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Source: Clif G – Steel City Woodstock (2024) – Steps 6 and 7 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clif-g-steel-city-woodstock-2024-steps-6-and-7-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:58:45
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He from Oklahoma. Always important to have a mic man. Hey everybody, I'm Cliff Gooding. I'm a grateful alcoholic. I'm sober since August the 15th of 2001 and for that short amount of time I'm as grateful as I know how to be and I'm just got to tell you I'm really impressed this many people showed up after lunch. I just got to tell you that. These are the desperate people here and these are the people that I may be dying. I need to go, right? It's really good to see everybody here this afternoon. It's just been phenomenal so far, hadn't it? It had been really great, really good, really, really good and I'm excited to see what comes next. So I want to thank Nancy again for extending the invitation and the committee of three for getting together and invite us, extended invitation to have me out here. I'm always surprised when anybody asks me to go anywhere to do anything. You know, most people didn't invite me back so to be asked to do anything for Alcoholics and Homeless is an honor and a privilege. It carries great responsibility to be to do that and it doesn't matter what you're asked to do in Alcoholics and Homeless. This just has to be my job today. I can promise you that the guys in my home group back home, they don't care where I am this weekend. They just want to know are you going to be at the home group Wednesday night. That's all they care about. That's all they care about. They are not impressed that I'm out here. So, you know, I have a sponsor and he knows he's my sponsor. It's a guy named Bob B out of St. Paul, Minnesota. He happens to sponsor my friend Paul and my friend Ralph. So we got together today talking about our sponsor because we do things like that. Come to find out I'm the guy that's talked to him last so this weekend I'm the most spiritual of the three of us is what I want to tell you. It's a lot. I want to thank Ron. Ron picked me up yesterday. Ron and I have been friends for a long time and he picked me up at the airport yesterday. I got to tell a story about Ron. It's really, back in Ron's drinking days, some of you might remember this, but back in Ron's drinking days they found him outside. He was outside of this bar in downtown Pittsburgh and he had this little piece of, oh it was like a branch, a little bit of branch, a twig really, about this long branch off a tree and he had a string on it with a sinker and he was out in a puddle and this guy came along and said, what are you doing? And he said, fishing. And the guy just kind of looked at him and felt sorry for Ron. He said, why don't you come in, let me buy you a drink. And so Ron said, okay. So he goes in and guy buys him a drink and he thinks, I need to find out more about this fishing. So he asked Ron, he said, well just tell me how many have you caught today? He said, you make eight.
Quite the fisherman. Anyway, my task today is to talk to you all about six and seven and I don't know about you, but Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, 75 pages. Steps one, two, three, four, five. Then you got the doctor's opinion, throw that on top of it, got the prefaces, the forwards, and then you come to step six and seven. And Ron read them. Two paragraphs. Now I don't know what your experience was when you got to that part in the book, but I'm gonna tell you what it looked like to me.
It looked like the free space on the bingo card, right? I mean, two paragraphs. I mean, I'm sweating all this other stuff, but I get to six and seven, I get really a paragraph and a prayer. That's what I really got. Paragraph, it looks like the free space on the bingo card. How many people in here have done six and seven? Yeah? How many people still doing six and seven? That's my people right there. Yeah.
This is going to resemble something like a spiritual whack-a-mole game, right? I don't know any way to describe it. It looks like spiritual whack-a-mole. Whatever I'm going through, about the time God relieves that from me, bam, something else comes on. He'll give me about a week and a half and then bam, something else. So I want to talk to you kind of about that journey for me and what that looks like. It's hard to talk about six and seven without a little bit of preface about how you get to that spot because there's some preparation to come to to do the paragraph and the prayer. I think we always think, at least I did when I got to this part of the book and when I got to this part in Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm thinking I'm about as ready as I want to be because in that fifth step, in four and five, I uncover some things that are just pretty horrendous about my life. Mostly the mask comes off about who's the real
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problem in this game. I mean, the mask comes off and when I look at the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I mean, aren't they just beautifully written? How we get to where we are, how we arrive at this spot. We come in here with this idea of personal powerlessness, this idea that I've got to have some kind of power greater than me. I'm willing to make a commitment to do the rest of the steps. I do this exercise in four. I share that with somebody and then I arrive at six and seven with a lot of information. Now, I'm a lawyer by trade and I'm going to tell you something. When I arrived on the shores of Alcoholics Anonymous and I looked on the steps that are not here, but when I looked at the steps on the wall, I want to tell you when I looked at those, those did not seem to me like the answers to my problem. I mean, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was homeless. Wasn't alcoholic, but I was homeless and it didn't seem to me looking at the steps were any way to solve my problem, which was homelessness.
This didn't seem it. I mean, if you just look at them and you start, you get down to about step four and they talk about writing stuff down. Well, I'm a lawyer. We don't write nothing down. I mean, that's just a fact. Then you got to tell somebody about it. You all know snitches get stitches. We don't tell anybody about nothing. It's going to the grave. Then they want you to go straighten everything up. I'm like, I'm out. I'm out of here, man. I'm out. But yet, that pathway is the way for a guy like me to be returned what the book talks about, back into the stream of life. And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and let me just say this, if you're new or you're nearly new here today, if you don't hear anything else I say, I really want you to hear this, that you're wanted, welcomed, and needed in Alcoholics Anonymous. That you're absolutely wanted, welcomed, and needed here in Alcoholics Anonymous. There used to be a plaque that we used to have in a downtown meeting that said, welcome home. And that's certainly what it feels like, not at first, but eventually began to feel like that for me, that I was with my people, that was people who could understand. But when I got to step six or seven, I had a sponsor who was really in touch and in tune with the book. He was a book guy. And he was a guy that believed, he was one of those people that believed that if you weren't at the meeting 30 minutes early, you were late. And he was one of those guys that would get there and he would set the chairs up, put the books out, make the coffee, you know, whatever needed to be done. And if he wasn't doing that, he had a couple of guys out in the ante room, and all those people seemed to know what to do out there was to pray, write, that was it. Pray, write, read, that's all they know out there. And he would float into the meeting, so you know, and I don't know how they do it here where you're from, it's probably wrong I'm sure, but however in Oklahoma, in Oklahoma, right kind of after introduction, all that they say, is there any A-related announcements? And old Don, it seemed like every meeting, his hand would shoot up, and I mean, he would go on and on, sometimes like 45 seconds, about everything going on in AA Worldwide. And when the meeting was over, if there was any newcomers there, Don and these, what I called at that time, acolytes, because I don't know what they are, you know, he and the acolytes would be on these newcomers like chicken on June bugs, man, just go in attack mode, you know. And they would be, you know, giving out numbers, writing numbers in the book, oh Don would be hanging back, and he would, he would do that of course, but he would also get a number, because Don knew the real truth about alcoholics is that no alcoholic can lift a 10,000 pound phone and call. So Don would call you, Don would call you. And I just hope for everybody here today that you have somebody in your life like that, that you have somebody in Don, in your life. Because Don changed the trajectory of my life. Don was a guy that was in that book and he understood it. So when I arrived at this point in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, there were some fundamental things that I began to understand and some fundamental things that Don explained to me and helped me to understand. And what's been talked about here today, that my problem really isn't drinking. It appears that way to everybody in my life, and to everyone in my life, it appears like drinking is my problem. And every one of you know that because you have all probably, all those who identify themselves as alcoholics, you've all heard that your whole life. You got a drinking problem. You just don't need to drink. You need to stop drinking. Which sounds like that's reasonable. The trouble is I can't. I can't stop drinking. You know, I suffered from what Adam talked about this morning, you go, I got that I can't drink and I can't not drink. I can't drink because once I start, I can't stop. And I can't
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drink because every time I swear I'll never do it again, I'm back at it. And that appears to everybody in my life that that's the problem. I think Alcoholics Anonymous is the greatest bait-and-switch program that's ever been invented, really. I mean, you come here saying, I got a problem drinking. They go, no you don't. They let you live for that for a couple of weeks, right? Drink is my problem. Until finally, somebody pulls the mask off and says, no, drink is your solution. And it's the solution to all the background noise in my life, that restless, irritable discontentedness of my life. Those bedevilments, you know, I'm a bedeviled person. And I always wonder, how does that all jive? How do we get to that spot? You know, how do we get to that spot? How do I come out restless, irritable, discontented? How do I arrive on this planet just restless, irritable, discontented? How does that work for a guy like me? And how did I find out that alcohol was a solution for that? Now, if you're one of those people and you're new, or you're nearly new, and you're here today, please don't go home to whoever is your shepherd and say, hey, that guy from Oklahoma said drink is not my problem.
They'll hunt me down. They will fly to Oklahoma and kill me. Don't tell them that. Let them live in the delusion for a while that it's the drinking. But the people of Alcoholics Anonymous told me it's not my problem, it's my solution. It's the flower on the tree. It is, it's just that part of me. What I really suffer from is this restless, irritable, discontentedness. And the real problem in my life, you know, the problem that I've come to learn in Alcoholics Anonymous, not the problem that the people in my life see. The problem that the people in my life see is the drinking. It's the drinking. But what I've come to understand in Alcoholics Anonymous is that's not really my problem. The problem is me. And the real problem is that I'm separated from God on self-will. That is the real problem in my life, is that I'm separated from God on self-will. And so if I'm separated from God on self-will, what I try to do is I just try to manual, I just try to go headlong into life. And from that I get all this restless, irritable, discontentedness. Why? Because I lack power. I lack power. And step two talks about in the chapter we agnostic says that's exactly what this book is about. It's a book that it's it's a book to help me find a power by which I could live. To help me solve my problem singular. My problem. My problem. And the book is already we've gone through that piece where we talk about that the problem of the alcoholic, if he never takes a drink, that allergic piece never really activates. You know if I never eat a peanut, if I'm allergic to peanuts, if I never eat a peanut, that allergy never activates. You ever been around peanut people? My God, they're the craziest people on earth. Well since y'all brought them up, let's talk about it for a minute. I mean these peanut people, my God, they make one emergency room visit they quit forever. I mean they quit forever. They don't have to go to Peanut Anonymous. They don't have to get a Peanut Anonymous sponsor. They don't even have to read the Peanut Anonymous book, Ralph. They're serious about it. They go to a restaurant, they ask questions like this, has a peanut been on this city block? I mean they want to know. And so you know that allergic reaction, if I don't drink, if I never take the first drink, the allergy never kicks in. But the book tells us that the problem centers in my mind. That that's where the problem lies. And I'm sure you all have heard and you've probably said I've said this before and I'm not just if if somebody believes different from this, I'm not discouraging or disputing that. It's what you believe, what your experience is, but my experience is, because I used to think that I had this God-sized hole. That's what it looks like. Some people say that's what it feels like. But what I've come to understand for me is I don't believe it's a hole because the book says that deep down in every man, woman, and child is what? The fundamental idea of God. So he's already there. So if God's already there, it can't be a hole. But what I believe it is for a guy like me is because of the way I've lived my life, because of these defective characters, because of these seated resentments, because of the fear in my life, because of bad sex conduct, because the harms to others, the activation of those character defects, what happens is I begin to stack these things up in my life. And they become so large that they cast such a shadow in me it looks like a hole. But they're so stacked up in my life that I've blocked God away from me.
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that sunlight of the Spirit that shines through, that did shine. And I believe when everybody's born there's a shaft of light, that I come through and there's a shaft of light. I'm as closest to God as I've ever been. But what happens for a guy like me is I've restless, irritable, discontent, that I become separated from God on self-will. I try to hammer my way through life, just hammerhead my way through. I become restless, irritable, discontented. And before I ever had a drink, before I ever had a drink of whiskey, what happened for me is I've needed to find power. I needed to find power. Now I don't know that's the problem. I don't know that lack of power is my dilemma. I just feel restless, irritable, discontent. So I begin to do some things. I begin what I like to call management tools. You people call them shortcomings and defects of character.
They seem like management tools to me. I found out if I lie, you know what happens is Paul asked me a question and I make up an answer because I don't know, but I can't look bad. I can't not know because I've got an old idea that I'm supposed to know. Anybody got that kind of deal? I'm supposed to know. Could be a question about nuclear physics. I don't know, but I'm going to make an answer up for him.
We'll give him an answer. So I lie to him and it could be about anything. It doesn't really matter. I'll just lie to him. He doesn't know I'm lying, but what happens for me is I get a sense of power. It's fleeting. It's fleeting, but I manufacture some power. Fleeting. Doesn't last long, but I manufacture it. I lie to somebody. Nancy, I lie to Paul. So my friend, Bob. Bob's got something I want. I steal it from him, but I help him look for it. I'm not that bad of a friend, so I help him look for it. He's pretty upset about it, but I got one over on Bob and what happens when I do that? I get a sense of power. Taking something that's his, I came on. I'm kind of a thief. I'm kind of a petty thief. I like to find things before they're lost, that kind of thing. I find them, but I get a sense of power from that. I get a power. I get some kind of power kick out of that, but it's fleeting.
Doesn't last, and what happens? I get restless irritable discontent again. I cheat somebody out of something, you know. I run a scam on somebody. I cheat them out of it. I get a sense of power, but it's fleeting. Doesn't last, and so I'm separated from God on self-will. I lack power. I begin. I get restless irritable discontent. I begin to manufacture power in my life. It gives me the sense, the sense that I have some power, and what happens for a guy like me is that because I have this restless irritable discontent, I can't lie, cheat, and steal all the time.
So when I'm 11 years old, what happened? Under big weeping willow tree down in southeast Oklahoma, my brother opens a tall boy can of Country Club malt liquor. Anybody in here ever drink Country Club malt liquor? That's God working in your life. I'll just tell you that right now. Promise you. And I took a drink, and the magic of alcohol happened for me, and I say it's the magic of alcohol because that's the way our textbook describes it. The illusion created by alcohol. The sense of ease and comfort. Not real ease and comfort, but the sense of it. And so I live my life by these defects of character. You know, a buddy of mine one time called them defaults of character, and I like that because I'm quick to default back into it. You catch me on a bad day, and you catch me flat-footed and ask me a question, I'll give you an answer. May not be the right one. It might not even be true, but I'll give you an answer. I gotta go back and clean all that up, right? But I'm trying to struggle through life with this stuff. And so what happens for me is I'm separated from God on self-will. I lack power. I'm restless, irritable, discontent. So what happens for me when that happens? I'm always at a crossroads, and drink seems to be the answer because I get that sense of ease and comfort that comes with that. So I got a problem I can't solve. I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. You have a solution that I don't want because that turning point that we talked about between step two and three that go to the bitter end, accept spiritual help, that doesn't sound attractive to me. That really doesn't sound all that appealing to me. That's why they call it a dilemma. Equally bad choices. I've got to make a choice here that are equally bad for me or appear to be bad. But this idea that I've got to live this spiritual life, I don't know what that looks like, but I create some ideas about what it is. I might have to
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go sell flowers at the airport. I might go help the starving kids in India. I got a lot of things I think is going to happen to me. Probably have me hawking big books on the corner. I don't know. But I have this connotation. Mostly it's I'm never going to have sex again. That's really what it is. I have these connotations of what I think the spiritual life is going to look like. Or go to the bitter end. And I have an idea of what that is. I have an idea of what that looks like. When I came into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was 41 years old. I hadn't worked the last three years of my drinking. My wife, my present wife, who we've been together since 1995, almost 30 years that we've been together. A great member of the Al-Anon program, but not then. She was an Al-Anon in training back then. She had this great job. She was selling radio back in 95 when sports radio just kind of came on the boom. She was the first woman to sell sports radio in Oklahoma City. She's beautiful. A lot of people here know my wife, Lori. She's beautiful. She's just killing it. So that's what I like to tell people. I became a functioning alcoholic. I had a wife that worked. That's what I did.
But I was a real go-getter. I'd take her to work and go get her. That's what I would do. But I think when I arrived on the shore of Alcoholics Anonymous and we come here and I'm challenged with this problem, and I think we begin to look at these steps, we really begin to look at them, I think those first three steps look something like this with God. I think God has a conversation. I think we all have this conversation in our own way with God. And that is the first piece of the conversation is step one. So you admit you're powerless in your life as a man. Yeah, I admit that. And you're willing to admit that you're willing to consider my existence. Yeah, I'm willing to consider that. And in considering my existence, you're willing to forge some kind of relationship with me. Yeah, I'm willing to do that. And I think God looks at us and he says, we're good. We're good. We are good. And then he says to us, now we're going to see who's been sitting in the God chair. And that's what four and five are about. But in step three, when we really analyze step three, that's where I really begin to see the character defects come on display. Maybe for the very first time in my life. In that part in step three where it talks about that I'm like the actor, you know, it talks about any life run on self-will would hardly be a success. And he says I'm like the actor. Now when I read that for the first time, when I really looked at that, it just seemed like words on the paper. But as I've, like everything in Alcoholics Anonymous for me, the steps seem so linear. First you do this, then you do this, and then you do this. It seems so, it's really kind of, you know, nerve-wracking.
I mean, it's really a hodgepodge. Because, you know, you could be on step seven or step eight making a list and suddenly being an AA, you think, that's what step two's all about. You could be making amends and think, that's what they're talking about, step three. It just kind of comes to us on the spiritual journey. We get more clarity over time. That's why, have you ever done this? Have you ever been reading your book and think gremlins have been in this book? This was not there two weeks ago. Not there two weeks ago. You swear by it. Who's been in my book? You've retyped the pages and inserted them. Because I'm spiritually more awake on the journey. And suddenly things that made no sense, you know, Bill said, common sense becomes uncommon sense. Things that I saw one way, this disease of perception, I'm more spiritually awake. I begin to see it's different. Begins to mean different things. But in step three is when I get to really see my character defects come into real bloom. And I always like that this is the most clear for a guy like me. It became more clear for me when I looked at my romantic relationships. When I talked about going back through my life and looking at my life, my romantic relationships were where I began to really see defects of characters becoming prominent in my life. Yeah, I lied. Yeah, I cheated. Yeah, I stole. But when I began to look at my interpersonal relationships, particularly when I began to look at my romantic relationships, they became right here. They got right in front of me. And I'll tell you how this kind of looks for me. So I'm going to use my friend Nancy as my puppet today, as my example. She's my exemplar today. So
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Nancy and I meet each other, and she's kind of cute because I'm into tall women. She's, and you know how alcoholics are, you know, we meet each other and this is what happens for me. Maybe this is not you, but this is what happens for me. Within the first 15 seconds, I got our whole life planned out. Got it all. I got the 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, I see it all. And immediately what I do is I assign Nancy a role. I assign her a role. And what happens for a guy like me is, you know, alcoholics, we date with a u-haul and a toothbrush. That's how we roll around. We immediately go underground for 60 days. And eventually we got to come back to the real world. And then I begin to notice some things about Nancy.
When we're in a room full of people like this, I notice she doesn't stand as close to me as the role calls for. Now if we took all the women out of the room as just the guys in here, I notice she doesn't hold my hand as quickly as the role calls for because I have a script of how it looks like to love me. This is what it looks like to love. I don't tell you that. You're supposed to know. You're supposed to know. You're laughing, you got identified. So what happens, I begin to try to help her. You know, I begin to try to be gracious, kind, but if she doesn't get it, I'll just be a jerk to get her to move because she won't piece at any price and she'll move. And you know, after about 90 days, what happens is Nancy's star power begins to fail because she doesn't get it. And I don't know about you, but when I've got who I believe was my starring person and they're just not getting it, I look for understudies. I mean, you've got to have some understudies. So I begin to look for understudies because she doesn't get it.
And she eventually finds out about that and she says, I'm out of here, as she rightfully should. And you know what I say? Good. Good. Because she doesn't get it. This is what it looks like to love me. And she doesn't, she's not filling the role. And I'd like to tell you that that's how it was in just my romantic relationship. But when I really started to break down my life, I was that way with my parents. If I'm your kid, this is what it needs to look like to parent me.
You guys ever have a fit? You know, that's what we call it down south, a fit. That's where you lay on the floor and kick and scream till you get your way? Just have a fit, you know. You have a fit. So I just manipulate people. My friends, my brother, people I work with, I just manipulate them. I use these character defects to maneuver them around on the chessboard to where I need them to be. And when they don't follow the script, when they don't do what I'm willing to do, you know what happens? I get restless, irritable, discontented. You know what I do when that happens? I drink. I drink. And this kind of scenario, this idea that I will manufacture these defects to create this illusion of power in my life.
Because I need that. You know, Judah talked about these people dominated her. People have dominated me in my life. And what I really want to do is, I don't want to get even. I want to get one more. Getting even is for wussies, man. I need to get one more on you. Not get even, get one better. And so I'm in this constant state of just restless, irritable, discontent, manufacturing power. It's being an alcoholic, inactive alcoholism, it's tiring. It's very tiring. I didn't know how tiring it was till I got sober. And I look at all the movements I had to make to drink. All the movements I had to do to participate in active alcoholism.
All the things that had, all the lies I had to tell. All the things I had to steal. Everything, people I had to manipulate to get them to move so I could participate in my active alcoholism. No wonder our book refers to it as drinking careers. It's a full-time job. I mean, I got a buddy of mine, he says, I think alcoholics ought to have trading cards, you know? Kind of like pro sports people, like on the back, how many DUIs you had, stuff like that. Trading card, have our stats on them, you know? How many wives we've had, stuff like that. Good stuff. And these defects of character, so they begin to, I begin to see them in time in step three, and I begin, and then suddenly in step four what happens is we get the evidence presented to us. Because a piece of it in step three is pretty theoretical, and in step four it becomes in black and white, and it's written out for us.
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conditions of my life. I begin to see exactly where these defects of characters in my life. I step on the toes of my fellows. I move them around, I try to move them around on the chessboard of life to suit me and I do that through these defects of character, these shortcomings. And so when I do that and I, you know, I share that inventory with somebody, it became, my wife says it better than anybody I know when she gives her talk. When she talks about being concluded with step five, she said I was as elated and disgusted as I'd ever been.
Elated that finally I don't have to live this way anymore but disgusted at how I lived my life prior to this date because it all became true. It all became real. And so arriving at this point, arriving at six and seven, gathering the evidence because that's really what happens in my life. For the first time I'm not building a case against you, I'm building a case against me. For the first time in my life I'm really laying out the facts. I'm really having a trial on the facts about me, who I really am, what kind of character do I want to have going forward.
I don't think that it's any real, it's not any kind of mystery, it's not any kind of, you know, chance that six and seven lay directly in the middle of our steps. If I looked at, if my hands and my arms outstretched here, we numbered the steps and we got right here to six and right here was seven, what's in the middle? And where does the problem lie? Right here. The problem lies in my mind. Is it any wonder that the breaking point from six to seven occurs there? Right in the middle. Right in the middle. And I want to tell you in steps six and seven is where everything changes. Six and seven is the whole enchilada, I believe, in Alcoholics Anonymous for this transformational process to begin. In six and seven, when the evidence is finally presented to me, then I have some things I have to do. And I'm going to tell you, I'm kind of a slow learner. I mean, I'm a guy that's, you know, I'm a quick study on some stuff, but on some things I'm really a slow learner. And I'm a guy, you know, I was asked, ready to ask God to take the drink and why it's killing me. Booze is killing me.
Have you guys ever been in six and seven meetings and hear people say something like this? Well, you know, I'm working on my lust. And in my mind, I always think, I bet you are, you horny bastard, working on your lust. I bet you are. And then I don't say that, I just think it, right? And then my next thought is this, with what power? With what power am I working on anything in my life? Well, why do I have the arrogance to suddenly believe that I've got power? It's like, you know, my buddy Don Majors, God rest his soul, who passed away, he used to talk, he talked, tell the story about being in a meeting one time, trying to find balance in his life. He was talking about balance and a newcomer spoke up after he said, said, Don, if you could find balance, don't you think you could manage your life? He said, I have no ability to arrest the defects of character in my life. I have no ability to dispel them from my life. As a matter of fact, our book talks about willingness. It talks about willingness a lot in our book. It talks about it in step three, it talks about it in step six, this idea of willingness. But it says something else that's profound. And Ron read it today, and it's something I think that a lot of people miss. I certainly missed it. It's when those gremlins came back and wrote in my book again, you know. And it's one little word and it's like to the next to the last sentence in that first paragraph. And it's, it changed everything. Once again, it changed everything for me. And it says something like this, these defects which I found objectionable. See, because until I find them objectionable, they're not problems for me. Until I find them objectionable, they're not problems for me.
I'm going to tell you some stories about my trials and tribulations with my experience with six and seven. They give me no great pleasure to tell you this. But I know the truth is that only by disclosing ourselves do we allow somebody else to disclose themselves. That's the power here. The power we have, the more
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transparent we are, the more that we are willing to be open, allows the other person who may be living in that fear permission. When I was a little kid growing up, I was, my brother was 10 years older than me. And when I was like, I don't know, 12 or so, 13, he was a fireman. And I used to go down to the fire station on Saturdays and just hang out with them. I'd go watch, we would watch American Bandstand. Who remembers that with me, huh? Yeah, there we go. They're my people. And then we'd have lunch and then they would go into the dorm and they had these old eight millimeter movies. Some of you might remember those. Stag films, they called them back then. Blue movies. I just call them porno, that's what they were. So I'm trying to color it up here a little bit for you people. And so I got exposed to that in some real formative years of my life. And again, none of that makes me alcoholic. But I have this fundamental belief that my experience is a lot of things that I, old ideas that I brought into Alcoholics Anonymous that caused me to develop shortcomings and defects of character, I learned on the playground. Some of those things I learned as I was just maneuvering early in my life. A lot of these things I really learned about myself is when I did a really deep principle inventory. What are the things I really believe in?
When I really looked at what are the guiding principles in my life, when I really broke those out and really looked at those, is that true or false? You know, one of the fundamental ones I had when I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous was men don't cry. You know, because somebody said this to me one day, if you don't stop crying I'm gonna give you something to cry about. So you know what I heard? Men don't cry.
So I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, first time I saw a man crying in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was uncomfortable. I thought, what a wussy. Not just waterworks all the time up here, you know. But those old ideas I bring into Alcoholics Anonymous, I bring those defects in here with those old ideas, they don't work. And so what happened for me is my sex ideas, my sex conducts got all screwed up in those formative years. And I'm gonna tell you, I had a lot of bad sex conduct because of that. My idea about sex was all screwed up about that. And so when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I had to have a complete, you know, when Judith and I talked about that sex, I'd have a whole rewiring of that stuff because I've lied, manipulated, cheated people to get what I want. To get what I want. And the real sad part about that is I got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous and before I really could understand the need to be validated by a woman, before I could really appreciate that, in my marriage there would be times when we would go out and I would just flirt with other women in front of my wife. And she would say things like this to me, I wish you wouldn't do that. I wish you wouldn't do that in front of me. I wish you wouldn't do it at all, but I wish you wouldn't do it in front of me.
And it got so bad one time that finally, we don't celebrate Valentine's by the way anymore because most of this would happen on Valentine's, you know the worst day it could happen on Valentine's. I just bring dinner home for now on some of that. But she got up and left me at a restaurant. I'm like seven years sober. She got up and just left me at a restaurant. And to think about shortcomings and character defects until it becomes painful enough for me, they're not objectionable. They're just not objectionable to me. If I'm still getting some benefit out of it, if I'm still getting something out of it, they're not objectionable. There has to be a level of pain that I get to, or better yet, I begin to see the pain in the people's eyes that I love the most in sobriety when I can't drink it away. And I finally saw the pain in my wife's eyes. And I finally caught it. You know what happens when you catch that? You know what happens when you finally get an objectionable? You get on your knees and you ask God to help you. You ask God to help you. You know what the amazing part about that was? The minute I abandoned that, the minute I walked away from that, everything changed. Everything changed.
Everything changed about that in my life. For those of you who were here last night, I talked about this period I went through. I went through a real evangelical period in Alcoholics and Alcoholics. I was one of these guys that, I don't know what happened to me, I just got that one degree off. I began to believe my own press. I began to believe everything about that. And that resurrected power of the ego that just came back to me. And I became very didactic in the way I read the book, the way I practiced the book. I'll give you an example. If we're in a
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step 10 meeting and you start talking about the 10th step nightly inventory, I would chase you down after the meeting and tell you, you're killing people buddy, you better clean that up, right? Just chase you down. Tell you, just point out how you're wrong. You know, you'd say something that the book doesn't say, I'd just chase you down. It doesn't say that, you know. Just an ass, really, you know. And the deal here is we're supposed to make this attractive. You know, I need to make this attractive for the newcomer. And I'm gonna tell you, beating people over the head with that book is not attractive. There's nothing attractive about that.
And I had this real crash at about nine years sober in Alcoholics and Alcoholics. I had this absolute crash where my wife came home one day and said, you know, you're physically sober but you're not spiritually sober and you're not mentally sober and you got to go. And at nine years sober, I got thrown out of my house. And I went and lived with a guy for about three or four months until, you know, you have these crossroads. And to have a crossroads in sobriety without being able to drink, you're faced with this idea that I got to change. I got to change. Because I know what's waiting for me out there. Yeah, I don't labor under any kind of illusion or delusion that a drink's an answer for me at all. And it hasn't been an answer for me for a long, long time. But when I get into enough pain, I'll look for other things to try to sway that so I don't have to do the work. So I don't have to really look at what's really wrong with me. And that crossroads I hit at nine years sober, that bottoming out I had one more time.
You know, I went and lived with this guy for three or four months till Lori invited me back home. You know, I didn't call her every day and say, can I come home, can I come home? I just left her alone. And what I did was I just got back with God. I got back with God and God's kids. And you know what happens? I'm amazed at this. If you really want this idea of the change in six and seven, you can really effectuate this in about two and a half hours. You really can. If five minutes every day, you'll actively engage in meditation for 30 days.
Actively. That's about two and a half hours. And I can promise you at the end of those 30 days, if you'll actively engage in prayer meditation for five minutes a day, something will happen to you. A change will begin to effectuate in your life. If you begin to walk with this power in your life and you really wanted to do exactly what what our book talks about, to relieve us of this to take away those things, to remove them from us. If we really begin to do that, if we really believe what our book says, if you'll do that at the end of 30 days, you'll be unrecognizable in some areas of your life. If we really put into practice what our book tells us. In step three, it calls for us to challenge us really. The real question is, do we trust God? That's the real challenge for us in step three. A lot of people come in here say, I believe in God, I believe in God, and they do. But do they trust God? You know, in this idea of trust, in this idea of faith, in six and seven are paramount. I'm often reminded of a child, and some of you have seen this and probably have experienced in your life, that there'll be a stoop. We took the tables off here, just this little stoop here. You might come by and there'd be a kid on it that your nephew or niece or your grandson or granddaughter or your child, whatever, and they'll see you coming and they do something like this, catch me, and they jump. They don't wait for you to set up. Let me get ready. They're already in the air if you say that, right? They're coming. They just jump. Why do they do that? They have this fundamental faith that you're going to catch them.
They don't hesitate. When they see you and they say catch me, they just jump. All my life people said things like this to me, maybe they said things like this to you. You need to grow up. You need to grow up. You need to grow up. And to a sense they were right. I did need to grow up. There's no disputing that. I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I got an old face, but I've got this mind that's about a five-year-old, you know, and I may be being generous, but I believe once I arrive here in Alcoholics Anonymous is I begin to take the actions in here, particularly in Step 6.
What I need to do is grow down to the faith of a child, that there's some fundamental
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things that I need to happen in my life in order to get the full bloom of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I can come here and I can participate in a program of recovery, but if I want real change, if I want to effectuate real change, then I need to begin a transformation process and how I do that is I have to engage with this power that we find here in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's no way I can effectuate changes with these defects.
I can no more get rid of those than I could relieve my alcoholism. No human power. If I could do that, I wouldn't need to be here this weekend. I could be home with my lovely wife and we would be doing something that never involved Alcoholics Anonymous. I could have just quit drinking. The other day I was at the gym and this guy came up to me and he said, I understand you and I have something else in common.
I didn't know we had anything in common, but I'll play. I said, okay, what is that? He said, I'm a recovered alcoholic too. And I thought, okay. I said, well, where do you go to meetings? He said, oh, I don't go to meetings. I said, do you have a sponsor? You read the book? He said, no, no, no, I didn't get sober. I met this woman and we got married and she said I drank too much so I quit. And I didn't say this, but I thought, you're not like me.
You're not like me. But today I don't need to explain that to him. See there have been a time I need to explain that. No, boy, you're nothing like me. You're nothing like me. But I don't need to do that today. What I did was say, well, that's really great, man. That's really great. And see, what I think has happened to me is I think what happens to all of us is by being engaged with the power and taking the actions from this book and Alcoholics and Alcoholics, the steps begin to change me.
And I think over time what happens is I begin to soften. I begin to soften. It smooths off the rough edges of my life. I don't have to chase it. If people come to meetings and they want to believe that the 11th Step Knightly Inventory is really in Step 10, I just let them. I just let them. I explain it to everybody I need to explain it to, but I just let them believe that. Because here's what I fundamentally know today.
Are you doing the spiritual exercise and are you getting the spiritual benefits out of it? I don't care what you call it. If you're doing the exercise and you're getting the benefits, isn't that really all that matters here? It's like some people will say, you know, well, that's really just a 10th step. Well, 10, 5, who cares? Are you doing it and are you getting better? Good for you, right? But there was time in my sobriety that I would have thrown down on that.
That would have been a hill to die on today. By God, you're killing people here. And that's how defects work in my life. That's how they work in my life. And I'd like to tell you that what happened for me is I came here and I had these things in my life and I got on my knees and prayed and I got up and pure as the driven snow. But in Oklahoma, we still call that a lie. And it has been a process of pain over time.
But the truth of the matter is, in my lifetime, I don't grow in my comfort zone. I've never grown where I'm comfortable. It's like some people just go and sit in their home group and that's good. I go sit in my home group, but I'm also like to go out and go to other places and go to other AA meetings and other people's home groups because I like to experience AA. And there was a time I was a big disunifier in AA.
There was a period of my sobriety back in my evangelistic period. My wife just says that's when Cliff was over sober, that's what she said. I would talk bad about your groups. If you didn't do it the way I thought it should be done, I'd talk bad about your group. Don't go over there. They don't do it right. Although they've been staying sober for 50 years, they don't do it right. I'm a divider in AA, man.
I'm that guy. And the beautiful part about Alcoholics Anonymous is that your defects here can just blossom right in the rooms of AA. And you know what they'll do? They'll just love you. People in AA will just love you.
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And they say things to you that you're just like, what? They say things like this, keep coming back. What they really mean is you really need to be here. That's what they mean. Keep coming back. But I tell you what, I was this big disunifier in AA in my city. I mean I was. And I was in general service. I was the area chair. I'm just all bad. But I'll tell you, a few years ago, my wife and I got asked to talk at this big anniversary in Oklahoma City.
And at one of those places, I would say, don't go here. They're killing people. God has a way of working all this stuff out, man. You know, my friend Bill says this, which I love. He says, you know, come to Alcoholics Anonymous, we come here wearing the clown suit. But we don't throw it away. We put it in the closet. Because we're going to get it out again here, you know, if you're here very long. But what happened is during that talk, I got to make amends to that whole community.
I got to own it. And I know there's other speakers, Ralph's getting ready to talk about that. But it's the healing process here. It's the healing process and this transformational process that we start when we come to Alcoholics Anonymous. Silkworth talked about an entire psychic change. And when he talks about an entire psychic change, he didn't say an entire psychic change as it relates to my drinking.
He's talking about an entire psychic change, about every part of my life. And these things that I cling to, these defects of character that I'm still getting something out of. What happens is that pain is a great motivator for that. And when I'm brought to my knees, once again, I do that. What I've discovered is that this is just a lifelong process. When I ask, you know, who's on six and seven, who's still on six and seven?
Because that's what I've discovered. We talk about this is a journey for us. The journey's over when they put the dirt in my face. Then I will have successfully completed the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I die sober, I will have successfully completed the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. But I'm not just here to participate in this fellowship recovery. I want the transformational change that happens.
We get this information. The book gives us this information for us. We do the work. We get some application. We put pen to paper. We share it. We begin to see these defects activate in our life. So we get information, application. But there's a vital step, I believe. Some people just say it's information, application, transformation. I think there's one more piece of the puzzle in there for me, and that's collaboration.
There has to be a collaboration with the power greater than myself that I find here. I've got to get God involved in the equation. When I'm active in my character defects, God's nowhere in the equation. The vertical relationship is out. I always remember what my old sponsor told me one time. He said, you know, if you don't feel close to God, you need to see who moved. And if you want to be close to him, you need to see who needs to move back.
And 100% of the time, it's always me. Why is that here? It's always me. You know? It could be you one time. Right? Just one time. It's you. It's them. And so what I have to do here in six and seven is I have to deepen this relationship I have with God. I really have to deepen this relationship I have to God. I don't know what it's like, I don't know what I could do to remove this lying from my life.
You know? I remember what Sandy used to say, you know, we'd talk about removing lust. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've already removed lust from my life. Well, not all of it. Not all of it. I want to remove lying from my life. Well, what about taxes? You know, what about that, you know? It's good in theory. It's hard when the rubber hits the road. When we get really down to it, how much am I really willing to walk away from?
How much am I willing to abandon and surrender to God? How much am I really willing to lay down in this transformational process? How much am I really willing to surrender this power that I've discovered in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous with you people, this design for living, this idea of letting go of fear, mistrust, delusion that's in my life? How much am I willing to let go of that? How much am I willing to lay down and move forward with my life?
How much am I willing to do what Bill said? He talked about this, you know, perfecting and enlarging our spiritual life.
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For what? The certain trials and low spots ahead. But maybe, not if, certain trials and low spots. And if you're new here, you're nearly new here today, and you're riding that pink cloud, all I can tell you is buckle up, you know, they're coming, you know? Nobody comes to Alcoholics Anonymous and they don't have bad times. Nobody comes to AA and don't lose people. Nobody comes here and it doesn't happen to them.
I became an orphan in Alcoholics Anonymous. I lost my mom, lost my dad, lost my brother. Last man standing in my little immediate family. Last guy here, you know? That happens to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if I'm active in my character defects, I make all that about me. Make it all about me. I make all those things about me. As life happens to me, I make all that about me. But what happens with deepening this relationship with God, what I found out is that I can lay that aside.
I can just lay that at his feet and that's his problem to solve. What's my job? Stay sober and help another alcoholic chief sobriety, period. That's it. And isn't that in an Alcoholics Anonymous? I mean, as we come here, we get involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. We go to our home groups and we might be elected a GSR or somebody may ask us to come talk at a little group anniversary. We go do that. And, you know, some of us, you know, you stick around, you get in general service.
They start giving you positions. We get a title and we think, aren't we something in AA, you know? So I'm really somebody and I'm making a name for myself in an Anonymous program here. That's me, you know. I'm that guy. I'm that guy that can just allow my ego and those defects to generate that in my life. And this life-saving program and this unbelievable gift that I have been given undeservedly. Grace that I have been given, absolute grace.
There was no merit in me standing here and being sober today. It was simply grace. And I want to set the scene for you guys. I'm going to take you back. It's Palm Sunday and it's the holy city of Jerusalem and the streets are packed. They're packed. Why? Jesus is coming. The Messiah is coming and everybody's there. And Jesus rides into the streets on the donkey and everybody is cheering. The whole place, I mean, it is crazy in the holy city.
It is packed and people are screaming for the Messiah and they're screaming for the Messiah and what if, what if, just for an instant, the donkey thought all that was for him. And isn't that true for me? Isn't that true for me? I come to Alcoholics Anonymous, I get some sober time and I get some kind of, somebody buys me an airplane ticket and I really think I'm something, you know. But I know this and I want you all to know this.
I'm just the ass carrying the message. Thanks for having me.