The topic of Step 11 at the Fellowship of the Spirit convention in Copper Mountain, CO

Somewhere,

maybe

OK, maybe not.

Sorry, bear with me. Step 11 sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Our first panelist today on Step 11 is David H. He is from the DTNGAA group in Broomfield, Co. Please help me. Welcome, David.

Hi everybody. I'm David. I'm an alcoholic,

My home groups to Denver Thursday night group and

I have been continuously sober since September 20th, 1984.

I was 31 years old when I came into the program and in February this year I turned 60. So I've really grown up in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, or at least I got older.

I have a sponsor. He attends the Denver Thursday night group. His name's Mickey. It's nice to have my sponsor at my Home group because we get a chance to see how we're doing. And, and I also try to call him. He's he really encourages me in a very gentle way to be very faithful and consistent about the 10th step. He's a lot better at listening to him than I am at making them, and I'm real appreciative for that

ability to be able to share that stuff. I really think it's helpful to to share that and especially with one person. My experience with that is it's very easy to share with a bunch of different people and nobody ever gets to know you. So I'm grateful for that. The 11th step. I'm going to tell you a story about me and my current sponsor, Mickey around the 11th step. But before I do that, I want to read the 11th step. It's pretty short,

it's simple, and yet I believe it's profound and yet like the big book says, simple but not easy. It means the total destruction of self centeredness. And man, if you want to jump start that destruction of self centeredness, the 11th step is a great place to practice that. OK.

Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration and direction from him who has all knowledge and power. May if you want some knowledge and power, might as well go to the source of it, right?

If you have carefully followed directions, you've begun to sense this flow of His Spirit.

Step 11 suggest prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. And it's really interesting because it seems like most of the 11 step meetings I go to were extremely shy about sharing about what my prayer life or my meditation life looks like. And how are they going to know if we don't share our experience, strength and hope

better men than we are using it constantly? It works if we if we have the proper attitude. And by this time we know what the proper attitude is because we've worked the steps right. The proper attitude is we're not thinking about ourselves all the time.

The proper attitude and work at it. It would be very easy to be vague about this matter, yet we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions

when we retire at night. So they start off by telling us what to do when we go to bed. We constructively review our day.

I used to destructively review my day, and let me tell you, it makes it very hard to get to sleep.

Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, afraid? Do we owe an apology? 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 only when I'm awake.

Or were we thinking of others

and what we could do? Were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?

We must be careful. Oh, by the way, it occurred to me about five years ago what they're asking us in those questions, that series of questions is were you faithful with your 10th step? Those are the exact same questions that the 10th step asked us to keep aware that we are aware. Keep in mind when we are being selfish, dishonest, self seeking or fearful, when these things crop up, we ask God to remove them at once. We talk to someone about it immediately,

we make amends if necessary, and then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Which is exactly the questions they just asked us. Did you do that? Are you current with your 10th step?

We must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. So if I'm sitting around beating myself over the head with a bat saying what a rotten person I am, I'm never going to. I'm 28 plus year sober. I'm never going to get this problem. I'm going to get a crummy night's sleep and I'm going to be useless to anybody else. And the purpose of this is to bring me closer to God. I believe it's that simple

and not to beat myself up.

After making our review, we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. OK, now the very next thing says on awakening. And so I assume that means I should have got a pretty good night's sleep from the end of that last sentence until I wake up in the morning. And truthfully, I will tell you that with very few and rare occasions, I have slept really well since I sobered up. And I think

this is part of it. On Awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead we consider our plans for the day. We've just been given permission to plan. Sometimes you'll hear people say, oh you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. But here they tell us it's OK to make plans. When I first sobered up in Victoria, TX, one of the things they said was it's OK to plan a fishing trip,

just don't plan to bring a boatload of fish home with you.

And so the difference is this is what I intend to do, but I'll leave those results to God. That makes sense for me and it makes sense in context of what I'm reading here for me.

We ask God to direct our thinking, especially that it be divorced from self pity, dishonest, self seeking motives. Under these conditions, asking to have myself removed from this prayer life and this thought life, it says we can employ our mental faculties. We are now capable of thinking if I've eliminated that most destructive element, and believe me, I haven't. I mean, it's a daily struggle to be able to do this. That's why these directions are so important.

I can begin to we can begin to employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all, God gave us brains to use our thought. Life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. And I think wrong motives in this context, as I understand it is simply am I thinking about you or am I thinking about God and what I can do for others?

My

I saw a friend of mine at a meeting the other night and he said this is so weird, David, I woke up this morning thinking about you. And I said that is weird. I woke up this morning thinking about me

and and that's true every morning. And that's why

I may or may not have this book by my bedside,

but I always have a card and something that I typed up that give the specific directions for the 11th step so that I can grab it. Because generally my prayer goes something like this. Dear God, so far today, I have not experienced selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, or fear. But in a minute, I'll have to get out of this bed and I am going to need all the help I can get. And that's what it's like for me almost every single morning. The story I was going to tell you was about

15 years ago, I'd had a new sponsor, Mickey, and that was a series of just wonderful experiences that led to that. And we had agreed to meet for lunch one day. And I have been a daily meditator for almost 25 years now. I as a as an employee benefit of a guy I work for. I was trained in a certain technique of meditation and

that that practice asked for 20 minutes twice a day.

And I've been doing that very faithfully, not always twice a day, but very faithfully for the last 25 years. And I had picked up a book that I was reading called The Cloud of Unknowing. And The Cloud of Unknowing is a book by an anonymous apparently monk who describes the practice of contemplative meditation in the Middle Middle Ages. Very complicated book. I have a degree in philosophy and religious studies and I've read some very complicated people and they gave me the

I knew I could trust my own thinking, which was a lie. But anyway, I'm reading this book and I can't make heads or tails of it. Mickey and I agree to meet for lunch and I'm telling him about this book that I'm reading. And somehow I've got myself convinced during this process that

a A is OK for beginner spirituality. But, you know, you really need to be reading these books. You can't understand. And

and Mickey looked at me in his eyes were getting bigger and bigger as I was describing my current spiritual practice. And he said, David, are you following the directions for the 11th step the way they're written down in our big book? And my first thought was kind of poor Mickey. You know,

I want to tell you that for the last 15 years I have kept those directions by my side. I will also tell you that

that I got rid of that book. It's still at my house and one day I might understand it, but it's not this day. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next we have Marie M Marie is from Park Hill AFG. She is from Denver, Co. Please help me. Welcome, Marine.

Hi, my name is Marie and I'm a very, very grateful Alan on.

I have a sponsor, my sponsor has a sponsor. I think that's really, really important.

I have been continually going to meetings. I can't say I've been continually serene for the last lot of years, but I've been going since February 22nd of 1974

and

my recovery has been kind of like a roller coaster and that's fine with me. So long as there are some UPS, I don't mind the downs.

This is just my opinion so you know. If you don't agree, that's absolutely fine.

I believe that often times the steps are to keep us busy while God

heals us.

It's not to diminish the necessity and the importance of the steps, because the steps are essential for our recovery. But

oftentimes we, we can get into a practice of, you know, you do it this way and you do it at this time and you, you know, and we start worshipping the process. And I've found that God is

a whole lot nicer than that.

He. He has trained me by daily crises and daily blessings. And to my mind, the 10th and 11th and 12th steps are to develop the spiritual muscle. And I believe, again, this is just my belief, I believe that we're here to become closer to God.

And so the spiritual muscle is to continue the conversation that we have

as long as we're awake. And the big book only gives us two times when it insists on we do when we what we do to communicate with our God,

dry mouth.

And

but I really believe that that we are at least I feel I am being asked to continually pray. And when I what I mean by that is that I'm continually talking to my partner, who is God. God is my partner. He's like the smart one. So I need to ask him, you know what? What am I supposed to be doing?

And if I don't quite know how to do it, he'll let me know how to do it. If I'm not strong enough to do it, he'll give me the power to do that.

So I'm trying to go for continual communication with my higher power. I don't do it, OK, But I definitely have been building the spiritual muscle of the 10 step, the 10 step during the day, the 11th step at night and 11th step in the morning. And one of the things that really helps me is that my husband and I do the 11th step at night together before we put our head on the pillow and say, Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to do the

step, aren't I? We do it usually in the living room. And he just, he says the questions. We do it silently. And it's, it's really, it's a nice practice because it's a more of a discipline for both of us. We don't forget it. And, and it's, it's, there's something about doing things together that, you know, one time I went to a,

a wedding in Taos

and the, the guy, he was an AA, he got up and he, he was doing a homily. And he said, and it just, I mean, it just really hit me. He said a two by four. And I don't know exactly the numbers. The two by four can hold 200 lbs of weight

and then another 2 by 4 can hold another 200 lbs away. And you put the two together and it can hold like 1000 lbs of weight. And so doing things together, you know, whether it's with your sponsor, whether it's with just a ten step partner, whether it's with your spouse or your your partner, whatever it is together, there is something about

the strength and the the unity that that just gives us. So

much more power.

But God. In the end, God is the one who's healing us

and I, the reason I say that I don't think that

the process of just doing each of these things in the program, working the program is where the healing comes is that I have probably learned more from the things I've messed up when I've not done something.

Probably a couple weeks ago,

we decided that we were just going to kind of take a day off and we were going to go out for a really early morning walk. And usually

we pray and we meditate, we sing the Psalms and we meditate for usually 15 minutes. And we were going to go out for a walk instead, right? And the day started deteriorating

and

that communication and that that commitment to

the connection with God

is so important

that

our whole spirit needs it. And, and it can be, you know, we didn't do it for a long time. I didn't do meditation for

and I said I did prayer, but my prayers were all, Oh my God, I screwed up, you know, help me. And, and it would be that intermittent screw up that I would start praying again. And,

and then we were blessed with some people in our lives who kind of insisted on

our prayer and meditation in the morning. And so that's been going on for a long time. And it's, it's a commitment and it's like exercise, which I don't do very well, but I but it's, it's a spiritual exercise. So you don't exercise for five hours

each month, one time a month. You know, it just doesn't work.

You can really do with 1520 thirty minutes each day if you are continuous about it, if you're really committed to it. So anyway,

this is

all I can say is this is so important. And if you're not doing some sort of practice, and I don't know that that it really matters a whole lot

what practice you're doing. But if you're committing to doing it, what you're doing is you're saying to God, you are the most important thing in my life. And so I will,

I will do something each day to bring something to the relationship between you and I and that very fact.

You know, if you do 5 minutes a day or if you stand on your head and say, you know, this is the greatest prayer in the world, it doesn't matter. But you're, you're committing to your higher power. That's what we need to do. So that's it. Thank you.

Thank you, Marie.

Next is Mel F Mel is from Saturday Step Study AA in Littleton, Co. Thank you.

So OK, my name is Mel and I'm an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is November. Oh, I'm looking at the rain. Wow. November 3rd, 1985.

My Home group is Saturday Step and this is my first time at Fonz. I've never been up here before and I am having a spiritual experience. This is awesome. I'm also crammed into a two-bedroom condo with eight women also

seeking serenity and sobriety. It's been great. It's really been a learning experience

sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, paying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. First of all, I've always been a seeker. I've always had that alcoholic disquietness, emptiness didn't fit in inside myself. So I always thought something I was even a product of. Some of you might have heard of EST, where they locked you in the room and, you know. Yeah, no, it's a it's a long time ago. I think they call it something different now,

but I was looking for peace and I was looking for a power that I knew was out there somewhere, but that did not really apply to me. So I didn't really know how to pray and I didn't know how to meditate. I didn't know how to be quiet. And I'm still learning that to a great degree. I will have to be honest about that. So if I don't have a power that I believe in and I don't know how to pray and I can't get quiet and meditate, I'm certainly not asking, you know, what anybody's will is for me

and any power to carry that out. I'm a steamroller. And that's kind of how I went through through life. So now what they did tell me my marching orders when I first came into a A was to read 848586. So upon awakening, I'm asking God and I didn't really believe this when I started it to help me. And what what I have today is it's called

they say in their my thoughts, my thought life.

My thought life was always fear based. My thought life was always how am I going to make it through this day? My thought life was very unpleasant. So today,

but this, I shouldn't say today, the process

where I am today is beautiful and it's wonderful. And I have certain practices that I do because of the discipline of this program, because they've told me it's about self-discipline because you are undisciplined. We let God discipline us. So it's been a process for me through the years and my sobriety to try to learn how how to pray, how to meditate, how to ask for God's will for me and the power to carry that out. I love that today

I am a powerful woman.

I'm a powerful woman of God and I can do his will. I can do his work. And that to me is it fills my heart with joy. You know, it just makes makes me feel like I have a purpose and I belong in this world and I fit where I never did before. But that was born, you know, this whole process for me was born out of a lot of pain, a lot of

trying to talk to God and asking him to hear me.

And what I know I believe, I know now is in my prayer. It's not for God. It is for me to hear me asking God to help me. He already knows I'm asking him to to be with me. He already knows I'm asking him to direct my thinking. I need him to do that.

So I lost my train of thought. OK,

the power to carry out

God's will

and to know what that is,

was and is at times still very, very difficult. In the beginning I knew that His will for me was certainly not to drink anymore and drug anymore. I'd hurt other people anymore. I certainly knew that was His will for me. I didn't know how to go about being

kind to myself.

I did know how to go about being loving to myself. I could see other people and this is what I believed. God got to me through the back door. I tried to learn that God loved all of you and I watched people change and transform in this program due to their conscious contact with God

and I thought He loves you and very, very slippery and sly. My God came in through the back door and I realized that He loves me too. As he was teaching me that He loved you and I could love you, I could also love myself. This is one of the the products of staying in prayer and meditation that I can be quiet with myself today and ask

what should I be doing for you? You know, instead of waking up with fear,

I do wake up and I do do this every day. I wake up and when my eyes open I say God could and would if he was sought. I seek you. Now I have to latch on to Him, you know, and if my foot is getting out of the bed before I have thought that thought, I will think that. So I don't leave my bed without God and then I have some quiet time with God

and so I can get into that God consciousness and that thought life.

And I try to go about my day being of service. I pray a lot during the day. I talk to God in my prayer. It's not just the morning or it's not just the night. God is with me all the time. Today God is with me all the time and I fumble and it was bloody and it was messy trying to get to this point. You know, I begged God for a lot of things and today I can talk with God

and it's usually about

purpose in this life and me being of service and helping other people.

I have a very contented life today because I've allowed God in into my life.

Like I said, I think this to me is a very meaty step. It's a huge step and it was hard for me. It was very difficult. There's so many aspects of it that I didn't know how to employ in my life. And I guess I want to say if there's anybody here that's new and that's struggling, my head was so busy and I didn't know how to get quiet. And I sometimes I still don't pull out the vacuum cleaner

and vacuum. And I'm not kidding. There's like a home to it. And as you're kind of vacuuming, your head gets a little quieter and you can kind of hear the thoughts coming in from God. Maybe I want to tell you about

God in my life and my God consciousness and asking him to be with me every day even when through the dark times that I didn't believe it.

It was about, it was about seven years ago and I was in, I was in a world clinical depression and I was going down

pretty fast and I just had a hysterectomy and it's urgent hysterectomy. And I was in Mexico with my family. That was already planned. And I was walking along the beach and I was trying to smile, you know, because I didn't want my family to know how bad things were because I couldn't touch God. I couldn't feel him with me. And it was scary and it was dark.

And I was, I walked along the beach and I said to him, I don't even know if I should be here anymore.

I can't feel you. I can't touch you. I don't know what my purpose is. And I looked down and I saw my footprints. And I was reminded of that poem. You know, I have not abandoned you. You know, through the dark times I carried you. And I believe that today

God is in my life and God carries me.

I guess that's it. That's all I have. Thanks.

Next we have Mike M from Full Measures a a Cedar Rapids, IA. Please can help me welcome him,

Mike, I'm alcoholic and

oh man, it's good to be here. Umm

with my family.

I love this conference and

I'm humbled

be here with with the people on this panel. And I mean that that's not podium talk. I

have learned through the disciplines of this program a lot, and I have come to respect people who

seem to really go at it, you know, and offer me some hope.

Thanks for reading some of this stuff you did. I

a couple things with the mechanics. One of them is I really got lit up with this stuff at about 3 years. I started working with a guy from Denver, Don P, and he took me through this work and

I started answering one of the questions in the 11th step. And it kind of troubled me because it was, it was around the question of were you kind and loving toward all? And I was answering yes. And this went on for a long time. And I began to wonder if I had not slipped into some kind of delusion around my life and the questions, because it's impossible for me to go that length of time without causing harm.

And Don said, well, Mike, what do you, what are you looking at when you're asking yourself that question?

Looking at my actions, right, Because you're a, it teaches us to look at our actions. And Don giggled with that little giggle that he had. And, and he said, well, why don't you bring that into your inner life, into your thought life? I was like, oh shit,

that that makes it a little bit different. See, 'cause I can treat you nice and and my head still want to take you out behind the woodshed. So I got to experience this thing in a whole nother way with that. And another thing that I was reminded of when David was reading and and and the last lick gal here was this thing upon awakening and I had an experience when Eric and I first moved in together. She had this,

I don't know chance was

five or something at time. Everybody was in school and we woke up late 1 morning and the we switched giving rides to school and

we were in a hurry. I didn't have time to invite God. I just I jumped up out of bed. I had about 10 minutes to get his lunch pack, get him dressed, get him ready for school and all this. So I jump out of bed and I'm in a fluster and I wake chance up and my energy is off

and it's scaring this little guy.

And

so I get him dressed and I get his lunch packed and, and I get his little backpack ready and, and the ride comes and, and he takes off running for this green door and he

forgets his lunch bucket. And I yell at him to come back and get his lunch bucket and he's really flustered and he he comes back and he gets his lunch bucket. And

then he dropped his backpack and he took off with his lunch bucket.

Got it.

And I really yelled at him then, and

I didn't know.

I didn't know what

what I had done to that little guy till he turned around and when he closed the screen door he was sobbing.

And you know, that's not real high drama or anything. But when I got 12 stepped into Alcoholics numbness, I sat across the table from the guy that was working with me and I told him that I did never want to hurt anybody again. And I meant it

and here I had just brought some some harm into this little guy's life that didn't have a common. He didn't deserve to be treated that way that morning, right. So sometimes the result of not doing the on awakening from that day to this. I have not not missed that I have made that commitment. And Don talked to me about that too. He said. Mike, why would you want to wait till you're on your way to work or something when the people that you're interacting with

right away in your life is the people you love the most in your own home?

When we say on awakening, we mean on awakening, he said. If you're not demonstrating this in your home, you're not doing a, a call it something else.

And he got my attention. And

so sometimes I'm, I'm brought back to the 11th step because, you know, I, I go to sleep in my 10th step, I suspect like most everybody in this room. And we have the, the 11th step to catch us with that at night. But sometimes I go asleep to that too. And as a result of that, I'm brought back to these disciplines because of some pain that I'm experiencing in my life, right. There's a piece of writing in another book of ours, I think that says that that Wilson says

is the touchstone of spiritual growth. And you know, I, I have come to experience and believe today that that does not always have to be the case. And I would have, you know, if you want to consider this not I was in meeting last night. I said something about how we go and think about things. And if I'm going and think about something, I'm just rearranging my prejudice is to support an old idea I have about something, but rather that I sit with things from a place of consideration. From

consideration. And what I've come to experience in Alcoholics Anonymous is exactly what is promised to us in our big book, that we will be inspired. In fact, it says that we come to rely on that. And you can hurry up and believe that this conference in the men and women here and around the country that do the work in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous continue to inspire me to greater heights.

I don't have to have my ass fall off

to have spiritual growth in my life, and neither do you. We can be inspired here to greater heights. Now. It also says that we're not going to be inspired at all times. All right? So we get to experience both sides of that. I would much rather today take the avenue of inspiration I have come to rely on. That is part of my conscious awareness. I expect that. I expect God to work in my life in that way

and the

the, the real love I have for the 11th step is the freedom that we're allowed here to go explore

God. I love that man. Go explore. And I have, I've went,

I'll get a notion or an idea and I'll go find a teacher. And that's taken me to South Dakota, to the Rosebud Reservation where I've spent a long time with a Lakota elder. And it's taken me back to the church that I grew up in. And I've spent some time there and it's taken me to people and Alcoholics Anonymous. They have a lot of respect for. It's taken me to the monastery where

I used to go up there quite often. We have a Trappist monastery. Tom's been there about an hour from Cedar Rapids, and

I used to go up there a lot, and I'd go sit with this old boy that had been in there 68 years. And now here's a guy who had not watched ATV, read a newspaper, listened to a radio. In 68 years. He had devoted his life to his work and prayer in that monastery. I loved the energy behind him. I've met a few other people in my life that carried that same energy.

And we would talk about stuff. Mostly we we'd talk and then he'd get up and go do stuff and he'd come back with the page that he copied out of a book with Merton or Goldsmith or some other usually Christian Mystic stuff. Which is why I think I was attracted to him because I kind of dig that stuff. And

we would talk about that stuff and he knew about Alcoholics Anonymous to a level that really kind of floored me. And he said something one day that did for me. He said that if

if you're really doing the work,

he didn't put it that way. He said if you're living the life that is described in your book that we've been talking about, he said that we're you are doing the exact same thing that we are in here.

He said the circumstances of our lives are quite different,

but the purpose is exactly the same,

that we are going out in our lives from a place of conscious contact and union with God doing our work.

And I thought that was incredible. That just really, really kind of floored me that that guy would say that. But I don't really have anything else. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks for listening.

Thank you to the panelists. Now we'll open the microphone for sharing on Step 11. Thank you.

Well, we could all sit here in prayer.

Hi, my name is Terry. I'm an alcoholic.

2008 is when I got sober. So just a little time. I just noticed something when I was listening to everybody and I always wondered why on 8486 through that section, it was always at night we retire and in the and then it was awakening was the second step of that. And it didn't hit me till now that retiring is 10 and awakening is 11. And I didn't have anything else to share with that, but I thought,

I'm always wondering why God does what he does and he puts things in order. And then as I'm open to it, I become aware. And I just thought I wanted to share that. I didn't know if anybody had ever known that. And maybe it's, I'm just taking a little while to figure that out. But there's a lot of things in the big book. I go, why would why would they say that? And why use that word? And, you know, I try to, I try to take it on blind faith

because of the grace that has been extended to me through this program

that God knows what he's doing. And every word in that book is with intention and everything. Now I just get to be that person that follows along and figures it out. And hopefully, you know, I'll have some experience go on for quite a few years from now. And but I love the fact that I'm here and everybody's done this just 24 hours, just within 24 hours, you know, and every day and every time I went to my sponsor, it was just me

having those 24 hours, but another 24 hours today. And I learned a lot, so thank you.

Hello, my name is Jim. I'm an alcoholic.

Thanks everybody on the panel. Very helpful for me today. And a couple things I heard was

practice to develop that spiritual muscle. I think Marie and inspiration and

I followed the template in there when I was newer for like 5-6 years straight

because I needed to develop.

I mean, you guys tricked me into a life of prayer.

I went to 90 meetings in 90 days. I didn't really get much, but I did 180 prayers,

turn me 180° toward the steps. But now when I'm, I mean, I've done like what Mike was talking about. I got a teacher. I don't know if you call him a professional teacher or not, but I went to the monastery

and learned how to do silent prayer. And I do it with my nightly review. And I've lived with that question was I love, loving and kind toward all.

And I think I said yes, just because I wanted approval from my higher power.

But I mean, if you look, if you sit with that stuff long enough, something starts to seep in the inner life, to crack that boundary around my heart. It's like changing the tattoo from selfishness to others

and what happened to me. I was and and in the in the when I wake up in the morning, I'll write down a lit. I got to write down stuff because I my memory is not that great.

And Joe told me to get a day timer. I said, what's that? So we went to the store together and got a day timer and I started writing a list and that and then somebody told me to write thy will be done next to each plan. And I would also plan the stuff I'm struggling with like I have. I still have difficulty with honesty and money,

so I would write honesty with money.

Thy will be done and then you know, go to work, call this person, go to this meeting, get together, I will be done. I, my hands start to hurt after a while, so I just write the initials

TWDB.

And then when I would, and then I started to see

where thy will was being done in these different things without me really trying to manipulate or think about it

because it comes from the IT comes from some inner mind that I'm not always aware of. But anyways, what was happening when I was looking at that question was I loving and kind toward all I had been through? I just gotten through divorce sober. I was got married sober, divorced, sober. And my kids I could see were really hurting bad

and the only thing I could think of is every time I'm around my kids and my former wife. By the way, my sponsor said never say X. My former wife.

I would show warmth whether I didn't want to or not. I know you're not supposed to fake it till you make it, but it was kind of that I got this message. I'm supposed to show warmth, a little soft hug. Maybe it was a distant hug

or a little Peck on the cheek. I just kept doing that and the weirdest thing happened. She started to warm up our heart. Mom and Dad's heart healed and the kids saw it.

And this all came from this practice, which is practices like learning

to do repetitive actions, to improve that conscious contact, that spiritual muscle,

and then love and kindness manifests in ways that you can't even imagine. So I highly recommend it. It'll improve all your other steps. That's all. Thanks.

Hi, I'm Ken. I'm an alcoholic. You know, thank you very much for members of the panel on the 11th step has been absolutely huge for me. And and not necessarily just the mechanics of it. I mean, understand like Marie said, the importance of the mechanics. I like to focus and Mike touched on it. The part about sought to improve. You know, like you said, I've been a seeker.

I used to drink and read spiritual books. You know, I knew there was something wrong with me

and I knew the answers were out there. My problem is I never did anything that these different spiritual ways of life said.

You know, I was a

thinking a couple years ago, I was reading a Bill Wilson, one of his writings, and he said AA is spiritual kindergarten.

OK, that's interesting. Kindergarten, the basic step of education. Now that leads me to believe in my mind that perhaps there's more work to be done. OK, If I wish to improve, besides the mechanics, that's just to get me

to a conscious contact. You know what step 10 says we've entered the realm entered. I've got my my toes through the door. I need to do more. So what I started doing was when I started to meet people that I felt a connection with. Dude, what do you what do you do? What do you read? What books have touched your life? Because while the ego loves knowledge, knowledge properly applied can be transformational. OK. And I read books that people

I I'll say it out loud, Peter M told me, recommended a book and I read it and it did nothing for me.