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Source: Bob D. & Don L – Lighthouse Big Book Weekend (2018) – CD 05 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bob-d-and-don-l-lighthouse-big-book-weekend-2018-cd-05-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:47:56
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We are behind. Okay, so we're going to go, I think we're going to go an hour. So we're going to probably go to 12.30. Oh my God. I was going to yell at whoever had their phone on. It was me. Oh, that's terrible. My sponsor did that one time. He's sitting, he was talking, and somebody's phone went off. He's calling, he's like, who the hell's phone? He pulled it out, it was his. It was like hilarious. Okay, so we're going to go to 12.30. This session is supposed to be about Steps 6 and 7. There's so much more we could have done on inventory. We didn't even touch on fear. We didn't even touch on, we will touch a little bit on fear now. The topic is the chief activator of our defects is self-centered fear, and that comes from Step 7 in the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, and then the second topic is divine imperfection. I think that fear seems to be the driving force in my life. It's the muscle of the ego. You can take the most honest, selfless member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you scare him enough, he'll lie to you. If you scare him enough, he'll grab, he'll be selfish, he'll be a taker. My ego's got to scare me into the ranks of the self-will run riot, and it does intermittently. I am very capable today of lying to you. The only difference today is it will be like a stone in my shoe, and I'm going to have to come back and say something. I'm going to have to make it right, but I am capable. I am not a sociopath, and there are some sociopaths that drift in and out of a people who have, there's just a gap. There's no conscience. They can pretty much do anything, and the only consequences they're ever concerned with is getting caught.
But I'm not that guy. If I do something to hurt one of God's kids, it bothers me. It bothers me. I'm not a sociopath. I'm a guy who just frequently argues with my own moral compass. It says, to thine own self be true. I don't, I don't know. I don't even know what that means. Not the self I've been battling. One of the problems I had with, and Don did a great job on step five. One of the problems I had with step six and seven is I didn't really understand it. My first attempt, after I did my first legitimate four step, is I didn't, I didn't say, I didn't even see the six step prayer on page 76, and there is a six step prayer and a seven step prayer. I didn't even see it. I just went right into the seven step prayer, and then I had a sort of an understanding of my defects. I was really selfish. I was a me first person, and even when I dressed it up and tried to look like a giver, the truth was it was all about me. It was all about my not wanting to be alone, my gratification, what I wanted. I used, I used things that appear to be giving as tools for self-aggrandizement, self-gratification, self-security. The truth, I started to see the truth was that I was such a selfish person, and I was very dishonest. I had hurt a lot of people, didn't mean to, but I did. And so I thought now that I know this, and Don touched on this, and this was really my experience. See, I've always, I still had that illusion. I was only, not quite five years sober, I still had that illusion that there was power in knowledge. That now that I know about this stuff, and I've seen it, and I've faced it head on, and I have all this knowledge about my defects, that surely the knowledge coupled with a sincere desire to be better, I was going to self-correct myself. And the problem is I couldn't do it. And I would hit these bottoms. Don was talking about the wish there was only two surrenders. That's so true.
[00:05:04]
My sponsor told a story one time. He said when you hit a bottom with alcohol, it's like you're so beaten up by this. It's like you throw the towel into the ring, and then he said, when no one's looking, you sneak it back. You spend the rest of your life tearing off little pieces of it to satisfy the ring. Just to throw, you know, here's this, and here's the lust, and here's this, you know, you throw little pieces of it back in there.
And that seems to be my experience. But I didn't know what was going on. And I tried to muscle down some of these defects of character. And there's, in page 101, there's a statement of what I believe is spiritual cause and effect when it comes to alcoholism. And it's really very true to form for me. And it's in the middle of the page, the second full paragraph. And he's talking about combating alcoholism. Now, alcoholism, in my experience, is everything I'm left with once you take away the alcohol, right?
These are my abnormal emotional and mental reactions to abstinence. This is my self-will run riot. This is my secret hidden selfishness and self-centered fears. It's all of that. And he says, in our belief, any scheme of combating alcoholism, which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation, is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself, he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to the impossible have always failed. Some of these hardwired defects, the more I suppress them, the more I give them torque. Some of us have cultivated anger and rage and self-righteousness and self-indignation.
A lot of this stuff is a defense mechanism that's hardwired in us. It's automatic. It's not a conscious initiation. It's knee-jerk. It's automatic. And the knowledge that it's there and it's causing you trouble and hard times with relationships and things, coupled with your sincere desire not to do that anymore, doesn't seem to budget much. Because the next time you feel threatened and the fear is engaged, it's knee-jerk.
There's a line later on in the steps, if we've progressed a little bit more, it's where it talks about we pause when agitated. I attack when agitated. I don't pause. I might pause later looking at the body, but I don't pause initially. And this is training myself to pause when agitated. It's been a big deal. I've got seven or eight guys right now that keep causing themselves horrible problems every day. I've got one guy, I had him write it out on his dashboard, pause when agitated. And I stick it there with scotch tape. Because we're spring-loaded, man. Just like that.
What happens when I try to suppress them is that they gain torque. And you know what that's like. You're going to be good. All right, I'm good. I'm going to be good. I'm not going to say nothing to them. Somebody should, but it's not going to be me. I don't care how wrong they are. I'm not going to say anything. Oh, I'm not going to say, oh boy, they did it again. Oh, man, I'm not going to say. And it's like a volcano that just explodes one day, right, with a whole bunch of torque. Because I don't have the ability to change what's underneath.
And what's underneath is a whole bunch of fear. And I don't understand what's going on. And I started hitting bottoms with a lot of this stuff. Just one example is, you know, when I finished my fifth step, and you're supposed to go home and look at it, you know, consider it carefully and look over what you just did. And I did that. And I was kind of appalled at how many resentments I had. And, you know, because I was sober, and, you know, because I was sober, over 40, over four years, when I wrote that, that third inventory, most of the people that are on my resentment list are people in AA.
Because, because I've been watching you. And I just, you know, I just noticed that I don't
[00:10:04]
notice the good you do. That's still my nature to this day. I don't walk into a room and just go, oh, these are a bunch of wonderful, loving givers here. I'll look around the room and go, some of you guys have a bad attitude, I can tell. You know, I'll see things that are a threat to me. Because that's all my head does is threat assessments. I'm a problem seeking missile. I don't see the good stuff. And because of that, I had a lot of resentments of people in AA.
And I looked at it in the aftermath of the fifth step, and I was appalled. And I just thought, oh, this is horrible. You know, to know that you're judgmental and opinionated in a general way is one thing. But when you start looking at it through your whole life, and you see how judgmental you've been, it's horrible. And I remember thinking to myself, man, Jesus is bad. I never imagined it was this bad. I'm just, that's it. That is it. I'm not going to be judgmental ever again. And almost instantaneously, I started to notice the judgmental people in AA.
And I became intolerant of the intolerant, which has made me just like them. And it's like that whack-a-mole in the kid's arcade, you hit the mole down here, and it pops up over there. Because lack of power truly is my dilemma. See, I can't do any of this. I need God. There's an old adage in Alcoholics Anonymous that I, you don't hear it that much anymore, but I love it. Without him, I can't. But without me, he won't.
And what does it look like if you were entirely ready? Entirely is like a lot. What would that look like? Well, I think some of us have a glimpse of entirely ready to some degree when you got sober. If you were dying of alcoholism, and you stood on a bridge on your last run, because you're in such emotional pain and anguish, you're trying to take your own life, and you have been, you've been failing at staying sober for seven years.
And your best efforts only got you a few months. And you're trying to kill yourself. What happens? Well, you end up in Alcoholics Anonymous, and you do crazy things that you normally wouldn't have done. Like you got a sponsor, and you tell your sponsor, I'll do anything you ask me to do. You start taking actions, and walking through fears, and turning yourself in, and offering to go do the two years in prison, and on, and on, and on. And if you, I went to 15 meetings or more a week when I had my first couple years of sobriety. I had, I said yes to everything in AA. Hospitals, institutions, I signed up for the prison, I did it all. I was doing everything they asked me to do. And you might have looked at me, and you thought, Bob's a whack job. But he's, he's willing. And Wilson, in the beginning, in one of the earlier drafts, in step six, he said entirely willing, and then he changed it to entirely ready.
And willingness without action is fantasy. And so, what would I have to do to represent myself, to myself, to God, and to life itself, as a guy who's entirely willing or entirely ready? Well, I watched my father got emphysema. My mother eventually died of lung cancer. But in early sobriety, I had one of the guys that really helped me a lot die of lung cancer. And I was smoking three packs a day. And I, I really tried to quit. I mean, I tried with everything in me. And I tried three times in my first five, five years of sobriety.
And the best I ever got was about three weeks of misery. And I just go back to smoking again. And it seemed like I was even more addicted than I was before. At one time, I was about two weeks into not smoking. And people in AA are offering to buy me cigarettes, because I'm so, I'm such a pain in the ass, right? I'm so irritable. I'm so uptight. You're just, they don't, nobody wants to be, I must have been like one of those asphalt highways on a hot summer day that just radiates the waves out. I must have been like that, you know? And after the third failure, I had a surrender.
To the third failure, I had a surrender of sorts, and it was not a good surrender, it
[00:15:03]
was a horrible surrender, it was a sad, depressing surrender. The surrender was, I can't quit, I'm going to have to lose a lung maybe, I'm going to probably die like people I've seen of lung cancer and emphysema, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it was a horrible surrender, and God fills all desires and vacancies. I was at a DCM, and I went to a PRASA, which is a Pacific Region A Service Assembly, and I was on a panel there, and after I did my panel, I was in the restaurant with another guy from Vegas who was a GSR, and we're sitting in this booth, and I overheard this conversation in the next booth, and this guy says to the other guy, they're both in AA, he said, so when did you quit smoking?
And the guy said, I didn't quit. And the other guy said, well, did you used to smoke? And he said, oh yeah, I smoke a lot. He said, well, I've known you for six years, I've never seen you with a cigarette. He said, well, I haven't actually had one in eight. So you quit eight years ago? He said, no, I didn't quit. He said, what do you mean you didn't quit? He said, I couldn't quit. He said, well, you don't smoke, you must have quit.
He said, no, I couldn't quit. He said, I just started asking God for the desire not to smoke without the intention of quitting. And he said, I did that for weeks and months, and God did something. And I sat there in that booth, and I thought, I can't quit, but I could do that. I could say those prayers, I could make smoking a piece of unresolved spiritual business in my life on a daily basis, and I started doing that.
And I don't even know, I don't know if it was five or six months, it was a long time. God works slow, because he is old. You can't rush him. And I woke up one morning, and I used to have an ashtray, a lighter, and a pack of cigarettes on the bed stand next to my bed. And the first thing I would do, I would light up a cigarette. I was lighting them up every morning as I am asking God for the desire not to smoke.
And I would always tell him, but I ain't quitting. I was not going to quit, but I would ask him for the desire. And I got up one morning, and I didn't light the first cigarette, and it was weird. I was afraid to believe that something had happened, but something had shifted inside of me. And I just quietly thanked God, I just thank you for the desire not to smoke, and I haven't had a cigarette since.
And nobody tried to buy me a pack or nothing, because all that, I was not, the angst, most of the angst came from my willful fighting something I couldn't win at. The book says we quit fighting everything and everybody, even alcohol, even your defects. There's some things I just can't change on my own. I have to have God's help. And so I've tried over the years to develop an image and an idea of what a guy who is entirely ready would look like, and then at times when I have something that's really eaten my lunch, I'll try to be that guy.
And I'll try to keep it a piece of spiritual business. Scott Redmond used to say, keep it above the table, keep it a piece of business. In time, nobody knows how long, some things, I did the same thing with gambling, I did the same thing with the stock market, sugar, I've got something, and you know, the thing is you've got to keep it a piece of business. I have this intermittent, I hate to even admit this, I have this intermittent problem with gossip.
It's not really gossip, I'm reporting things that you need to hear. And it's like you'd think I was from down south, because I always end it with something nice. Like down south they'll say all kinds of crap about people, but then they said, and bless their heart. But I always end it with, but they're really basically a good person, or something like that. And I get sick of myself when I'm like that.
You know what I mean? I get sick of myself, because I'm awake enough to know that that ain't right, and know if I was on the other end of it, I wouldn't like it, I get it, I get it. And so I hit these little miniature bottoms with that stuff, but I've got guys I sponsor that just feed the worst, oh my god, I've got one guy, he's so funny, and he seduces me into talking crap about people, because he makes it funny, right?
[00:20:05]
Next thing I know, I'm laughing, and then I go, oh my god, I did it again, it's like oh no. I even, I tried like group help, I got all the guys I sponsor to agree, from now on if any one of us talks about someone who's not here, we're supposed to say out loud, well where is that person right now anyway? Well that actually was very effective for about two weeks. I don't know what that's, I guess there's a perverse pleasure in that, as Wilson talks about in the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, it's a self-grandizing action, but the problem is it doesn't feed my spirit, it only feeds my ego.
And it feeds everything that should not be fed. And I'll tell you, it's like gossip, inappropriate sex without love, any of that stuff, it's like peeing your pants on a cold winter's day, it feels really good at first. Yeah, but it goes that way, doesn't it? It's squirmy and horrible, but in the beginning it's like, oh yeah, this is good, this is good. Oh man. And so, I want you to know, I still struggle with some stuff.
I make a little progress, but then I forget and I stop keeping a piece of business, and it kind of comes back, you know, it comes back. And I guess maybe the truth is, maybe I'm not entirely ready enough to act entirely ready. Sometimes you have to pray for the willingness to be willing. Because there's layers here. And maybe the truth is, I don't have the willingness to be willing yet. Because I guess maybe I secretly see some value in it.
When I was a little kid there was a TV show, I'll tell this story and I'll give it up, called Rescue Aid on television. And there was this one episode and I remembered it, it was odd I remembered it, but it seems to tie in with my experience in sobriety. In this episode, Rescue Aid was about these two paramedics that worked out of a firehouse and they go out on distress calls. In this one episode they came out to this scene and there was this little girl with her arm wedged up, stuck up into a vending machine and her parents have been trying to pull it out and she's crying, it hurts her to try to pull it out.
And the paramedics come and they try to pull it out, they can't pull it out, it just hurts her. So now the fire trucks are rolling up and they're bringing these electric saws and acetylene torches off the trucks and they're talking about different methods of cutting the door away from her arm and it's just what's freaking her out. And freaking the parents that are standing there just hysterical. And the one paramedic is watching all this and he comes over and he kneels down next to the little girl and he said, sweetheart, do you have something in your hand?
She goes, uh huh, what do you have in your hand? A candy bar, would you let go of it? No, it's my candy bar, it's my gossip, it's my gambling, it's my porno, it's my… She's not letting go of that candy bar. And he gets it, he just packs away and just stands there and goes, okay, I don't know. He stands there for about a minute and he gets a pensive look on his face and he walks slowly over to her and she's looking at him like, what do you want?
He's the guy that's trying to take away her candy bar. And he kneels down next to her and he says, sweetheart, I'm just here to make you a promise. And she says, what? He said, I want to promise you two brand new, uncrumpled candy bars if you'll let go of that crumbled one in your hand. And she says, really? And he says, I promise. And because she trusts him, she lets go of the candy bar and her arm slides out of the vending machine.
Do you realize that the thing you're hanging on to doesn't really have value? And do you trust God enough to act like he's going to replace it with something better? I think the whole thing is governed by self-centered fear.
[00:25:02]
And the only answer that Alcoholics Anonymous gives guys like me is self-centered fear. It says we want a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. Trusting God is hard for us. Most of us, when we get sober, trust is like an atrophied muscle. It has nothing to it. But a funny thing, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And I tell this to the guys I sponsor, and I know this.
This is not podium talk. I know this, that the more you act like God can be trusted, the more trustworthy he becomes. But you got to act your way into that. It doesn't happen. If I am incapable of trusting God or you or anything because you say so, I have to have an experience with God. And my experience with God has been that he's absolutely 100% trustworthy. He's always been there. He's always taken me through whatever I have to go through.
He's gotten me through to the other side. If I'm hurt in my sobriety at all, it's me. It's not God. It's my DNA that the CSI team will find. Nobody else's. Because I am capable of self-willing it again. I got a guy I sponsor right now who's burning his life to the ground on self-will. And he's very bright. Which, being bright when it comes to alcoholism really is not an asset. I mean, it's the biggest handicap.
Because what it is, is you have a highly educated enemy. That's really what it is. Your ability to justify, rationalize, explain, and defend are heightened by the level of your intelligence. So the smarter you are, the more you can hurt you. And have reasons that makes it look sensible all the way down the road. My friend Ralph says something I love. He says, Isn't it odd that trouble always starts out looking like fun?
Don. Don Alcoholic? Thanks, Bob. So we're going to talk a little bit about steps six and seven. I always like it when there's somebody up at the podium. I know they don't say this, but this is what it sounds like to me. I remember when I had character defects. This morning. I was at this conference last weekend and I heard a line. I'd never heard it before. I thought it was such a great line. This woman said, You know, it's funny.
It seems like a spiritual awakening is always preceded by a rude awakening. And it's a lot of what we go through here. It's the seemingly good and the seemingly bad. So much of my experience with my character defects, as Bob talked about. This is how my head works. Bob's telling this great analogy about this girl holding on to the candy bar. And when I hear the paramedics say, If you let go, I'll give you two.
And I'm going, I get two porno addictions? I misunderstood steps six and seven for a long time. And I forgot. It's funny. We're supposed to be taking all this information that we've put into practical application and action with a sponsor's tutelage as we work through the steps. And there's some stuff, big stuff, I have to forget to have a problem with six and seven. And the first thing I forgot from the first step is the first thing I should have learned, right?
I'm powerless. I'm powerless. But of course, I'm powerless over alcohol and that other crap, thank you very much. The rest of my life, we're in negotiation for that. And I don't know that on a conscious level. It's subconscious. Nobody's telling me that in AA. I figured that out all by myself. Because I'm one of those smart guys. My first sponsor, man, we were talking one night. He goes, you know, Don, I've got to tell you, you're a pretty smart fellow.
And I said, well, thank you. And he goes, yeah, we bury guys like you all the time. And you're right. It's not a good thing. And so without taking counsel with anybody, somehow I figure out by the time I'm at six and seven that it's my job. It's my job to do something about all this stuff I found out in my fifth step about myself that I admit, I admit is objectionable. Now, it's been objectionable to the rest of the world forever.
But now, finally, I'm catching up with the rest of you and I realize I'm a crap head. …up at the rescue and I realize I'm a crap head and I got to do something about it. Well, here's the problem. I'm making this much more complicated than it needs to be.
[00:30:03]
I have a list of character defects. It's extensive. I don't know, my first go-around, because they had me write out what I thought my defects of character were, and oh my God, I've got like 37 defects of character. Let's go out in the world, let's launch them out, and let's try to keep an eye on those. It's like herding cats. What did I do wrong today? And here's the thing I know. If you're in a constant state of failure, because you're trying to control your character defects, and you're missing the mark in your opinion, what's going to happen at some point, you're just going to stop looking.
You're going to stop looking because it's too uncomfortable. You're going to stop looking because you feel like you're not making progress. You're going to stop looking because you're going to figure what's the point, and then you're going to start telling yourself stories. You're going to start writing a narrative that makes room for your character defects. Well, it's just the way I am. You know, in the 12 in 12, it says our character defects, the one thing that can defeat us is when we say, I'll never change, this is the way I am.
And once we throw in the towel and we think there's nothing we can do about it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I go back to that guy that I go, this is just the way I am, it's your problem now, you have to deal with it. But the main problem I have with my character defects is assuming that it's my responsibility to do something about them. What I'm doing is I'm forgetting that I'm powerless.
I'm forgetting that in Chapter 5 at every meeting I attend, they read a portion of that and it says, there is one who has all power, may you find him now. That one is God. I'm forgetting that. If I'm powerless and there's one that has all power, where should I be going for this? And then the other thing that I'm doing that I'm making a mistake with is I'm praying in a pleading manner to God. I'm beseeching God with prayer about my character defects.
And so what happens when I do that is I slide into a state of self-centeredness, self-obsession about what? My character defects. And why am I so concerned about my character defects? Is it because I think they're interfering with your pleasure or mine? Because I think they're interfering with my progress in my life or yours? So everything that I'm coming at, I'm coming from a place of self. And in the book it's very clearly stated that I'm going to waste a lot of time praying for my own selfish ends.
It says we shouldn't do that. It doesn't work. And it says we can easily see why. Not me. I couldn't easily see why, yet I am pleading to God or praying to God in a pleading manner about my character defects, as though he's not aware of them. As though he didn't hear the prayer the first time. Now, the idea is that I answer the question in the sixth step and I ask myself, am I entirely ready? Well, I know it's a trick question.
I'm a good test taker. I've always been good at taking tests. That's why people think I'm brighter than I really am. I'm a guy that can get a great score on a test, but if you ask me a month later what the criteria was, I don't know. I can just show you my grade. I don't really remember things. But I know the answer to that question. The answer is yes. Why wouldn't I be? It's right there on paper in my fourth step.
All the trouble these things have caused me my whole life. Why wouldn't I be entirely ready? But I don't really know what I'm committing to. Because there's a contractual element to my spiritual relationship with God. It's a relationship. There's something going on here. Now, granted, the nature of the relationship, and I understand it, God is management and I'm labor. I get that. We're not in a partnership.
We're not equal partners. That's not what I'm talking about. But, you know, in the third step, there's a question that I have to ask myself of God. Because I'm afraid of that third step. I'm afraid it's not true. I'm afraid I'm going to go on this journey and I'm going to find out it's not that the hope was false. You know, we stand on the edge of the abyss when we're faced with the third step. And we're there with our sponsor, and our sponsor turns to us and says, jump.
And we look down and we can't see anything. So we say to our sponsor, you jump. And he says, I already did. So we ask our sponsor, what are you going to do? He goes, well, after you jump, we're just going to hang out and see what happens. And we take that leap of faith. And what we're really asking God is, can I trust you? Can I trust you? But, you know, I think in the seventh step, that question gets flipped around.
Because there's another prayer associated with the seventh step. And it says, not my creator, I'm now willing that you have all of me, good and bad. And I can say good and bad, because I've done the work in four and five. I have a more complete picture of myself. And I'm willing to give it all to God. And I'm praying that he now remove every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to him and my fellows.
And then once again, I tap into the spiritual principle of personal powerlessness. And I say, grant me strength, because I don't have any. I will not have the strength necessary to fulfill the obligation I'm asked to fulfill
[00:35:01]
in the seventh step. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. So I take that powerlessness into the seventh step, and I realize that the question God gets to ask me in the seventh step is, can he trust me? Are you going to do this, kid? Do you mean it? How free do you want to be, Don? And you see, when I'm trying to monitor and correct my own character defects, I'm playing God one more time.
And once again, I have to forget something I've already learned, and I learned it in the third step, and it very simply said we had to quit playing God. Why? It didn't work. So I'm playing God, and I'm trying to work on my character defects, and I'm putting my energy into the wrong slot, into the wrong pocket. I'm trying to fix myself. And most of my problems, as the book has already told me, I forget this.
The main problem of the alcoholic resides mainly in his mind rather than his body. And I'm forgetting that this will never fix this. I'm trying to think my way out of it, and I can't. And I know that's true because I know what I'm doing in my life. I have a front row seat for my character defects showing up in my life in sobriety, years sober. And so I sit back and I think to myself, if this situation was to reappear, what, if anything, would I do differently?
And I get an answer, and I know I'm going to act differently the next time it happens. And then that emotional hoop goes up, and I dive right through, and I don't even realize I've left my feet. My character defects show up in a lot of different ways, but they're always a manifestation of what? Self. In the inventory, I was convinced of the idea that what? Self is what had defeated me. So first I'm convinced of that, that my self is what had defeated me.
Then I look for its common manifestations. I look at my resentments, my fears, my sex life, my personal relationships, and I look at that stuff. And that's where I'm going to see my character defects showing up. But they're all manifestations of that. If you really want to boil it down and look at it simply, if you ask me, Don, what are your character defects today? I'd say, well, I only have one. A true character defect.
And that's that I'm selfish and I'm self-centered. All of the other character defects, I'm going to take my labeling gun out, and I'm going to call them lust and gluttony and pride and greed and whatever else you want to add to the list, judgment of others, condemnation, feelings of low self-worth, low self-esteem, which is a character defect, because I'm saying that God makes junk. I take my labeling gun and I put them on all those.
Those are just the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the fruit. That's just a tree that I can see. That's what the world can see. But underneath all that, below the ground, is the root of the problem, the selfishness and the self-centeredness. So the question I have to ask myself is, what do I want to do for the rest of my life? Do I want to walk around with a pair of spiritual pruning shears on my hip, and as I go through my day, I just prune and I snip and I cut out the character defect through prayer, telling on myself with my sponsor, Don was a bad boy, I'm so sorry, make another amends until I do it again?
Or do I go for the root of the problem? And how do I go for the root of the problem if I'm powerless? You see, what I'm trying to do in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is have a spiritual awakening, and once having had a spiritual awakening, what's my next job? Stay awake. Because I fall asleep. I'm connected, but I get unplugged. You know, it's funny. When I got sober, the first job I worked was construction, and I had never worked construction before.
I'd never worked with my hands. I was terrible, just absolutely awful at that job. I had a nickname on the job site, The Bleeder. I remember the first time I pulled the trigger on a skill saw on a job site, I literally dropped the saw. And I just thought to myself, this is dangerous. But if you went to my house today, and I opened my garage, you'd see workbenches all the way around the garage that I built myself.
You'd see pegboard systems with every hand tool known to man hanging there in exactly the right spot, unless my wife borrowed one. Side issue. You'd see every power tool known to man, every power saw. I've got tile saws and reciprocating saws and table saws and band saws and saws that cut saws. Right? And every one of those tools I didn't know how to use when I first got them. I learned on job sites, or I learned by watching other men, but I did what's suggested in Alcoholics Anonymous.
You know, it's funny, when I'd get something, it'd be in that box.
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It'd be all shiny. I'd be excited getting it home. And I'd open the box, and usually on the top of the box, the very first thing you find is the directions. And I'd leave the box in the garage, and I'd go inside, and I'd get a cup of coffee, and I'd sit down, and I'd get comfortable, and I'd read the directions. And I'd be comfortable enough with the directions. Now, it didn't mean I knew how to use the saw.
It just meant I knew what it was intended to do and what the directions were for using it. And now I'd go out, and I'd put the saw together, and I'd get ready. And then what I would do was I was taught in Alcoholics Anonymous is I'd start to practice. You know, we take these spiritual tools, you know, and we think we're supposed to be good with them right away, and we're not. I'm telling you, every tool I've ever used in my garage, I was kind of fumbling and nervous, and I wasn't sure if I was using it right, and if it was used for the intended purpose, and if I was going to kill myself in some cases with it.
But what I found is repetition bred familiarity, and familiarity bred the comfort. And we do the same thing with the spiritual tools. We use them in repetition, and then we get familiarity. And from that familiarity comes the comfort, but we have to stay in the process. And I have all these tools now that I've read the directions on. Everyone, I'm proficient with these tools. I'm comfortable with these tools.
I know how to use these tools. You know what those tools will never work without? Power. I can set them up. I can take my measurements. I can have all my lumber set out. I know in my mind what I want to do, and I can push the button, pull the trigger as long as I want, and nothing happens until I plug into the power. Those tools are powerless. They have to be plugged into work. And it's the same thing with these spiritual tools we talk about.
Anytime I take one of these spiritual tools and I think I'm the power that's driving them, nothing happens. So I'm working on my character defects, and I think I have power to do something about myself, and I forget what I've already learned in the third step. We have to get rid of self. We must, or else it kills us. And there doesn't seem to be any way of reducing it even much under our own power.
We had to have God's help. But I forget all that when I'm trying to make myself better, when I'm trying to fix myself, when I'm trying to work on my character defects. So the day I don't work on my character defects, I put very little effort into them. I think about them because they show up in my life, but I don't work on them. I don't try to change myself. It's not my job anymore. Where I put my effort is in improving my conscious contact with a power greater than myself I choose to call God.
And I'll tell you the simplicity that I discovered years into sobriety. I noticed something. Every time one of my character defects had center stage, you know when you do something and you go, I can't believe I did it, and your sponsor goes, believe it, you did it, right? There's always something present in that equation, the noticeable absence of a conscious contact with a power greater than myself.
Where was God when you put your hands on that guy, Don? Where was God when you told that person off? Where was God when you screamed at your wife? Where was God when you drove like a maniac? Where was God when you had that heated argument in AA? Where was God? And the answer's always the same. I'm sure he was there, but I wasn't aware of him because I wasn't plugged in. I was standing next to the power.
I just wasn't plugged into it. So what I try to do today is stay plugged in. And the good news is this, and I suggest to you that you run it up the flagpole and see if somebody salutes it. Try this in your life because it's been astounding in mine. Nothing short of miraculous. That when I am simply trying to live in the spirit of the third step and the seventh step, which for me is this, my job is to serve.
My job is to play a spiritual game where I wake up in the morning and I say, my job today is to serve God and his kids, and everything that happens is exactly the way it's supposed to be happening in this moment. God has a plan, and just because he's not whispering in my ear doesn't mean that the plan doesn't work. How about I just go out, and I remember talking to my sponsor, and he told me the absolute necessity that if I was going to grow spiritually and survive alcoholism, I had to be of service to people.
And I was confused by that. I remember saying to him, well, who am I supposed to help? And he smiled and he said, oh, God. Don, God made you. He knows everything about you, and he knows you're not very bright. So the people you're supposed to help, he's going to put them right in front of you. So as you go through your day, and you find one of God's kids right in front of you, that's who you're supposed to help that moment.
And sometimes it's just by being polite. Sometimes it's just by listening. being polite. Sometimes it's just by listening. Sometimes it's by being patient. It doesn't mean you got to build somebody something or carry something for somebody. Sometimes it's
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just recognizing their humanity and seeing them. But they're going to be right in front of you. And I've never forgotten that. And I'll tell you, there have been more than a few moments where I've thought to myself, when somebody's standing right in front of me, this one too, God? Really? This one? But when I'm living in that simple spirit of the third and seventh step, a spirit of service to God and his kids, my character defects can't draw a clean breath. Because the component for my character defects, and right here it says the chief activator of our character defects is self-centered fear, and I believe that. But in order for me to be in fear, loneliness, depression, anxiety, anger, rage, self-righteousness, condemnation of others, any of these things that we can talk about that we'll label negative, I have to first be in a state of self. And the only way for me to get out of the state of self is to be in a state of service, simply trying to figure out what God would have me do in that moment. And the beautiful thing about it is, I don't even have to be right. I've never been sure that I'm right when I think I'm doing God's will. But if I have an honest desire to simply do what I think he would have me do in that moment, my character defects for that moment, just for that moment, or those moments, are instantaneously removed. But anything removed can be returned. And does that mean that when I spring back into my default setting of self-centeredness, that my character defects immediately show up and start causing problems? No. I think of my character defects like a pack of lions, and they're on very strong leashes, and they're always with me. And you know, if I keep them at bay long enough, have a good enough conscious contact, live my life on a fairly continuous basis doing what I think God would have me do, they get a little bored. They lay down, start licking their paws, minding their own business. I forget they're there. But the minute I slide into self, some jerk zookeeper sneaks into my room and very quietly unclicks the leashes. So quietly, sometimes I don't even think they know they're free yet, but they figure it out pretty quickly. When I'm in self, it doesn't mean my character defects run riot through my life. I've been sober too long for that. It just means they wake up and they start showing up in my life, subtly at first, and then stronger the longer that I'm in self and disconnected from God. Thanks for listening. Let's take a break.
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