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Source: DICOBE-00436 – John D – TWELVE STEP STUDY-STEPS 11 AND 12.mp3 File: dicobe-00436-john-d-twelve-step-study-steps-11-and-12.mp3 Duration: 00:35:16
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We learned the necessity of formulating a habit of inventory, of keeping check on ourselves lest we get back into this thinking, thinking, drinking, thinking days of yore which led us into so many problems and to so much trouble. So then in the twelfth step, eleventh step, we immediately realized that we're not going to be very successful with ourselves nor our inventory unless we 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.
Now in this step it says we sought, in other words we had an open mind, we're again seeking, we're looking for something, we're not trying to sidestep something. And in answer to the old invitation, seek and you shall find, ask and it shall be heard and shall be granted to you, we in our humility say, God, teach us to pray. Now one idea perhaps we better clear up right in the beginning is prayer is not weakness, prayer is courage.
Any nincompoop can leave his prayers go day after day but takes great courage and great humility to go to God day in and day out, minute in and minute out for everything, to become God-dependent people and that's what God wants. Now it's not for me to define what we mean by prayer. Each one has to seek God in his own way. But perhaps it might not be out of place to suggest the most appropriate times for prayer because I think most people orientate to these times.
As in the morning, in the evening and during the day when we're tempted. Why do we pray in the morning? We pray in the morning in order to get the courage, the strength and the guidance to live the day well. We pray in the evening to thank God for the blessings of that day and also to express our sorrow if we have failed to live up to our own expectations of that morning. And during the day when we're tempted, we call on God for aid.
You know, take for example the carpenter, when he's on top of the house merrily hammering the shingles in the house roof, he thinks about nothing else but once he starts slipping then he yells for help. And so we go along our workaday world and perhaps we have not thought of God all through the day. But once we start to slip, then we should immediately call upon him for help. In other words, we might start our day by saying, Almighty God, I may forget you today, but please God, don't forget me.
In other words, he is our security against slipping in any type, whether that's moral, spiritual, whether it's slipping as far as thinking is concerned, drinking, thinking or even thinking. You know, I've had a lot of people to talk to me after they're sobering up from a drunk. And I have made it a point to ask these people to tell me whether on the day they started to drink again, whether that morning they honestly and sincerely asked God for the strength of sobriety for those 24 hours.
And everybody answered no, with one exception. One guy said, Yes, Father, I did. I prayed and prayed and prayed that God wouldn't let me get hurt on this drunk. Then a word about meditation. You know, so many fellows and gals seem to be confused about this meditation business. I believe one of the difficulties, we approach it too formally. Meditation is very simple. Meditation comes from the two Latin words, medio tare, which means to stay or tarry in the middle.
So meditation means for me to tarry or stay in the middle with a truth, analyze it, turn
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it over, apply it to myself in relation to God, make a decision, and then gradually truth will motivate my living instead of excuse-making and rationalization. Let's take an example. Let's take an example about a truth concerning which there is no controversy, and that is death. I don't believe anybody here doubts we're all going to die sooner or later and soon at the latest. It says in the scriptures about Adam and Eve, they lived hundreds of years, but always about these gentlemen, the last thing written is, he died.
Methuselah, it says, lived 969 years, and then it says, two little words, he died. So I don't believe anybody doubts that we're all going to die. So let's meditate on that just a moment, and the first question will come to our minds, who's going to die? I'm going to die. That big shot, that big ego, that guy who I'm so tolerant with now, I'm not tolerant with others, that guy is going to die, and you know what's going to happen after death?
Everyone's going to be the same size, six feet underneath the surface. Then immediately rushing to my mind is the question, when am I going to die? I don't know. Ten years, ten months, ten days, ten minutes, it has happened. I was giving this talk up into a group in Indiana one time, and right after the meeting one of the fellows dropped dead. Believe me, the other guys got on the program that night.
Then the question comes to my mind, how am I going to die? If I'm positive I'm going to die, I don't know when, then it must be important, how am I going to die? Ah, there's the big $64,000 question. How am I going to die? Well, there's only one answer. I'm going to die as I live. Ninety-nine percent of the people die as they live. Therefore, if I want to die well, I better begin to live well. I don't know when I'm going to die.
I know I'm going to die. I want to die well. Therefore, I will today, right now, make a decision to begin to live well, and then if I die today, everything's fine. Everything's fine. I've died well. If I live, therefore, every day well, no matter what day I die, I'll die well. And after all, that's all that matters. Now I've made a meditation, just a few moments. I took a truth, I turned it over, I applied it to me, I made my decision.
Now from now on, I'm going to live more with an idea that one of these days I'm going to die, and I want to die well, so I better start living well. And that way we can meditate with any truth, alcoholism, any virtue, honesty, indecision, take any truth, turn it over, apply it to ourselves, and then make a decision in our relationship with God, and we have made a very effective and efficient meditation.
And that's the reason in seeking through prayer and meditation, we do it to improve our conscious contact with God. What does that mean? That means to bring God more and more into my conscious living. Today I may not think of God at all, but if I begin to meditate and to pray, tomorrow I will think about Him once in a while. If I continue to do that, I will gradually improve that consciousness of God in everything I do.
Then let's make God a real God, a God that can come into our lives and take part in everything, not only on Sunday morning, but every day, and if necessary, every hour and every moment. And if I seek through prayer and meditation, I will more and more gradually over the years improve, in other words, become more and more conscious of God's manipulations in my entire
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life and all my ways of thinking and living. This is the quickest, the surest, and the safest way to sobriety and to happiness and to serenity. Prayer and meditation. I mentioned before we took step ten that the daily living of the AA program was constituted by taking each day step ten, step eleven, and step twelve. And right in the middle of all these three, there is step eleven, the whole core of the AA program.
Because if I ever be mindful I'm an alcoholic and need God today, each day seek Him through prayer and meditation, then I will rapidly go along the path of sobriety and happiness and serenity. When we approach God, we might say a word just right now that we are still human. We can't expect miracles, although we could, but in the ordinary course of providence, God is not going to make a saint out of you overnight.
If He would, you would become the most arrogant person in the world, and you would probably take all the credit of it. But God lets us stumble along, and if God wanted perfect prayer, He would have made us differently, and He hasn't. He made us full of faults, full of rationalizations, all types of thinking. And we might say a word or two about such things as distractions in prayer. So many people are disturbed by distractions in prayer.
They say, well, Father, every time I start to pray, everything in the sun comes into my mind except God. Well, that's normal. That's human mentality. When we start to pray, we put ourselves on a supernatural level, and so all the human elements are going to rush in. We should ignore them. Distractions should not disturb us unless we cause them. Now, of course, if you sit down to say your prayers and turn on the television, that's a different situation.
You know, they tell the story that St. Francis one day, speaking of distractions, now I don't know whether this ever happened to St. Francis, but he's just as good as anyone else to tell it about. But anyhow, they tell the story that one day he was driving along the highway or riding along the roadway on a horse with a brother of his order. So as they were riding along, this brother in the Franciscan order said, Father Francis, he said, you know, I have come quite far in this matter of prayer and meditation.
He said, I have come so far that I can meditate now for hours on end and not have one distraction. Oh, Francis said, you can. Yes, Father Francis, I can. Well, Father Francis said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. He said, I'll bet you my horse against your horse that you cannot say the Lord's prayer without a distraction. Why, Father Francis, the brother said, that's easy. Okay, Father Francis said, let's begin.
So they stopped and they began. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Just then the brother said, does the saddle go with it? Then before we leave this eleventh step, perhaps there's one thought we should take with us, and that is, let's always remember that unless we willfully meditate now, the day will come and has come for most of us when God will force us to meditate.
Remember coming off that last drunk? That wasn't such a pleasant meditation, was it? So now let's go to step number twelve. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Now this used to say, having had a spiritual experience, but they changed that. The reason was there were too many guys and gals in AA waiting the hot flash, you know.
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Experience to Awakening, Now Experience Originally Meant Experiencing Spiritual Help, In Other Words The First Time I Prayed, The First Time My Sponsor Came to See Me, Every Little Help I Got, That Was Experiencing Spiritual Help, But In Order to Understand It Better, They Now Use the Term Awakening, And That Means Exactly What It Says, How Do You Awaken in the Morning? Now I'm Talking About the Mind Run of People, You Don't Suddenly Stand Up and Say Let's Go, Takes a Long Time to Awaken, Some of Us It Takes an Awful Long Time, So We Gradually Come to Realize a New Attitude Toward Life, Toward Reality, Toward Spiritual Living, That's the New Awakening, As the Result of These Steps.
Now Notice That, A Lot of Fellows Will Come Along and Say, Well Look Father, I've Been Around a Long Time and I Never Had No Spiritual Awakening, Well It Says As the Result of These Steps, So Maybe We Better Begin Again, It Doesn't Say We Can Skip from One to Twelve and Have a Spiritual Awakening, You Might Skip from One to Twelve and Stay Sober, At Least Dry, But You're Not Going to Have This New Realization of the True Values of Life and Living and Adjustment to Reality, Unless We Take These Steps One by One.
Each One Gives a Little, and the Cumulative Result is This Realization of These New Attitudes Toward Life. We Try to Carry This Message to Alcoholics and to Practice These Principles in All of Our Affairs. Now What Do We Mean, Carry the Message? The So-Called Twelve-Step Work, Does That Mean Just Calling on a Fellow When He's Sobering Up or a Gal When She's Sobering Up, No, That's Part of the Twelve-Step.
Any Activity in or Along the Group, Participating in the Activities of the Group, Comes Under Twelve-Step Activity. Or Attending Meetings with a Realization to Give Something to That Meeting. You Know, So Many Go to Meetings and Say, Well, It's Getting So Monotonous, Had a Lousy Speaker This Evening, I Got Nothing Out of It. Well, If You Went to Give, You Have to Succeed. Every Meeting Would Be a Good Meeting, Then, Because There's Always Someone to Receive.
There's Lots of New Fellows and Gals Around Waiting for Someone to Talk to, for Some Attentive Ear that They Can Talk to, Hours on End, Instead of Running the Other Way, When They Come Around. We Go to the Meeting to Encourage the Rest of the People That Are There. Wouldn't You Have Felt Funny if Everybody Had the Idea of Going to Get Instead of to Give and the First Meeting You Went to, Nobody Was There?
Well, If Everybody Figured That Way, That's What Would Have Happened. So Therefore, If We Go to the Meeting to Get Something Out of It or to Give with Our Present Encouragement to the Others There, We Will Have Accomplished a Lot and We Will Get a Lot out of It. No Matter How Terrible the Speaker Is or No Matter How Good He Is, We Will Get a Lot for Ourselves, Because It's in the Giving that We Receive.
Then Making Calls When Asked, and Here Again, I'm Afraid Some of the Old Timers Might Sit and Listen, That Haven't Made a Twelve-Step Call for a Long Time. That's Insurance Against the Slip. That's Twelve-Step Work. That's Part of the Twelve-Step. Now, It's Not for Me to Say How Often a Person Should Make a Twelve-Step Call. Each One Has to Decide for Himself, but I Believe that if a Fellow or a Gal Gets Away from that Completely, He's on Dangerous Territory, because that, we call it, at least in our part of the Country, is Insurance Against the Slip.
I don't go on that Twelve-Step Call to Sober Up a Drunk. I go on that Twelve-Step Call to Keep Me Sober. And Then I Have Succeeded.
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Then I Have Succeeded. I Have Taken Out More Insurance for My Own Sobriety. Then Speaking When Asked, and Right Away a Lot of People Say, Well, After All, I'm Not a Professional Speaker. Well, the Book Doesn't Say Anything About Professional Speakers. It Says, Tell Them What Happened to You. You Know That Backwards. So All We Have to Do is to Get Up There in Our Own Way the Best We Can, Tell Them What I Was, Tell Them What Happened to Me, and Tell Them What I Am Today.
That's the Essence of Speaking in AA. Then to Give Financial Contributions When Asked by the Group. And Here to Me is the Enigma of AA. How Tight Alcoholics Become When They Dry Up in AA. The Same Guy or the Same Gal Who Thought Nothing of Going into the Tavern, Laying Down a Twenty-Dollar Bill and Saying, Set Up the House on Me. Now the Poor Chairman or the Secretary Asks for a Little Extra Donation.
They Yell to High Heaven, Really? And Right Away they Bring Out that Time-Worn Excuse, No Dues, No Fees, What's the Matter? When They Put the Two Bits in the Basket, You Can Hear Their Elbows Squeak. This is a Give Program. Starting with What God Has Given Me in My Years of Sobriety is Doing Twelve-Step Work. Then by Giving Good Example of Complete Sobriety to My Family, to My Friends in My Social Life, to My Business Associates and so forth.
By Giving an Example of Total Sobriety, that means by Working and Using the Program, not only to Stay Dry, but to Be New People, to Become Sober and Happy and Adjustment to Reality. Then by Owning, Reading and Rereading and Loaning the Big Alcoholics Anonymous Book. You Know, there's so many today who come to AA who've been in six months or so and they never have had a copy of the Big AA Book yet. Perhaps they couldn't afford it and their sponsor was too tight to get one for them.
Such a sponsor says, well, what if he don't give it back? Well now, what if he don't? This is a Give Program. Then to Read it and Reread it. We don't absorb that book in one reading and we gradually get away from the thinking of the book if we don't read it from time to time. Then by Encouraging Those with Difficulties. As I said a while ago, instead of running away from them. You've heard that in AA groups.
Oh here she comes, I don't get away from her before she gets me and starts talking to me. It wasn't too long ago until you needed somebody's ear badly to talk to. So let's give a listening, a willfully listening ear to the newcomer. Even serving as chairman when asked in the group. Then as the Big Book tells us, doing all these things with a conscious sacrifice of disciplining ourselves away from habits of selfishness into habits of unselfishness and love.
That's exactly what it says in the Big AA Book. We do these things in order consciously to discipline ourselves away from habits of selfishness to habits of unselfishness and love. Now we do all these things and then we say we practice these principles in all our affairs. Now what are the principles we learn in Alcoholics Anonymous? Well I don't think you will find a list of such principles as such.
But I have made such a list by listening all over the country and all over the world to the various groups and to the discussions in AA through the things that I have learned and listened to. And I have jotted down for those who wish to use them as a guide a list of 25 principles
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which I'm sure you will recognize as having been discussed in your group sometime or another. First, I am an alcoholic. Remember when we learned that principle. She what a shock. I can't drink. Not that I shouldn't drink. Not that it's wrong for me to drink. I can't drink. I am an alcoholic. And although I'm sober 10 years, 20 years, I'm still an alcoholic. That's the first principle we learn. I am an alcoholic.
And then the principle first things first. What gave us so much difficulty in life? We tried to put the third things first and the fourth things fifth and so forth. And as a result we were all mixed up in our living. Now we put first things first, second things second, third things third, then everything goes along smoothly. Then the principle of easy does it. Remember when you learned that one? Probably it was your first meeting.
You were asking everybody, how long is this going to take? What's going to happen? You know? And suddenly somebody said, look bud, you didn't get drunk overnight. You're not going to get sober overnight. Take it easy. Easy does it. It takes time. We are human. We are rebuilding, as I mentioned in one of the other steps, a character. And that takes a long, long lifetime. Easy does it. In the twenty-four hour program we learned that.
Twenty-four hours at a time, the past is in the hands of God, His mercy, and the future is in the hands of God's providence. Today alone is mine. And my tomorrow is going to be determined, not nearly so much by my plans for tomorrow as it's going to be determined by my actions today. Twenty-four hours at a time, the twenty-four hour program. Then the principle you see on many of the walls of A.A. clubhouses and meeting halls, there but for the grace of God go I.
Oh how we looked down on everybody else in the old days, but now we come to realize that we can never look down on the worst of God's creatures or the most terrible of man's mistakes. There but for the grace of God go I. No matter whom I'm talking about, no matter what they have done, no matter how awful they may be, there but for the grace of God go I. Why am I sober tonight? Why am I here tonight before you for only one reason, the grace of God?
Why are there millions today, millions of people still under the throes of the darkness and the suffering of alcoholism? Because God for some reason has given me these twelve steps, to them He has not. There but for the grace of God go I. You know it is always amazing to me how anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous, how any alcoholic can look down on somebody. It's amazing. But there are such things along the way when we criticize others, whereas if we realize there but for the grace of God go I, we never could look down on anybody.
Then the danger of resentment. We learn that now there is an automatic tie-up inside between resentment and the craving for alcohol. Therefore I cannot tolerate resentment. Therefore when I become resentful, I will get rid of it, promptly get rid of it, lest it cause me to crave alcohol again. Then the value of apology. We used to think that apology was for mamby-pambys. But now we know that apology takes courage.
When apology is in order, it takes real courage and it makes real men and real women. I say when apology is in order. I don't mean a guy going around saying, oh pardon me, pardon me, pardon me. I don't mean that type of person. I mean when there is reason for apology, that apology takes courage and makes a man and makes a woman. The value of apology. To make direct demands. Then the importance of decision.
We learn that most of our problems in life start with indecision. And we being made of a simple soul substance, we cannot tolerate indecision. It tears us to pieces. Then we are told by the very
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Therefore If I Make a Decision, Even If It's Wrong, It's Better than No Decision, The Problem is Halved, By Making Up My Mind, Make Up Our Minds, We Either Are or We Aren't, Like the New Guy Who Comes to AA, You Might Think He's a Little Alcoholic, There's No Such Thing as being a Little Alcoholic, You Either Are or You Aren't, Then the Principle, Honesty is the Best Policy, and We Learned That in Childhood, and Then We Lost It Along the Way, and We Ended Up as Pathological Liars, but Now We Realize that Nothing Counts but Honesty, Honesty is the Best Policy, Then AA Comes First, and This Means Exactly that I Use AA Inside Me, That's Important, That's First in My Life, Not that I Use AA Activity as an Excuse to Get Away from Home, to Get Away from the Young Lady at Home, or the Wife or the Husband, you know there's a lot of them that do that, one guy came to me just recently, he says, Father, you know my wife, she's just raising canes about me going to AA, I said, well how often do you go, well he says, I only go every night, but he says the book says AA comes first, yeah, AA Inside, it doesn't say my AA Activity comes first, I come first with God, and then my family, then my friends, and then my enemies, that's the order of charity.
Then the value of giving, that it's in the giving that we receive, that we only keep what we give away, and when we die the only thing we take with us is what we have given away, the value of giving, this is a give program. Then the necessity of action, of doing something about the problem, instead of thinking it out, do something, action is the magic word. The value of acceptance, that no matter how bad the problem is, no matter how complicated the circumstances, I can always, if I have to, accept it, and that is a solution, the value of acceptance.
Tolerance for my neighbor, I may not like him, but I will love him. In other words, I may not like a person, but I have to realize he is a child of God, the same as I am, therefore I love him, I wish him well, although my nature, emotionally, I may not like the person. Then the value of humility, that the basic structure of all life is humility. I am what I am, and that's the only thing I really have to build on.
What made me fall to pieces, I was trying to build on something I wasn't. Of course, I had no foundation. Humility tells me I am what I am. Truth is humility, and humility is truth. Then the myth of perfection, in other words, there is no such thing as perfect people in this world. No matter how long I live, I still will be imperfect. The necessity of prayer and meditation, which we just took in the eleventh step.
The necessity of the inventory, which we just took in the tenth step. The value of carrying the message, and all that means that we just got through discussing in this step, step twelve. Then the value of the principles of the Lord's Prayer, which we enunciate to end all AA meetings throughout the world, that we're all children of one God who is our common Father, that makes no difference whether I'm black or white or rich or poor, Catholic, Protestant, or Jew.
I'm a child of God, the same as the next person. We have one God who is our Father. Then the principle, no one starts at the top. That's another reason we got into trouble. We were always going to start at the top, and not only when we got to the point where there was no place to go but up, then we got somewhere. Then AA is a selfish program. In other words, I'm doing what I'm doing for me. Then the primacy of the spiritual, that below all this, the most important thing is the spiritual life.
Then the value of the will of God, and finally the reality of death. You and I someday are going to die, and so I'm going to close by saying that when that day comes, there's one sincere wish that I have down deep that I shall meet you all again when that day has passed into the eternal serenity that is God's, and may God grant
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we'll someday be ours. God love you.