Why the Big Book Is a Menu and Not the Meal – Bob B.

I feel like I'm in jail, right? And the subject this morning has changed, which is kind of an intimidating subject. I really was going to kind of get into it, and then I saw my wife come in the room. Which always kind of makes you see things a little differently. I don't know why that is, you know. And do it. I assume what most of us mean by change or at least what comes to my mind when I think of change are things that I'd like to do in my life that would improve my life and get rid of some things that don't work in my live as Dick said, change is inexorable if I wonder if there's any change I just have to look in a mirror I have a son who looks so much like me as a young man you could take my swimming picture from high school and you could almost not tell the difference between the two of us. And I go by Amir, and I think, what have you done to yourself? Where are you, and what have your done? So change is inexorable. And I'm going to kind of talk back and forth in kind of two different ways because I'm kind of schizoid on it. I feel like I have made enormous changes in Alcoholics Anonymous, and in other ways I feel Like I Have Made None. Very early on when I was sober, we had Chuck C who was a well known member of AA from California and he was a hero of mine and a man who communicated in ways that really attracted me and we were one of the things he would do often when he was after conferences he would kind of hold court. He would find a big hotel room or something and you know people would just grab a chair and people would hang out and listen to him expound I don't know how sober I was but it was 7 or 8 or 9 years before I had my second kind of come to Jesus spiritual awakening and he looked down at me and I was sitting down right in front of him and he said son you're not going anywhere, you already are everything you're ever going to be and he says I can tell you're kind of disappointed by that and not only was I disappointed I didn't understand it but today I understand it I think what I am is closer to home I feel like I have been on a journey to come home to be who I more truly am and I have discarded some things that I picked up along the way that were not essential to the trip and actually interfered with the trip And I often want to look at that. It seems like change. And there was an old spiritualist from the 12th century that said the process of finding God is more a process of subtraction than of addition. And I know when most of my people that I'm fortunate enough to work with in the program, they usually come over to my house or coffee, wherever we're having it, and they dump, you know, a situation or something that's going on. And every once in a while I tell them, okay, quiet, it's enough, close your eyes, pretend that I came to your house and just told you for the last half hour what you just told me. Tell me what to do. They always know. No, but we have a place that knows. okay they always know we always know but we don't often do it okay but the question they always ask is what do I do okay the question is what Do I do it's always the question at the end you know or you go give an AA talk to people like the AA talk the people who want a corny afterwards and sit down and say this is my situation what do i do and one of the things that I have a sense of over a period of time is that change, as we talk about it in the program, as we're talking about what I think is maybe growth, is not about doing. It's about an alteration in being. And when you have an altercation in being, what you do automatically changes. It kind of like most of us want to have the things other people have, so we want to do the things that other people do so that we can be okay. Well, it's the other way around. You have to kind of be okay to do things that others do other people do to have the things other people have we are going upstream you know where we got our hand over the end of the hose trying to push the water back in and it takes a while to find out there's a nozzle on the other end it goes so we're gonna talk about change I had when I came to alcoholics anonymous I think my first blush was one of great excitement that I found a group of people who understood more about me than any group that I had ever run into before. I'd been to therapy, I'd be to psychiatrists, I've been to people who have tried to help me. I never ran into anybody who understood me as much from the get-go as the people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I've never felt as comfortable. I've ever known more about who I am and what I'm about than when I'm in the room of Alcoholic Anonymous So I was really excited that if I were to do the things that we do in AA that my life would finally come in order because I was kind of the family problem. I was the kid who looked like I was pretty well equipped, but I could only do good or brilliant things for short periods of time. I didn't seem to be able to sustain it. I didn' t seem to able to do some of the things that other people did like work or other things. Sustained effort over a long period of time, I couldn' t do what mature people did for sure. You know, I could do quick things. I was quick. But I think without knowing it, I had an expectation. You make up your mind as to what you think alcoholism is. You make it up to how you think it impacts your life. You make a list without even necessarily making a list of what you think needs to happen in relatively short order for you to be okay. Almost all of those things happened to me in relatively short order in the program about over the first couple of years but you know but then when you get that out of the way you look around your program becomes more daily people are paying less attention to you and you look around say this is not enough this is okay now you have actually accomplished quite a bit you have you know stop drinking which is no small deal okay we talk about change linear or transformational most of us in this room have maybe the most profound example of change that we could have, our sobriety. I mean, if we want to know how to change, we have experienced and lived and done one of the most profound changes that I think can happen to a human being. Why can't we just repeat that? Why can'T we just go, oh, I know what I did. I made one ofthe largest changes in my life, but I'm having a problem with smoking, which I have, or spending money too much, which I have, or name a list. Why can't we just snap our fingers and go do that? Well, one of the reasons I think we can't just snap our fingers and do it is I think that kind of change is of God. It's not just a linear change. It is not just a mechanical change. If the program were mechanical, all we would have to do is say the third step prayer, click our heels, and we'd be back in Kansas. I mean, really. If truly, if it were mechanical we would just go ABC. You know, I'm powerless. I can't do it. I think a God can. Gee, I'll ask God and then I'll be okay. And today with all the teaching around the program, as our fellowship has grown, we've become more didactic. We have more formal teachings. We've got hundreds of tapes on the steps and hundreds of people who go through the process. And people who are far more expert on the big book than I have ever, you know, certainly in my early sobriety, there are people who really have the big book down. They know it and can do it. Most of us, even if we know the book pretty well, have trouble living it. But you can get pretty familiar with 164 pages. And there are people who say that's the only book you ever have to read. I'm glad our founders didn't feel that way. I think we probably wouldn't have been able to write the book they wrote or be who they were afterwards. As I look at their libraries before and after sobriety, they were searchers throughout their entire lives. They were people who, and the good news is, is true things do not conflict. I don't think, you know, I wouldn't send out new people in search of other literature. I really think, it ain't a period of time. But in middle sobriete, there's all sorts of wonderful things that I think broaden our scope and give us something new. I think one of the things that happens with everybody is we take the power of the experience of the surrender that we had in Alcoholics Anonymous, us. And what happens to all of us, it gets reduced to conceptual memory. You know, I am a Catholic. You know Peter lived with Christ for three years and the first time his ass gets in trouble he denies him. Now he lived with someone who we would, many of us would call God for three years and then when they you know had trouble when they were going to go crucify Christ he denied him. Paul gets knocked off his ass in Damascus and has a spiritual awakening and later writes, why do I do the things I don't want to do? And why can't I do the things they want to? You know, these are people who've been touched by miracles and subsequently have had trouble operating their lives the way they want operate. So it seems fairly obvious to me that first of all, we will never get to a point where we do not have difficulties. We will never get to a point where we do not have frailty. We will never be totally problem-free, so I want to start with that premise, and I need to start without promise for myself. Number two, many of the profound changes that happen in our lives have an enormous spiritual dimension. It is not mechanical. It is just something you can snap your fingers. It's not just something you can ask someone else what they did and go, oh, I'm going to go do that, because there has to be an alteration in how you be before you can go do that. Because the steps are spiritual in nature, because they are of God, first of all, you can't totally contain them nor describe them. Now we can point to them, but as one wise man said, when the master points to the moon, all the idiot seizes his finger. And that's what I think people do with the big book. The big book points to some powerful things. They always say, read the black part. Well, sometimes that's simplistic. There is power in those steps beyond the words. There's a new experience every time you read the words. I don't think it's just in the black parts. If I could memorize just the black part and go do it, I'd be, you know, I have a little bit more trouble than that. So change is, so what if change happened as a result of raising our consciousness? as a result of being more awake than anything else. Now, most of my time I've had a sense of change as being a process of resistance. Frank talked a little bit about the kind of conservative Catholicism approach. A lot of our thing is offer it up, do sacrifice, resist it, resist temptation. I have not ever been very good at resisting temptation. I have an attraction to temptation that is significant. But I think early in our walk, you do have to resist temptation. I think earlier in the walk, you do need to resist it. You do have things that are mechanical. You can't wait until you have the spiritual growth to be able to look elsewhere. I think all of us when we're babies, and Don Gates talked about that the other night, We have to act like children and get the fundamentals in place and do the meetings and read the book and study the steps, take the steps at whatever level you are. I'm still taking the same steps of 34 years of sobriety that I took when I was one year sober. I have a different experience of them. I have an different relationship with them than I did when I was one years sober. But they're the same spiritual exercises that they were when I Was One Year Sober. So you have to build a foundation and you have to go, but it is not simple. It is simple, but not simplistic. It is profound, it is deep, it is simple but not simplistic. It is not as much about doing as it is about alteration and being. When you go then to take the steps, when you go then when you want to change, you have to bring something to that process that I think is beyond the obvious. You have to brings a kind of integrity, a kind of honesty, a kind of humility a kind OF openness so it can a type of vulnerability I mean if you wanted Chamberlain again one time he was asked to give a talk at the Peachford conference or whatever it was. It was a symposium of all the experts in the field of alcoholism and Chuck didn't very often do things that were outside of AA but the man who ran the conference was an AA doctor and asked Chuck to talk and Chuck was discussing it and I happened to be at another conference he was at about three or four months later, and people asked him, Chuck, what did you think of that conference about all the experts on alcoholism? And as he sometimes could do in about one sentence, he brought it all together. He said they don't know much about surrender. If you wanted one word, if you wanted access for people to the power and strength that's in the program, all you'd have them do is surrender. They They wouldn't have to resist the change. They wouldn'T have to do anything. All they had to do was surrender. When they surrender, they're declaring. When they're clearing, they are connected with their inner being. They're connected with God. They're connecting with who they really are. There wouldn't be any problem, okay? But how do you tell someone to surrender? Every one of us in this room has had that experience. But how to describe it or how do You give the directions to someone to how to do it? It is of God. It is beyond words. you can talk around it and some of us every once in a while have the gift when you're actually talking to a sponsee where you say some things that you really didn't know you were going to say where they're really right on and you have no memory of ever having used those words before. They just kind of came through you rather than anything else. So surrender is for lack of any other word what I would like to have available to me if I were to want to take a different direction or to have a change take place in my life or to have another patch of growth that I have but again I want to say you can't just snap your fingers and surrender many of us I think in this room from time to time have tried to do that and have had trouble doing it so In a more human way, change is a process of maybe resistance. Change is a practice of identification. It takes us a while to wake up. I believe that life is a school. My teacher tells me life is the school. He says that the subject is love and that the more loving we become, eventually if your program is working and what you are doing, you are moving towards God, you are going to be loved. You are moving toward love. that the universe will present to you your unworkability. So the universe and God will present to you what isn't OK and doesn't work in your life. Now, most of us do not experience conflict as the universe and God presenting to us what doesn't work. We view it as difficult people. We view it as crappy circumstances. We view it as how the heck did I pick this person to spend all this time with? We view it as if God wanted to get a couple of serious messages to me about my life, where would he start? One of the bad news is probably my wife. One of the places I am most likely to get information about what I need to do in my life is my spouse. It's the person I spend the most time with. It's a person I end up in conflict with more often than not. How about your children? You know, don't like that one either. But I mean, you know, but when I'm in conflict with my children because they're one stage down the food chain from my wife, I can dismiss them more readily Because they are, they seem one more level down even though they are part of me. Your employer, your brothers and sisters, your mom and dad, the message of the universe comes through in conflict. The message ofthe universe comes through relationship. Everything that happens in our life happens in relationship. There is no other place for things to happen in relationship with your work, relationship with your family, relationship with your spouse, relationship with your significant other, with your kids. There is nothing else other than relationship. I get a big kick out of these people who say, go to Al-Anon for relationship. It's like saying, I go to Elanon for air. You know, I mean, there is life is, I think, fundamentally relationship. So earlier on in our recovery and some of the times when I'm not as awake, change seems mechanical, that I need to identify what's not working in my life, put it on a list, start to resist it or develop counter habits, you know, that would help strengthen something new and weaken something old and get about the process of change. There's a man I've talked about and he describes change. One of the things you have to do is raise your consciousness. You have to first of all tell the truth about it. What is the first thing we do in Alcoholics Anonymous when we go about the change of recovery? We tell the truth about our situation, that we're powerless over alcohol, that our lives are unmanageable. Sometimes we don't talk about it like that. There's a power in truth. You know, they say the truth will set you free. Well, first it will piss you off. But there is a power and truth such that when you speak the truth, My name's Bob. I'm an alcoholic for the first time. Not a small deal. When you speak that truth, maybe it changes you. Maybe just standing naked in front of your alcoholism and speaking those words alters you. Just that power of truth. But if it isn't maintained, it devolves into a memory, into a concept, into an idea. Oh yeah, I remember that. I remember taking step one. Let me tell you what I did. and then you describe what you did but it's like describing there's plenty of people in the program to me that have memorized the menu that are starving to death the 164 pages is the menu but not everybody is able to feast on what is there memorizing the menu does not bring nutrition to you so So for many of us in the early stages, maybe change starts with resistance. Maybe change starts mit telling the truth. When you raise it in your consciousness, once you can see it, what you can't see and what you cannot be with manages you. What you can be with, you can start to manage. So until you had your alcoholism, it managed you. Once you had your alcoholism, you could then do things that would help you manage that illness. But until you had it, until you saw it, until it was raised in your consciousness, you had absolutely no ability to do much with it. So you have to raise it in your conscience. Then you have direct your intention. Now you've directed your attention. You have to direct your intention and your will towards that. and then you can start to see some change take place. One of the things I do when I'm working with a sponsor who wants to make some of those changes, I often ask him to pick one or two other people and tell them what he's going to do, okay? He doesn't have to announce it at a meeting, but just, you know, pick one atauther people, tell the truth to them, tell themwhat's going on. And when I told the truth about my gambling, rather than a guy who liked to gamble, I told someone I was a chronic gambler. you know I had not until those were I don't believe I had expressed those words I'd always you know I never really considered myself to be that but in the last analysis as I traveled my 34 years down the path I think change is more a process that there isn't much to do that the process is one more of waking up if you take a look at it right now for many of us, using is not very tempting if we're significantly implanted in our recovery. Now that's pretty unusual for it not to be. Why? Because we've left it. We've left it.We saw it for what it was and we left it .Why don't I do some of the things that I used to do in my early recovery or in my alcoholism? They don't work. They just don't work. I can't do them. Maybe I can get myself to do it, but I canít do it on a regular basis. It doesnít work for me to do it. You have awakened me. Iím more awake. Why canít I strike my children? You know, I still have an issue with anger because Iím more awake. Okay? I mean, you know, I still have some of the same weaknesses and tendencies I have, but Iím not as dominated by ñ and if life is a school and if the subject is love. What most of us have done unwittingly is we've gathered a toolbox throughout life. You know, when you're born, they issue you this little wooden toolbox and it gets bigger as you get older. What many of us do is we show up in life when we're 25 years old and we have a toolbox just chock full of hammers. And if your only tool's a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You know, I mean, we use it when we're working on the car. We use it while we're connecting the hose. We use them when we work, you know. And we have big hammers and little hammers, different kinds of claws, you know, different. I mean it isn't like we don't have, you know, different ones that we use for this and different ones that we used for that. But it is, the truth is that many of us, one of the reasons changes are difficult is that some of the techniques we have used, and I'll use anger as an example. I used anger fairly regularly. Anger was more a problem for me in my parenting. It was really fascinating to me. My middle boy and I went and did some work with a psychologist on anger because my middle boy was starting to treat our younger boy like I treated my middle boy, and watching the crap roll downhill was not very attractive, so Peter and I decided to go do some work. And the man looked at me, and he said, I bet you weren't very angry until you became a parent. I looked at that. I was never an angry kid. I never had issues like that. It was not a word I would have used to describe myself up through my 20s. I was just more or less a pretty happy-go-lucky guy. Now, my father, who was my hero and a wonderful man who had the same relationship with his father that later on I did not, was fairly physical, fairly loud, fairly intimidating. And when I got to be the father of my children, I took a hard disk off the shelf called parenting and plugged it in my computer. It had never been in the computer before. It was on the shelf. And when i booted it up, all of a sudden my old man started to jump out of my mouth. Now, I'm not giving my father responsibility for my behavior. I'm just telling you a phenomenon in human living. We are conditioned, okay? The people, I mean, we are conditioned. We are commissioned by the people in our family, strongly conditioned. We swim on our parents, okay, so all of a sudden I was using the same technique just reversing roles with my child, and later on my child was using the same technology with his younger brother, and I thought if I had the opportunity to impede the process of alcoholism through my family, maybe I'd have the process to impede the progress of rage through my family. And it was a fascinating insight for me because it was invisible to me that I had that kind of conditioning. I always considered myself to be kind of an aware guy, and I was totally unaware of that. So many of us have conditionings that we are really unaware of. We are unaware that we have toolbox full of hammers, that that's what we use. All of us has a certain come from, a certain thing we go to when things get tough. Now, that may not work. We may have made that one up in third grade. We may have decided in third grade when the coast told us that we were lousy at this, that we never were going to be on a team again and we've had this issue going on in our lives and we're now 55 years old and we still don't want to be in a team. We don't wanna be in front of other people having someone point out something that's negative about it. We don' t have any idea where the hell that comes from. But it could be a decision you made when you were nine years old. This is not who we are. This is part of the package we made to make the trip. We have, this is a Chevrolet. We've gotten new tires and we've polished that thing up and we have new chrome bumpers and wehave 27 paint jobs on it and a new antenna and all this stuff but we are the driver. We've been presenting the Chevy as the package all the way. We're going up and down the strip looking for girls and the Chevy is the, we're the Chevy. Uh-uh, we'RE the driver and the drivers are far more the same than different. There are very few things that distinguish the drivers. There's lots of things that distinguish the package. There's lot of things to distinguish the car. And we are far less different from non-alcoholic human beings than we like to think we are in the program also. We think we're so unique it's as much the reaction we have that is unique and the physiology that we have is unique. So for me what I've discovered over this period of time is that if I continue to try to the the best of my limited ability to take these spiritual principles and put them in action in my life. That process will help me grow. And if I try to stay awake, which is one of the things that I try to do, I really try to listen. It's hard sometimes to listen to your wife. It's harder sometimes to hear from your wife than it is to hear from your children. It's also hard sometimes listening to your partner. But if I stay awake and I listen to those conflicts as the world telling me something is not working and that is the message that conflict brings. It's not working. We don't want that message. We know it's not work because I'm having this interaction with that patoot. And many times there is our issue with the person you're having the interaction with but eventually that isn't important. The fact is that the stability is that you have this problem. The problems that I have in relationships are not new They're problems I've had all my life. If I was, if I had a magic wand and were able to literally remove every financial and social issue that everybody had in this room and you went back out and we met 10 years later, you would have recreated them. You would have. if i was able to resolve every issue that is going on in this room financially and socially snap my fingers and they're gone and we met 10 years from now you would have recreated them because you have the same machine you have same toolbox okay so So, and there's a lot of fear in change because we so identify with the toolbox and the Chevrolet is who we are. And when you go to change who you are, you have to, like, kill part of it. Let's throw this away, you know. That's pretty hard to do. So what I want to say and remind myself of and remind us of is change is not changing muscle and bone. It is just behavior. It isn't who we Are is what we do. And that as we go through the process of using the steps and helping each other in this program and growing spiritually, we become more awake. As we become moral wake, we see things differently. As we see them differently, we seize them for what they are. For those of us that are old enough to sponsor people, you bring people in there and they bring you their treasure. You know, their treasure may be pornography. Their treasure may gambling. Their treasure maybe their car. Their treasure may be, but it's a turd. It's a turd wrapped in gold tinfoil. And you can look at someone else's treasure and you can see what it is. But we cannot see that about our own. We don't see that above our own because it's ours. It's my turd! No, but it's fascinating. You look at someone else's because it isn't your temptation, because it isn't their treasure. You wonder why that person would hang on so deeply to something that causes so much mischief in their life. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. You're looking at it and you say, oh, that's just nuts. Okay? Well, there's someone further down the road that can take a look at some of the trinkets we hang onto that, you know, say, it doesn't make any sens. You are such a wonderful person. Why do you carry those little hand grenade with the pins out go put you know go put the pins back in you know so maybe the process is simply one of growth maybe it's one of becoming more awake and as you become more awake you literally just abandon the pieces of unworkability as you travel they just literally like fall off and then what the reason that you know and asyou go further along the journey more that you lose more of the unworkability. And I really think that in some ways that is the process of change, the process to waking up. Feeney. So we have 20 minutes or 25 minutes, something like that. This is a workshop. About a half hour. This is the workshop and if anybody has any questions or comments I will try to relate them through the microphone. Is that how you want it done, Dick? Sure. Okay. Anybody? Yes, sir. Well, when you were mentioning that you were able to solve all the financial and social problems that we created in 10 years, that is pretty small of a thing that we didn't change. We didn't do anything about it. Because most of us don't think the problem – are you – is that a statement with a question? I'm asking. Yeah, I'm going to ask. Sure. because most of us view the problems as the circumstances. I mean, most of Us came here, all we wanted was $10,000 and a new wife. I mean there was really, you know, we did not get it. We did not get it, okay? So most of US are dealing with things in our lives like their circumstances. I got a financial problem. I got money problem. I've got a wife problem. I've Got a spouse problem. We view it as it, disconnected, separate, describable as a thing. And I'm saying, ah, it's your creation. It was created in the space of your being. And if you don't do anything to alter how you be, you will go plant that seed again and grow that crop. His question was, if I had the power to, as I said, just to take away all the financial and social issues of everybody in this room, and then we met 10 years later and we came back, I said you'd recreate the same problems. He said, well, if you took them away, then you're presupposing we didn't change well I'm saying if I just take them away and nothing else changes which is what I presuppose that we had the same tool kit okay we will recreate the same things I mean money I had financial problems when I made 20 grand a year I had potential problems when I made 300,000 dollars a year it was more disguised okay but same issues What's your name? Would you leave? Tom asked when I gave my talk earlier, I talked a little more about some of the unmanageability in my sobriety and Tom said I didn't see the unmanageability or I didn' t identify it then I made some changes and here I am we're having a workshop on change would I still consider my life to be unmanangeable the answer is yes because when I talk about me managing my life what I'm talking about is my ego and my intellect then you've got a 17 year old in charge the only choice I have is on one side is the Chevy You know, I've got my ego and my intellect running the show. The other side is I have myself connected to the source where I'm grounded. When I'm ground it, I don't have any issues. When I am grounded, I am okay. I do not own the ground. The resting spot for the marble that goes around the bowl is always in the bottom of the bowl. the bottom of the bowl position is my ego and intellect in charge of my life. It is only my awareness of that mechanism running my life that I have any chance to avoid being dominated by that mechanism of ego and intellect. Ego and intellect are necessary for the journey, you can't take the trip without them but they're great junior partners, they are poor masters. When I am connected, they are in a subordinate important position but they do not dominate my life and bring the characteristics to my life which cause it to be problematic and I with disgusting regularity end up in the default position and you wonder why, you do and I don't think there's a human being people who are great spiritual masters if they talk about the greatest temptation they had in their life is once they've gained access to that, that they lost it you know, the dark night of the soul you don't own it, you cannot control it while it is who you be it is not yours and so each of us are on a walk each of Us have a practice you cannot do this alone and you need a practice and the practice is meetings the practice of sponsors the practice is reading the practices of steps the practice may be having a spiritual advisor the practice maybe prayer practice maybe meditation but it is a practice and that practice is like physical exercise is to the conditioning of the body it makes you more present and it makes you a more awake traveler does that address the issue that you yes sir hi John can you say something about how the universe telling us that something isn't working maybe signaling other substitute addictions or additional addictions Are you talking about us personally? You mean like if we had a food issue or a... No, we adapt by alcohol or drugs. Oh, so there may be another thing. And then, you know... Something else? Everybody knows they have to be the only ones. Oh, they aren't, John. Was that your only one, John? I, uh... I'm looking at some of these other problems I think alcoholism is threefold. I think it's mental, spiritual, and physical. I believe that most of us come in and the physical part goes away but the mental emotional part is still very problematic. I think that the patterns of obsessive behavior, compulsive behavior, the patterns of addictive behavior, is a well-worn groove in us and that it leaks out in other areas and that almost everybody in their early and early middle sobriety has one or two areas of their lives where that pattern exhibits itself. Sexually, eating, work, money, gambling, anger, where they get almost some of the same internal experience of, I had some ofthe same internal experiences of euphoria and blackouts and some of those things when I gambled. There was an awful lotof similarities to gambling. Today, I still have some ofthose feelings when I spend money. So the pattern of thinking, and mostly what I notice today in those patterns in my life is that I use them to drop out. They're like a distraction, so I don't have to pay attention to reality. They're my bar. They're My Haven. Okay. And, uh... Okay. Okay. I have a question. My name's Megan. I'm not the one. You talked about pulling out the parenting disc Try it. when we're supposed to be grown-ups. And what I've become aware of is that our feelings on that, you know, when there's a question or friction or problem or financial management problems, it outpops my parenting gifts. And I am like, what do you think? You know, if you did the same as what's coming through my mouth, how dare you ask me that question? I'm your mother. what do you mean you think I'm not making good use of the funds or whatever because that parenting is pushed right in and I have not the good news is I finally created an awareness that's what I'm doing but to be able to change positions and act as this person who also is my son in another environment Yeah, it'll never happen, Megan. No, I'm kidding. I'm killing you. I'm not kidding. I think the mother-child relationship is so profound that it will always be present. The likelihood that it would disappear for both of you is not high. No, no, no. I'm just saying. But you can manage it. What? I didn't hear that. What? But if you are aware of it, then you can be with it. I mean, if you're aware of its presence, it need not cause you trouble unintentionally. So your raised consciousness about your mother showing up, your mothering and showing up in that process, is what I'm talking about. The more conscious you are of it, the less likelihood it will cause inappropriate trouble in the relationship or circumstance that you're discussing. All there is is consciousness. That's the best it is, and it's very powerful. Those of us that are conscious of our alcoholism and conscious of the aspects of our alcoholicism when we run into problem areas, we do just fine. Serious problem areas. Consciousness is not to be underestimated. Oh, God. She said you talk a little bit about when you did the steps before, they were a little but different, and now you do them a little bit differently could you talk about that difference and and and how you do them differently today that I mean that's a eight day I mean it that's And that's my life. I mean, I don't, you know, describe your life. When you're married for 34 years, marriage seems different than when you've been married for two. That's the difference. That's part of the difference。 I use the steps in the same way, but they are different to me. They are more part of me. when I'm awake and using them. There are some times when I am not awake and I am using them and they don't have much impact and the difference isn't very astounding. But I told you that one of the most profound differences today is I am looking for the steps to alter my doing as much as I used to. I am working I am making I am taking for the steps to get me more awake I am talking for the steps to interact with my being, with my heart rather than my head and my ego. So that would be the most, the largest difference today. I have more compassion today. I think to make some of the changes that you need to make later in your life, you have to have compassion. I was a pretty philosophical and somewhat arrogant guy. I thought I knew right and wrong. and I was judgmental. When you're judgmental, you have a tough time making changes in your life because you judge yourself. You can't turn the knife on yourself that you... I mean, you do, unwittingly, because you can't forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others. If you're judgemental of others, you're so judgmental of yourself that you can be with the unworkability of your own life so you just suppress it and deny it. In order to deal with some of the things that you really have to deal within your own lives, You need a compassion even for yourself to be able to say, yeah, yes, this is mine. I don't like that it's mine. I wish it wasn't mine, but this is my. And you have to have a kind of a love and a gentleness for yourself to beable to do that. Otherwise, you won't be able too. It's going to be too hard to see it. Hi, Bill. I'm a little unclear about the being and doing connection. You were talking earlier about the doing, and you used the word mechanical. I got somewhat of a sense you were talking about that as sort of an early stage of the program where it would come into more of a mental or a spiritual part later. One of the most comforting concepts of the project for me all along has been the notion that we don't think our way into proper actions. because we act our way into proper thinking. And I think of mindfulness, awareness, openness, non-denial, all as products of action, not of a mental process. I think about talking to the meeting, talking to people who are operating, all those things that are actions. So I wasn't getting where you were going with the being part. Could you talk more about that? I got it. Bill's asking me that I talked about some distinction about alteration in being rather than alteration and doing, and he comes from a school of AA that feels that a lot of the changes in growth that we experience in alcoholics now has come from taking the right actions. In some ways I don't disagree with you, but there are, in every movement there are different schools, okay? And there is the school of action. There is the people that say, look, all you've got to do is take the right action and you're okay. I think there are abuses in every school in Alcoholics Anonymous. I know people who talk about the actions, and they more focus on the actions you take inside of Alcoholics Anonymous, that if you have to go to the right number of meetings and you do this and you sponsor the right member of people and you get enough merit badges and you do all these things, you're a good member of AA. Some of those people live well. Some of Those people don't live well some of those People are like Special Forces Green Beret Marines that stand up and say, I'm the best member of Alkali. I go to 18 meetings a week, you know, saying, how's your wife? How's your kid? Have you finished your college? What's your life? You know, tell me about your life. Now, at different periods. I'm just saying it isn't that simple, okay? And I was just trying to make a distinction. I think certain people overdo. There's a difference between activity and action. And in some cases, what people are doing when they're taking action is activity. It's rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic. There's just as many people who are going to the 12 meetings a week that are as flat and as unproductive and are stuck as anybody I've ever seen. I don't believe AA was meant to be our lives. I know that's heresy. I think it was to return us to life. And I'm not – I don'T mean that to be heretical. I don't mean it to be that it didn't give us our lives back. I don' t mean any of that. I'm a committed member of Alcoholics Anonymous. But I do mean that the measure of our program is how we are in relationship in our lives. So just talking about action as producing results, neither one of the things can be properly there without having the other. You cannot really have an alteration of being without having action. They just follow each other. You can't have an absence of action, as the Bible talks about. If it doesn't show up in deeds, it isn't there. And you can't be true to God. You can not have true action without having growth. So they are a hand and a glove. And you cannot really talk about one without the other. And sometimes when people talk about them, they talk about him like they are two different objects and two different approaches. The big book was written. When the big book Was written, no one had 34 years. Are we really talking about taking the game to a higher level? Who's your sponsor? I don't have one. I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. Charlie and I have been talking about sponsorship. Charlie asked the question about when the book was written there wasn't 34 years of recovery available and aren't we talking today about taking it to a different level no I don't think so I think the book is inspired I think it is inexhaustible I don' t think you can exhaust what's in the book and or take it to another level I would like to be able to deal with what's there I do think what is happening in our society is we are reflecting society more I think we are more psychological today and that's a result of our society we're younger, we're less married there's all sorts of changes that are happening within Alcoholics Anonymous that alter the stew a little bit and we have 34 years of reading the book and taking a look at it so in some ways we get deeper I don't know if we're more profound. I think in some ways those old-timers who gave drunkologues, included in their drunkologue the profundity because it was who they were. And today some of us people who are so philosophical and wax eloquently don't bring necessarily any more substance to the game than they did. Yeah? Assuming that you've changed different rates with different people, she asked assuming that people grow at different rates how did linda and i do in our marriage as a result of some of us growing at different times and another person being stuck and And how do we deal with that in our marriage? In some ways, I'm a guy who's been born on third base and congratulated myself for hitting a triple. Okay, I had... Okay. Linda and I had a lot of similarities. We're both Catholic. We're all Catholic. We're also both college-educated. Both our parents' marriages were intact. We have good examples about how to treat women in both families, okay? And I've learned that... So I want you to know that I had really good training and a really good example. Not everybody, even with good training or good examples, does that. I just want to let you know that it was easier, I think, in some ways for me to be in marriage. And even though it was easy, it was still plenty problematic. There were lots of times when I was stuck. I'm more dramatic than Linda. I'm way more up and way more down. I'm a much bigger pain in the ass than my wife. On the other hand, she doesn't need a TV. When you each really have a program, your attention is on yourself in a non-selfish way. So there were times when it was really nurturing to me when you're hanging out there and you're really being an asshole to have your wife have the integrity to look at her reaction to you being an ass rather than just at you being an ass. I can't tell you how spacious that feels and how much more likely it is to produce the willingness to change than conflict. And my wife really has a program, and I also have a program. And we've nurtured each other, I think. with, I think we really want we give each other space and we allow for significant imperfections I mean you know, I mean significant imperfections, they're just part I mean, you know like you don't have to change that you know and the things that we need to get out of our lives you know is get a hierarchy illegal, get it out physically harmful to other beings, get It Out you know harmful to other people you know I mean there is a hierarchy of things you do but you're just never going to get the whole list out and it is and what you find out is in that deeper love is knowing all that about you 34 years of knowing that about me we treasure each other that there is a real respect and caring for with knowing that I mean it's just part of, it's texture. Which is another good word for shit, but it's texture. Will? Hi, Will. I really like what you say about pulling the CDs off the shelf because I think I pull too often on how to be a husband and how to become a father. and what's the CD at this point in my head does not count as what's going on in my heart. I got it. I got It. A gentleman asked me, he said, I think I pulled a couple of CDs off and put them in my hard drive. There's two things you have to know about those CDs. One is they are filed under answer. even though they will often act as problems, they are in the hard drive as solution. I forgot to say that later. Anger was a tool. It was filed under answer. It had long ceased to be an answer or a solution in my life, but it was on my hard drive. As an answer. The great relationships in life, being a child to a parent, being a parent to a child, being a spouse to a spouse they take everything you have you're going to make mistakes lots of mistakes so don't beat yourself up for not knowing they have a very small manual on all those major relationships now the good news is what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous if we're awake we have a place to take all of that We really do have a place to examine our lives. As you start to wake up and you start to see the influence of your conditioning on your life, you really have a space to go talk with your sponsor, go talk to a friend, go interact with it, and you will become more conscious. And as you become more cautious, you'll have more choice. It will not be being done to you. When you don't see it, you have no choice. It's invisible. It does you. So don't beat yourself up. The major, the big three relationships take all you've got and more. And there just isn't anybody who constantly looks good in those relationships. You need to take care of each other in those relationship. I mean, I'm in line this morning, and somebody says, oh, you're Danny's dad. I say, yeah, Danny just got a tattoo. He got his first tattoo. That's how I found out. and I'm just wondering how a three foot penis running up and down his arm is going to look sure it's probably not that or how he's going to do with AIDS but there just is and most of us you need to take care of each other that's the most single important thing you do is just take care of each other, you know. I think we're kind of there. Can we close? Even though we didn't start with anything, it would be okay with you if we close with the Lord's Prayer? It isn't a medium, but why don't we... Our Father, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. that thou mayest be in them, and of our and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Be coming back first.