Steps 1, 2 & 3 at the Spiritual Awakenings group in Bernardsville, NJ

We have Peter M is back and we'll continue his presentation, presenting one through three, one through three tonight.

So I'll turn the meeting over to Peter.

Hi everybody, I'm Peter. I'm a recovered alcoholic.

Great for you be alive and sober and at a sacred place called Alcoholics Anonymous.

And...

Thank the group for allowing Chris and I to present again.

We did this deal up in Vermont.

We had some fun, and I love getting down here and sharing experience and hope on what this power, this book,

An Alcoholics Anonymous, has done for me and experienced the spiritual revolution.

God separating me from alcohol June 23rd, 1988.

I'm a recovered alcoholic.

If I said anything less than that, I would be falsely humble.

But a loving God separated me on the day of June 23rd, 198.

It was a violent and ugly separation.

And I'm not talking about my marriage.

I'm talking about alcohol.

Is this on, Bill?

Yeah.

And I tried quitting and stopping many times on my own power, and what would happen is I would stay away from the drink for a day or two, maybe a couple of minutes, and then my mind would convince me it's okay to pick up a drink again.

Or I would spend nine weeks in a treatment center and two days later get drunk again because on my own power, I have no choice in control.

And the day of June 23rd, 1988, God interrupted my death in my drinking and separated me and I've been separated since.

And through that, I've been able to get to people who were armed with the facts, who had a solution, who knew my truth, who knew their truth, and were able to share with me, pass on a message.

And I sought this as I still do with the desperation of a drowning man, and little by slowly, I start to experience waking up, experience the spiritual revolution, and being brought to a new place of consciousness.

Thank you.

I don't use spiritual tools when I'm in a gem.

The boss is on my back. Things aren't going well.

What step do I look to? Who do I call? What book can I read?

That'll give me a little relief, but not liberation.

A new state of consciousness, experiencing the spiritual experience, it's now who we be.

There's been a change, an internal revolution, a change within.

It's a way of living.

It's a way of living.

So I don't need to run to, well, what do I do now to get me out of this jackpot

to get them off my back or do something so I can get a little bit of sleep tonight?

We go through this work and we really become integrated with this power.

It's completely different than relying on a couple of books or maybe a step or run to the 12 and 12 or read how it works

or what I used to always get when I was first getting sober, read acceptance.

It was on me.

I don't know which way out, and they would say read acceptance.

And I would do that and get a little bit of relief.

And where I've been brought to because of the work and following instructions

is when we get revolutionized, we're in a different place altogether.

And our reaction to external conditions is different.

Because what's going to happen out there is going to happen.

I have no power choice control over what other people do.

Troubles of my own making, my book tells me.

So things are going to happen, joys and challenges, joys and sorrows.

But how I be and move through that is different than, here it comes again, what do I do?

Who do I call?

It's called inner peace rather than seeking happiness, because happiness depends on how my external

world looks and inner peace, whether things are going okay or not so okay, I'm okay moving through it.

The work we do here is really spiritual life or spiritual death, and I needed to get that

That I wasn't doing this because it was fashionable,

a lot of other people were doing it.

For me, it came down to spiritual life and spiritual death out there

and six months in Alcoholics Anonymous in here untreated.

Right.

One of the questions we have to consider is my recovery based in abstinence or in spirit.

If it's based in abstinence, then experience in God is really not that important because you probably got power, choice, and control.

Because all I have to do is stay away from a drink.

And regardless of what my life looks like, it's really okay, because you'll go to contemporary AA and be a big hit.

Because you can say, I didn't pick up a drink today, and I'm a winner.

All right?

But if my recovery is based in spirit, and this book, this book is aimed at spirit, not the thinking mind, it's not self-help, it's not motivational.

It'll motivate you. It'll scare a hell out of you sometimes too.

But it's aimed at spirit, not the thinking mind.

If my recovery is based in spirit, and I have no power choice of control because I'm a real alcoholic, what I need to do is experience the power of God.

And from becoming a concept, and they talk about that, this concept, and the third step, this concept, this idea, from having an idea, talking about this idea, this concept of God and passing through the archway free at last, is it still a concept if we're around here a little bit, or has it become an experience? This big difference is.

I can talk about God, but have I had an experience with God?

I can talk about, well, you know, I'm an alcoholic.

I would say that so many times in treatment.

I'm an alcoholic.

But I really did I get to that place of experiencing what it's truly like to be

without power, choice, and control.

So again, I probably said this last week, and I do it at a lot of workshops,

is I would offer this to you, seek experience, seek experience,

Belief and faith will give me some relief.

But seeking an experience and having an experience with this book,

which will take me to God, of my understanding,

having an experience with God,

will bring me to a place of true liberation,

freedom from bondage of self.

There's a great word for it, and even that fall short, it's called bliss.

I just got back from doing a workshop.

I just got back.

and not just now, a few last week.

I'm in Europe doing this workshop,

and there's a few trailblazers there

with this book trying to pass this message on,

that watching a lot of their brothers and sisters in AA die

keep getting drunk.

They got a hold of some tapes,

got together, formed a little cluster of enthusiasm,

and they're trying to pass the message on

and are experiencing an incredible amount of resistance.

They don't even want people, don't even want to talk about God, don't even mention God,

and we don't need to do the steps.

It's poor group therapy, column two meetings.

But there's a handful of people who are trying to pass this on.

And I applaud them for that.

But here's what goes on, how we are so responsible for what we do.

One gentleman says, we're trying to give hardline AA, like back in the States, real recovery.

So I asked them to explain.

So we tell our people 90 meetings in 90 days.

That's contemporary stuff.

That's not Big Book.

But how many of our meetings are talking about that as if that is the solution rather than the steps in God?

And it travels.

It travels.

So here's a group of people trying to pass a message on, taking it from what we got to offer currently.

And that's 90 meetings and 90 days.

That's hardline Big Book AA.

And so I had to challenge that.

And I experienced resistance from the Big Book people.

How's that?

Yeah.

I was asked to leave by a few Sunday morning guided meditation.

And the question was brought to me,

are you going to do the guided meditation this morning?

And one gentleman in the front row went like this.

No, no.

All right?

So, along with that, some of us here will go back to our home group

or go back to our other meetings with a big book

and an experience looking to pass it on,

and we will get resistance.

Resistance.

And that will be called controversial and Alcoholics Anonymous.

The reality is it isn't.

It isn't.

And so I need to take that risk and just pass this message on.

My home group is a vision for you group.

We meet in Union, New Jersey, Thursday nights at 7.30, 8.45.

And Chris was kind enough to come down and share our second group anniversary.

And our group members couldn't believe we made two years.

Because we were putting it together, we knew we were going to experience a ton of resistance, as we still do.

My town hates our group.

We get zero support from most people in that in AA and union.

Bless them, they found another way.

But we didn't close up shop because we experienced some resistance.

And we have about 20, maybe 30 people sometimes more, passing a message on.

And talking about what it is to be a real alcoholic and how to recover from alcoholism.

Through the next few weeks, what may happen is...

sitting in the chair, you may experience resistance to the information being presented.

It sounds different. I never did it before.

And it'll manifest this way. I don't like the speaker.

I don't like this workshop. It's too hot in here.

I think I need to get more coffee. She looks really good.

Let me go help her through her drama.

Yeah. Right.

So what I ask you to do is just recognize that, be aware of it, watch it, observe it.

It's ego showing up.

Ego doesn't want to die.

And places like this, workshops like this, will kill ego.

It will kill self.

And what we need to do is experience the death of self before the physical death.

And that's what this work will do.

It'll remove.

It'll remove.

It'll remove.

And ego doesn't want it.

My illness doesn't want it.

My mind will start chirping at me like...

We need to go elsewhere.

Recognize that.

There's nothing wrong with it.

There's nothing right about it.

It just is, except what is.

Be there present.

Here goes my mind.

I'm experiencing some resistance.

The chair is suddenly getting uncomfortable.

Recognize that.

Just be with it.

Especially when belief systems get challenged.

Well, I never did it that way.

It's called contempt pride investigation.

Before you let your mind offer an opinion without experience, be.

And listen.

Just be with the workshop.

How many people have ever, never gone to any kind of big book workshop?

Good deal, welcome.

Everyone else is a big book lawyer, I guess, right?

Okay.

How many people have gone to the 12 steps, believe they've gone to the 12 steps,

and have experienced the spiritual awakening as a result of these steps?

Okay.

Okay.

And all those guys and women who raise their hands who believe they've had a spiritual awakening as a result of the steps.

You don't have to raise your hand.

But my question is, how many of you guys have completed your amends that you're consciously aware of?

Good deal.

Because what we can get into is, well, I've gone through the 12 steps, but I have, you know, a truckload of amends that I'm aware of that I can make and I haven't made.

But my deluded mind will tell me you've gone through the steps and you're okay.

And I'll get to those amends when I get to those amends.

And what I've just shifted into is a prey to comfortability and getting stuck on the second half for the first step.

My life was unmanageable.

It's pretty manageable.

Now the external world looks pretty good.

I feel good.

And so the amends I'm supposed to be making, I can do tomorrow.

And suddenly I have become the power.

And I keep me sober because I'm calling the shots.

And how many times am I still, how many times am I going to my sponsor and being truthful and not dishonest?

When I start to do things like that, I've shifted in becoming the power and I'm responsible for my recovery.

Any kind of power I think I have over the next drink is really how much I'm going to seek this power of God.

For me, going from pages 23 to 43, and I got to see my thinking, mind, and action

realized how in a corner I was with no way out, it moved me to seek in this power.

And so what I hope to talk about as we move through this work is not only going through

steps one, two, and three, and the rest of the work maybe for the first time,

but those of us who have been around here a while, how do we get the book to meet us where we are?

I've been sober a few years, gone through the work a few times.

How do I go through the work again?

How do I get this book to meet me where I currently am?

What's my current and manageability look like?

The first thing my mind's going to say, you have none.

Everything's great.

And what I do, when people come to me like that has been passed on to me,

is I move right to page 52 with the bedevilments.

It's current unmanageability.

It's unmanageability back then when we first got in here.

Having trouble with person relationships.

Can't control my emotional nature.

Pray to misery and depression.

Full of fear.

Couldn't make a living.

Can't be of real help to other people,

feeling of uselessness.

Am I experiencing any of that?

In fact, am I kind of living in that place?

And I'm trying to move me past each bedevilment

on my own power, trying to get past each bedevilment.

Be devilment, I...

I didn't go to school, so I had to look up what that word meant.

And I went to the University of 86th Street in Benzburg, Brooklyn.

Bedevlement is something that torments or harasses and frustrates us.

The bedevilments on page 52.

It's on manageability.

Do I think I can get me past each one on my own power if I'm living there?

or have I tried and have bottomed out and now I need to seek the power of God,

which is the only power that's going to get me past those bedevilments?

So when people come to me, one of the first things I go to is page 52

and look at current unmanageability.

And then we'll visit doctor's opinion and Bill's story

and some of the considerations in chapter T agnostics as to what that looks like.

With the contempt prior investigation, with some of the resistance, we may experience

lay aside prejudice, lay it aside, be aware of it.

Okay, it's really important that we do that.

It kind of goes like this.

What I don't know, I fear, and what I fear I dislike.

So shut it down.

Don't like the message.

Shoot down the messenger.

I've done it.

I've also attended how the mind works, and we'll get into this, steps one, two, and three.

How the mind works is I'm hearing some new information.

I start to experience uncomfortability.

I start to experience resistance.

And I'm right away thinking, well, I don't like this speaker.

He or she has no idea what they're talking about.

They've done it different.

And then that very same speaker goes, I want to thank Pete for all the help he's given me.

He's been a great guy.

And suddenly, I love the workshop and I love the speaker.

Because the ego got stroked, right?

Thinking mind, great thing to lose.

It'll pretty up a junk out.

It'll take us back to that which is killing us over and over and over again.

Wants me dead, settle for me drunk.

And we'll know the cracks in the armor.

A book tells us that knowledge alone will not work, right?

Without an experience.

And we can acquire a whole lot of knowledge in here.

As we go through this book, we're going to acquire knowledge.

But that very same knowledge is a thing that will turn against me and justify a spree.

I know what I'm doing. I have lots of knowledge. I've been around a while. And the thinking mind will justify a spree, will justify a drunk, will justify a lot of inappropriate behavior for those of us who claim to be on this path. And then I moved into speaking from experience to now speaking from a place of intellect, which is another thing we can worship right away. Intellect. The thinking mind, the methodology. We get real familiar with the book we can quote.

Give little sound bites. Go to page, you know, right?

And I fall in love with me rather than the power.

And what we're looking to do is not go through this work so I can keep me sober,

but go through this work to have an experience with God, this power that's keeping us sober all along.

And we need to get that and wake up to that.

And then continue to grow in understanding and effectiveness.

If we go over to the title page, and I'm just going to pull a couple of things out of here,

we're going to be coming from a place of experience here.

On the title page in a third edition, it's one of the first promises in our book,

and it kind of will give us some understanding of why we can say we're recovered if we've experienced it,

and we don't have to cop two, I'm recovering.

It says the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism.

It's right on our title page is the first promise in the book.

And how do I get to a place called recovered?

If you have a third edition, and you have the little blue covers on a third edition, on the little fly page, it says, but the basic text, pages one to 164 have remained unchanged.

This is the AA message.

And I take that first portion of the book with the sponsor, and I will get to a place called recovered.

Place in a position of neutrality, safe and protected.

I've not tried to will myself into it.

I've not tried to do that.

It's done for us.

And then we can go where we couldn't go before.

We can be around liquor being served.

We can go to parties.

We can do a lot of things and I don't have to worry about issues and triggers and all of that.

Because God is doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.

Step one says we admitted we repal us over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.

The thing I had to get with step one, I conceded to my innermost self.

I was an alcoholic when I was out there.

I knew what I was.

It was made abundantly clear to me.

But coming in here, I got a little bit deeper understanding of why I'm different from those moderate and hard drinkers,

why I'm the person on page 21, the real alcoholic.

I lack power.

I lack choice and I lack control.

And those words are interchangeable.

Lack a power choice and control.

Not only after I pick up a drink.

My mind takes me back to a drink.

I pick up a drink and the phenomenon of craving kicks in.

The cravings intensified, not satisfied when I drink.

I'm a real alcoholic and I don't know when it's going to stop.

That's once I pick up a drink.

The unmanageability of my life,

well sure, you know, a blind man can see the unmanageability.

A lot of things are not being taken care of,

and our lifestyle gets reduced to some of the places,

the sort of spots that some of us visit and some of the things we do.

But there's another component to the unmanageability,

and it kicks over to the first half of the first step.

About lack of power, choice, control before I pick up a drink.

This took me a long time to get. I would go into treatment and be separated for a while, come out and get drunk again.

My body wasn't craving alcohol. I was separated for quite a while. What happened? How come some of us are separated? Maybe we make three, four months sobriety. And suddenly, my mind says we can go back to drink again. It convinces me to go back to that, which is killing me.

And that is the unmanageability for me in the first half for the first step, that I have no input into the decision that's being made for me by something called alcoholism coming from a thinking mind.

I have no power choice of control to stop the starting or stop the drunk when I think it should be stopped.

So the lack of power choice of control in step one before I pick up a drink is in the mind.

And once I pick up a drink, it becomes in the body because now I got booze going in and my body's craving more alcohol.

And when I've heard this information, I understood truly why I suffer the way I do at the hands of alcohol.

But I also felt incredibly screwed.

If we go over to chapter two for a moment, it says on page 18.

How do I get this book to meet me where I am?

It says, an illness of this sort, and we have come to believe that an illness involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can.

If a person has cancer, all aside from, no one is angry or hurt.

But not so with the alcoholic illness.

For with it there goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life.

It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferers.

And now we need to pay attention to this.

It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers.

Warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents, anyone can increase the list.

Well, that was pretty obvious for me on my way in here in 1988.

But the question we have to consider is being separated from alcohol in here a while,

does my life resemble anything that I just read?

Does it look like that?

Am I bringing that type of stuff on manageability to other people based on my behavior?

Because it's a really good red flag to maybe I need to revisit the work

because I'm running around Alcohol, Anonymous Untreated.

It will parallel loosely, but parallel, page 52.

Okay.

I get into Alcoholics Anonymous and things start to, the wrinkles get out of my belly and I start going through the work and I'm starting to feel really good about a lot of things.

I'm starting to feel better about me and it was real easy what I did like after I got done with my fifth step to rest on my laurels because I became a prey to comfortability and I got stuck on the second half of the first step.

Life was certainly unmanageable.

It became a lot more manageable so I don't need to really go to any lengths.

And then I bottom out again.

and do some more inventory and revisit the work again.

My ego, my thinking mind will not tell me that suddenly is coming.

The drink is coming.

It will not tell me you're really not paying attention to spiritual growth here.

You really should be working with more people.

It's not going to tell me.

It's not going to announce its arrival.

It's going to endorse any kind of behavior that's going to take me away from this power.

And that's why our book gives us some warnings along this way.

So I moved into a place.

of no power, choice, and control,

when I go through the first 43 pages of this book,

and I'm not sure what I am, am I alcoholic?

Am I not alcoholic? Am I addict and alcoholic?

What is my truth?

I need to have this journey built on truth.

I can't build it on the line.

I need to find out what my truth is,

and going through the first 43 pages may reveal to me

what my truth is if I'm not sure,

and if I am sure it will convince me even further.

And so I go through doctor's opinion.

One of great assignment we can do is take statements and turn them into questions.

Do I experience or have I experience an allergic reaction to alcohol, an abnormal reaction to alcohol?

Do I experience the mental obsession to alcohol?

My mind is always thinking about alcohol.

When I'm drinking, I'm worried about the next one.

When I'm not drinking, I'm thinking about drinking.

It's paramount.

Every time I pick up a drink, do I experience the allergy?

Or do I pick up a drink and have power to stop it?

Our book separates us over and over and over again.

They call us alcoholics of our type in this class.

What about the real alcoholic, chronic alcoholics?

A great assignment for Bill's story as we go through Bill's story in the first nine pages.

A Bill's story, in fact, go over to page nine, please.

And it says about a third of the way down, it says the very thing in Oasis.

Drinkers are like that.

What I was instructed to do is draw a line across the page, and that's the split in Bill's story.

The first half is his story.

like a power choice and control.

And I go through those first nine pages, and I underline where I drank like Bill, how I thought like Bill, I feel like Bill, to identify with Bill Wilson, even though he was some, well, stockbroker.

And at the time, when I went to this work for the first time, I was a long shaman.

Well, what do I have in common with Bill? We're both alcoholic.

And I go through the second half of Bill's story and I look at where I'm experiencing any sort of resistance when he's talking about God or Ebby's talking to him about God.

And I experience some kind of like tightness in here.

Uh-oh, they're going to talk about God now.

Don't judge it if you do.

Well, this is not good.

I'm experiencing some resistance because Bill and Ebby are talking about God here.

Bill turns in all things to the Father of Light.

I don't know if I can do that.

Don't judge that.

Just see it for what it is.

because it's great information now that we can get past.

It makes us aware of some current agnosticism.

When we go through this work, don't judge any of it.

Whatever the behavior looks like, whatever was going on, just observe it.

I think last time I was here, worked with a few words, watch or wear, observe and turn in,

turn into God in order to go out.

So step one will paint us into a corner.

where we're really feeling like we're in serious trouble as we ought to.

Contemporary A will tell us, step one tells us we can't drink.

And the reality is step one tells us, no, I'm going to drink.

Pete Marnelli, you are drinking.

Not that you can't drink, you're drinking.

That's your truth, and you can't stop it when you want to.

Even the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail.

That's my big book that tells me that my experience proved it to me.

Fra the emotional peel seldom suffices.

Step one tells me, Peter Marinelli, you are drinking,

and you can't stop it even though you may want to.

Regardless of what's going on around you and what's going on within you,

you ain't stopping until it's done.

And that'll bring us to bring me to incomprehensible demoralization,

and my solution to that is another drink.

This is killing me, but I'll take more to work on what's killing me, which is this.

It's delusional.

If it had to do it any other area of our life, we may or probably will be able to be sane and rational.

But when it comes to alcohol, we're strangely insane.

A civilian would look at some of my behavior and say, a lunacy commission ought to be appointed for you.

I don't get it.

Five treatment centers.

You were nine weeks in treatment.

You're loaded.

What does it take?

You spawn everything wholly on your way in.

You're loaded again.

That's lack of power and choice and control.

That's unmanageability.

That's I'm screwed.

Where's the solution?

Step one tells me I'm drinking.

Lack of power is my dilemma with power, no dilemma.

Yet in contemporary AA, they say it's a we program.

It's a we program.

What happened to?

It's a spiritual program.

A we program.

My book says, no human power can relieve me of alcohols.

And we is a human power.

I may get a little relief around we,

But the power's got to come from something greater than me, eventually, call God.

So we went from a spiritual program to middle of the road, A, A, A, contemporary A.

It's a we program. We meet.

We get together. We lean on each other. We support. We teach.

It's a spiritual program.

And all the work we do here are point is to experience God.

So I go through step one and realize what kind of serious trouble I'm in that I'm going to drink.

I identify with Bill Wilson.

I identify what Dr. Silkworth says in doctor's opinion,

and I have no clue how I'm ever going to get to a place called recovered

and experience a 10-step promises.

Sometimes newcomers will say, when is it going to get off of me?

It's on me.

I can't get away from it.

I'll show them the 10-step promises.

I'll even show them the 9-step promises.

And let them know there's a condition on all of that that we must do some work.

And we need to turn to the power.

I pray for willingness 18 years now to continue doing this.

Each morning, thank you, Father, for the willingness to do this.

Because based on me, I have no clue if I'll show up to the plate and continue doing this.

I've been given great power in here, but I've learned I'm not the power.

So we get to step two, and it better be a solution that's going to relieve me of alcoholism.

And step two is the solution.

I just want to challenge a couple of things here.

And more about alcoholism.

There's a couple of things.

Start with page 24.

If we can go to page 24.

And there's a solution, I'm sorry.

A real alcoholic, no power choice of control.

Real alcoholic, step one tells us we're drinking.

That I have a mind that's going to take me back to that,

which is killing me.

I come into Alcoholics Anonymous with a sick mind.

The solution is not in the mind.

It's in the spirit.

Yet we'll hear, think the drink through.

Play to take to the end.

Remember what it was like.

Remember where you come from.

And I'm telling someone with a sick mind...

to overcome a sick mind.

I'm telling someone who is suffering from untreated alcoholism

to make a sane, rational decision.

If he or she could have done that,

they would have put the plug in a jug and gone home and had a nice life,

but they show up to us,

and we give them a plate of tape through, think to drink through.

And here's what page 24 says about that.

At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic, he or she passes into the state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail.

This tragic situation has already arrived in practically every case long before it is suspected.

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink.

Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent.

We are unable at certain times to bring into consciousness with sufficient force.

The memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago,

we are without defense against the first drink.

The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer

do not crowd into my mind to determine if these thoughts occur

that are hazing readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea

that this time I'm going to handle myself like those other people.

That's what my mind is going to do for me when it's untreated.

Yet we'll tell a newcomer, think it through.

And we shortchange a new alcoholic.

We shortchange what God to do for us.

And we go from having a solution in a book to offering no solution.

In more about alcohol, they talk about a guy named Fred.

And an alcoholic's anonymous in some of our contemporary AA meetings, you'll hear halt.

Hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

Look out for halt. Look out for halt.

Like you're walking down a block.

Don't run into halt.

Look out.

Oh, no. I'm hungry.

Oh, no, I'm lonely.

The triggers I'm going to drink.

I got to watch for hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

What happened to God?

Fred wasn't hungry.

Fred wasn't angry.

Fred wasn't lonely, nor was he tired.

It was at the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on horizon.

He had a great business day.

He was feeling great about things.

And Fred got drunk because Fred experienced something called a strange mental blank spot,