Steps 10-12 at the Primary Purpose Group in Seaford, NY – February 26th 2011

Hi, my name is Damon. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Derek, again for this opportunity.

The way I understand it, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with two different problems. One is that I was suffering from alcoholism. I was suffering from a seemingly hopeless condition of body and mind. You know, I had a body that couldn't process alcohol safely and I had a mind that could not determine whether or not to ingest alcohol, you know, that did not have control

over whether or not I drank. And so that was my one problem. And then I had an additional problem, which is that I had a severe spiritual malady. I was, I was completely blocked spiritually. And I've got these two different problems. And here's this one over here. The alcoholism I can't do anything about,

you know, that was the first thing that I got to see in looking at the first step, is that I had no power over any of this stuff. I could not control what happened when booze was in my system. And I had no reason to believe that I was never going to be able to say no on an extended basis, you know? So here's this problem I can't do anything about

and a comes along with this radical message that's so different than what I had heard any place else, different than what family members or friends or therapists or rehabs or TC say. You know, all those things are saying you have to decide that you're done once and for all. You know, make your sobriety the most important thing in your life.

And an A came along with this radically different message, which is if you're like us and sobriety is the most important thing in your life, you're in trouble because we don't have any power over our sobriety. And So what we've done, and we're going to suggest to you is instead of trying to stay sober, take all of that energy and instead put it into trying to clear out a channel between you and a power that can protect you from it.

So instead of dealing with the alcoholism, I deal with the spiritual malady. And you know, I used to look at this book, at our text as this is a guide to staying sober. And as I was taken through it, I got to see that they say, the reason we've written this book is this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.

This book isn't actually about me recovering from alcoholism. It's about getting me in touch with the higher power, about getting me in touch with God. And what they found is when they got in touch with God,

God handled the alcoholism. So I don't have to worry about that problem again. You know, so we've been talking about the first nine steps the last handful of weeks. And now that's the thing that was to clear out the channel, you know, identify that problem in the first step. I have some hope of a solution, some willingness to believe in a solution in the second, In the third, then, OK, well, obviously there's nothing left for me to do if I've got one and two, but three, you know, if there's no answer for

accept this one possibility that I'm willing to believe, well, then I better try to make that the focus of my energies at this point out. And then four through 9 for this program of action. Bless you that that's that's to clear out the channel between me and this power. And so now what they say when they start to talk about 10, they say we've entered the realm of the spirit, right? We've the past is now behind us.

We've looked at the selfishness, the self centeredness. We've looked at the fear

and the anger and the judgmentalism and the entitlement of the grandiosity and the blame and all of this stuff. We've looked at it. We've got it all on paper. We dragged it out into the light where it can't survive. We've asked God to take it away. And we've said now, so that I can experience it being gone, I'm going to go out clean this stuff up. I'm going to go out and make amends, make right these harms that I've caused. And now that that's happened, we find that we're exper

a form of conscious contact with this power. You know, in two, all I had to do was be willing to believe. They say that over and over again. And we agnostics, I didn't even necessarily have to believe anything yet. I just had to be willing to believe, willing enough to do this experiment to take a shot and say, OK, well, I'm going to take these particular actions that these people took. And I found that when I took them. Now on the other side of it,

I'm experiencing a form of contact with this power.

I can now hear it more clearly, I can feel it more intensely, I can answer to it more easily. And at this point, then it's not about belief anymore. I don't have to be willing to believe. I don't have to believe I now have experience. I can tell you that I have experienced this power in my life and that I could not and would not be here sober right now if that power had not transformed me in a way that I

possibly have imagined. I don't have to believe anymore. I have experience. And that's a profoundly powerful thing. And So what they say then is that, you know, in this state, they said we've been restored to sanity. Now that's something that I had a lot of confusion about because, you know, anybody's welcome to an, a, a meeting and anybody can put their hand up and share. And so I heard lots of interesting and colorful things, you know, opinions and points of view about sanity and insanity. And

oh, I was old. How could I be restored to sanity? I was never sane or oh, I'm so insane. You know, I think everybody's always talking about me. And I think every, you know, all these, they talk about something very clearly when they talk about insanity in this book. If you finally were insanity or sanity. And as you're going through, you'll see it's always coupled with the idea of the first drink.

The insanity is that with no booze in my system and every piece of evidence that my life is going to fall apart if I pick it up,

my brain is unable to recognize that. And I go, sure, why not? So being restored to sanity just means one very simple thing. It means I can now see the true from the false when it comes to this. And so there's all this, you know, I don't even, I don't want to say that there's controversy over recovered or not recovered. There really isn't. You know, there's people who have had the experience of having recovered, and I'm one of them.

And then there are people that because they have not recovered,

they choose to be comfortable with the opinion that it is impossible to recover. I don't need to argue with them. I have had the experience that I am recovered from alcoholism. And that what that means is in the course of any given day, the only time I think about alcohol is when there's somebody sitting in front of me that's suffering, that I need to talk about alcohol in order to be helpful to that person. And that

99.9% of the time is the extent of my relationship to alcohol, whether it's, whether it's, you know, practically or in my head, in my heart.

And, and it's a beautiful place to be. Because if I had, if sobriety was about what it was for me when I first came into a, a, which is sitting in a meeting, like, Oh my God, let me get through this. And like, am I going to be able to get to sleep tonight without a drink in my system, gripping the edge of the chair, watching the clock, making the phone calls? If that's what sobriety is about, I would not still be here today. I wouldn't be capable of maintaining that for too long.

They say that the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us as long as we remain in fit spiritual condition. You know, does that mean people will say, oh, well, oh, so you're recovered, so now you can drink? No, I, I have a physical problem. I will never be able to ingest alcohol safely,

but what that means is, as long as I remain in this connection with God, I'm protected from that form of insanity. I don't have to worry about the temptations, the urges and the inability to say no when the thing comes up.

So there's a qualification to that. You know, they say this is this is what we experience as long as we remain in fit spiritual condition, right? So I can tell you that as long as I continue doing what I'm doing now, I will never pick up a drink again. You know, there are people that presented sobriety as though, oh, I could be doing everything that a a suggest and just be strolling down the street one day and get struck drunk,

you know, And if that's the case, then really why bother?

You know, there is much more available here than that. I can say as long as I continue to do this, I will not drink. They they use an interesting phrase. They talk about permanent sobriety, right. Intensive work with others was vital to permanent recovery. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge to this room, I may die drunk. And it's not because a doesn't work and it's not because there's no God. It's because I may stop doing this Monday

and they they make a statement, you know, and and I really appreciate thinking about the we in this book as it's the original fellowship. It's not us today.

I could look around the rooms that I go to today and say, Oh yeah, it seems to be easy for people to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on their laurels. I see it happening all around me. But it's another thing to realize the original fellowship, the 1st 100 that we're saying we've recovered, we're happy, joyous and free. That we've entered into conscious contact with your creators. The most important fact of our lives, like

they're really shouting this from the rooftops. They've created this fellowship. They were saying

it's easy for us to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. So that does two things for me. You know, on the one hand, it cuts me a little bit of slack that when I do find that I step back in some way that I'm distance. I don't have to now whip myself and say, Oh my God, I've gotten this all wrong, You know, OK, so I can say, yes, I'm in. I'm in good company. I'm having an experience similar to to the one that they're talking about in here, but at the same time

need to keep very aware of what they then say. We're headed for trouble if we do that. Alcohol is a subtle foe. We're not sure of alcoholism. So now we're in the realm of a cab recovered. Now what? And one of the things I love, you know, they, they point out in here that alcohol is just a symptom, right? So they say a much more important demonstration of our principles

lies before us in our homes, occupations and affairs.

And that this is something that, and I'm trying to remember the

line, I'm going to let it go.

This is the this is the important aspect of my surprise. Oh, it's we've made a good beginning, right. The elimination of alcohol is just the beginning. That's what it is. I used to think of that as, oh, OK, so just not, not picking up a drink. It's just the beginning. And now we need to start the steps, you know? And I came to find through further study of it, that what they're really talking about is, they say in the original manuscript, elimination of the liquor problem,

it's just the beginning. So when they say now in the 10 step, the problem has been removed. Now this is just the beginning, the problem being removed. My recovering from alcoholism is the beginning. And now it's how do I go out into the world and live? Now I've got a spirit that's awake and I've got no booze in my system. And how do I interact with the same world that I seem to function so poorly? And before

people in it haven't changed, what do I do?

So they say they had to continue to take personal inventory. If I'm continuing to do something, I've obviously been doing it before. And so I look to, OK, where did I take inventory? I took it in the fourth step when resentment, dishonesty, self centeredness, you know, when these things crop up, when I see something pop up that is not in line with spiritual principles, I need to bring my consciousness to the moment and be able to spot that and be honest enough to acknowledge it.

I mentioned last week, like God takes the compulsion for the defect away. But if I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing, I could be running around acting out all kinds of crazy things that aren't in line with spiritual principles just because I'm not paying attention. I'm not thinking about what I'm doing. So Bill, he talks in in his story about he's sort of outlining the steps and he says I was to test my thinking by the new God consciousness within. He's talking about that, that 10th and

step, you know, that now I've got to now that the past is behind me and I'm in the present moment, I have to look at like, what am I doing right now? And is this in line with spiritual principles or am I beginning to build a new resentment? Am I beginning to cause new harms that later on down the line I'm just going to have to inventory those, and I'm going to have to confess those and I'm going to have to make amends for those.

And so instead of accumulating new garbage, let me keep that Channel clear.

He says common sense would become uncommon sense, right. So what I used to do is go through the world and when I was about to do something, if somebody cut me off in traffic, there would be this thought of, oh, OK, well, what are most people do in that situation? Oh, I'll flip the guy to burn or now I'm going to tailgate him or whatever. And I think, well, that's, yeah, that's what most people would do in that situation.

So I went by what was common sense? What do I, what do I hear? How do I hear most other people react? But what they've asked me to do at different points in this process is to look around at the world and see that the results that normal people seem to be getting aren't all that good. And then if they're not in contact with the power, that might be OK for them. But my life depends on it. And so I can't use common sense. I have to test my thinking by an uncommon sense.

Continue to look at this stuff. You know, when I see something come up, be willing to deal with it right there in the moment. That may mean excusing myself from the situation so I can go into prayer. Sometimes it's just about pausing and in the moment, being able to say, you know, what that thing I just said to you, that's not really the truth. Here's what's really going on. You know, to be able to own up to it, to be able to apologize, you know, to have a situation where I'm, I'm in a store

and I'm dealing with the clerk and they're, you know, I'm not happy with the policies. And so I'm rude to the person. I walk out, I'm going out to the parking lot and there's that little twinge,

there's that little feeling of dis ease that I used to answer with a drink. I can't live with that feeling. So let me shut it off. You know, Well, I don't, I don't want to go back to that having to shut it off anymore. So it means now I have to address it. So it means stopping, turning around and going back into the store and saying, listen, I'm sorry. I just I snapped at you. I I wasn't getting what I wanted and I got frustrated. I realized it's not your fault.

I really apologize for that. You're just here trying to do your job, do the best you can. And

you know, things like that enable me to continue to enjoy Slife. I, I hear people talk sometimes about whether, you know, do we write the stuff out or not? You know, a lot of times I don't,

they talk when they're talking about the 11 step. They say, you know, at some point, like we start to become more and more along the plane of inspiration as this goes, right. So sometimes I have an experience and I'm able to see very clearly in my head, here's what's going on. You are pride and entitlement.

And so that's what you need to be asked to have taken. That's what you need to own up to. You know, there's other times when something's going on and I just keep thinking about what they did or I'm not able to see quite what's going on in me. And so I say then let me do what I let me do what I did when I first started this inventory. Let me get out the paper and actually write this thing through, you know, and, and I, and ideally, and I don't do this all the time, you know, but

call somebody and talk to them about it, you know,

to confess where I'm at, to own up to this thing so that other people who know me on this path are able to see if I'm headed in a direction that they can start to like, you know, bring me back and, and say, Damon, it looks like there's some things that this has been coming up a lot recently. You might want to take a look at this. So that's the the sort of like moment to moment stuff in the day.

Then at 11, they talk about, you know, doing this, having a process of this at night

so that I can look at as I'm going through the day, I'm trying to keep an eye on this stuff that I'm not going to be able to see everything. I'm moving around, I'm moving around and I might miss something. And so let me take some time at night and sort of reflect on the day and think about is there anything that now that I've slowed down that I can feel in my gut that maybe needs to be addressed? But the thing I really wanted to say about 11,

you know, on the on the shades we have saw through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, right? And so

we talk a lot about prayer, meditation, prayer, meditation. If I've been doing half of what they've suggested in here, I've been doing a lot of prayer and meditation throughout all of the steps those things are suggested. So that's not really the new ground here. What this is about is me trying to improve the contact that I've made with this power. You know, I heard a lot 10 and 11/10/11 and 12 really referred to as maintenance steps. But in reading them, they talk about,

they say our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. And now in 11, we're talking about improving my contact with this power. So OK, if a little bit of contact with this power is getting me some ease and comfort, let me see what's in deeper contact is going to bring me. And if this is enabling me to be more effective in the lives of others and be more helpful, well then let me clear out that Channel further.

I found some fantastic things. You know, 11 for me is about exploration.

So, you know, I just wanted to talk about a couple of experiences that I've had. I think I mentioned when I was talking about the second step, there was an attempt made to raise me with a religion and I was not having it. I, it was not my concept of God. And I was, I was at home visiting my parents for a weekend. My father came down the stairs and he went out to the car and he said, OK, I'm going to church.

And,

you know, same place that he had dragged me out of bed kicking and screaming when I was a kid. All the, all the fighting and arguing about it, you know, and and he does that and I'm sitting there watching television and I don't know what happened. It wasn't a conscious thought. I found my body. Just get up, grab my shoes, run outside carrying my shoes and say, you know what? I'm going to go with you. And the look on this man's face.

Was like he didn't. He didn't know what to think. He didn't know what to say,

you know, and, and I went there with him and waiting for this service to start. And I'm and I'm in prayer asking for a new experience, asking for an open mind. And I can see the he's in prayer and he's praying quietly, but he says out loud at the end, thank you for bringing my son back to me. Such an amazing experience. Now the important thing that I have to tell you is that service ended. And I said, this is not my concept of God,

I do not belong here, right? But it was such a fantastic thing to feel and experience that willingness

and to see it through different eyes to say, how am I going to experience this practice with the spirit that's awake and how am I going to experience it with my prejudice set to the side.

I also, I dug into like early, early a literature, the Oxford group, you know, we get our program from a, from a religious group. You know, originally there was this Oxford group and it was a Christian fellowship and we've grown in a lot of ways and taken the doors off of those, those boundaries.

But I was curious as to what were these people doing? And one thing I found was a fantastic practice. It's a, a practice they called How to Listen to God. And there's a, there's an early Oxford group pamphlet where they spell out this practice of here's the first thing that you do. Here's the next thing that you do, Here's the next thing that you do. And it's a process of going to God and bringing a specific question into meditation. And it's interesting because if you read our description of meditation in the 11th

here and look at this, you can see that they're really talking about the same thing. But when they say in our book, we can make some definite and practical suggestions, it's interesting. I found that this How to listen to God, the suggestions were so much more definite and practical. I knew exactly what to do at each step of the way. And so I've gotten a lot of help from that. And it's something that I've gotten to pass on to Sponsee. You know,

there's not a direction to do that in the book, so I can't tell them

you must do this, but I can say, listen, it's what a lot of the early guys were doing and I've gotten a great deal of help from it. So if you're interested, here's the thing that's available to you.

I, I wanted to reach out, look at other spiritual practices of the world. You know, I was in a, I was in a psych program. I started going back to school and I was studying psychology. I wanted to go into counseling and I took a class. I, I took a religions class just to see and, and it was comparative religions, which is basically like looking at, at, at the traditions of the world

and seeing not how are they different from each other, but like, but what's in common in all this? What are the principles that unrelated underlie these things? Forget about the names, dates and places, you know, what, what do they all have in common? And it really lit me up. And I found that in these classes I was having more powerful spiritual experiences than most of the meetings that I had been at that week. You know, no, I hadn't found some groups like this yet, you know, but

I found that I wanted to study it more and I ended up adding it as a second major.

And Oh my God, I first of all, I still can't believe that I'm able to say this. And secondly, I can't believe that I'm coming out to a A in this. But I ended up finishing that program and saying, you know what? I've seen lights go off in people's eyes as they're hearing about this stuff. And I'm having all these powerful experiences and I think I want to be able to teach these things in the same way. And so I went to a seminary program.

If there's anything more miraculous in this world than my having not having a drink or a drug in my system in the last 10 1/2 years,

it's the island to seminary. Because if you told me that years ago that that was going to happen, I probably would have taken my life to prevent it. That's how vehemently anti religious I was. I still, I do not have a particular system of belief. I still don't know what it is that I'm praying to. I don't understand this power. I can't describe it to you. I don't have dogma around it.

I don't have a particular tradition. I do and I don't. I found a faith tradition that is defined very much like Alcoholics Anonymous by they say we're not here to talk about a particular belief system. We're here to study spiritual principles. You believe whatever you want. So you have people there with all kinds of different beliefs systems.

That was the only home that I would have felt comfortable in. And so I felt like this is what I need to do with my life. You know, I need to find some way to continue to, to grow in this and talk about this. I got involved with something that has become very dear to my heart. There's this thing step by step, which I stumbled upon while I was going to school. It's basically like it's a it's a cross between a service, a worship service, and a meeting

where it's people from all different with all different addictions from all different fellowships coming together. Not to talk about how to stay away from their thing, but how to get closer to this power

and looking at looking at spiritual texts from around the world and from all different traditions and how do they match up with what our program talks about? You know, so that's been a big part of my spiritual practice

times that I have laxed in. You know, I haven't had as many spawn season my life. That has been a form of being able to carry a message just like our original 12 step said, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, especially Alcoholics, is what they said, because they they say we're sure our way of life has its advantages for all right. So I why do I want to limit this experience

to only other addicts? Like let me offer this to everyone. And that brings me I'm going to squeeze in 12. I'm sorry, I apologize for that. But,

you know, maybe it makes sense that I didn't talk as much about 12 because I personally feel like there doesn't need to be a direction for 12. You know, if I really have had a spiritual awakening as the result of this process, if I was suffering and agonizing in my life before

and that solution has been given me where I had an experience like they described feeling reborn, not in the afterlife here and now feeling reborn, If I've really had that experience, nobody's got to tell me to talk to people about it. I want to jump up out of my chair and run and be like, do you have any idea what's possible here? I, I moved out here and I found some wonderful groups and wonderful solution. And all I can do is think about the meetings that I used to go to in Manhattan, in Brooklyn,

where people are suffering and have no idea that something like what's happening in this room is going on. And I feel like, what am I even doing here? Like, let's get up and go to the city. Come on, get your cars. You know,

I've learned so much more about these principles and about this program by taking other people through it then by me being taken through it myself. You know, this is really where the joy comes in. And you know, I, I guess I'll, I'll say to,

I never say no when someone asks for help. If somebody asks for my number, somebody asks for sponsorship. And it's got as an interesting way of working things out. I mean, if I had to take through all 12 steps, every person that's asked me for help, it would absolutely be thoroughly impossible. But the reality is most people that ask don't follow through. And so I have the freedom to be able to say yes to everyone and let God sort out or let their fear sort out

what my, what my load is actually going to be. And there's times when it's really intense and I'm sponsoring a whole stable of guys. And I feel like, wow, I, this is a little too much for me to handle right now, you know, and I don't know, you know, then a couple of the people, they drift off into space. They got an inventory to work on and they don't feel like it. They got better ideas and a couple will drop off. And then a few weeks later, somebody else comes along and a couple more.

You know,

it's been a wonderful, wonderful journey. I wish that I had left more time to talk about 12, but I don't want to take up hearing from you, so I'm going to stop now. Thank you for this experience.