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Source: DICOBE-00614 – Mark H – PRESCOTT SHOESTRING RNDP – 2002-07-14.mp3 File: dicobe-00614-mark-h-prescott-shoestring-rndp-2002-07-14.mp3 Duration: 00:52:06
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Silence is hard on alcoholics isn't it? Morning everybody my name is Mark H. I'm an alcoholic and I was given the gift of sobriety morning of October 19th in 1982 and I can't tell you how grateful I am for that event. I give my sobriety date because that's what we do in Texas. Now when I lived in Colorado we didn't give sobriety dates and I got to Texas and they gave sobriety dates and I had judgments about that. I thought our speakers over the weekend did a great job of describing how we think and you know my experience in the years I've been in AA is if I'm unwilling to submit and surrender to a path other than my own I'm probably going to die drunk and I don't have to drink to die of alcoholism. So once I wrote some inventory about the fact that these people give their sobriety dates all the time in Texas and I submitted to a way other than my own begin to give my sobriety date and of course now I was laughing to myself because now I go to places where they don't do that and I got judgments about that see so I don't know you know go figure.
I'd like to take a moment and open with a prayer. This prayer is one of my practices right now in the 10th and 11th step so if you'll just join me in this prayer and then I'm going to talk about this a little bit. My creator helped me to go through this day with an open mind and with an open heart and to realize that when I awaken this morning that every breath that I take throughout this day is a new breath and every experience I have with everybody and everything is new. Keep me open to your wonder and awe as I go through this day. Amen. I say to you that that is a spiritual practice and and I'm going to give you an example of how that can show up in my life.
If you've been around for a while and you go to a lot of meetings or you go to a lot of conventions after a while you get this idea that you know and for a guy like me there's grave danger in that. One of my favorite quotes is from a Trappist month named Thomas Merton who says those who think they know from the beginning will in fact never come to know anything and so one of my practices right now is to say that prayer every morning to work with it throughout the day and I'll give you an example of the benefit. Yesterday it was hot and Bob was going to do the thing on the traditions and I've listened to a lot of people say that was hot and Bob was going to do the thing on the traditions now I've listened to a lot of stuff in the traditions right so I'm an alcoholic my head says well it's kind of hot and I'm a little tired and a nap and then I said that prayer and so I came here and the truth is if you weren't here yesterday you need to go by that two-hour talk that arose from Bob because there was some great stuff in there that resonated within me and if I don't work with a prayer like that and particularly if you some of you would have a little bit of time away from alcohol you know what I'm talking about see everything I've been to this weekend I got I got so much out of a whole bunch of things but in particular there were some things that Bob said that I needed to hear that resonated within me that I now get to go take a look at all for my highest good that's just one of the many things I get to practice with the strict spiritual disciplines of the 10th and 11th step which is really what I'm going to talk to you about this morning I don't know if I know what spirituality means I'm going to share with you my experiences with the power behind the name whatever you wish to call the name albeit God creator whatever at some point in time in your journey in Alcoholics Anonymous you must experience the power behind the name and if you're like me at some point in time in your journey through Alcoholics Anonymous a belief in God must be transformed into conscious contact with God if you're ever to have any peace so I want to talk about some of those things this morning I suppose if you ask me what I thought spirituality means at all what I would have to say about that is do I have a conscious awareness of this incredible thing called life on a daily basis from my first breath to my last breath and it doesn't make any difference what I'm doing in between there I suppose that's what I would have to say spirituality is I've kind of had some interesting experiences this weekend I don't know how y'all drank but when I first got sober I went through a period of time for almost a year where I experienced audio hallucinations and the way that showed up was I'd be standing somewhere and I'd hear this voice and say
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Mark Mark H. and I'd look around there wouldn't be anybody around and all this weekend there's several people in this committee named Mark and I thought I was having that stuff happen to me again just a reminder I am so so grateful that I that I'm not drinking alcohol today tell you a little bit about what it was like I think there's some relevancy in that if you're fairly new I think it's important you get some idea of the transformation that takes place if you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you're willing to submit and surrender to this thing and the only way you're going to know about the transformation that took place in me is if I tell you a little bit about what I was like last two years the only time I've gotten asked to speak anywhere is to be the Sunday morning speaker now let me tell you explain the paradox in that I came to AA an atheist isn't that interesting people say will you call it will you come and be the spiritual speaker of course I what isn't spiritual to me but that's how that thing works I was born and raised in in Iowa Norwegian farming community one of four boys had a father died alcoholism in 1986 my mother went through a lot of misery and suffering through what I call untreated al-anon-ism it's a deadly thing turned you into a bitter person see see a lot of it a lot of alcoholism all over my uh all over my family raised in a small small farming community didn't take a drink alcohol till I was 16 years old my dad was a practicing alcoholic and and at the time I began to watch him that thing happens to us if you drink long enough and that is that that it stops working and what you do is you just turn into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and all you do is you just get drunk but the effect that you needed to get out of it stops so you have a tendency to get a little mean so I got to experience that so I made some decisions about I wasn't going to drink but of course that changed the summer when I was 16 years old and I picked up a drink of alcohol I think some of the speakers have described so well what alcohol did for me and that has to do with for whatever reason there's this incredible sense of separation that I experienced from myself from you from everybody and from everything I don't know where that comes from maybe it's part of the plan I don't know I just know that it's incredibly uncomfortable and then when I drink alcohol it treats that sense of separation that alienation that I had which which was incredibly intense and by the way I've experienced that a bunch in sobriety see I love what what Bob is saying about being sober and being miserable see I don't know about you but alcohol has never been my problem alcohol was my solution to this incredible sense of separation and fear and anxiety and alienation and the reason I know alcohol was my solution to that was I kept going back to alcohol in spite of suffering horrendous consequences from drinking which is probably why our big book says Mark alcohol is not your problem it's only a symptom my first three years in AA I didn't understand that now if you knew it's important you get some sense of understanding see if alcohol was my problem not drinking would be my solution but I'm the kind of guy that you take alcohol out of my life and I'm not drinking I get worse sober I don't get better oh yeah I'm not I'm demonstrating different behavior but internally I'm getting worse and worse and worse and I become a prey to misery and depression I begin to suffer from what they call a generalized anxiety disorder which is true of every drunk I've ever met who hasn't done some work with the steps alcohol treated that for me from my first drink to my last drink I was a daily drinker once I tasted alcohol once I had the effect produced by alcohol begin to show up in my life there was never going to be anything to get between me and alcohol I don't know if I know what a functioning alcoholic is or not I can tell you that I drank for several years that I had a lot of fun
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I drank a lot of alcohol got through high school I went to college I got a job I got a job a lot of alcohol got through high school I went to college my drinking began to show up very early in my life instead of completing my degree in four years I took six and a half and at that time Vietnam was going on in the draft and I was having so much in college drinking and doing the other things that you do I just kept switching courses and not showing up and doing this and doing that and low on the motorcycle we got married and bought a new Volkswagen and roared off to California with 150 dollars in her pocket lived in San Francisco for a year my my drinking began to assume more serious proportions I will also tell you that along the way I was introduced to a bunch of other mind-altering substances and what I have to say about them is they allowed me to drink more my deal was alcohol man I loved alcohol because of the effect produced not because the taste hell and I lived in San Francisco I used to go to Napa Valley once a month became a wine connoisseur right I've never drank wine for the taste I drank wine for the effect produced you know I could never buy a good bottle of wine because you're supposed to open and let it sit for a period of time and breathe what alcoholic can do that see you can't do stuff like that and from there I moved up to Eugene Oregon in Portland Oregon and beginning in 1973 and 74 and 75 the big book talks about pitiful and comprehensible demoralization I begin to compromise every value system I was raised with I was raised with the difference between right and wrong I was married to a woman I love and I knew I wasn't supposed to be committing adultery and I was committing adultery and I didn't want to commit adultery but I committed adultery now I begin to lie and the list just goes on and on and on about what we begin to do as alcohol takes a more important and invigorating role in our life and the pain that I was causing in that marriage got so bad that I woke up one day and said I don't want to be married anymore let that marriage went up to Seattle Washington was up in Seattle Washington for two years and then went to Alaska Anchorage Alaska was the beginning of the end if you're not done drinking go to Alaska it's a great place for a drunk bars only shut down for two hours it gets a little weird though summertime it's daylight 24 hours a day you walk out of a bar three in the morning it gets a little confusing then winter time it's dark three months of the year that gets a little weird too but that was the beginning and end for me and from 1978 to 1982 I drifted from Anchorage Alaska to Seattle and then finally back to Colorado which is where my family had relocated and began to work at a series of odd jobs and those kinds of things and and I just could not quit drinking and was drinking every day and pretty soon I reached a place I just couldn't pull anything off I couldn't pull work off I couldn't pull anything off and I'd met a gal and and married her and that's that's just the way that was I reached a place where nobody wanted anything to do with me and they probably should have done that long long before and I didn't want anything to do with me and the crazy part in the middle of all this is not once if did I think to myself that alcohol was the problem and the reason I didn't think that and if you knew you can probably understand it's because alcohol was my solution to living in this body in this skin and interacting with you with any sense of ease and comfort and the horrible dilemma then for a guy like me is there's no ease and comfort and I've had that same experience sober a lot of parallels between how I experienced life drinking and sober untreated I'm going to talk about that I almost committed suicide at 10 years in in Alcoholics Anonymous because of untreated alcoholism through a series of events what I will tell you is this the morning of October 19th of 1982 at the end of a year and a half drunk the power behind the name removed the obsession to drink and struck me sober and I've never been able to take a drink since and it's not because I didn't want to and it's not because I shouldn't have that's my experience I didn't come in and out of AA I didn't that's just the way it was for me I don't need to know why that's just the way it was for me that morning something was literally physically lifted out of me that has never come back on me since I went to a treatment center I can't tell you much of my I can't tell you much of my first two to three years in Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Now, if you'd asked me in that time period how I was doing, I would have told you I was doing fine. I'm sober almost twenty years. I can't even remember my first two or three years. I had brain damage, which some pals of mine contend I still suffer from. I had liver damage, kidney damage, and everything I owned you could put in a duffel bag, and that's the way that was. And like a lot of other alcoholics, I went to meetings every day, got a sponsor, did a little bit of step work.
My focus today is not on my external life, it's on my interior life. And my interior life, just not drinking, going to meetings with no step work, was a horrendous experience. Page 52, I think, describes it so well, they call it the bedevilments. Having trouble in personal relationships, mostly the one with myself, from which all the rest stem. I'll never forget that one time I heard a speaker say, if you said to me what I said to me, I'd have to kill you. I can understand that.
And if you've got that kind of stuff going on, what kind of relationship do you think you're having with other people? And that prey to misery and depression that can't control your emotional nature and full of fear. This is a true story. My hair was black until I got sober. I didn't know how terrified I was. This happened almost immediately, by the way. I like to joke and tell people this is what will happen, you do a third step prayer, but that's not the truth.
Just being sober turned my hair white. Without these steps, without God, without the disciplines of the 10th and 11th and 12th step. I'm the kind of guy that at 19 plus years of sobriety on any given day, without this power in my life, I'm afraid to go into a grocery store because I don't know what I'd do if someone said hi to me. That's the truth of my life as I stand before you. Of myself, I am nothing. Without that connection with that power, that is the truth of my life.
I'm the kind of alcoholic who I don't know how I did what I did today and the universe wants me to do it tomorrow. When you begin to realize the truth of that, then that dependency on that power reaches a level that will move you into a course of action that I like to call the disciplines of the 10th and 11th step. Somewhere around three, three and a half years in the program, I met a gentleman from Colorado who took me through the big book, who introduced me to some ideas that I had no clarity on whatsoever.
And I had a revolutionary spiritual experience. And probably about three years to about seven years. My life, when I when I reflect back interior, mentally, emotionally, there was a lot of peace in my life at that time. Now, externally, for a lot of us, things come and come quickly. Within three years, I bought a house. Having some success in business. But I'll never forget this. I'm about six years sober and I'm sitting in this house in Aurora, Colorado.
Two cars sitting in the garage. I bought some mountain property. Money in the bank, job, sober. And I'm sitting there and I'm feeling like a prisoner of war and I can't figure out what's going on. There was something significant about that event and I'll tell you what was significant. I realized at that moment in time that I better start challenging a lot of belief systems that the universe has been throwing out there.
Because there was something wrong with this picture. Because here I am sober, six years or so, seven years. Supposedly have this life that from the external world looks like it's wonderful. And inside I feel like I'm dying. When I look back from about seven years sober to around ten in that time period, I was going to meetings. I was doing no step work. Little or nothing with inventory. In hindsight, I still had a lot of unfinished amends that I was completely asleep to.
I was praying but doing absolutely nothing with meditation. And was not very involved in sponsorship. I got trapped and what Bob talked about yesterday is I forgot my primary purpose. And I didn't do that intentionally. If you've got a little time, I want to tell you a little story. I used to sell television sets. Tell you something about a television set. You buy a television set today and that picture knocks your sock off.
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And every single day and every single time that that set is on, that picture begins to fade. But you can't see it. And in five years, you're looking at this set still thinking you're seeing a great picture. And a friend comes in and says, that's a horrible picture. Well, that's exactly what happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it is that subtle, ladies and gentlemen. Make a long story short, right around nine and a half years of sobriety, I began to suffer from a depression that ultimately took me to a place where all I could do is sit in this apartment and cry.
And I could not work. I could not go to meetings. I could not do anything. Now, I had some people in the therapeutic community that had attempted to convince me that that's what they call PTSD. And I submit to you in hindsight, that was a tiny, tiny bit of what was going on with me. What was going on with me was severe, untreated alcoholism. Just not drinking, having lost sight of my primary purpose.
Not having a clue about the strict spiritual disciplines of the 10th and 11th step. And I got within 24 hours of committing suicide. By the way, to tell you how much alcohol worked in my life, in all the years I drank, not once did I consider committing suicide. I did many times in sobriety. Some of you might relate to that. I was telling my pal Paul the other day, I still love alcohol more than most people who drink it.
I think if you're a real alcoholic, there's probably a lot of truth in that. Thank God for alcohol. Through a series of events, I wound up in a, well, I think the term they use is a psychiatric hospital in H., Texas. I like to call it what it is, it's a nut house. And I needed to be there. That, by the way, was my first introduction to Texas. I have since said to this power that if you want me to go somewhere, there are other ways in which you can get my attention in the future.
It is not necessary that I put myself through that dilemma again. When that ended, I wound up relocating to H., Texas. There was a great gift in that, and here's what the gift was. There was me and the big book and a God that I didn't know experientially. When I look back at my first ten years in Alcoholics Anonymous, what I begin to understand is I got caught in a trap, and here's what the trap is.
Because I tell you I believe in God, I think that I know God. I think I know the power behind the name. I think I'm having conscious contact. And that was not true. In essence, in my first ten years, I'd made my mind God and did not even know it. Which is why at ten years, I'm still feeling separate, alienated, fear-driven, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Through a series of events, I got moved to a small community in Texas called Kerrville, Texas.
Very small community. And what I will tell you is that while I was in that hospital, I began to look at the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I began to see all the things in that book that I had not been willing to do. And I was faced with this, and actually it was a wonderful thing. Here's what I was faced with. I had a life of twenty years of drinking. I had ten years of sobriety, which in hindsight I believe were half measures.
And I'm locked up in a nut house. And I'm 46 years old. And really what happened for me in hindsight in that nut house in 1991, I did a third step prayer. And from that day to this, my life is not, nor will it ever be, my business. Any part of my life I make my business, good stuff is not going to happen. Today my life happens, but I'm just not involved with it. It just took what it took to get me to that place.
I mean, think about what we say in the third step. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and you do with me as you want. Think about the implications of that word. It means it's not my say anymore where I live, who's in my life, where I work, what I do. It's not my say anymore, it's not my business. You do with me as you want, you build with me. Relieve me of the bondage of self so I can better do your will.
First two years up in that town, I was like a madman in Alcoholics Anonymous.
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When I walked into the first meeting up there, I don't know what they were doing there, but it was not AA. There's some good, strong AA in Denver, Colorado, and I'd been exposed to that, and I made a commitment in the first two to three years after getting out of that nuthouse, I worked and reworked the first nine steps four times. I started in that title page with a set-aside prayer up through the ninth step, and I made every single amend.
It took me 14 years to pay the IRS back. I found everybody that came into my consciousness, and my life has never been the same since. Unbeknownst to me, this program for me is not about the first nine steps at all. It's about living in the spiritual dimension of the 10th, 11th, and 12th step. I didn't know any of that stuff. My experiences bottomed me out sober, where I'm left with nothing but this book and nothing but the steps, and nothing but this power.
I began to work with meditation. Our book is very, very clear, by the way, about meditation, and I hadn't been doing meditation in my first 10 years, and I made a promise to myself. See, I had a lot to do with winding up in that nuthouse. There's a line in our big book. It says that I stay sober every day based on one thing and one thing only, and that one thing is fifth spiritual condition. And guess whose responsibility that is.
That's not God's. That's Mark's. And I didn't want to assume that responsibility. So I really started looking at those instructions in the 10th and 11th step, and I began to see that it was very clear that I'm supposed to be meditating every day. So I went out and I began to buy books on meditation, because I made a commitment to myself. There's spiritual virtue in following instructions. And I went out and I bought a timer, and I made a commitment that I would meditate two times a day, and I started with 10 minutes.
And I bought the timer because when I sat down to meditate, I experienced the chatter of a thousand monkeys. The last place my ego wanted me to go was into meditation, because in meditation I ultimately would come to know God and realize the illusion of my ego, which is why there's so much resistance to meditation. Then there's another part of this. Everyone I sponsor will get into meditation. I will teach them what I know.
And they all do the same thing I did. After two weeks, they call me and they're struggling with meditation. Yeah, no kidding. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. No expectations, no results. And I begin to experience the things that you experience if you work in meditation on a daily basis, like our big book asked us to do. I begin to go through the day with a greater sense of calmness. A lot of my fears begin to dissipate.
A lot of my anxieties begin to dissipate. I begin to realize a lot of what I call… See, the 10th and 11th step for me today in the big book is completely new language. It is not language designed to speak to my thinking mind. It is language of the Spirit. As evidenced by two or three sentences into the 10th step in the big book, it says, Mark, you've entered the world of the Spirit. My experience as I stand before you right now is this.
Everything beyond that is language designed to speak to my spirit, not my mind. And I begin to understand those things. I begin to work with what the 10th step called your vital sixth sense. You don't think they meant vital, do you? I begin to… The 11th step, be quick to see where religious people are right. I begin to seek out books and teachers about things like meditation. What about God? What about the four absolutes?
And I begin to question everything. Fabulous, fabulous experience for me. Spent two years studying with a Lakota medicine man. Had some very, very profound experiences. I'll tell you, this is another thing that's happened to me in AA. When your experience exceeds your understanding, it's probably about God. It's not about God. And from the time I begin to work with meditation in the disciplines of 10 and 11, having made my amends, all of my amends, my experience from that moment to this has always exceeded any understanding that I had.
Moment of this has always exceeded any understanding that I have.
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I got moved into some of the Eastern practices, breathing. You know, I didn't know this. The tenth and eleventh step are a carte blanche saying, Mark, go out in the universe and look at all this neat stuff going on out there. Now there's a trap in this because I've seen it. I'm a fundamental orthodox member of AA who does a lot of stuff with the eleventh step along with, not instead of. I've watched all kinds of people get pulled out of AA in the eleventh step.
Might be, could be via religion. I've seen people get pulled out of AA through meditation. So I stay, I was shown the path, these steps, AA. I'll never leave, I'll never deviate, but I do a lot of other stuff. Had some great experiences, all that. I started to go to monasteries. You know, if you want to learn about meditation, you're not going to find that out in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're like sandbox.
We're like kindergarten here. Go talk to a monk who's been meditating 30 years. He'll blow the top of your head off. See, it is so important for me to always, always, always be in kindergarten. To always be in kindergarten, which is why I begin to do things like that. I love it when a, because a lot of people send me books and stuff. I love it when I get a book and I read something and I don't have a clue what the book is saying.
I love that kind of stuff. So I begin to work with those disciplines. I want to talk a little bit with you about how I work with the disciplines of the 10th and 11th step on a daily basis. To me, those are two very distinct steps with two very distinct sets of instructions, if you will, for daily disciplines so that I can stay in fit spiritual condition. And I want to make this statement. I do what I do with the disciplines of 10, 11, and 12 because I like the effect produced.
I wish to God I was a member of AA who could just go to a few meetings a week, do a little step work, never meditate, and their life would be great. But I'm not. I tried that. Since the day I hit AA, I've tried the easier, softer way in AA. And it didn't work for me. That's just me. If it works for people, God bless you. I'm talking about what I have to do to be at peace within myself. I begin my day with prayer.
I have some books I work out of. I always do 84 through 88 because there's very specific instructions. I need to be reminded about those. My current practice in meditation is two times a day for 24 minutes. When I get done with that, I'm also a runner, and running has become a form of meditation and prayer for me. Now that's what I call starting my day using some 11-step tools. The 10th step, which is about four to five paragraphs long, has some incredible stuff that I utilize during the course of my day.
There's a story which sums up the 10th step for me. Here's what the story is. If I'm in the middle of the street and there's an 18-wheeler coming at me, that is not the time to analyze how I got there. I need to get out of the street. I analyze at night when I'm doing an evening review. The 10-step tools that I work with are watch, ask, turn. 11-step tool, pause when agitated or doubtful. Ask God for the right thought or right action.
And I'll tell you what my experience is. Without having done the work in four through nine, 10 to 11 are words on a page and I can't practice any of it. I'm on autopilot. There is no pause. There is no turn. There is no ask. I love the 10-step promises, some of the most powerful in the whole book, that I could not practice until I'd done the work in the first nine steps. For example, love and tolerance of others becomes a code.
How can you be an Alcoholics Anonymous and practice love and tolerance as a code? I was speaking not long ago with this woman. She's talking about what wonderful people alcoholics are. I said to her, did somebody drop you in your head? Look at your big book. Look what your book says. I mean, I understood what she was saying. But I can't practice love and tolerance as my code with self-will intact.
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The line that I've ceased fighting anybody or anything, dash even alcohol, can you imagine what it's like to go through 24 hours and not fight anything? The extent to which I resist anything is the extent to which self-will is involved. Let me say that again. The extent to which I will not accept what is, is the extent to which self-will in some capacity is involved in any area of my life, relationships, work, money, you name it.
Resistance always leads to more suffering and the horrible dilemma for the alcoholic is my self-will cannot eliminate my self-will. I can't stop my resistance on my power, which is why I still do a lot of work with inventory. I'm recently coming back through the steps again on amends. I had seven amends, got two left to make. I wrote some inventory, had some resentments. There were three fears that kept filtering through my consciousness.
I wrote inventory on them, had one piece of sex inventory. I took that inventory and I read that inventory to three people. I like to do what I call multiple fifth steps. It's deflation of the ego at a greater level. I give one of those to the man that I use as a sponsor. I also am very, very accountable to the men that I work with. I do a thing called steel on steel with them as well as my sponsor.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've suffered greatly from self-delusion in sobriety. That's where the we part of the program gets so crucial. So about once every two weeks, I sit down with a bunch of people and I examine. I have ten minutes in which I bring them to date with every single area of my life and they give me considerations out of love. I talk about how many meetings I've gone to, what I'm doing with the disciplines of ten and eleven, exactly where I am with the step work, how many morning prayer and meditations I did, how many evening reviews I did, how many evening meditations I did.
If I'm writing inventory exactly where I'm at with the inventory, if I'm making amends exactly how many are left. I talk about my career. I talk about relationships. I talk about money. And I finish it with working with the concept of honesty. Say what I do, do what I say. And then they give me considerations. I can't tell you how beneficial this has been to me. Now a lot of drunks don't want to do this because this is tremendous accountability.
I did it as a means of self-survival, suffering from self-delusion in sobriety. The considerations have saved my life. You know, a couple of speakers were talking about this. You know, speaking can be a trap. I started getting asked to speak in 1994. The only people who would ever want to be speakers in AA are those who are not speakers in AA, if that makes any sense. Two times in my sobriety a consideration they gave me is, Mark, between your job and speaking, you cannot do it.
And you are getting physically, emotionally, and mentally bereft, and you're probably going to drink. And we want you to consider you need to take six months to a year off from speaking. And I have done that. Thank God for those men. I very much limit what I do because of that kind of accountability. And several of these people are much younger in sobriety than me. It doesn't make any difference to me.
They've got God working in their life, too. They have a vital sixth sense that's alive in them. I give people spiritual consent. Speaking of spiritual consent, I don't go places anymore where I'm not given spiritual consent. I had to make a lot of amends for that. You know what I mean? Where some guy's talking, or you're talking to somebody, and you want to sit and tell them what they're supposed to be doing, and they haven't given you permission to do that?
Any of you ever done that? I don't do that anymore. If I'm given spiritual consent, you're inviting me into your life. Now you better grab a hold of yourself because I'm coming. So I work off that. The 10th and 11th step practices for me, I'll give you an example. Man up in Denver, Colorado, I call him Big Frank, sober long time. They got a group up there called the God Squad. These group of men and women do as much with these disciplines as I've ever heard.
He gave a talk one time in the 10th and 11th step and just blew the top of my head off. I realized I didn't know a single thing about the 10th and 11th step. And he brought up something which helped me tremendously, and that was this. He said you could take the 10th step and you could take a few words and work with them
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for months at a time. He said there used to be this idea that I'm going to take these spiritual practices and all of a sudden get real good with them immediately. He said I don't care if you're digging a ditch, whatever you do for a living, it takes a long time to learn how to do it well. And I heard what he said. I took the word watch, which is in the 10th step. Watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear, and I worked with that one word for six months.
Incredible experience. I took the word ask and worked with it for six months. I took the word turn. Turn. Get that force away from yourself. Get your ego. Get rid of your ego. Turn. Turn is a spiritual practice. I took cease fighting and worked with that for a long time. Cease fighting. I took position of neutrality and I began to work with that and realized that our beautiful book wasn't just talking about a position of neutrality around alcohol.
They're talking about we can get taken to a position of neutrality in all situations in which I don't have to react. The kind of stuff we always have to make amends for. Vital sixth sense. You can take those three words and just begin to work with what does that mean? Am I awake to that? Do I have that? You know, I tell people, if you want to mess up a meeting of AA, I don't know if they do that in Arizona, but they still do this a lot in Texas, where the chairperson will say, does anybody have a topic?
A scary thing to do in a room full of people who are selfish and self-centered and obsessed with themselves, right? Of course we have topics. Throw out some of the 10 step topics like this. Share your experience with having entered the world of the spirit. Share your experience with your new vital sixth sense. Incredible stuff that we aren't talking about. I'm talking incredible stuff. The 10 step is an abyss you can work with until the day you die.
As a matter of fact, it says we're supposed to be doing that. Work with the vision of God's will. Work with line of the will. It's a fascinating thing in the second step. We are shown the insanity of our will in the third step. We make a decision to turn our will and life over to God. And in the 10 step, it now says we can use our will. And it says along the line of the will in the 10 step. What an incredible thing.
What does that mean? To go through the day using my will along this line. What line? The line of the will. The line of God's will. Is ego, is self out of the way? Can I be aligned with that? Just incredible stuff that you can sit and work with. There's just no end to it. Eleventh step gives me my evening review. For years I've done a written evening review. My goal today, if you ask me if I had one, is to go through life being awake, aware, mindful and conscious.
If I'm not doing an evening review, I don't know that. So I like to do a written evening review and answer the questions in which I get to review my day. Talks about, you know, was I resentful during the course of the day? And the easiest way for me to review is start with the last thing I did and go back to the morning. And if I see that, I write that out. Was I selfish? Was I afraid? See, I'm not asleep anymore.
I get to wake up to my life, if you will. The other thing the review does is begins to impact how you live your life on a daily basis. An example. For years I've been answering this question, Mark, were you kind and loving toward all? And at some point in time, I got tired of saying no. And I begin to work with this idea of kind and loving toward all, all day long. Begin to have a big, tremendous impact on how I begin to go through my day.
You get done with that and it talks about you ask for forgiveness and it warns you of drift into worry, which I guess is tomorrow, the next minute, remorse, maybe today, or morbid reflection in the past, for it renders you useless to others. So I do that written review and then what I do when I come off the written review, if there's some action I need to take to correct things, then I dovetail that into what I'm going to do for my plans the next day.
Many times throughout the day, I will be done, I will be done, I will be done, I will be done. And then those incredible promises behind it, if I do that, I then get to avoid the danger. or foolish decisions, all the stuff that consumes our meetings.
[00:45:02]
Thy will be done, thy will be done, thy will be done. My experience is there's nothing but the will of God. Can I be in alignment with Adam or am I going to resist that? And some of the stuff I do are the tenth and eleventh step. I'll spend a couple minutes on the twelfth step and then I'll be done. Working with other alcoholics has been such an incredible gift, is what the Big Book says probably the central fact of my life today.
I follow the instructions in the chapter Working with Others. Had a couple people ask me some questions about that. If someone asks me about being their sponsor, working with them, I do what the book says. I like to sit down and get a picture about this person. I seem to attract three kinds of people. I attract chronic relapsers. I attract people with long-term sobriety, dying of untreated alcoholism.
Those are normally the ones in which I attract. Very difficult people to work with. Their four favorite words are I know and yes, but. If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I just have to assume I was not a good person in my past lifetime and I'm doing penance. They are. They're very, very difficult to work with. And that's about all that I attract. And I like to sit down with them and I like to take about 20 minutes.
You know, there's a great question we ask people, are you willing to go to any length? But you know what we don't do? We don't tell them what that looks like. So they answer yes, and they don't even know what it looks like. So I like to take about 20 minutes and I like to review the 12 steps on page 58. And I don't soft sell it. If spiritual living was easy, there'd be 50,000 people here this weekend.
But I talk very specifically about those steps and what they're going to have to do. I talk about the inventories. I talk about amends. I talk about 10, 11, and 12. I talk about the third step decision, six and seven. I talk about all that. And then I send them home and I say, I need you to take a couple days and think about that. Because if you want me to sponsor you, what it means is the next time we meet, we're going to pop the title page of this book and we're going through this book together.
Ten people ask me to work with them, two of them call me back, never the two I want. But see, there's a spiritual law of caring. If you care through your actions, I must care. If through your actions you don't care, I can't and will not care. You follow? See? And from there, we begin the journey. The journey through the big book. I was sponsored that way, I sponsor that way. You transmit what you have.
Work with a lot of people. Love working with a lot of people. Sometimes with the chronic relapsers, I ask God to give me discernment because they need power and they need it quick. Sometimes I have sat down and reviewed the first three steps in a matter of hours with those people. Got them very quickly into inventory. Write three inventories, do a fifth step, and I do mean quickly. Six, seven, eight, and have them out making amends, sometimes in two and three weeks, and watching the incredible change that happens in their life with the idea they're going to continually work and rework through the steps.
Where would I be without Alcoholics Anonymous? Alcoholics Anonymous, it was in here that I learned everything that's in my life today. The quality of my life today came to me because of what I learned in the big book and in the rooms of AA. God willing, if things proceed one day at a time, October 19th, I'll celebrate 20 years. I couldn't even begin to touch on all the people that over the years have touched my life and helped me in this journey one day at a time, beyond belief.
So I will give back. My life is not my business anymore. I love my life. I love the big book. I love what's happened to me as a result of a course of action that was laid out in the big book. I love the men and women who've been honest about me, honest enough with me, who cared more about my life than they did about my feelings. I was telling this to a person yesterday. If I work with you and I care about how you feel about what I say to you, I will become useless to you.
I don't do that. We may become friends through the process, we may not. The deal is you walk side by side. This is a deadly disease. I work in the field of chemical dependency, always been on the business side, watch a
[00:50:06]
lot of people die. Most recently a man I'd done some work with at nine years sobriety committed suicide and they asked me to do his eulogy. I hadn't seen him in about two years and I asked a bunch of questions and severe untreated alcoholism. Six month time period of business went away, wife went away, money went away. I'm sitting there having to deliver a eulogy. He's got about six sponsees there.
He had so isolated himself, none of them knew what was going on. They're just completely devastated. I watched his brother get up and his brother collapsed because of the pain he was in. I think to myself, what a tragedy. What a deadly disease we got. You don't have to pick up a drink to die of alcoholism. I don't ever, ever want to forget that. There's another side to the coin. Recently I got a chance of working with a man, a chronic relapser.
I don't know how many times in treatment in and out of AA and he damaged his liver and I started working with him. He recently died, but he died sober. He died because his liver finally quit working and his kidneys. He died with 14 months sobriety. You know, what a deal and the dignity with which that man died and he knew God. So I think I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing, which is I'm going to continue going to my home group.
I'm going to continue working with my sponsor. I'm going to continue working with the disciplines of 10, 11, and 12. I'm going to keep writing inventory. I'm going to keep making amends. I can't speed it up and I can't slow it down. God bless you all.