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Source: Scott L – Step Study (2003) – CD 4 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: scott-l-step-study-2003-cd-4-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:01:45
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Funny how we have to get back in the same seats, isn't it? Did you ever notice that? It's not comfortable. I didn't move. I didn't move. You didn't either. Okay. I'm Scott L.. I'm an alcoholic. And so grateful to be here. I'm always amazed that people come back. You know, I just think it's great. I have tremendous respect for you. I'd like to ask somebody to close that back door, please, as you come in. Thank you, ma'am.
And let's have a few moments of silence and acknowledge the presence and ask again for the open hearts. And I'll meet you back here. Amen. Thank you. Thanks for coming back. Tom, where are you? Somebody asked a question about Step Four and how many times you do it. My immediate past sponsor believed that you did the four-step once, and if you were thorough, that you could stay sober on 10, 11, 12. And he had a great program and I have a world of respect for him. That's not my take on it.
And whatever your sponsor says, by the way, is final authority. And if you take something that I've said to your sponsor to argue with him, I disagree with you. I agree with your sponsor. All right? Now, I mean that with all my heart. I believe God bless his sponsorship. And if you're shopping what your sponsor says, you ought to be shopping for sponsors. Page 64, a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. That is the reference.
And I believe in taking inventory about once a year. It's been three years since my last one. Okay? That's the best I can do with it. I'm long overdue. That's my own perspective. I thought it was a great question. I've got five of the men that I sponsor. One of them is sober four years and the others are all over 10 that are in the step work now. Again, they've asked me to bring them back through it again.
The four-step, the ensuing four steps, you're thorough with the first one, you do the second one a year later, take you less than an hour, probably won't turn the page on the resentment inventory, probably won't fill the first page. So don't be surprised when that happens. I'm due for a four-step and I bet I knock it out in less than an hour because there isn't that much work to do. I don't want to carry the resentments anymore. I'm okay. I'm at peace with the people that are attacking my country.
I have been blessed with seeing them as very sick individuals. I'm sad for them. They've been lied to. They have a set of beliefs that turns them away from the power of goodness and love and joy, and I'm sad for them. I wasn't always sad for them. I had anger for them, but the prayer worked for me again. They're spiritually sick and I'm sad for them. I wish them the best. I hope they have a spiritual awakening. Don't you?
I'm not expecting this process to take me very long. It's interesting. The former spouse thing has flared for me again, and she hadn't done a thing. I have had no contact with her. Thank you. I'm sorry. That's very flippant of me. But some of my old stuff has come up, the old thinking. So I've got some work to do. It's time. So for me, I need to continue to stay active in the work. If one's a mistake, if it's a mistake to do a four-step again, what's the harm?
If it's a mistake not to do a four-step again, it looks like the price might be high. That's just my take on it. OK, so we're on page 83, and it says the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Now, that's really important because they put it in squiggly writing. OK, unless one's family expresses a desire to live upon spiritual principles, we think we ought not to urge them. We should not talk incessantly to them about spiritual matters.
They will change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words. Oh, I'm going to have to go be a good guy now? We must remember that 10 or 20 years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone. Yeah, OK, I can see how that might have happened. I personally restrict a man that I sponsor from using the word sorry when they make amends. I think we've told them we were sorry enough, and I believe that amends is not a lecture course.
It needs to be brief. You may open by saying, I was wrong, or I believed I harmed you, or both. I think those are good ways to open amends. You will be very brief about it, and we have to be extremely careful that we don't hurt somebody. I'm going to give an example, and this is the best I can do with the language.
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Somebody can help me with this later, I'd like to hear it. Let's say for example that he used a lady's charms lightly and then ignored her after that. OK, you get the idea? So how do you go and make amends to her and not make her feel cheap again? Because we do not want to hurt her. And this is the best I've been able to come up with. You go to her and say, I was not as good a friend to you as I could have been, and I'm ashamed, and I believe I may have harmed you, and I would like to make that right.
Would you like to talk to me about how I harmed you? What can I do to make it right? That's plenty. I tell them, when you sit down and you think about what you want to say to somebody in making amends, figure out how many words that is, and divide by two. And then knock off a zero. This is a little number. This is a teeny tiny number. You're not going to go to your mother and talk about all the times you were a bad son or daughter to her.
You're going to say, I wasn't as good a child to you as I could have been. I ignored you. I did not act in a loving fashion. I believe I've harmed you. I'd like to make that right. Would you please tell me how I've harmed you and what I can do to square the books? That's plenty. And then you listen. We take abuse, and we are also, and this is really important, we are not asking you to turn your will and life over to the care of someone that you have harmed.
If I sponsor you, I will tell you that this guy that you harmed is not final authority on what this amend will be. I am. You and I prayerfully are. Because there may be somebody out there who absolutely treasures the fact that he hates you and will bash you for the rest of your life. It is not necessary for you to submit to that. So that's not what we're doing here. And the question is, did you harm them?
Restitution to those harmed. For those who were, as I was, abused as a child, I do not owe amends to someone who abused me. I do not owe them amends. And I do not have to see them. For I did not harm them. It's an important piece. I believe God blesses sponsorship. And if you're new and you're heading out to make amends without your sponsor's full authority and approval, you are probably making a very, very serious mistake.
I'd like to recommend as strongly against that as I can. That's a mistake. And then we let them talk. Now, we don't take abuse, but we let them talk. And say, well, if you owe them $100, it might be good to give them $100. If you owe them $5,000, it would be good to give them $100 and tell them when the next $100 is coming and make sure that it does. And if you think you can do $100 a month, tell them $50 and make sure that you get it covered.
Let's make sure we do what we say because we went a long time without so. So let's do what we say. My wife came up with something I think is so powerful. For those of you who are blessed enough to hear her tomorrow, she'll talk about it. She calls it good amends. And that's where you go back and thank the people who deeply touched your life. Who here has been thanked too much? Who's been overthanked?
No hands? Hmm. Okay. And when I heard her talk about that, it occurred to me there were people who had touched my life deeply I had not thanked. And I thanked my dad for being a good dad. Best he could do. And I thanked my mother for being my mom and being in my corner all the time. And I thanked my major professor in college because I learned a lot from him. And I thanked the man that taught me to fly because he set up my Air Force career.
I went back and thanked people. You want to do something that's really fun? You want to do something that will touch you deeply? You go hunt them down and thank them. Go hunt them down and thank them and see what happens to you. It's a spectacular process. That's a gift from my wife. Don't miss her talk. Page 83. There may be some wrongs we can never fully right. We don't worry about them if we can honestly say to ourselves that we would right them if we could.
I'm going to talk about the worst thing I ever did for a couple of minutes. And I want to preface this. I'll do this Sunday in part of my talks. I think it's maybe the most important thing I have to say. If you have done what I'm about to describe and you're okay with it, I'm okay with it, all right? It's not a political discussion. As a young man, I paid for an abortion. And that festered my soul.
I used to think about the what ifs on that one. And I used to think about it all the time. And I had a major spiritual experience, which I'm not going to go into now, when I was thinking about that one time. And I received the forgiveness. I had one of the burning bushes. I'll tell you about that Sunday. And I received God's forgiveness. When I got to the ninth step, it looked to me like I owed amends to an unborn child, and I didn't think it could be done.
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I have been blessed to have been in the hands of people who knew what was in this book. I'd like to read it to you from page 83. Some people cannot be seen. We send them an honest letter. And I'm going to talk about the letter that I wrote, and I'm going to talk about how I recommend people write letters. I was sat down, and I recommend outside under God's sky instead of indoors under man's roof. And I was told to write a letter, Dear Unborn Child.
And my instructions were to write only until I was able to cry. And for those of you who are suffering now, because I know I picked your scabs, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't have an answer, and I do. Please listen. Please see me afterward. I want to talk to you. This is an unborn child. This is a grandparent. It's anybody who's gone to the other side. And I'm told to write this child a letter.
And like the fourth step, I think we demonstrated earlier, it's not about writing. It was observations and prayers that made the changes. In my experience, this letter process is not about writing. It is about tears. If you are unable to cry, I do not recommend this process. I've seen people lock up, and it just doesn't do any good. I was taught to cry when I was sober a year. A member of my home group, a guy taught me to cry.
It took me a year. He taught me. And I can cry, and I can teach you, and I want to. And if you don't know how to cry, if you will see me later, I've got a handout right here. You'll learn to cry, because no baby was ever born unable to cry. Your inability to cry was learned. It can be unlearned. And I mention that only because I believe tears are necessary to this letter process, because I've had the privilege of sitting with a lot of people.
And so I sat down with one of my spiritual advisors. Well, not my sponsor, but one of my spiritual advisors sat me down and said, Write to this child. And I would write only until I was able to cry. And I was told to lay the pen down and cry as long as I could. If you have one of these to do, you're going to want to write and cry at the same time. And if you do that, you're going to compress the time frame, and it will not get complete.
I've seen it over and over again. So you write until you can cry. As soon as you can cry, you lay the pen down and you cry as long as you can. And as soon as the tears stop on their own, you begin to write again. You do this with someone who is not afraid of your tears, who will prayerfully hold the space. We need someone to sit there and prayerfully hold this space while you do this thing. They need to understand that.
And they need to be informed that you're going to have to be told to lay the pen down when you're crying, because believe me, you're going to want to write and cry. Don't do it. And you lay the pen down, you cry as long as you can. When the tears stop on their own, you begin to write again. And as soon as you can cry again, lay the pen down again. And you do that process. And I did it until I was sure I was complete.
And I talked about how much I missed. You can imagine. And I'll talk to you later if you need to hear details. I'd be glad to. Because I got free. You see, nothing's going on in here while I do this. I got free. That's what I came to tell you. I got free. I serve a powerful God who gave me a powerful program. He uses the worst things I've ever done as tools to help other people. That's going on right now.
I can see it in some faces. I know that's happening right now. Powerful. And when I was sure I was finished, I was told to sign Love Dad. And I was not finished. I was then handed a plain white envelope, and I was told to address the envelope. And I said, how? And I was asked the question, where's the child? And I said, with God. That's correct, with God, in heaven. And there's no resentment there.
Nobody's mad. And God and that child want you to get free. Now address the letter. And I addressed the plain envelope to an unborn child in heaven. And I was told to put on extra postage. That's a long way from Nashville, Tennessee. And I mailed it, and I got free. And I have permission to tell this piece of the story. I got a phone call a few years ago, and a guy that I sponsor said, I sponsor a guy who needs to write a letter.
I started telling this when I'm telling you in public about four and a half years ago. So this story predates that. But he and I had exchanged fist steps, and consequently he knew about this. And he said, I'm sponsoring a guy that needs to write a letter, and I don't have the experience. Would you sit with us? I said, I'd be honored. And we sat down, myself, the man I sponsored, and the man he sponsored.
And this guy wrote a letter to two unborn children. And I coached him. I just kept saying, lay the pen down, lay the pen down, lay the pen down. And he cried. And when he was finished, I said, here's a plain white envelope. Address the letter. And he said, no. He said, I think I'm going to burn this, not in the sense of destroying it, but to send it in smoke. I think it could get where it's going better that way.
And I said, wow. And we went over by the rose bushes, and he held a kitchen match to it. And when it was just ashes, he crumbled it and put them on the roses. And he got free. And I don't have his permission to tell this. He begged me to tell you. And I don't give him the envelope anymore. I pick a special place, and we send it in smoke, and we get free. And the people who follow these instructions get free. I've seen it over
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and over and over again. I've also written that down. If somebody would like to have that, it's on the back of this How to Learn to Cry thing. Powerful stuff. I say again, if you've done what I've done and you're okay with it, I'm okay with it. I did not come to indict you. I came to maybe help some other people get free. That's what I'm about. That's what that page 124 was about. About the worst thing in my past is a tool in God's hands. I watch it over and over again. It's one of my great joys. And nothing happened in here. That's the worst thing I ever did.
I'm free. I am free. What a gift. It's my experience in coaching people through the ninth step. I'm going to lighten up a little bit, okay? That was pretty heavy. Lighten up a little bit. That, you know, when I get the guy, he's got a lot of problems. But by the time I've got him all the way into step nine, his life has changed. I mean, he's been promoted at work. There's money in the bank. He throws the switch. The lights come on. The phone rings. He's not afraid to answer it, okay?
He's sleeping in the big bed, all right? I mean, his life changed and his motivation is gone. His motivation is gone because my motivation of choice is pain. I mean, isn't yours? That's my favorite. And so what I like to do at this point is apply it because it's hard to keep them moving in the ninth step. Anybody experience that, sponsoring people? A lot of trouble keeping them moving through step nine.
And what I've found is that you can apply the one day at a time concept to step nine and keep them moving. So what I say, he says, you know, he's saying to himself, I can't make 160 amends. And I'm saying to myself, I know that, but you can make one today. Which one is it? We're only 160 days from being through with this. So I say, what's what amend you want to make next? Okay, let's talk about that amend. When can you get that person on the phone schedule an appointment? Are you calm today? Good, good. What's the next hole in your counter? When could you see him? Well, you can see him tomorrow. Good, good. Call him, book the appointment, call me back. Yeah, okay. Appointment tomorrow at two, shouldn't take over an hour. I'll look for your phone call at three. I wonder how it went. All right. So I got his feet right up against the fire. He calls me at three. He says, geez, it went good. It was amazing. Or it was terrible or, you know, whatever we process that, I say, okay, who's next? Right? I do that 159 more times and we're done. One day at a time concept applied to sponsoring somebody through step nine. It is so hard to keep them moving at that point. And that's what I use. It works pretty good. That unborn child thing just wears me out. I am physically tired. And I wasn't kidding when I said we were going to get heavy duty. Okay. And then we have the nine step promises, which I read before. So I'm not going to do that again, but aren't they powerful? I'd like to make an observation about one of them.
It's two observations. The first one is my favorite is the first. It says, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. That is a promise. Were you not amazed before you were halfway through? That's my favorite one. I see people that take them out and insist on having 12, the number one through 12, they missed that one. And they have to break another one in half so they can have the magic number of 12. I think we'll be amazed for halfway through. It's pretty important stuff. And this one, the last one, we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. It doesn't say God will suddenly begin to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. It says our realization will be sudden. We'll suddenly say, wow, been going on for a long time, but I finally noticed it. I have my own definition for a revelation. You know what a revelation is? Revelation is when I figure out for myself something you've been trying to tell me for six months or longer. It's a revelation.
Middle of page 84. This thought brings us to step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to write any new mistakes as we go along. I think the as we go along is the powerful piece for me. Again, this is just how I approach it. For me, the difference between step 10 and step 11 is the as we go along. Step 10 is about me being present in my own life moment by moment. We're going to come to the directions on step 11 here in a few minutes that recommend morning and evening prayer and meditation. If I wait until 11 o'clock tonight to inventory what I did today, how am I going to promptly admit it and fix something I did wrong at 7.15 in the morning? It's not possible. So for me, step 10 is about being present in my own life moment by moment, about taking inventory not necessarily right after I did something, but maybe right before I did something to think about it. I think one of the slogans applies to this and the slogan is easy does it. That if I'm running Mach 2 with my hair on fire, you're
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familiar, right? Mach 2 of my hair on fire, I'm not present. I'm usually way out in the future, right? And I'm leaving a sonic boom that's breaking eggs and windows everywhere. I have to slow down. I have to easy does it if I'm going to live step 10. I can inventory before I do something. I need inventory after. Did I just do harm? Have I hurt somebody? What do I need to do moment by moment during the day? That for me is the difference. So I don't do a 10 step inventory night. I do a 10 step all day long. I live in step 10. Step 11 is a couple of, a handful of very specific prayers and observations that are done morning and night. And that's just my observation on it, okay? The 12 and 12 disagrees with that. That's just where I am with it. I'm kind of a big book guy. So take a look at that. I'm aware of that difference by the way. That's just what I'm saying. Don't bring me that one, I know. Okay, it says we vigorously, that means with a lot of energy, commence this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the spirit. How's that for a promise? Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.
This is the very first time we've been involved in understanding. This has been action up until now. Not what I understand or know, but what I do. And now we can begin to understand. Excuse me, it says it's not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. This is forever. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Those to me are the earmarks of ego. The re-emergence of ego is the most terrifying thing. I was telling the story about my own character defect and how it's the re-emergence of ego that terrifies me. And those spiritual barometers, that's my ego that lies. That's my ego wanting to get its own way at any price. It swears because it's not spiritually connected.
It becomes angry with you because I think I should be controlling you and what you do. Anything I'm angry about, anything I'm unhappy about, it's because I'm trying to control it because I think I ought to be in charge. Step one, section B, I think I'm supposed to be managing it. That's why I'm angry. That's the re-emergence of ego. These words, selfish, dishonest, resentment, and fear, in various forms appear throughout the book. I told you part of what we would do here was to sort of skip around through the book. Let's take a look at that same concept here in step 11, page 86. When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid? Same list. Page 88, still in the 11th step. We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Pretty much the same list. Page 67, in the inventory where we looked at our own mistakes, it says where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? On page 145, the greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear. Man, oh man, oh man, now there's a concept that just crawls all over this book. It says the same thing over and over again, and those things for me are all the re-emergence of ego. Fear is my ego wanting to have its way in the future. Resentment is when I'm not getting it right now, or it didn't get it in the past. Anger is when I'm not getting it now. I mean, it's all over the place. Envy is the same thing. Envy is anger because you've got something I think I should have. It's the same list over and over again. What's the answer to that? Back on page 84, continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear when these crop up. I'd like to observe it did not say if. This is a when question. This is not an if question.
So this is not the perfection step either. Here's one of two 10-step prayers. We ask God to remove them. Oh, okay. I can't get rid of my own selfishness. We found that concept on page 62. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone. That sounds familiar. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't say that we sit and beat ourselves up for once again having failed to be perfect. I cannot find permission in this book to beat myself up. I do not take the liberty of beating up the men that I sponsor in any way, shape, or form.
I'm going to talk about dropping them if they don't do what I ask. I'm going to get to that in the next hour, but I never beat on them. It's not my job. I'm in no position to do that, but I need to point at these things. What we're supposed to do when we screw up is turn our
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thoughts to someone we can help. Now, we chased that through the book before, but it's all over the place in here. Then here's our code. Love and tolerance of others is our code. We have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. Okay, I'm out of the fight. I've resigned from the fight, so that means I don't have to lose anymore. I don't have to surrender anymore. I can volunteer because I'm not fighting. I'm out of the fight. For this time, sanity will have returned. Okay, we found sanity at the top of page 57. Here it is again. We have promised to you at step 10 the return of sanity. I think sanity comes in two forms. This is my own observation.
Sanity of mind and sanity of action. It is the sanity of action that's the important one. It's important for me to do sane things. I have a friend who says that he's pretty sure that God can restore him to sanity, but every morning when he wakes up, he's pretty sure it hasn't happened yet. He says his disease gets up every morning and does push-ups for about 20 minutes before he wakes up. Then it sits up on the top of the bed, up on the headpost, and it waits.
When he opens his eyes, it goes, and it jumps on him. I wake up nuts every morning myself, don't you? I'm going to talk about that in a few minutes when we get to step 11. I think it's really important that what I must have is sanity of action. My sponsor told me that in the history of this planet, no human has ever been put in an insane asylum for being insane. It's never happened. They put us in there for acting insane.
Big difference. Nobody's ever been let out of an insane asylum for being sane. They let them out for acting sane. On the days when I'm nuts, if I don't act that way, they don't know. I can walk around with everybody else. Let me tell you something. I've been to the insane asylum. I've been in the little padded cell in withdrawal. I know all about that. This is a better deal, even when I'm nuts, if I don't act that way. I think I made my point. I hope so.
We're going to talk here about sanity of action. It says we will seldom be interested in liquor. I haven't been interested in liquor in a long time. Every once in a while, I see one thing, that's kind of an interesting looking bottle. I think, I'm not interested in that. They give me a wine list and say, is this all you have? There's no sense in me getting started. They got beers now that they didn't have as a beer drinker. They got beers that I didn't have.
I thought, I wonder what that smells like. I thought, no, you don't. I know what it tastes like. It tastes about the same coming back up as it did going down. That's what I need to know about it. I'm seldom interested. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. That is a sane reaction for someone with my history. We react sanely, there it is again, and normally. We find that this happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes.
There's tremendous effort that's been taken from the beginning of this book to this point. The effort has not been about liquor. It hasn't been about stopping drinking. It hasn't been about not wanting a drink. It has been effort because that's the problem. That's living in the problem. We haven't been focused on the problem. I haven't been focused on not wanting a drink. I've been focused on having a spiritual experience and learning to live a spiritual life.
In that answer, this other one has been removed. That's what I see when I read this. That's the miracle of it. We're not fighting it. Neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We've not even sworn off. Who quit forever? Who quit forever? Lots of times. Every time you puked. Come on, pukers. I know you quit forever. How did it work? We're not doing that anymore. Instead, the problem has been removed. How did it get removed? By following these steps. By digging the poison out of my soul because that's what this fourth through ninth steps, actually through ten are about. Digging the poison out of my soul. About making me be lighter on my feet and in my own skin at peace. Walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. How could you be thirsty?
It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in a fit spiritual condition. There's a caveat. Okay, got to keep in fit spiritual condition. It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. For alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve. Look it up. That's a stay of execution. That's what a reprieve is. It's a stay of execution. This is a death threat.
We have a daily reprieve contingent on the We have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. I talked about maintenance meaning two things. It means I can't lose what I've already got.
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It also means I must maintenance my spiritual condition with prayer, reading spiritual literature, meditation, being nice to folks, taking meetings into jails, all that sort of stuff that we do to maintenance our spiritual condition. And when I first read that sentence in my first year sober, I thought, okay, a spiritual condition, what I'm going to do is to get that spiritual condition, whatever is necessary. And then once I have that, I can take the rest of my life off with pay. I won't have to do anything else. And so I searched for over a year trying to discover what that spiritual condition was. And I finally found it. It's the next sentence where it says, every day is a day when we must, there are no musts in the program, and this is one of them. All right. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. The vision is the best I can see of. Every day. Okay, so I don't get any days off. It's a day when I must carry, it means absolutely got to, the vision of God's will into all of my activities, not almost all or most, all of my activities.
There's a spiritual condition. How do I do that? With this maintenance thing that we talked about. And then here's the second 10-step prayer. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mind be done. 10-step prayer. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. All right. That's about being present in my own life moment by moment, prayerfully, just in touch with the great reality is what the book refers to God as in one place. We can exercise our willpower along this line.
All we wish it is the proper use of the will. Excuse me. Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, you know, Bill want to use directions and how it works and they got that out of there, but he sneaked it in on him here. We've carefully followed directions. We have begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us. How's that for a promise? Huh? How do you love that? Speaking of promises, how about the short form of step 11? How do you like that for a promise?
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. I can't improve something I don't already have. It implies that having done these first 10 steps under the tutelage of a sponsor who has already done them, I will at that point have a conscious contact for I cannot improve something I don't have. What a powerful promise that is. Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us. To some extent, we have become God conscious.
What a promise. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. Vital, once again, beta. This is a death threat. This is only if you want to live. Sixth sense. A friend of mine says if I'm still using my other five senses trying to get my will to come to pass, I will not develop this vital sixth sense. For it comes in this trying to walk in the master's presence and trying to say simply, what can I give today? How may I be of service to you or somebody else?
What can I do for the man that still suffers? That's where that consciousness comes from. But we must go further and that means more action. We keep getting into this action thing, don't we? Has anybody got a question or something? My voice could use a break. I haven't gotten to 11 yet. Oh, I didn't read the whole thing? The whole 11th step? Yeah, I will. I'm going to come to that when I read the step. I was just making that point.
We're still in 10, but I was just making a point. Thank you. Hi. Hi. We had a big discussion in our home group about the forward that says we are 100 men and women who have recovered. And then over here, we are not cured. Allow me if I might. Can I interrupt? This is the great, I'm going to call it a discussion because I'm trying to be a gentleman, about whether I'm a recovering or recovered alcoholic.
We're hearing this one all the time. I walked into the old woodbine club. I was in there about two years sober and I was having a rather heated discussion. It may have been about this. You not being as spiritually developed as I am might have thought it was an argument, but it was a discussion about something exceptionally important. And I'm not sure today what it was, but I know it was extremely important and this may have been it.
And old Joe B. walked in and Joe had been sober since about a week before the earth began to cool and was a highly intelligent individual, which clearly would place him on my side of this
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burning issue, which I cannot quite remember what it was at this point. And as he poured his coffee, I posed the question to him and said, what do you think? And Joe said, well, I am not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution to not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorse nor oppose any causes. My primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. And I wonder how many AA meetings have got old time members standing there arguing about whether I'm recovered or recovering.
And there's a newcomer standing alone in the door wondering if he needs to come in. I have a primary purpose and I do not wish to engage in any controversy. And that's my answer. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Yeah. Isn't that fun? Okay. Moving right along. All right. Step 11 suggests prayer and meditation. My wife and I have the high honor and privilege of doing a meditation workshop tomorrow morning at 830. Ms. Linda does most of it and she has quite a gift for guided imageries.
We're going to read to you from AA and Al-Anon conference-approved literature and share our experience with it. And if there's any chance at all you can come, I'd like to recommend that you do so. I'd like to recommend also, if you can stand it, that you don't do any caffeine before then, because there's just nothing like meditating really fast. Okay. For me, meditating really fast is like praying hard. Let me show you praying hard.
Okay. When I'm praying hard, I'm back to trying to train God. And when I'm meditating fast, I think I missed a point. So allow me to suggest that if your heart will start without caffeine, bring it on in here. Okay. I'd love to see you tomorrow. For me, prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening. And I have the strongest suspicion that I need to listen more than I need to talk. The gentleman here in the second row suggested that I read the full 11 step, but I think it's a good idea. Short form, 11 step, page 59. Sought through prayer and meditation.
I like to observe it does not say achieved. The result is not my responsibility. Sought through prayer and meditation. That means that if I go to sleep during meditation, I did great. That's as good as it gets because I sought. I take no responsibility for the results. That gives me a lot of peace. Hi, my name is Vincent. I'm an alcoholic. I remember you saying that when you woke up, you wake up insane. And I do that too. And part of my daily meditation is when I get on my hands and knees, I'll say the off ball of third step breath, seven step breath.
Right in the middle of prayers, my mind's going, you know, to my task of the day. What are some of the tools you use to get centered so you don't let the mind go, the job, this, that. You can't really get centered. Sure. He's asking about how do you keep your prayers, prayers instead of your mind wandering off. And I don't think I have full answers for that, but I'm going to share my experience in a couple of minutes on that. That's a great question. Thank you. Because that's something I think there may be some other people that have some good suggestions on that. But let me, let me come back to this point and I'm going to get to that in just a minute. It says, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. So that means that I've got to get out of the business of training God, right? I've just got to quit praying. I used to pray to the great Monty Hall in the sky. Anybody old enough? Let's make a deal. If you will get me out of this one, I will. You ever do that one? Yeah. How'd it work? Yeah, me too. Okay.
Okay. So for me, prayer is talking to God. Meditation is an attempt to listen, to sit quietly in the master's presence and see what happens. And for those of you who are new, if you believe what I'm about to say, you will be impressed if you believe it. Okay. I have one thought at a time and sometimes there's a little space between them and I wouldn't take anything for that space. And when I got here, my head was a very busy place and it's not anymore. And prayer and meditation, most especially meditation and going through this work to dig the poison out of my soul is what's brought me that sense of peace.
My head's not a busy place anymore. It says we shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. There was a very, very well-known clergyman. Matter of fact, you would recognize his name if I could remember it. Who was asked one time how much time he spent in prayer and meditation every morning. And he said an hour, unless my life is extremely hectic and the walls are closing in
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and I have more to do than I can possibly do. In which case I spend two hours. I got that one on backwards, don't you? Yeah. It's the first thing that goes. Better men than we are using it constantly. It works. If we have the proper attitude and work at it, it would be easy. If we have the proper attitude and work at it, it would be easy to be vague on this matter. Yet we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions. One of the things that I do with new people is I have them read the book out loud. One of the things that happened to me when I was new and still occasionally is that my mind, my eyes are moving across the page and my mind is going somewhere else. And I can trap my mind in the moment by reading out loud. If I read out loud, it has to stay here. Because the mind is my worst enemy. I swear it is. And not only that, but I get more out of it because I not only read it with my eyes, I now read it with my throat and my mouth and I hear it with my ears. I get an awful lot more retention from anything that I read out loud.
So if you're new, you're having trouble, or if you've been around a while and your eyes are moving across the page and it's not sticking, read it out loud. Read it out loud. I think you'll find that to be very, very helpful. Now it says here, when we retire at night. I always thought this was upside down. Why don't they do the morning thing first? And it occurred to me that whenever I pick this book up the very first time to read it, I'm already awake. All right, I've already missed the morning deal. So the next one comes at night and then it starts to make better sense to me that way.
That's just my own take on it and I do not wish to engage in any controversy. That's just an observation. Okay, just an observation. It says we constructively review the day. That means I'm not going to beat myself up. Where were we? Here's our list again. Resentful, dishonest, selfish, dishonest, or afraid. Those are the earmarks for me of the re-emergence of my ego, my will. Do we owe an apology? Uh-huh. Do I miss him? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better?
Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? Isn't that beautiful prose? To pack into the stream of life. But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection. All right? It says you can't beat yourself up, no matter what. Permission to beat yourself up is not in here. For that would diminish our usefulness to others. Back to what I'm trying to do here.
Page 77. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. I can't do that if I'm sitting around bashing myself. Not possible. After making our review, we ask God's forgiveness. That looks like a prayer to me. And inquire, I'm going to ask God what corrective measures should be taken. That's the evening review that a lot of people consider that a 10th step. It looks to me like it's an 11, and my own take is that 10 is about being present in my own life. Whatever you're doing and your sponsor is doing suits me fine. That's just my take. And then we go, it says on awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead. I'd like to observe what it does not say. It does not say after two over easy and a ham, a half a pot of coffee and reading the paper. That's not what it says. It says on awakening, because I like Vince wake up crazy as an outhouse rat. I wake up with untreated alcoholism first thing in the morning, and I must do this on awakening. My friend Don from Louisville, Kentucky says that he's capable of making life devastating decisions between the bed and the bathroom.
So it says on awakening, that must be first thing. We consider plans for the day. Interesting, how do we do that though? It says before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking. So that's the first prayer. I ask God to direct my thinking, especially asking to be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives. I'm going to tell you a personal story. I bought this exceptionally ugly watch at Radio Shack for $30. I don't own Radio Shack stock, but I want to tell you why I bought it. It's because it has multiple alarms, and this morning, Ms. Linda and I had them set 15 minutes apart.
It's usually somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, and when the first one goes off, we cuddle, and I do my morning prayers in my wife's arms, and she does hers. It's the best way we found to start the day. It says on awakening. Now, many people feel that they need to kneel and pray. I don't even want to touch that. I do not wish that. I mean, if that's what you want to do, I think that's wonderful. I really do. I have tremendous respect for that, and I kneel to pray.
Menace Respect for that. And I kneel to pray some, but I can pray anywhere. And I do my morning prayers in my wife's arms. Wow. Wow. Try that sometime. So I bought this ugly watch
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because it has multiple alarms. Because when the second one goes off, it's get-up time. Right? And the first one we cuddle, and we do our morning prayers. And let me tell you the truth. Sometimes that second one wakes us up. I think that's okay. I really think that's okay. Sought through prayer and meditation. Not achieved. Sought. That's my job is to seek. And so we sought. So that's how we start our day. Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all, God gave us brains to use. Our thought life will place on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
In thinking about our day, we may face indecision. Boy, I guess so. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God. That must be a prayer. We ask God for inspiration, intuitive thought, or decision. We relax and take it easy. Oh, we don't thrash around? No. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle, and we're often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or occasional inspiration gradually, this is not one of those immediate things, gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it. I need to bounce these things off of my sponsor when I think I'm being told what to do. I need some help with some skin on it. I think as my sponsor and I prayerfully approach anything, we come up with good answers. A wonderful friend of mine, as a matter of fact, I just saw he's speaking at a conference down here. The yellow one back there is a guy from my home group is speaking, a fellow named Steve, fabulous guy. He said he had a problem the other day, and it was either do A or do B, and he wasn't sure which one. And he said as he reached for the phone to call his sponsor, he got his relief. The reaching for the phone gave him his relief, because he knew if his sponsor said do A, he'd do A. If his sponsor said B, he'd do B. And he wasn't going to argue. He already had his relief. Now his sponsor may not come up with the best answer. Oh, but his batting average is so much better than mine. He doesn't make any bad mistakes. And then it says we usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer. All right, so it recommends meditation, to try to sit quietly in the Master's presence. We're going to talk about that tomorrow morning in depth. I'm going to work out of the twelve and twelve Linda works out of some of the Al-Anon literature.
I think you'll find it interesting. We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that will be shown all through the day what our next step is to be. That we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems we ask, especially for freedom from self-will. Boy, there it is again. Over and over and over again. I'm asking God to help me be free of self. And are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves however if others will be helped. Page 15 in Bill's story. Very powerful. Hold on, I may be on the wrong page. I am. It's on 13. Yeah. This is near the bottom of page 13. I was to test my thinking by the new God consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. For those of you who don't know, it looks to me like the twelve steps appear in narrative form on pages 12 and 13. You might have a look and see what you think. I would also observe that the sober alcoholic called on the wet one. Bill didn't call Ebby. Ebby called Bill. And then he called him back. He called him again. At my home group, we don't give our phone numbers out to newcomers anymore. We stopped it. When I was sober six months, a hundred days, I had a hundred phone numbers. How many had I called? That's correct.
That's exactly right. We don't give our phone numbers out. We exchange phone numbers with newcomers. Guys with guys, girls with girls. And I task myself and the men that I sponsor, when you exchange phone numbers with a new guy, you will call him twice in the next three days. All right? There's nothing for you with twelve years to pick up the phone and call a guy with twelve days and say, hey, it's Fred. I met you at the back room group yesterday.
I talked to five guys every day that are on the phone. You're on today's list. How's it going? I'm going to the fellowship group tonight, eight o'clock, Presbyterian Church on Nolensville Road. Maybe meet you there, get a cup of coffee. I got a speaker tape you might like. All right? There's nothing for me to call him. He can't call me. This thing about the hand of AA being there, I'm not sure it's enough. I'm not sure it's enough.
Maybe we can reach it out just a little bit further. This is life or death. I think we ask for too many surrenders. I believe in giving newcomers sponsor. That's what the greeters of my home group are doing. We're looking for newcomers that don't have sponsors and giving them one if we can. Life or death. Life or death. Let's make it easy for them
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to stay. Somebody mentioned something to me, too, about someone who's had extended periods of sobriety and gone back out. I think the two most important things we do in recovery are make it easy for the newcomers to stay and make it easy for those who've gone back out to come back. And I like to tell the ones coming back, if you're coming back, I want to talk to you. This is not a seniority contest. I think we make a little bit too much out of how long you've been sober. I mean, it's important, but it's not a seniority contest.
This is life or death today. Life or death today. Let's make it easy for them to come back, folks, because please, God, if I go back out, please make it easy for me. I got nowhere else to go. Have you? Nowhere. Let's make it easy, okay? That's what we got to do for each other. Bill says, I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problem as he would have me. Never was I to pray for myself, except as my request bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive, but that would be in great measure. Wow. When I ask God for what he wants me to have, it's astonishing how much help I get. We are careful never to pray. I'm back on page 87. Forgive me.
I'm skipping around and not telling you. I apologize. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that, and it doesn't work. If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in meditation. I like the group meditation thing. The men of my home group unofficially do a number of retreats, and we do a lot of meditations. We do one that's really neat that we call a love meditation, where we sit in a circle, and we all try to sit quietly in God's presence using whatever method seems appropriate. Then whoever's leading it, say for example I am, when he's ready, we'll take the hand next to him, and he takes the hand next to him. When this man on this side takes my left hand, I know we have a circle, and I say, God help us send love to, and I name somebody. They could be here or they could be gone. Then each man in the circle focuses his love toward me and sends it in with his breath. This is going to sound really weird to you, but boy, do not knock this if you have not tried it. They do it until this man on my right has done three breaths at least. Then it's his turn. He says, God help us send love to, and then I join the rest of the crowd, and we focus our love. He could be naming somebody none of us have ever heard of. That doesn't matter. I believe love can be sent. Part of one of the things I learned from my wife was each morning in my prayer and meditation, I send love to the places I'm going to be. I sent some to this room this morning in meditation, so there'd be some when I got here. I do that for all the places I'm going to be during the day. We do this love meditation, and we hold a circle.
If it comes to you, and we go around several times, if it comes to you and you don't have someone to name, you just squeeze the hand on your right so they know it's their turn. We don't know what that does to the people that we send this to. For us, it's an exceptionally powerful experience. I'd recommend to you, if you want to talk details on that, I'd be glad to. Some of the other meditation things that we do, for we're seekers. The Twelve and Twelve recommends that. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we are discussing. So here's praying yet again. There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one's priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer. As we go through the day, we pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action. Isn't that interesting?
This is so important that they've had to tell us again. Bye girls. Thanks for coming. These people need to sponsor you, by the way. Ladies, before you go, we need to sponsor you very, very much. I wish I'd known when I was new that the old timers needed to sponsor. You're not begging somebody. You're not saying, I'm a dead weight. Would you drag me? You're going to hate this. When you ask someone to sponsor you, you're saying, I believe you're on the path. May I walk beside you? We will help each other. I don't care how new you are.
That's the deal. How many times have I heard myself telling somebody I sponsor something I needed to hear? How many times have they asked questions that opened doors for me? We need to sponsor you. Do somebody a favor. Let them sponsor you. Thanks. God bless. Thanks for coming. These girls are all in treatment. Is that great that they were here? I didn't know they were leaving. That's part of what I like to do on step 12. Now I'm confused.
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I'm going to have to start again with good morning. Oh man. Okay, we're at the bottom of page 87. Yeah, that's right. I've got to set the alarm. Where's Ms. Linda? I'm supposed to cuddle. As we go through the day, we pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action. That's exactly what it said on the facing page at the same place. It says, here we ask God for inspiration and intuitive thought or decision. We relax and take it easy. It must be an important concept. They've told us twice. That's what I'm supposed to do when I don't know what to do. It's not thrash around. Sit quietly in the Master's presence and ask to be open to what he'd have me do. Pretty simple. Oh, here's one. We constantly, it's pretty often, we constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show. Ah, step one section B. I'm not in charge. Okay. Humbly saying to ourselves many times each day, thy will be done. That's a prayer. We are then in much less danger of, here's the ego list again, excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. Oh, really? Yeah. We do not tire so easily for we're not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves. It works.
It really does. We alcoholics are undisciplined. I love that. I want to read to you from page, I think it's 23, 25 or 23, 23. This is one of my favorite quotations in the book. They're talking to alcoholics. This is a sentence not taken out of context. It says, once in a while he may tell the truth. Is that thin? Once in a while, maybe. Okay. Yeah. Don't want to spread the truth around too thick. Save it for emergencies. There's a wonderful line from Nashville. I know a lot of country folk, country singers and so on. And one of them wrote a great song that has a wonderful line in it. It says, you'll never catch me in a lie, but I'll tell you the truth at my own pace. Well, we stretch that every way we can, don't we? I think we're great at that kind of thing. Let's see here. Where am I?
We alcoholics are undisciplined, so we let God discipline us in this simple way we've just outlined. Interesting the word discipline comes from the same root word as disciple. It's someone who learns. In the home I grew up in, discipline and punishment, the same thing. I was confused. It's an old belief that had to go. So when I discipline myself, I don't beat on me. I put myself in a position to learn. That's why if you're involved in a university, they refer to the disciplines. Philosophy is a discipline. The sciences are disciplines. They're bodies of learning. So that's what this is. So when it says here, we let God discipline us, it doesn't mean he punish. It means I'm allowing him to teach.
My God, this is just me, my God's a gentleman. I don't fully believe this, but operationally it works pretty good for me. He doesn't go where he's not invited, doesn't stay where he's not made welcome. That's what a gentleman does. So it's my job each morning to invite God into my life as God and to try to do the things during the day that I think will make him welcome. Now, I don't fully believe that because I'm not sure any of us would have survived the wet phase of our alcoholism if he didn't go where he's not invited. But I think it's important for me today to do that. And that's in part, I think, what step 11 is about. And it says, but this is not all. There is action and more action. Faith without works is dead. Oh, not another death threat. Golly. I mean, they just don't ever seem to get off of that. I don't know that I've missed a morning since I got out of treatment and discovered these directions on pages 86, 87, and 88 on how to open and close my day.
I start my newcomers on that immediately. I want them to read 86, 87, 88 out loud, morning and night for the first 30 days they're sober. And I want them to do it, to get that in their mind. I begin them on Roman numeral 11, which is the first page after the table of contents, reading a minimum of two pages a day, looking up at least one word. I don't care if you have a Ph.D. in English. Look up at least a word on every page. And let's talk about those things. Do you happen to know, by the way, the difference between a good habit and a bad habit? I'm going to tell you. Good habits are easy to break. That's the difference.
If I'm going to have a good habit, I'm going to have to pay the price to keep it. And opening and closing my day on those pages is a good habit. On those pages is a good habit, and it's something I have to continue to do. If I'm going to have this thing, I've got to continue to do it. I have a good friend in Nashville who says that if he could give every newcomer coming
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through the door only one thing, it'd be 500 cc's of desperation right in the butt, you know, because the desperate ones we do pretty good with. We don't care much how squirrely they are. We really don't care, and I tell the new ones that I sponsor, I say, I've been a park ranger a long time, baby, you're not my first squirrel. Don't worry about it. Just dump your bucket. Let's talk about what's going on.
I like to start them there and then take them through the work, and I have personally not yet seen any individual go through these steps too fast and drink again. I've seen several hundred thousand go too slow. We can do it again. We can do it again. We're going to get what we can get. I'm not giving them the trophy. I don't believe in the trophy. What I'd like to do now, I've got about 11 minutes after 3, and I really need a break this time.
Does somebody have a question? We've got a couple of minutes left on this one. Hi. Hi. You just said that you start them out on page 11? Roman numeral 11. Okay. Roman numeral 11. Thank you very much. Start on Roman numeral 11. Yeah. Yeah, you're sober. I tell them you're sober now. We read forwards and introductions. Okay. Okay? Prefaces. We read those things. You're sober now. Okay. I've heard that several times.
Anybody else? Okay. 18-minute warning. Take a break. Yeah, if you want the how to learn to cry or how to write the letter handout, it's right here on the end. Are you going to be around after like 7 and after 4 o'clock? I'm going to be so available this weekend, you won't believe it. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I read that every…