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Source: Howard P – North Coast Woodstock 2015 – Steps 10 & 11 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: howard-p-north-coast-woodstock-2015-steps-10-and-11-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:46:03
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Thank you, my name is Howard and I am an alcoholic. I kept, oh, thank you, hi, my name's Howard, I'm an alcoholic, from Gilbert, Arizona. You guys know where Gilbert is? You know where Scottsdale is? Gilbert's about a million and a half dollars southeast of Scottsdale. Right up against Apache Junction, if that gets you an idea. So, my sobriety date is August the 4th, 1972. My home group is the We Ain't Dead Yet group in Gilbert.
I'm the only one that that applies to. We call it, it's a bunch of young kids and me. It seems like it's a story of my life now. A bunch of young people and me. And Bob B., from St. Paul, Minnesota, is my sponsor. Dick M., from Omaha, Nebraska, or someplace near Omaha, is, and then Clancy I., is Dick M.'s sponsor, so, and I think God directly watches over Clancy. So, I'm not short of sponsorship, I'll tell ya.
And I want to say, you know, all of us have participated in this format several times now, but in my experience, I think the people that preceded me did the best job of focusing on, you know, you have to start ahead to get a foothold, and then cover your step, but they did the best job and provided the best detail, and I know what Dr. Bob said, but he did not say, dumb it down. You know, he said, keep it simple, but he didn't say, dumb it down. This was a guy, if you go to his house, most of us have now, he's got piles of books, there were piles of books around that he read that you cannot read and dumb it down.
You read those books and have to be open to analysis to get those, and if in the analysis you have seen that this all boils down to love and service, then you've really analyzed and focused on the parts that make this work. If you can reduce it down, and he had, that really breaks it down, love and service. And love is the law. There's two things Chuck used to tell us, there's the law and love. Love is whatever you sow, that you will reap.
Love is the fulfillment of that law. And that's where the steps take us, so that it is love and service, and that is the way we get the love that we get, is by giving it away. Now, when I first came in, I was totally separate from the idea of any kind of divine order or existing spirituality in my life. And when I came and you guys, the first meeting was about alcoholism, and then the second part of that meeting was about God.
And I listened, but it was all the same stuff. It was act as if, well I had acted as if all the way through my religious behavior and it didn't work. You could not con yourself into what you know is a fantasy as being the truth.
[00:05:07]
I like the idea of act as is. You know, get an airfoil and act as is, that there are aeronautical principles in the atmosphere, and you'll fly. And if you act as is, and it works, then you'll fly. But you need the confidence to know it is. It's called faith. Anyway, I came and I wasn't going to work any of the steps, and my sponsor said, well let's just go to meetings. I said, is that it? That's it.
And then he started talking to me on the way to meetings, adding stuff. Don't drink between meetings. You know, and listen. You know, when you get there, listen to what people say. If it sounds good, take that home with you. Well sometimes that works and sometimes it don't. The bunch of old timers that I got into were really quite diverse, but I can look back and see, this was really, the studio group in 1972 was just AA down to about 50 people.
I mean, it was all of AA. There was Chuck Ennis, who was the old timer, who described alcoholism to me, who was a great, great guy to talk to and get big book stuff from. And he would say, the first 164 pages is all you need. All you need is the first 164 pages. And I said, well it said in the 12 and 12. He said, don't get into that 12 and 12. He said, Bill was on acid when he wrote that. But he would say, work the steps.
You know, he would say, work the steps. Read the book, work the steps. And now our second oldest guy was Leo. And Leo would say, he had I think 19 years and he said, stay away from those middle steps. Just work the first and the twelfth. And if you do that, all of those in the middle are going to surface and you're going to work them just as part of living your day. You don't have to write all that stuff down. That'll get you drunk quicker than anything.
And if, you know, I tell that baby elephant story because the important thing about the baby elephant story is it ends just for when you're a baby. When you come into the program, you are a baby. And you're going to get some baby elephant beliefs imposed on you that are going to be absolute truth. Bill was on acid when he wrote the 12 and 12. That is absolutely not the truth. And work the first step and the twelfth step.
Now Leo said that, but he didn't just do that. He worked the first step, the twelfth step, and the thirteenth step. But I brought into Leo after a while because my life was better. But it wasn't better at home and it wasn't better at work. And that's why I'm here. It's because everything in my life has gone to hell. Now I come to AA and what a great experience this is. But I'm not able to take it into my life with me, really.
Although the very fact that I'm staying sober gives me this life to work in and live in. But I finally, well I'll do that. I'll work the first step and the twelfth step. And I remained anxious, angry, and filled with dread about what's going to happen. Long after I had stopped drinking. And so I was going to work the tenth step. You see, let bygones be bygones. Just don't make any new problems. And if you work the tenth step, you see, that will keep you from making new problems.
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You know how many times I was able to do that? Not once. We read this morning that we continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, anger, and fear. And when these crop up, we ask God to take them away. In my first thirteen years, you know, how many times I was able to do that? Not once. I did good with the other steps, eventually. For the first time through, if you just started, I believe, if you're new and you started the first step, and you work your way through the steps, it helps with the sponsor.
But my sponsor had moved out of town, and I was more or less on my own until the fifth step. And I'm telling you, my life was transformed from the fourth step. I forgave my dad for beatings, and I had no idea what an effect that has in my life. It was like I had no idea on the streets of San Diego when I said, basically, I am whipped. Alcohol has whipped me. I know I'm whipped. I have to stop, and I can't.
I'm going to AA. Help. That was the day of my last drink. That's a change. When you can't go 50 minutes without a drink, and then you start and go for 42 years without a drink, that's something. And it turns out that in each of the steps that these folks described so well, we have surrendered. We gave up about our stepfather. And when we did, God will not interfere in my life. If God would interfere in life, we would have not had concentration camps, and we would not have cancer.
But he did not choose to interfere. I don't think God wants everything to be automatic or us all be automatons. So he gives us free will and a universe with freedom, so it can have cancer. And I know all this stuff, and so the steps don't make sense to me until you surrender. That what you're doing now don't make sense. You've been doing this for 39 years, and it has never worked. When the guy said, if you're not working the steps, AA will stop being fun.
You go to the bar and order a drink, and the bartender says, does AA work? If you're not working the steps, be honest with him and tell him you don't know if it works or not, because you didn't try. And even if you start to try and stop and rest on your laurels, the results disintegrate. So, I learned to meditate. And the way I was meditating, when I first started meditation, well, Frank taught me from step 11 of the 12 and 12, which I think is the best description for me as an alcoholic on how to meditate.
Be conscious of what I want to be conscious of, which one proposal was the St. Francis of Assisi prayer. Frank proposed that it be from the big book in describing the first step. Go through that. Be conscious of the description and realize, and then surrender to your innermost self, I am an alcoholic. If I have another drink, I will almost immediately return to pitiful, unrelenting meditation. Immediately return to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.
[00:15:03]
Now, I don't have to do that to know it, because there'll be a certain number of us that do it, you know, and just watch for them, and see that if they come back, every one of them says, well, that was a huge mistake, and I need to know that and learn from that. So, that's the way I was taught to meditate and to pray, and I meditated and prayed that way, and then it wouldn't work. Everything would be fine, I'd meditate and everything would be fine, and then I would stay up too late, the alarm would go off, and I'd hit the snooze button.
That means I'm not going to meditate for God knows how long, because once I don't do it, I don't do it. And then I'd see Frank, and he'd say, how's the meditation going? He knew how the meditation was going. What do you mean, how's the meditation going? And so, I'd go back to meditating, and then in step seven in the twelve and twelve, Bill wrote, eventually we have to learn that we cannot use our higher power as some kind of a Bush leg pinch hitter.
This idea that we will run our lives and then occasionally call on God to help, we have to see that don't work. So, I made a commitment that I was going to meditate every morning for 30 minutes for the rest of my life. And I started that on the first of October 1974, and the first day I missed was July in 2002 when I had open heart surgery. But over that period of time, I was a first class meditator, and you can't do that and have it not change your life.
The tenth step still didn't work for me, and I heard Bob Corwin, who was Sybil Corwin's eighth husband. And that eighth husband, Bob Corwin, was talking, and he talked about going to prison. And for robbing the hotel that he was living in with a gun, and then going up and passing out in his room. Now, maybe all our cops in Los Angeles aren't that bright, but this bunch was right on the ball and they caught him.
They caught him and woke him up. Took him to jail and he went to prison. And in prison, he got to AA. And in AA, he learned to love. And he said, I even learned not to swear. I wish, you know, Pat tells me I should not swear. I know, but sometimes it's funny. So, funny wins. That's it. He did not swear because love does not behave itself unseemly. Wow. Wow. And I got in line, and I was the last one in line on purpose so I could say, did that line come from Shakespeare or did it come from the big book?
He said, it came from the big, big book. Oh, the Bible. And he said, no, no, no. Dr. Bob encouraged everybody to read the book by Emmett Fox called The Sermon on the Mount. And Henry Drummond's little book, which you can get for free over the Internet, The Greatest Thing in the World. And I went home to Pat, and I said, get me that book. And she said, you have that book. Your mama left you that book, and you looked at it and threw it in the drawer, and it's still in your drawer.
[00:20:00]
And it's that big. It's a little bigger than a postage stamp, but not a hell of a lot. And I went and looked, and of course, it opens with 1 Corinthians 13th chapter, which is why I threw it in the drawer. And why, when he said, the big, big book, I bounced off. I was not going to get into that again. But then reason, you see. The voices talk to you, and you think it's, you don't know what it is. But this voice said, this is Dr. Bob's recommendation.
This is not St. Paul's. This is Dr. Bob. And, you see, in the 12 and 12, it says, look for the deeper meaning of each word and phrase when you're meditating. Now, if you buy this silly little book, The Greatest Thing in the World, and you read his essays, Henry Drummond's essays, on what love is, what love does, and its effect, you get the deeper meaning of each word and phrase. And then, if you memorize 1 Corinthians 13th chapter, and go over the first part, and the first part, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Now, if you meditate on that, that means if you are conscious of that, and if you're listening for the deeper meaning of the words and phrases, though I speak with the tongues of men, I could stand up here, and be as eloquent as you can be, but if I'm not doing it with love, it sounds like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.
It has a very hollow meaning. And you get, if you listen for the deeper meaning, you deepen your understanding of what this means. And the second part, and my rule was, if my mind wandered, when my mind wandered, I had to go back to the first part, until I had gone through the first part, and not let my mind wander. Okay? And then I would go to the second part. Love suffereth long, and is kind. These are things that love does.
If you love your life, love suffereth long, and is kind. Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, love never fails. You go through that. Now, if you've read Drummond, okay, and then there's a third part, and once you get through that, then I would go back to the second part.
And I, let's say, love suffereth long. Well, Drummond says that means love is patience. It doesn't say, love is patience. That's, you know, if you love your life, you love it behind the guy that won't move when the light turns green. Now, if you can't, you know, if you don't love your life, he's got to go, or your man, you know. But if you love your life, you love your life. You don't love it because lights go, you know, that has nothing to do with it.
And it has everything to do with it, if you love your life. And Drummond says love is patience. Love endureth all things,
[00:25:02]
believeth all things, hopeth all things. Love understands and therefore waits. Okay. Then there's kindness and diskind. Now, where patience is love passing, just a power waiting there for when the summons comes for it to express himself. Kindness is love in life going out into action and expressing itself as you go through the day. If there is someone I can help or be kind to, let me do it now, for I may not pass this way again.
And you go through all nine elements of love, getting a deeper meaning of what each of those words mean. And if you do that for 30 minutes a day for six months, you have become more of a loving person. And the first time I found that was a guy cut me off on the freeway. And my head automatically said, I remember doing that to people and I didn't mean to and neither did that guy. I just loved him. Now, that's…
And what I also did was as I would go through this and then I would select one of these things to practice for this week. I mean, there's nine of them. It would be nice to practice nine, but let's just be patient this week. Let's practice. It is not an easy thing. So you have to start out loving your life. And I know what love is and I know what love does and I love Pat. And I can start out that way.
Very easy loving Pat. Because I've loved her forever, I'm just not conscious of it. And to be conscious of that, then she may piss me off. You know, but… But that's her fault. We are not saints. When Frank told me, when he started me off on this, he said, you could do the St. Francis prayer, but I don't want you to. That's a saint's prayer. I don't think you're close enough to actually make that work.
But you're also an alcoholic. Let's focus on being an alcoholic. And so I finally, so finally the 10th step worked. Another thing I've discovered is where it says selfishness, Al, I don't want to get… Okay. Don explained when he talked about fear, fear in three columns. And then he explained how the self is involved in that. You know, the self and that's, it's wanting to have its way and you can discover the manifestations of self by looking at fear.
And you can't get rid of that. I mean, it's your brain chemistry. All right? But when you see it, and you see you can't get rid of it, and you say help, that disengages you from those neural pathways and hooks you up to the parts that instead of activating the fight or flight center, the fear center, it activates the pleasure center. There's these new pathways to of being patient, kind, generous. If I love my life and you win the lottery, I rejoice for you and love you.
My life isn't based on me having what somebody else has. It's based on me loving my life. So I envy it's not.
[00:30:03]
My Life Unless I Ask God to Help Me Let Go of Fear, And What We Have Here Is Love Through Every One of the Steps, I Know, I Know, I've Been to Alano Clubs, There's a Principle Behind Each of the Steps, And If You Look at Those and Look at the Steps Really, Every One of Those Principles Behind Every Step is in Every Step, And in the Twelve and Twelve, These Are Things Bill Thought That He Hadn't Emphasized Enough in the Big Book, And They Give Him Opportunity, Humility Is the Foundation Principle of All These Steps, The Ability to See That I Am Whipped in This Area, I Need Help, And Then I Get It, So, When I'm in the Tenth Step, And I'm Able to Let Fear Go, I Believe That's Because I Did the Fourth Step the Way Don Described to Do the Fourth Step in Three Columns, And Analyzed It, Why Was I Afraid? Self-Centeredness, That's Why, Those Are the Manifestations of Self, And What I'm Afraid of Fundamentally Is I'm Not Going to Have My Way, Okay, If You Love Your Life, You Accept, You're Not Going to, You Know, This Isn't About Getting What You Want, This Thing Is About Wanting What You're Getting, It Isn't About I Will Love My Life If This Thing Happens for Me, I'll Make a Deal with You, God, You Do This for Me and I'll Love You, You Know, Now, What Are You Intended, Whether That Is Your Intended Deal, When You Are Basing Your Love of Your Life on You Having Your Way, That's the Deal, And The Answer Through the Steps, And With Meditation, And I Don't Think, The Big Book Doesn't Make a Real Big Deal Out of Meditation, They Only Ask You, Bill Only Asks You to Meditate As You're Doing Each Step, There's Prayer and Meditation in Each Step, Then, Of Course, He Asks You to Meditate and Pray Upon Awakening, And In Planning Your Day, And When Facing Indecisions About Planning Your Day, And As You Go Through the Day, When You're Agitated or Doubtful, About This Matter of Prayer, Better Men Than Us Are Using It Constantly, Hell, That's Almost 5% of the Time, I Think, Thy Will, Not Mine, Be Done, These Are Thoughts That Must Go With Us Constantly, We Constantly, There Were Up to 15%, We Constantly Remind Ourselves, We're No Longer Running the Show, And Then, Upon Retiring at Night, Now, Except for That, The Big Book Don't Ask You Much About Prayer and Meditation, Oh, It Gives You Some Other Prayer and Stuff to Do, Like The Third Step, Okay, I Mean, This Is The Hub, You Know, And What Am I Shooting For?
Of Course, I'm Shooting For Love and Service, I Am Shooting For A Personally Satisfactory, Conscious Partnership With The Creative Intelligence, The Spirit of The Universe, That Underlies The Totality of Things, Including The Direction of Our Lives, And I Don't Want To Find That As I Did With My Fear Inventory, 26 Years After What I Was Afraid Would Happen, Did Happen, Turned Out To Be The Best Thing That Could Have Happened, The Reason I Had That Great Job I'd Always Worked For Was Because I Didn't Have My Way, If I Had My Way, I'd Have Been An Electrician, And Not A Very Good One, Or If I Had My Way, I'd Have Been A Tool Maker For Longer Than Six Years, But As An Electrician, I Happened To Learn Engineering
[00:35:04]
Design Features That Are Essential To Designing A Weapon System That Can Be Maintained In The Field By A 17-Year-Old High School Student Without A Hell Of A Lot Of Maintenance Training Or Experience, And Keep That Equipment Operating On The Battlefield. Now, The Only Way That Can Happen Is To Design It That Way, And I Learned That When I Was An Electrician In The Navy. As A Tool Maker, I Learned Everything About Engineering Tolerances, Manufacturing Processes, I Never Made One Good Tool In Six Years. If I Had My Way, I Would Have Been A Mediocre Or Less Tool Maker For The Rest Of My Life. God, That Was A Terrible Thing To Lose That Tool Maker Job. And So, I Had To Wait 26 Years For Those Things To Come Together And Me To See If I Would Have Had My Way, And This Is What I've Been Fighting For All The Time, My Life Would Have Been Terrible. Now, God, You Know, When We Go Through The Fears, We See That We Are Pulling A Corrosive Thread Of Fear Through The Entire Fabric Of Our Being. And When We Do That Inventory, We See God Was Pulling A Golden Thread Through Every Circumstance And Events Of Our Life, But I Didn't Enjoy It Because I Wasn't Having My Way. But Once I See That, And When I Get To The, And I See It, And I Surrender, Then I Can Give Up Fear In The Tenth Step. I Can Just Reconnect. If I Remain Conscious Of This With Daily Meditation And Prayer. If I Start My Day That Way. And It Is, We Can Do The Greatest Thing On Earth, St. Francis Prayer, Or Whatever Prayer We Do, We Can Then Practice That In Our Lives That Day. And It Has A Good Reach. Love And Service Is What We Are Shooting For. And This Is What The Steps Bring Us. And We Experience In An Early Step Something That Makes It Work In The Next Step. And Each Step Adds To That. And A Consciousness, You See. It Isn't Just A Personally Satisfactory Relationship. It Is A Personally Satisfactory. That Means If I Go Into This Day, My Brain Set Is This Is Going To Be A Good Day Because I Am In Partnerships With God This Day. And I Am Conscious Of That As I Go Through The Day. If I Am, Then That Is What Happens. And If I Am Conscious Of I Am Going To Feel Good If I Have My Way, That Is What Happens.
And I Am Telling You, One Of The Important Things Is I Hope Somebody Would Say Two Years Gets This. I Was 13 Years. All The Way Through, I Have Been Getting Little Bits Of It. But I Don't Think It Should Take 42 Years. I Think After 42 Years, I Should Be Better Than I Am. You Know. I Am Not Telling You Anything That I Didn't Hear And It Didn't Help Me. But You Can't Help But Want To Help. Love And Service Is The Hub Of Our Lives. In The Third Step Prayer, Let's Do The Third Step Prayer. Be Awake And Be Conscious As We Go Through The Prayer. Now It Is A Longer Prayer Than What You Use. We Pray In AA. And This Is Hopefully A Humorous Observation. Like We Were Taught To Pray By Evelyn Woods. The Reason That Gets A Few Laughs Is Because It Is Not That Funny. But Evelyn Woods
[00:40:09]
Invented Speed Reading. It Is Like She Taught Us To Pray, Lightning Fast. We Are Going To Do A Slightly Slowed Down Version Of The Third Step Prayer. What Was This About? Our Lives Are In God's Care. Our Now Always Have Been. This Universe Is 13.7 Billion Years Of Unfolding Order And Harmony. Most Of Us Were Born Less Than 100 Years Ago. Do You Think It Is Divine Order That Recently We Came Into The World To Take Over? No, I Think We Should Go Along With The Gag. We Are Just In This And Being Guided And Taken Through It. And We Need To Know That. Then We Need To Surrender To It. So When We Say God, As We Do In The Third Step Prayer, Let Us Be Conscious Of Who We Are Addressing. A Spirit Of The Universe. A Creative Intelligence Manifesting Precise Law, Order, And Harmony In Every Aspect Of All Being. In Everything.
I Offer Myself To Thee To Build With Me And Do With Me As Thy Will. Now We Stop And We Are Conscious Of The Truth That Everything We Need To Fulfill Our Purpose Today Is Drawn Into Our Lives And We Are Given The Power And The Knowledge To Interact With Those Circumstances And Events. Practicing Patience, Tolerance, Kindliness, And Love And To Experience Our Love Of God, Our Love Of Life. Knowing This, Trusting This Relieves Me Of The Bondage Of Self. That I May Better Do Thy Will.
Now Let Us Stop And Know That God, The Spirit Of The Universe, Does Not Experience Problems, Difficulties, Or Unresolved Circumstances In Life. The Spirit Only Experiences Order, Harmony, And Unfolding Goodness. Fear, Anger, Unresolved Circumstances Are The Product Of My Thinking, My Action, My Efforts To Control Things That I Lack The Power To Control. So Knowing This And Knowing That I Am A Part Of This Divine Order Which Is In My Life Takes Away My Difficulties That Victory Over Them May Bear Witness To Those I Would Help Of Thy Power Which Is All The Power, All The Power There Is In The Universe. Thy Love, And Then We Would Stop If We Had The Time And We Would Love Our Lives. And Thy Way Of Life, What Would God's Way Of Life Be?
Well We Know This, Through The Steps We Know This, That God's Way Of Life Was To Grace His Creation And All His Creatures With His Spirit For Their Unfolding Goodness. So Our Way Of Life Would Be Best If We Were Of Service To God's Creation And His Creatures For Their Goodness. Creatures for Their Goodness, The Power of God is Within Me, The Grace of God Surrounds
[00:45:13]
Me, not just in the immediate area, but throughout the entire world, through the entire universe, and if there's more than one universe, through all the universes. The power of God is within me, in every aspect of my being, unfolding goodness, order, and harmony. We love our life, and we are of service. Thank you for letting me share.