Why the Compulsion Was Gone Before the Belief – Mildred F.

He told me yesterday that he thinks he probably has heard me speak 30 times, so that he's interested in hearing me this morning is indeed a miracle in itself. Good morning. I'm an alcoholic and my name is Mildred Frank. I'm from Toronto, from the Rox Glen Traditional Group. My dry date is May the 18th, 1973, and I'm delighted to be here with you. Hi. I, before I begin, want to thank Bob. Where are you, Bob? Think of all the work that goes into this and the beautiful organization. You know, everything has gone really smoothly, hasn't it? Bob, we appreciate you. We love you. Thanks. There's somebody else I think that needs to be thanked And that's our good friend over there, Lee the Taper And Dave, just think of all the work that it takes I'm always amazed when they put everything out and they bring their machinery And they dedicate themselves to making tapes and CDs available So let's give them a thanks now do I look good first things first a couple of years ago uh I chaired our conference in Toronto and it's a big conference so they put up the big screens And since I was the chair, I was at the podium a number of times. And Sunday morning when people were leaving, I was out the door saying goodbye and thanking them for coming. And one woman said, oh, she said, you are so photogenic. She said, I just enjoyed seeing you on the screens. And then she kind of stepped back and she said, you know, I think you look better on the screens than you do in real life. Okay, I'll settle down now. A couple of years ago, I was in the airport watching a father with his little boy. And what the father was doing, he was standing there by the window and there was a plane being, they were loading things onto this plane. And this little guy, maybe he was two, maybe three, and the father wanted him to look outside and see what was happening. and the child either well he was obviously not interested in what the father was interested in he had dropped a ball on the floor and he was screaming for the ball and what I watched was the father who's gently he would take it you know push just you know nudge his face a little bit and say, no, son, look there, look there. And I thought, you know, the child simply was not capable. And finally the father gave up, picked up the ball and they walked away. And I taught what a great metaphor for my experience of step two. My experience with God, because I'm not going to get into a whole deal of how you do it, but I am going to talk about how in my life I developed, or my relationship with God has taken root and set me on fire with life. And I wasn't always that way. You know, Bill says we come here, and he says we love but a few. We're indifferent to the many so long as they cause us no trouble, and we hate the rest. Well, that kind of describes me, but not quite. Because I hated everybody. I did not discriminate. And I think you could well describe me as a soul at war. I was at war with the world, I wasat war with people I had met, Iwas at war with myself and I was certainly at warwith that chief honcho. Is it that way today? No this program is so powerful. The disease, the drinking of the alcohol has forced me into, you know it says it's not an easy choice to make. Dying an alcoholic death or practicing some spiritual principles. Quite a choice isn't it? But actually alcohol beat me into a state of reasonableness and so from that place I have been able to be changed I was going to say I have being able to change Yeah, I've changed the way I speak. I've change the way think. I've have changed the way I've acted, but I think it was one of the old timers and I think he's here today, Bob from Arizona who said to me one time, you don't change yourself. You do that work so you can be changed. And I think that's what's happened because today I have to tell you I like myself. I'm a decent person today. More surprisingly, I'm a happy person. And more surprisingly yet, I am a loving person. You know, I really buy into what Carl Jung said when he said he believed that alcoholics were seeking the spirit with a capital S in every bottle of spirits. That's all I was ever looking for. And if you look through the big book, how can you interpret some of the things that are said there? If you believe some of the things, then I think, you know, it behooves me to take a look at things like we've been rocketed into the fourth dimension. There's a statement. It says deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. It says either God is nothing or God is everything. Make your choice. You see, it doesn't tell me how I have to understand God. And then on page 164, it says, See to it that your relationship with God is right and great things will come to pass. Of course, I'm an alcoholic, but Bill says alcohol is the symptom. And I imply from that it's not the problem. Sure, alcohol created problems for me simply because it was such a great solution. for what was really wrong with me. Chuck Chamberlain used to hammer this home to me day after day when he used to come out to Prince Albert when I was newly sober in 1966. And he'd say, your problem is you think you're separate from God. And at the time, I didn't understand that, but I do now. So, I come from a world... Well, why did I have such difficulty in building a relationship with God. I come from a world where God was the fabric of existence. I was born on a farm in Saskatchewan, and in that area, I would say maybe 20 or 30 square miles, everybody that lived in there was Roman Catholic. They were farmers like we were, and they were Roman Catholic You prots wouldn't have done well in that era. on Sundays everybody showed up at church and this is the way we showed up this is how we sat to the left side of the altar sat the young women then there was an aisle and then the married women then There was another aisle and Then The Married Men and Then There Was Another Aisle and Way Over There Were The Single Fellas And We Kids We Sat At The Front And I Can Tell You If Anybody was missing. That was the subject of the dinner table conversation. Where are they and why aren't they in church? Belief in God was assumed. I went along with that, but I didn't understand original sin. What do you mean I've got a spot on my soul? What do you mean with all this doctrine and dogma I tried to figure it out and I couldn't and then life intruded in my world life in the form of my sister Dora you know I talk about her all the time because she's very important in my life I was a little kid when she's three years old she was 16 Dora had been injured at birth. She couldn't study as fast as the other kids and in those days they called her retarded and she cried at night and she crawled into bed with me. She'd say, Mildred, why was I ever born? Why didn't I die in the cradle? And I'd cry with her and I couldn't fix it. You know, I practiced step one right there. I was powerless over that situation but i had big brothers and sisters and so i started the process of trying to get somebody to fix the outside world any of you ever done that really works well doesn't it when you see we didn't talk about this in our family so i didn't understand it And when my brothers and sisters, who I thought loved me, didn't change the way my sister was, her crying, I figured they don't care about me, they don' t care about her, and I went to God. I had heard the priest say that God was love and God was power. I never heard any of that business of, you know, God's going to punish you and so on. Maybe I heard it, but I didn't take it in. I had plans for God this is the way you need to do the world and it didn't happen and I couldn't figure out how can you have a God who can make beautiful trees who can makes sunsets who can made the aurora borealis and the stars and all that and who can't fix this sister of mine And I became really confused. See, when you look at step two, I come to believe that there's a power bigger than me or us that can restore me to sanity. If you've got underlying beliefs like I had, you're going to have trouble understanding that because my experience of God is he's a useless twit. And so now, I've got this problem. Don't worry, the sky isn't going to fall in. I've said it before and I haven't been struck dead, so... I don't say that out of irreverence to God. I say it simply, that's the way I felt. I wanted somebody that was going to get things done. And that wasn't the way it was. And then at five, I picked up a drink. There was always booze around. And that booze did for me what I had hoped God would do. I felt great when I drank. You know, what I experienced was oneness. I loved you. You loved me. So I thought, of course, it's all perception. because what the booze did, I believe, was shut down the voices of the false self, the voices of the ego. And so when those voices were quiet, I felt great. I could handle anything. And I have to tell you for the next 35 years I never thought sober again. You know, because alcohol worked and I wanted to be in the bag as much as I could be. it's not the right solution and life has consequences and when you use the wrong solution because I don't think I'm here to falsely change I think I am here to grow in God consciousness that is the only thing I can figure out you know I am here to grow and change and make a difference and all that kind of thing, and I'm sure not going to do it hiding in a bottle of booze. But I didn't understand that. I continued to do church. And I put it that way because I can see now as I look back I went because it was the thing to do. That's where my family went. And though I felt alienated from family, that's where I lived. So I did what they did. And then at 18, I made a strange decision. I don't fit at home. I'm not okay unless I drink. I've still got some ideas about God that maybe God could be persuaded and so I decided to go to a convent. Jeez. You know, I believe that all behavior is meaningful. We do it because there's a reason behind it and my reason was maybe, maybe, because I still believed that there was a God. I just didn't understand anything. And I thought, well, you know, maybe if I go to a convent, everybody that knew me laughed. They said, this isn't right for you, but I had made up my mind, so I went to the convent. I found a swinging convent in the United States. And it swang a little more after I was there, I can tell you. and I stayed there for 15 years. And, you know, I could write a whole book on that whole experience, but it was a good experience. I didn't leave after 15 years because I was disillusioned with the convent. I was dissolutioned with life. It was just another way that life didn't work. I don't know how to make it work. The only place I can feel okay is when I drink, so I left. And I remember standing on the convent steps in January of 1966 thinking, I'm fixed now. You know, I'm no longer Sister Mary Eugenia. I don'T have the habit and all that stuff. Said goodbye to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And I'm off to the secular world. and it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I didn't know how to live there, but I found out very quickly where I felt comfortable, who's at the bars. And at thebars I found the booze and I found the men and it wasn't very long before I was really doing some really bad stuff. Got thrown in jail, etc. Maybe that doesn't impress you but it sure impresses you when you're three weeks out of a convent. Ten months of that kind of living, and I felt like the dirtiest piece of goods on the planet. I didn't know I was alcoholic. I knew I had to drink. And that, see, in the convent, I really pursued God. We did six hours of spiritual exercises every day. I mean, just think of what I'm saying. Six hours of spirit. Six hours and a half of spiritual exercise every day, which shows me that you can acquiesce, you can comply on the outside, and nothing happens in here. And at the end of that time, I had myself signed into what was then known as the Insane Asylum. and I went there and it was the insane asylum and I was happy there that's you know my brother found me there my family hadn't heard from me for a year and so they hired some private investigators and they found me he took me back to the west and he said you want to go to Saskatoon or you wantto go to Regina And for some reason, because my university was there, I said Saskatoon. What little did I know, I was to meet my destiny there. I was the man I was going to marry, a psychiatrist, wouldn't you know? And Dr. Hoffer, who sent me to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, if you understand my modus operandi, I am looking for somebody to fix my life. I can't fix it. I don't know that it has to be done by changing me. I think there is somebody out there who has some magic. Now, where was my life at this time? I'd been locked up 32 times in psych wards, mental institutions, insane asylums. I'd had 38 electric shock treatments. I had been tied to the bed and it was not with one of you, trust me. I had been put in cold water baths because I used to get violent, and I'd just get stiff, and then they'd pull me out, and so on. So Dr. Hoffer knew Bill Wilson, and he said, this girl isn't all the things we said she is. She's an alcoholic, and she should go to AA. And my doctor eventually agreed, and I walked into AA in November of 1966, And I was happy because at last somebody was going to fix me. Goody, goody. My brother had gone to AA. My brother died 49 years sober. Isn't that wonderful? But at the time, my father called me after I had left for the convent and he said, there's a miracle. There's a new organization has come to the prairies and your brother isn't going to die. he said he's an alcoholic and this new organization they call it AA and he said it's so good your brother is fine now and he started to cry and he said your brother has been transformed ah I like that word transformed is good I didn't know what it implied but I'm up for it so I go to AA and I sit there for three weeks waiting for somebody to transform me. And after three weeks, you know, thank God that Bill put this in here, that alcohol is the symptom. So you take the alcohol away, you're still left with all the problems. And so I'm sitting there, I don't know how to do relationship. I've never been sober a day in my life if I could be drunk. I'm not saying I was stoned all the time or drunk, but I sure wanted to be. And now I don't have any medication, and I feel the way I feel, and I don' t know what to do about it until I remember. I do know what do to about it. So I got medication. I medicated myself, and sat in AA Stone for five-and-a-half years. If you're new, I do not recommend it. It was at that time Wesley. You see, here again, I'm confronted with this. There's got to be somebody out there that's going to fix me. Chuck Chamberlain used to come to Prince Albert's. He's Cargill was there. Mac Cheater. Mac Cheator was an angel and he used to sit down with me. Chuck used to seat down with him. He'd say, your problem is you think you're separate. I heard it with the ears. I didn't hear it with the ears of my soul. And I went my merry way, tearing a swath through that AA community for five and a half years. Somehow or other, they don't care too much about this business if you're having affairs and all kinds of stuff. So at the end of that time, again, I'm the loser. I left AA, and I drank for a year and a halve. And everything that Ron said last night, you know, that it's progressive and it's fatal and all that. You know, I'm having DTs, I've had convulsions, I have had six of those. And waking up in strange places with strange people who probably thought I was just as strange as I thought they were. And I wind up on a park bench. My husband too was alcoholic and we both were drinking at this time and we lost everything. And I mean everything. There was no little stash of money anywhere. There was nothing. And so I spent my last three weeks drinking on a park bench. I woke up in the psych ward and there were two men sitting at the foot of my bed and they really were there. And the The private detective, you know, my family, he had been hired to find me. The morning of the 20th, I decided what I was going to do. I was out of everything. I was D-O-N-E, done. There was nothing left. There was nobody left. I didn't have one idea about how I could fix this thing. I had nobody to call. You know, my family, thank goodness for them. They made no bones about it. You can come home, but you can't come home and act the way you've been acting. And so that's not an option. People said, stay away from us. We'll have you arrested if you come on our property. I was a nasty little piece of work. So I asked the nurse to get my clothes because I knew I was done. going to take my life knew how to do it and my mind was made up she went to get my clothes and at that moment I had a spirit I can't call it anything else because one minute I'm on my way out the door to kill myself and the next minute something has reached into me and taken the compulsion and the obsession and it's gone and I know it's done I know I don't have to drink and I remember saying oh my whatever this is i don't know how to live sober because i knew i did the compulsion was gone and uh i said you'll have to send me somebody and there was somebody wrapped on the door honest to god this happened and he said i saw you at breakfast and he offered me some help and two days later he took me to a hospital treatment center because there were no treatment centers in those days and it was the perfect place you have to understand at this point I hated just you say god and I would spit you in the eye and I didn't like a a much better you were supposed to fix me you were supposed to transform me and you didn't do it so this man took me to this institution and they didn't push God and they did not push AA I think we get the perfect I just believe today God is perfect and God is everywhere and God is active in our lives and God was active in my life even though I didn't recognize it I got to the perfect place and when they were done with me after four weeks they gave me just and I had no home so they gaveme enough money and I got a room on Skid Row. They did not teach me about Skid row in the convent. And my family hadn't taught me about skid row either. That was not part of the agenda. And so I remember opening the door, going, oh, my God, you know I was to live there. I'm going to tell you just a little bit about that because this is where I started to change. My soul was quiet before I left the institution. Dr. Maharaj, who was the chief psychiatrist there, he had taken an interest in me. He really cared about me and I really, for some reason, connected. I think that's the first real connection I had ever made with a fellow human being. And he said to me, get a job. So I went to Skid Row and then I went from door to door saying, please, have you got any work for me to do? And eventually some fellow had a factory and he said, you can come and sweep the factory floor. And that's what I did. I swept the factory floor for six months. I had no television, no radio, no entertainment. Some days there was no food. I don't feel sorry for myself. It was a great experience. Once a week, I would hike myself to Donwood to spend an hour with Dr. Maharaj. And the softening process started. Love matters. and I'm sure other people loved me too but for some reason there was no judgment in him he didn't want anything from me we would just talk and he would encourage me and I would go back to my barren life on Skid Row and it was okay because I had a higher power and I knew I was going back next week and that's where the change started in me i lived that way for six months and then one day somebody invited me to a meeting and i didn't know we were going to an aa meeting i might have refused i don't know anyway i went with him it was an aa meet and i think back to that meeting i don t remember what was said I'd had enough talk what I saw was this remember, I said I started to change by that relationship with Dr. Maharaj what I saw was people who were pleasant, who were kind to each other they seemed to like each other now why did I never notice that before I don't know but I did and I found it attractive nobody was laying anything on me saying you got to do this and you got to do that and I founded attractive and they kept saying keep coming back and I kept coming back. And then there were two angels at that meeting two men who took me aside and said you have to do the steps my first sponsor had gotten drunk and they took me through the steps. You know, I was thinking about this. I've been thinking about it for a while to try and see how did this whole coming to believe really happen to me? I didn't really believe in God at that time. I believed in Dr. Maharaj. I believed in the group that I was going to, in a way. I had some hope about that. And then I started to believe in these two men who came. And they read the book to me and told me what to do and saw me through the steps. And I don't remember what happened when we got to, you know, step two. who came to believe that there's a power that's going to restore you to sanity. I just know I did what I was told. And I have to tell you that I changed. I changed enough to be able to stay. I didn't pray a lot, didn't know really how to pray. Who am I going to pray to? This God that I've been confronted with nothing seems to happen about the things you care about in life. Like, what are you supposed to go to that God for? What are you suppose to ask that God for? How are you supossed to relate to that God? Because it always seemed to me that the things I cared about just didn't fit in with that God's plans. Nothing seemed. You see, that's what was going on inside me, a hardness of heart. A lot of intellectual stuff, you know, spending time reading books, taking courses at the university in theology and philosophy, trying to figure it out. That's where my head was. But I had been softened up. And once the softening up process starts. Watch out. That pretty much went on for 20 years. I was a good member of AA. If you had said to me, what do you believe? I couldn't have had much to say to you about that. I had a sponsor who insisted that I keep doing the right things. Boy, that's wisdom. Because I know this, if you keep coming back and you keep doing the right things, it's a word here, it's kindness there, something else happens. And bit by bit, one day you wake up and you're cracked wide open. And then everything happens, you see? and at 20 years my life fell apart I gave up my job I gave up the last man not the last on earth just the last last man I'd associated with and my life felt apart I would know today what to do about that i didn't then and again i thought well i guess maybe suicide isn't a bad idea and i had another spiritual experience and out of that i knew it was going to be okay i had no idea how and father o'brien called me about three weeks later he was the rector at a jesuit house and he asked me to come and give a retreat and i tell you that because something important happened at that retreat. It was a retreat for 70 or 80 women, and I don't... I'm okay with women by this time. I'm 20 years sober, but not enough okay that I want to cry in front of women. And the very last conference I gave, I started to bawl. Not pretty like they do in the movies. I bawled I'm sure I wasn't pretty and I said to those women I don't have a friend in the world I've got lots of acquaintances but no friends didn't even know that I really understood that I felt for the first time like all my defenses were gone I had no more unreality reality. I had built such a web around myself to protect myself. How in the world could I grow? I just remember feeling so vulnerable. And those women stepped forward one after the other, and I had to learn how to be real. And I understand today that if I'm going to grow in God consciousness. I can't do that based on a lie. I can't, do that, based on falseness. And so those walls coming down was a very important deal really. The second important thing was I got to know Father O'Brien quite well and I started to think about this relationship with God, and I'm giving retreats, and does what I'm saying match with what's going on in here? So I went to see Father O'Brien, and I said, Father, can you help me with this? He said, tell me how you got sober. Father O'Brien is not an alcoholic, but he's a very learned, wise Jesuit. He said, tell me how you got sober. And so I told him about May the 20th. And he said, did you hear what you just said? I said, yeah. He said it doesn't seem to impress you very much. he said, how do you think that happened? See, the first 50 pages of our book are filled, aren't they, with expressions that indicate no human power can fix me. It says in the ABCs, I can't fix myself. No human power can fix me. It says there's no middle-of-the-road solution. I'm strangely insane. It says I have strange mental blank spots. And on it goes. The main problem rests in the mind, those old ideas I have that somebody out there is going to fix it. That's what I had been thinking all these years. he said to me was there anybody in the room when this happened when the compulsion was taken I said no he said that anybody phoned you that morning I said no was there any buddy around no and as I said it it was as if something shook me it was like having another electroshock treatment it struck me. He said, you have been touched by God and that has made all the difference. That was when I really started to change. Isn't that what Bill is saying when he writes we have been rocketed into the fourth dimension? What is the fourth dimension it's the kingdom of heaven this is where i'm supposed to live but i can't live there while i'm living from the false self while i'm leaving from that ego driven mania that says you have to be a certain way or i won't love you you have to do it the way i want you to i was so filled with up to that so filled with hatred and judgment and criticism and if it is true that as the result of these steps we get a spiritual awakening i got it that morning and i've never lost it and that to me is now where i go i don't know who god is thank goodness we have in our book God as you understand God because when Ebi went to see Bill Bill says my mind snapped shut when he thought this guy has gotten religion and if you had talked religion to me my mind would have snapped shut because I wanted no part of that God who did not seem to care about the things that I cared about and this i could accept it's not for the intellect if my intellect could understand this you'd have a different speaker my i don't get this but i know something and i think really that's what step two is inviting us to do to become aware of the experiences of our lives I believe today that God is right here. You know, that's the other statement in the big book, that either God is everything or nothing. And I think I was about 23 years when that one hit me. Well, if God is every thing, then it's here, whatever it is. I don't understand it, but I believe it's there. And I've observed something. When I take that seriously, and when I live my life that way, when I say no to the voices of the false self that say you're not okay, nobody cares about you, and instead of going into anger and resistance and manipulation, saying God, you love me. I believe that. I believethat you show up as me. And I'm going out into the world to live that way. When I do that, I can observe what happens. I can tell you, you know, today when I came in, there were my friends from Tennessee. There are Sandy and Bob from Arizona. They're my friends. I can't even begin to mention you all. but I remember where I was that old me that was shut down and said no it's got to go my way I can tell you that first six months that I was sober in 1973 I walked the streets of Toronto and I felt like the damned you know there was no I felt nobody sees me nobody knows me nobody cares it's just another loser walking down the street and I'd go into this factory and I sweep and sweep and sweet and nobody really made a fuss that meant you know whatever and I you know I'd go home and that's how I lived what a deal to come in to be invited to have people be happy to see you. See, I don't think that God refuses us anything. As I look over my life, I do not believe God ever was missing. God just has to wait like that little boy. He could not see what his father wanted him to see and I could not say what God wanted me to see a whole business of living and suffering if you will and trying it my way shows me what that got me and so i can see now i believe that all good is available i don't think you see and that was the other thing i used to think that life was about acquiring stuff and i acquired a lot of stuff and I thought it was about men and I acquired a few of those too and about sex and about jewelry and about houses and about where you live and the car you drive and all those things and all of it left me cold It's an amazing thing. When, since, you know, and don't get the idea that I'm saying, you know that, you Know, I've got wings. No wings, I can be a real whack job some days. Just get me on the right day. But I don't stay there. I don' t stay there, I know what to do. You see, I think we can look at step two as part of the process of doing those 12 steps. So I'm in trouble with alcohol, I'm powerless over the booze, and I can't fix it. And if I've studied those first 50 pages, I know you can't fixed it. and then I come to this I got to come to believe that there's a power bigger than we are that's going to restore me to sanity what does that mean? I think it means I like the definition of sanity as seeing the big picture you see, I don't see a very big picture when I look through my ego every once in a while I look through a straw just to remind myself and you know there's a whole room of stuff and I'm looking through a straw and if I think that's the reality I'm going to make some really weird decisions and by God I do you see and I think then once I have I don't know how it is with you I just know that I was hard as a rock but I was told to take actions I didn't believe in thank God for Clancy than those two men that took me through the steps. The one thing I've done right, I've continued to come. I have never been without a home group. I have ever but been active in my home group I've always sponsored people. I've almost been sponsored. And like I said, I think bit by bit the change comes about. you know if I think about that little boy with his dad supposing that little boy decided at some time he was going to be an airplane engineer or he was gonna be a pilot a lot of stuff would have to happen wouldn't it so that little two or three year old could become a pilot and I think for somebody like me to get rid of all those crusts and all those old ideas it's taken it's taking a lot and there's a lot to go. But, you know, I'm really very happy today because I do believe God is in my life and that God makes it and it makes a difference that God is here. And so there's nothing that I just look at it different. The other thing I appreciate is knowing that I'm not the boss and that I don't have a magic wand, sometimes I would like to be in charge of you selectively. But it's, you know, I know that that's not the way it is. I think another gift that has come to me is knowing that I'm not the only one on the planet. The universe does not revolve around me. You know, that's freedom. You may say, what the hell is she talking about? Well, I'm talking about the attitude that I used to have, like why can't they see? Why can't THEY do it my way? It's the equivalent of saying, I'm in the middle of this thing. I think that every day I am asked to live the truth of step one. I am powerless. I am not God. God shows up as me, but I don't get to decide how things are. I think that's every day I can do that. And every day, I can practice step two. Because if I keep the eyes of my soul open, every day i can grow in that understanding that God is here. God does care and all is well. I want to thank you Bob again and I want to thank every one of you for your kindness in being here with me and God bless you all