or comprehend that power which is God. So I find that statement pretty remarkable. And I just want to break it up into three pieces. that the first thing it's telling me, basically this is just a formula to have an open mind. Lay aside any prejudice. Lay aside any old concepts of God or a higher power that you may have had. Just don't get rid of it. Just temporarily put it aside. The stuff that's needed will come back. The stuffthat's not needed, it'll just drop off. So set that stuff aside and then express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. So it's telling me all I need to have is an open mind and willingness. And then the third piece of this is that it says it's impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power, But then he goes on to define it anyway, and he says, which is God. So for me, and I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but for me the word God today, nine times out of ten I just use it merely for convenience. I'll probably get into this a little bit more as we get deeper into the chapter. But I've gone through all sorts of concepts of God since I've been in AA. And today it's very difficult for me to put a label on any concept. Quite frankly, I don't even know if I have a concept today. I just know that whatever that power is, it exists and it's there. It is. And, you know, as some grumpy old old-timer, I shouldn't say that, as some elder statesman of our fellowship told me when I was very young in our fellowship, the only thing you need to know about God, Mike, is that there is one and you ain't it. You know, and that kind of makes more sense as time goes on. much to our relief we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God and that's wonderful I don't need to believe in the same concept of God that my parents did I don'T need to BELIEVE IN THE SAME CONCEPT OF GOD THAT THE PREACHER TRIED TO IMPRESS UPON ME I DON'T EVEN NEED TO BELieve IN THE SAME CONCECT OF GOD AS MY SPONSOR our own conception however inadequate, is sufficient to make the approach and to affect the contact with Him or with God. So my own conception is good enough. And all I have to do is make an approach and affect the contract. And I love that phrase, affect the content, because I always think about... God knows why I would think about hot wiring a car, but you have two wires. And what happens when, what happens in order for the car to start? What happens in ordered for the electricity to, or the power so to speak, to flow through? You have to affect a contact. You have make a contact and usually what happens is some kind of spark happens when you touch those two wires together. So I need to make some sort of contact with God, even if I don't know what God is. Even if I do not know what I am doing. All I need to do is have a truly open mind and a willingness and some sort of conception, however limited it may be, and give it a try. Say a prayer. That's why we do this set-aside prayer. as soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligent intelligence a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps provided we took steps 3 through 12 and also as we go through this chapter if you're having a hard time as I did, if you're having a hard time with the second step as far as finding your own concept of God this book, and usually he does it in capitalized words this chapter and all throughout the book it gives so many different examples of conceptions of God do you have those handy? don't you usually rattle those off? I didn't hear what you were saying. Just the different conceptions of God, the different names. Yeah, capitalized words. Yeah, I don't have that. Somebody that I know put together all the God references in the big book, but I don' t have it. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. So this is kind of the third piece of the puzzle as far as the requirements to begin spiritual growth. We talked about two of them in the preceding paragraph. Lay aside prejudice, express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. Then they give us the third one. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. So I've got to lay aside prejudice. Have a willingness and earnestly seek God. And then on the top of page 47, they're going to give us the fourth requirement to begin spiritual growth. But to us, the realm of the Spirit, and there's more capitalized words, is broad, roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men and women. Top of 47. When therefore we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies too to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Here's the fourth requirement to begin spiritual growth. Do not let any prejudice or old ideas you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to affect our first conscious relation with God, and that's another way of saying affect the contact, In fact, to affect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him, afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. And that was growth. But if we wished to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So we had use our own conception, however limited it was. And Bill's going to take us through what we call the first second step question. Before I do that, you might notice that he's mentioned the word prejudice a few times. He actually mentions that word on page 45, 46, 47, twice on 48, 49, twice on 51, and again on 55. So obviously he's trying to throw out something. If he keeps repeating it over and over again, it's pretty important that we need to lay aside our prejudice and ask ourselves what do we really believe instead of having old conceptions, sometimes of which don't work for us anymore like i when i came into ai i believed in the you know get even god's going to get me on bad so i'm going in hell kind of god and that just didn't work for me so i needed to scrap everything and start over uh and develop my own concept of a higher power which for me was probably one of the most respectful and considerate things anybody had ever done for me because up until that point my family and my religion told me what i had to believe and if i believe differently i was wrong so uh for for me to come here and be told you can believe whatever you want to believe as long as it's not you for me that was one of the most respectful things anybody had ever done for me and like mike said this is the um the first uh second step question and we'll come back to it when we finish this chapter we need to ask ourselves but one short question do i now believe as in an agnostic or am i even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself as soon as a man can say that he does believe or is willing to belief we emphatically or strongly assure him that he is on his way it has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built and again down at the bottom it says please be sure that you read the spiritual experience appendix back in page 569 so that's the third time that they're driving us back to that appendix it's so important that was great news for us for we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith, which seemed difficult to believe. When people presented us with spiritual approaches, how frequently did we all say, I wish I had what that man has. I'm sure it would work if I could only believe as he believes. But I cannot accept as surely true the many articles of faith which are so plain to him. So it was comforting to learn that we could commence at a simpler level. you might notice there that it's saying that there's a point that we can start at before faith I know throughout my life people had said to me Bill you have to have faith and I would just look at them and say I just don't know what you're talking about and what this is saying is it's sort of a review of the steps actually but I guess 8 years ago now I had lost my license for 4 years and three months. And what's interesting about that is that none of it was for drunk driving, so figure that one out. And when I got my car back, I bought a used car. A couple months later, I started having problems with it. Now, I had moved to an area where I didn't have my license, and now that I have my licence and I have a car, I'm living in an area où I don't know of any mechanics. So I started asking around, I haven't told my car, you know, can you tell me about any good mechanics? And for some reason, these two people that I worked with both mentioned this one guy in Middlesex. His name is John and I highly recommend him. But at that time I didn't know him and I didn' t know anything about him. So in hearing two people who I respected offer this guy as a possible mechanic that I could go to sort of in the first step I saw that I had a problem and I had to do something about it. In the second step I came to believe that somebody could help me In the third step I made a decision to let John help me and then in 4 through 12 I took some actions to bring about getting my car to his shop. He worked on it he finished it before he said that he'd be done with it. It didn't cost more than he told me that it was going to cost. When I got the car back it worked just as good as if not better as before I got it fixed. So now I started with believing that this guy could help me but then after taking some actions and having experience with him, I now had faith that this guy was a good mechanic. So what this is saying we need to start before faith we need to start with a belief. In some cases you'll hear people say, believe that we believe. And again, as long as you're not the power that's a decent place to start. But after making a decision to let that power work with us and then taking some actions to work in that direction then we can have an experience then we'll get results and then we could have faith that this power could help us. So this is saying we need the start at belief first. Besides the seeming inability to accept much on faith We often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. And there's that prejudice again. And if you didn't know, obstinancy is stubbornness. And that's telling us what the blocks are to spiritual growth. Our stubbornness, being sensitive, perhaps to spiritual references or whatever, or not being open-minded to hearing what other people believe, and then unreasoned prejudice again, so those are some warnings. Many of us have been so touchy that even a casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle, which means become agitated with antagonism or hostility. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. So again, we can ask ourselves, am I experiencing a lot of this, especially around spiritual terms and about spirituality? Because this is saying that that in and of itself will block us off from progressing on a spiritual path. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was the great persuader that finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. And notice that it says that alcohol is the great persuader. We as sponsors aren't the great pursuader, the judge isn't the Great Persuader the police isn't The Great Perssuader my boss telling me that if I were to drink again isn't A Great Perspuader that alcohol is the great persuader and that will bring us to a point of surrender and that'll bring us to a place where we can get to a state of powerlessness. Sometimes this was a tedious process. We hope no one else will be as prejudiced for as long as some of us were. Middle of the next page, 49. Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever-advancing creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all rather vain of us wasn't it and of course that's sort of describing the way we play God we who have traveled the dubious or uncertain path beg you to lay aside prejudice even against organized religion we have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions people of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about. Actually we used to have no reasonable conception whatever we used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices but we might have observed that many spiritual minded persons of all races colors and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves and that's another one of those questions or another oneof those sentences in the book that i need to ask myself is this the way my life is do i am i living a stable, happy, and useful life. It's describing a positive spiritual path to grow toward and I need to ask myself, am I moving in that direction? Top of 50. Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance while we are intolerant ourselves and that describes a large part of my life. We miss the reality and the beauty of the forest because we are diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees. We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. So again, we can ask ourselves with that statement, is that the way we're going to live in our life? Now notice what it says here, just like it said back on 29. It says, In our personal stories you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the power which is greater than himself. Whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference. Experience has taught us that these are not matters about which, for our purpose, we need not be worried. There are questions for each individual to settle for himself. On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has, one, gained access to, and two, believes in a power greater than himself. This power has, in each case, accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American statesman put it, let's look at the record. and notice this group of people they're going to describe here it says here are thousands of men and women worldly indeed and I'm going to personalize this because you'll understand as I go through I flatly declare that since I have one come to believe in a power greater than myself which is like step two two to take a certain attitude toward that power which is like step three and three to do certain simple things which is steps four through twelve there have been a revolutionary change in my way of living and thinking in the face of collapse and despair and in the case of total failure of my human resources and they're sort of described in step one there. I found that a new power peace, happiness and sense of direction flowed into me. This happened soon after I wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements again steps one through twelve. Once confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence I showed the underlying reasons why I was making a heavy going of life now again describing step one kind of stuff now leaving aside the drink question so let's disregard the drink question completely let's talk about how I'm living my life I tell why living was so unsatisfactory I show how the change came over me when I am able to say that the consciousness of the presence of God is today the most important fact in my life I present a powerful reason why one should have faith and like the book said many times and like it's going to say many times that's why our fellowship is so important is to carry a message of hope to the new person because we can talk about God all we want but if a new person isn't seeing changes within us and isn't seen us having tools that perhaps the new person can use to work through problems and to get through life and to have a more satisfying way of life we are going to be useless to a new person so we need to relive in this and the fellowship is so important that this is the kind of message that we need to carry to new people let's turn to 52 please right in the middle of page 52 we went over this last week this is one of the better descriptions of the spiritual malady again if you weren't here last week we gave out a whole lot of stuff about the spiritual malady please see one of us after the meeting if you don't have that because it's some pretty powerful stuff and basically what we did was we took out of this book what being spiritually blocked off looks like not only on the outside but also on the inside how it affects us on the inside with how we're feeling. And these are some of the better ones. It says, I had to ask myself why I shouldn't apply my human problems to the same readiness to change my point of view. Here's the spiritual malady descriptions. I was having trouble with personal relationships. I couldn't control my emotional nature. I was a prey to misery and depression. I couldn'T make a living. Now, not only is that work, but that's also our finances and that's all flow of meaning. I had a feeling of uselessness. I was full of fear. I was unhappy. I couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. Was not the basic solution of these bedevilments. And I love how Bill uses words, and he again used a perfect word. Bedevilments means to torment maliciously. This is the stuff that rattles around in us and slowly but surely heads us toward another drink because alcohol helps us with this. And that's why we focus so much on the spiritual malady because the more this kind of stuff is going on the more unmanageable and uncomfortable we are on the inside the more drinking is going to become an option because alcohol helps us with this but the steps can create a way of life where these conditions aren't existing to any kind of large extent within us we're comfortable within ourselves we're not looking to drink alcohol because we like how we feel on the outside and we don't want to change that it says well that was not the basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether We should see newsreel as a lunar fight. Of course it was. So, again, last week we took a look at these eight different areas and if you had the spiritual malady exercise, it was actually a total of 15 areas. But that's for step one. How can we use this paragraph now for step two? Let me walk us through that real quick. If we weren't having trouble with personal relationships, what would that look like? If we could control our emotional natures, or better yet, had a power greater than ourselves that comes from within us that does that for us, what would that look like? What would it look like if I wasn't subjected to misery and depression anymore? What would It look like if I could make a happy and successful life? What would it look like if I had a feeling of usefulness rather than uselessness? What would It look like If I didn't have fear? What would I look like, If I was happy? And what would It Look like, That If I really could finally in my life seem to be of real help to other people? and this is what we get to do in the second step exercise that Bill touched on before in the handout is we get to build a vision we can do that in step two we get to build a vision for our lives and the way that vision can manifest for us is by three through twelve we have a description of the problem in step one step two gives us a description of the solution. Step one, we see how our lives are unmanageable and we see all the negative things so to speak. With step two, we get to build a vision of if we didn't have those negative things in our life and if we weren't powerless and if we had power how would our lives look like? How would our internal condition be? And thank God we have ten more steps that enables us to carry out that vision. The cool thing that I like about the Step 2 exercise is that after we come up with the vision and the ideal of what would it look like if we were moving away from all those things that we just read, at the bottom of the Step 3 exercise there's something that's really key and it asks a question that are we able on our own power without God's help to bring about this ideal that we now just wrote down, which would be our ideal for all those 15 areas that the big book talks about when we're spiritually blocked off? Are we capable on our own power to head in the direction of that ideal, that sanity ideal of what those areas would look like? And again, I really like that because then it catapults us into realizing, you know what, if I was capable of bringing about that ideal it would already be in my life and since it's not I do need to find a higher power to help me with this and again it catapults us into the third step to make a decision to head toward that power by working steps 4 through 12 when we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe we had to stop doubting the power of God our ideas did not work but the God idea did if you would skip over to the middle of page 53 and this is what we like to call the second second step question or proposition or choice. When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade. We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What was our choice to be? So, possibly for those who maybe still struggle with this idea of God, let me just change a word around in this paragraph and see if you can find a newfound willingness. When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis, we could not postpone or evade. We had to fearlessly face the proposition that living by spiritual principles is going to be everything or else nothing. Living by spiritual principals either is the solution or it isn't. What is our choice going to do? Arrived at this point, we were... And again, we're going to come back to that question when we do a wrapper on this chapter. arrived at this point we were squarely confronted with the question of faith we couldn't duck the issue some of us had already walked far over the bridge of reason towards the desire shore of faith the outline and the promise of the new land had brought had brought excuse me brought lust to tired eyes and fresh courage to lagging spirits friendly hands that stretched out in welcome We were grateful that reason had brought us so far, but somehow we couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support. That was natural, but let us think a little more closely. Without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? Did we not have faith and reliance upon alcohol? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, objectionably faithful to the God of reason. So in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time. Should we skip? Okay. First full paragraph on 55, three lines down. Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't true. Again, that's why the fellowship is so important. They need to be seeing people like that. That God made these things possible. So finally they're going to tell us exactly where to find this idea of God. Actually we are fooling ourselves for deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of god. It may be obscured or blocked by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things by resentments, by fears by harms we do to others by inappropriate sexual conduct or just inappropriate conduct in general but in some form or other it was there this fundamental idea of God is there always has been and always was I've come to see it as my true inner nature what I was before I was even born and what I've always been that fundamental idea has always been there my problem is that I've always blocked it out through those things that I just mentioned and thank God Alcoholics Anonymous gives an inventory where we can see the ways that we block God out and then the fifth step it begins in the fourth step but really in the fifth stop we begin to cast those things out We begin to slowly, slowly clear away those blocks. And then on through 6 and 7, which clears a little bit more. And on through 8 and 9, which clears it more. And we come to that even keel. And then through 10, 11, and 12, we can keep the blocks from coming back. Beautiful process we have in these 12 steps. And it's interesting, too, because we all have experienced that inner voice that we all have. Some people call it the conscience or your inner guide or whatever. I know there were times that a part of me was saying, Bill, you know, I don't think it's a good idea that you take that and, you know, Bill maybe help that lady across the street or, you know, and sometimes I listen to it and sometimes I don t. And when I listen to it my life is inevitably really wonderful and when i don't listen to it it's usually the reason why i get into trouble uh so deep down within us we have that peace that's within us that sometimes we just don't look at much and it's almost like the more we listen to it the stronger it gets and the easier it is to recognize it and it almost seems like the more that we blow it off the kind of weaker it getsand it never dies out it never goes away it's always there but you know uh 10 years ago i could do something that it wouldn't affect me on the inside but today if i was to do that same thing it would rip me apart because my conscience and my my um my mind would just beat me up inevitably you know what i mean and it's interesting how it never really ever went away but now that i try to listen to it more and more the stronger it is and the easier it is for me to uh you know realize that that's what's speaking to me on the inside and the eager it is from me to head in a certain direction which is what the steps are all continuing on for faith in a power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself, that's why the stories in the back of the book are so important they tell exactly how people have recovered from alcoholism especially the stories in their early pioneer section through a spiritual experience or through a spiritual awakening That's a demonstration of the power in our human lives. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our makeup, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Now if you remember back on page 45, they told us that we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. obviously and then it goes on to say but where and how were we to find this power and now in this in this next sentence the next two sentences actually they tell us exactly how and where so the point that they touched on on page 45 10 pages later they answer it for us so sometimes we had to search fearlessly, and that's how. That's how we're going to find the power, by searching fearlessly. But he was there. He or God was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality capital G, capital R, and this is where deep down within us in the last analysis it is only there that God may be found. It was so with us. we can only clear the ground a bit if our testimony helps one, sweep away prejudice two, enables you to think honestly and encourages you to three, search diligently within yourself then if you wish you can join us on the broad highway with this attitude and what attitude are they talking about well they're talking about having an attitude of sweeping away prejudice, thinking honestly and having the willingness to search diligently within yourself. So with those three pieces of the puzzle, with that attitude, you cannot fail. You cannot fail in this process. The paragraph before that it ends with in the last analysis and is only there where he may be found, Bill knew us self-centered alcoholics pretty well that he knew that we looked everywhere else outside of us. Drugs, alcohol, sex, jobs, money, possessions. we always looked outside of ourselves to fill that hole that was lacking within us but only when we seek within do we then find the answer that we're actually looking for the consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you and then if you turn to page 57 what we just skipped over here is a gentleman's spiritual experience you might want to read it but we just we're pretty much out of time so let's go to the end it says what is this but a miracle of healing the first full paragraph of 57 yet its elements are simple circumstances made him willing to believe steps 1 and 2 he humbly offered himself to his maker step 3 and then he knew even so has God restored us all to our right minds to this man the revelation was sudden he had a spiritual experience some of us grow into it more slowly as in a spiritual awakening but he has come to all who have honestly sought him when we draw near to him then he discloses himself to us God gives us free will we can do whatever we want to do but as soon as we take that half a step toward wanting to get to know our higher power better he then discloses themselves to us and I always like saying that the way that we draw closer to our higher powers through prayer and doing his will and the way he disclosed himself to us is through meditation and through others so for me that's a really incredible promise there as well. So I guess let's go back and do the two questions together as a group. The first one is in the middle of page 47. Page 47. Sorry about that. Commercial break. It says, do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? Why don't we take a few seconds and think about that. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to say one, two, three, and then we can all answer together as a group. So again, do we now believe or are we even willing to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves? One, 1, 2, 3. Yes. Okay, and then the next one is in the middle of page 53. Now what I also should have said for that first question there, which I guess I just kind of blew it, but ask yourselves if you agree with this too. This is actually a statement that can be used with the first second step question for those of us that are already on the path or for those that are going through the steps perhaps once or more in other times. This is the question. This is how this question, because at that point we believe, so what's sort of a deeper level of the step two question? What's a deeper spiritual essence of the steps two question and this is how it goes. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself that can take me beyond where I am now in every area of my life, past here, past the experience I've already had? Do I believe that there are realms of peace, love, freedom, happiness, existence, understanding, wisdom and power that I cannot even imagine so that's sort of the deeper essence of the second step question that we can ask ourselves for those of us that are already on the path and then again on page 53 it says when I became an alcoholic crushed by a self imposed crisis I could not postpone or evade notice that says self imposed later on it also tells us that alcohol is not our problem self centeredness is our problem it says I had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing God either is or he isn't what was my choice to be so something that I always like about that question is inevitably and I've never got anybody to disagree with me and I'd like you all to think about it for a second I'd love to I'd also like to suggest that every area in our life that we have not included God or have not said, in this area of my life God is everything and I'm going to live my life that way. That those are the areas that we don't do that are the areas where we're having problems. That all the areas that we say, God is every thing in my work, I'm gonna be honest, I wanna be loving, I want to be unselfish I wanna have pure motivations that those areas of our life are going really well. And the areas of her life that we're not willing to include our power are the areas were we have problems. So let's think about this for a few seconds and then I'll ask us to answer a question after one, two, and three. Are we willing to fearlessly face the proposition that God is everything or He is nothing? That either God is or He isn't in all areas of our life. What is our choice to be? Okay, so again are we willing to face the proposition that God is everything or he is nothing in all areas of our life 1, 2, 3 yes so again we can use that statement as a tool when we do our second step exercise that if this were to manifest if God is everything in every area of my life, or if spiritual living, or if a spiritual solution is everything in every area of My life, what would that look like? Now in some cases we're going to absolutely have no comprehension of what that could look like. And this isn't an exercise to be like a self-fulfilled prophecy or anything like that. It's just trying to build us some vision because the 10th step talks a lot about vision, and Bill and I have found it very useful that if we can start here, especially since we had been through the steps a few times, we found this a really useful tool. One thing I'd just like to touch on about the page 47 question again, Bill said that do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself which can take me past here, which can take me passed every area of my life. You don't have to raise your hand but how many people in this room have been sober for a while or if you have another affliction have been abstinent for a While but you're having problems with something else. My case I had been off of booze for a few years but I was having problems in other areas of my life in the areas of overeating in the áreas of sexual conduct you know internet pornography we especially the men we drunks are good for that kind of stuff you know the list can go on and on spending money I don't necessarily have can God and spiritual living which manifest the power of God in my life can that power take me past those areas too see today I know God works for alcohol what about everything else we're not looking at a perfect world here we're never looking at perfect lives but is it possible that there is some power that can treat that inward unmanageability that causes the outward unmanangeability in my life. So maybe that's something to not only think about tonight, but maybe during the next week as you do the second step exercise. Can we get him to talk about it next time? Sure. Absolutely. For anyone that's new here tonight, hasn't been here before, the meeting typically goes for 90 minutes. Bill and I usually share for an hour, and then we open it up to you guys for a half hour. We start at about five minutes late, so we can go to five or ten minutes after the hour, however you guys want to do it. Do you have anything you want to add? you know with the the second step exercise uh i mean don't get us wrong i mean with our limited finite minds we're going to try to come up with an ideal but believe me god's idea for sanity those areas could be a whole lot different than whatever ours is going to be yeah but it's just good to have sort of an ideal to go toward and then as time passes sometimes that ideal changes somewhat uh and you know i've i remember working with somebody who was a musician and he was afraid to turn his role in his life over to god because he was afraid that god will not want him to play music anymore and all i could say to this gentleman was why would god give you a passion and an incredible ability for something and then not want you to share that with his other children so um you know sometimes we just have this hole-in-the-donut attitude toward what happens when I turn my role in my life over to God. And, you know, I heard this gentleman say this once that, you Know, what God has in mind for me is better than anything I'll ever have in mind from me. And that's my concept of a higher power. And that' s what I believe. And that''s where my faith has brought me. And that ''s how I look at all of this. So when we get together next week, having completed our second step exercises we'll get into step three. It's amazing how after six or seven after being on the first step for six weeks we're finally starting to progress along and I think that says something for the necessity to really have a grasp of the first step We'll go through the third step next week we have yet again another exercise which I think you guys will find really neat and then the week after that we'll get in the inventory so at this point we'll shut off the tape and open up the meeting for discussion thanks for letting us share