Step 11 at the 10th Fellowship of the Spirit, NY at the Graymoor Spiritual Retreat Center in Garrison, NY

Good morning. My name is Scott Lee and I'm alcoholic

and and grateful to be here. I'd like to say one more time thanks to everyone who was involved. There's a lot of work goes putting one of these things on. And I'd like to say one more time, thank you so much to everyone who who worked so hard to make this possible for us.

I'd like to open, as I always do, with a few moments of silence. I'm going to invite God to join us and ask Him to bless me with an open heart. And I like to have a A. And also I'm going to remember Bart and his dad,

Serenity Prayer. God

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Thank you. We're going to talk this morning about steps 11:00 and 12:00

and some of our own observations about these things. A friend of mine said, do you know the difference between a good habit and a bad habit? And I said no. He said good habits are easy to break.

That's that's been my experience

and so if I'm going to have good habits, I'm going to have to pay the price to have them on and I'm just going to get we're just getting bits and pieces here. OK. We know where we can't be thorough. We don't have the time, but we're going to we're going to do what we can do. It says interestingly enough here on page 86. It says on awakening about halfway down the page. I like to observe sometimes when it does not say it does not say after a shower and shave too over easy and bacon reading the front page 1/2 a pot of coffee in a fight with her.

It says on awakening and as I said last night, that's why I bought this watch is it has the multiple alarms. Linda and I get 10 to 20 minutes each morning cuddling each others arms doing our morning prayers. It's a fabulous way to start today on awakening. One of my teachers says the reason it says on awakening is because I am capable of making a life devastating decisions between the bed and the bathroom.

I got to have my medicine right now, need to take it first. And I think that's terribly important.

I, I hear people saying that it's important for me to be comfortable in recovery, and I don't believe that. What's important is that I don't borrow pain from the past to the future. If I can reach far enough into the past or far enough into the future and find enough pain and drag it into today, I can make today so bad. I can't stand it.

And that's why the Today word, I think is such magic.

Interesting on in that paragraph on awakening. Let us think about the 24 hours ahead. We can consider our plans for the day. But before we begin, I'm going to ask God to direct my thinking, especially asking that be divorced from self pity, dishonest or self seeking motives. It's kind of the word divorce is is a very powerful word. Divorce. What comes before divorce, well before divorce, way before divorce is I'm attracted to something and then I'm in love with it. And then it's a major part of my life and I'm, I'm, I'm all over it,

right? I don't have to be divorced from things that that I never was interested in anyway. And I have to look at the truth on that and that self pity, dishonest and self seeking motives I must be divorced from because I was in love with them for an awfully long time. I love the language in the, in the text. I think there's such power in some of the language

and in the next paragraph it says we may not be able to determine which course to take here. We ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or decision. We relax and take it easy. That is so important that on the facing page in the last little paragraph it says the same thing as we go through the day, we pause when agitated, ask for the right thought or action. Fell in my Home group took that pause when agitated. And he took the first letters PWA and he made him his screen saver at work. This PWA

bouncing around in a cup of the earthlings came up behind him one day. And I don't know what y'all we call them Earthlings or Earth Earth people. Anyway, the civilians came up and and said what's PWA? And he said pause. When agitated, they said wow,

they don't have their lives set on this bet on this thing like we do.

So I have to learn to pause when agitated. The the short form of the steps sought through prayer and meditation not achieved

but sought saw it indicates that I simply took action through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact. There's an implied promise and it implies that if I have done these first ten steps, I will have a conscious contact because I can't improve something I don't have. So I will have a conscious contact of some kind. If I get this far with God is we understood him and my understanding continues to change. We talked about that some over breakfast.

Praying only got into a discussion not too long ago with some very good friends of mine about individual words in the steps

and, and we picked out three that just scream at us. Individual words, and this is one of them. Only that I have to get out of the business of trying to teach God or, or to be his coach to tell him what to do and when I pray only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out. That's what that means. That means I'm not going to give him direction anymore. I think God's will is the best deal there is. It's better than mine.

The other two words that shout at us were the first word In the first step. We I got to get out of the eye business

and the third one was the word thee in the 12th step coming had a spiritual awakening as the result single promise. We have the result, not a the result. Those are the ones that shouted at us.

I had had an experience years ago. My little business is doing pretty good and I hired an assistant and she was a very gentle spiritual Christian woman. And we're multi line manufacturers reps which means we represent a lot of companies to our little territory. So I got customers on one side and factories on the other. We stand in the middle and, and and try to keep them from killing each other. It's kind of what the job looks like. One of the factories that we represented represented a little better than a third of our total income

If we lose this when we go down to PIPE the same day.

There was a woman at that one. There was the pricing authority, which is the person I gotta have. And we were Sheila and I were convinced that there was a broom in their parking lot somewhere that we figured she'd been that way since that house fell on her sister because something was wrong here. And she was just. And we were starting every day. Every Rep I knew in the country was hating this woman. And Sheila and I were starting every day hating this woman, saying I hope we don't have to deal with her today. God, did she hear? We're doing. And one morning and I, it was either a Monday or Tuesday,

Monday morning, as we start our day that way at 9:00, Sheila says to me, hang on a minute, you and neither one of us believe what we're doing here is the right thing. We're running this woman down and we need to stop that. And I said, you're exactly right. And what we decided to do was something that you're going to see in the meditation workshop. I'll give a little bit more detail on it or Linda will, when we get to that later today. But we decided to sit and send love to that woman for the 1st 5 minutes of our business day.

We started doing that every morning. Later that week, that woman called our office to chat.

We couldn't figure it out. She called her office to chat. A couple of months later, I went to Chicago to our national trade show. I walked into a room about this size with a couple 100 people in it, the hospitality suite kind of thing, which by the way, on those things, I go late, leave early, come through the door carrying a drink. I got a schedule to call somebody in recovery while I'm there. But I do a lot of things to protect my sobriety. I treat it like it's important. I walk through the door of that thing and this woman is elbowing people out of

way to get to me, to hug me, to tell me I'm the best Rep in the country and if she had more people like me and Sheila to deal with, her life would be so much easier. The place came to a stop, a cocktail party came to a stop and everybody's jaw on the floor watching this. I spent the rest of that four day weekend with people coming up to me saying what is how, how, what did you do? And I said, well, I'll tell you, but you're not going to like it, you know?

And I don't know that anything can stand up under an assault of love.

I don't think anything in the negative column can. That was our experience with it.

I was in my Home group meeting. This has been a good ten years ago now and a fellow that I sponsor walked in. He has just come from his grandfather's funeral and he said while he was there he was studying his grandmother and he had a thought that occurred to him and he approached her after the funeral. He said to her I think you were a fabulous wife from my grandfather and she said I should have been. I prayed to be that every day.

Yeah, it hit me hard.

I begin the next morning. I don't think I've missed a morning since. And I asked God to help me treasure Linda.

And I use that word treasure. It's interesting. We know the word treasures a verb to treasure, but it's rarely used that way. Normally you hear the word treasure is a noun. I'm making a point within two weeks of starting that nobody knew. I didn't tell the soul on earth I was doing that. Within two weeks of that, I happened to come to out of the kitchen and walk through the den. As I heard Linda say into the phone, Scott treasures me

and I think when I asked God for what He wants me to have, I get a lot of help.

It's about me getting to the right question.

It's about me getting to the right question.

So I asked him to help me treasure people and I send them love. And that's that's just part of who I am and that's part of what I do.

You all talk about the next right thing. Is this something you hear a lot of meetings and from sponsors? Next right thing? I've discovered for me a last right thing

and the last right thing is for me to go to bed at a reasonable hour to set two alarms so that I can awaken the next morning with a full night's sleep and sufficient time to start the next day on a spiritual note with a prayer and meditation that I need to do. If I fail to do the last right thing tonight, I won't be able to do the 1st right thing tomorrow morning. And I frequently talk to people, say I can't get meditation in the morning or, or I go to sleep in meditation all the time.

You know, how do I stop it? Well, we're working on the symptom. The problem was the night before. So I have to keep an eye, keep an eye on my on my last right things

go back to page 87.

What used to be the hunch or occasional inspirational gradually becomes a working part of the mind, not suddenly, but gradually being still an experience that having just made conscious contact with God is not probably we're going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. I heard an old timer tell his new sponsee one time. He said if you have a good idea, give me a call. If you have a great idea, come right over.

Yeah,

yeah, let's do that page 35 thing you want to

see. We can pump some energy into this thing just for fun. There's a great question asked on page there. We do this for fun sometimes. Great question asked on page 35 in the first full paragraph. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic or repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink. That is a great question. It they set it up for a whole page and the answer to me is at the top of the following page, top of 36, it says, yet he got drunk again.

We ask him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story. What did we ask for? We asked exactly what happened. What did we get his story? Do you understand that difference between exactly what happened in his story? They're not necessarily the same.

Bob is going to take the part of yet he got drunk again. I'm going to play the sponsor that he doesn't have. But what the sponsor might have said if he'd had one.

I came to work on Tuesday morning. What happened on Monday? A lot of people work on Monday. You cut hair for a living. I mean, they get Mondays off. Why did? OK, You came on Tuesday. Go ahead. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. Irritated. How about bent? How about your undies are on a permanent wad and they're starched? How about the veins on your neck throbbing and and your face turns red every time you think about the fact that all you are as a salesman and you used to own this place and this guy that's running it now.

Idiot. Irritated. You were irritated. OK, go ahead.

I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. You had a fight with your boss and you don't think it's serious? Now, there is a judgment error right there. Who has ever had a fight with their boss that wasn't serious? That's how people get fired. That's how they lose jobs. That's how they get demoted. That's how their paychecks evaporate. You had a fight with your boss and you don't think it was serious? Gee whiz. Wow, what a great vision. Go ahead, please. I can't wait to hear more than I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. Well, that's where they all are.

I mean, they never do show up at the lot, do they? I mean, you just what are you going to knock on a few doors? Or maybe they're down by the river? Have you got your fishing gear in the trunk? See, that just makes perfect sense to me. All right, so. So here we have a series of his story as opposed to what happened. That leads us to another thought, very similar to that in the italics at the bottom of the page.

Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach.

There it is. I believe if this guide had a sponsor who had responded similarly to what I did, we might not have gotten to the ounce of whiskey in the milk. I need help with my thinking, and I think that's one of the best advertisements for sponsorship that we've got. Is that a little blurb right there?

Let's go back to 86 for just a minute. I'm going to turn it over to Bob.

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. OK? So once again, why do not have permission to beat myself up over mistakes? Constructively review our day

where we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? There's that list again. Did self reemerge

is really the question. Oh an apology kept Something ourselves should be discussed with another person at once. Where we kind of loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves? Most of the time

we're thinking what we could do for others, what we could pack into the stream of life. Isn't that interesting? Bob said this. I get a lot of great stuff from him. I think you can see why he said if you want something for yourself, go give it to someone else.

And and that that generalized a long time ago. It got specific for me last night and I've got a couple of guys I sponsor. I can't wait to take that to. They're having some problems with some people and they and they don't seem to be able to resolve. And I'm going to ask him to go look for things to compliment these people on.

Let's go look for good things in these people. Let's see how that changes. Let's send them love like we've been doing, but let's see what we can pack into the stream of their life. Gee, that's a nice looking tie.

Boy, you, you know, you did a great job on that or you got a great telephone voice. There is something nice I can say to that person and it needs to be true. I'm going to search for it and it will change

pack into the stream of life. What can I give? I'm going to tell you a couple of things that I do. Sometimes.

I don't know if they do it here down South. If you find a penny on the ground, if it's heads up it's a lucky penny,

what do you do if it's tails?

Bend down and turn it over

and leave it for somebody else to find a lucky penny.

Do something for someone and don't get caught.

Uh, that really good parking place you found in rear real close and it was raining. Don't take it

past that and leave that for someone you'll never know.

Your legs are in good shape. That rain isn't going to hurt you. Go park further out. See what happens to you when you take that level of so when I take that level of service into a day. I had one a couple of days ago. I hope I can remember it for a long time. I had one of those days where I was just blessed that my morning. I can't judge my relationship with God by how I feel. I learned that years ago, but I like it when I feel close and I had one of those feel close days in my morning

was great and and I was literally seeking chances to be of service. And I started out and found some early in the day and you just can't believe the way the skies opened up and neat stuff fell on me all day long. I I found some of the most fantastic, friendly, fun people to play with all day long. And it was because that's when I was looking for and that's who I was being was trying to be somebody of service.

Pray about it is what I do

and and and just look for ways to be of service. This there's

I must stay here.

We must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection. OK, once again I can't beat myself because it would diminish our usefulness to others. There we are back on the usefulness to others thing. I say we found sixty. I think it's 62 as our current count

and then after making our review, here's a prayer. We ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrected measures should be taken. I like to take those to my sponsor, spiritual advisor. It's it's under the if you have a good idea, if you have a great idea category. I got to be careful. I'm capable of making amends that do more damage than the amend. I'm capable of making an amended yuts me off the hook that hurts them. I've done that. I have to be real careful that I don't get involved in that again.

I think that's it for me. Thank you. Take it, Bob. Good morning. I'm an alcoholic.

Hey, Bob, I want to thank you all for sitting and listening to us prattle on about our experience this weekend. Yeah. I think we improved it up to prattle. Yeah. I think we. Yeah,

I was

confused about step 11.

I was confused about 8-9 and six and 7:00 and 4:00 and 5:00 and 1:00 and 2:00 and 3:00 and

and I don't follow directions well. Smart guys don't have to.

And I didn't get sober at a time there was when I got sober in the, in the 70s in Las Vegas, there was no one that in Vegas that could take you through the big book. So I was, I was kind of out there on a limb and I had, I had a bad case of alcoholism. I'd relapse for seven years.

So I listen to tapes, I talk to people, I studied the book, I tried to sponsor other people, and I'd started doing something that nobody had ever done. I started taking guys through the book, a book I don't even really know. And it's funny how you Start learning the book when you're trying to give it to somebody else. The Hindus say the student doesn't learn the lesson till he becomes the teacher.

And I, that's sort of how I found myself and found this process in this book

by trying to give it away. And I didn't even understand what I was trying to give away. But I got clarity as I started something because what would happen is as, as I was caring about this guy that I'm trying to help, I'm out of the way. God moves in. It all clicks. It starts to click. But well, here's some of the things that were difficult for me and, and my ego

heard heard about meditation from day one,

right? Like because it my ego, my ego gets alert when it hears about stuff like, oh,

it might be power there for me.

Oh, this is the step where I rise above the little people.

Oh yeah, meditation. I like this

wonder what should I wear a white robe or a red 1 white? I think white. So I started to get I thought I started to really trying to read and figure out this part of the book. Okay, so I come to the bottom of page 85 and it starts a section on step 11. You know how you know that? Because in italics it says step 11, it says step 11. Suggest prayer meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are are using it constantly. It works.

Oh good, it works if we have the proper attitude and work at it. It would be easy to be vague about this matter, yet we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions. Okay, I'm ready, buckle in. I'm going to get some definite and valuable suggestions about Step 11, about prayer meditation, and here's what it says. It says when we retire at night, we constructively review our day

where we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid. I'm reading this thinking, man, that ain't right.

Hey, right, that's inventory.

What's that doing here? Is that a misprint? Should that have been on the previous page? And I read further on down the page and and there's nothing in this from here to the end of the chapter that looks like meditation. There's a couple prayers. There's that we ask God to direct our thinking. Then again, we ask God for inspiration. We ask especially for freedom from self will. We may ask for ourselves, however, for others are helped. There's there's some prayers,

but nothing that looks like meditation. And I know about meditation. I'm a smart guy.

Smart guys know stuff.

I, I went to TM, I had AI, had a mantra. For God's sakes, don't tell me about meditation. I chanted in Nami Yoho Herring, get killed with the Buddhists, with SGI. I I've done visible, I've done it all. I've done different types of yoga

and this doesn't match up with my preconceived notion of what it should be. And smart guys consequently

at times can't observe, read or listen to hear anything new. We can only look to see how we're already right. And so consequently, I didn't never took the direction on these couple pages. And what I did was a thing that a lot of people do. I started seeking other vehicles and meditation. I, I, I and over the years I did just about everything you could think of

for my 1st 17,

probably years of sobriety.

I, I got, I took, I started doing the out of the 12 by 12, the prayer of Saint Francis, good prayer. Then I found another version of it I like better, the one that says instead of a channel, make me an instrument. I like that even better.

I got to the end of that rope where that was just seemed to be shallow after a while. And I, I thought, you know, I'll go to church and I went to a couple churches and I said the rosary for a while.

Just I thought, well, what the heck, You know, it's very, the Muslims do the beads, the Catholics do the beads. Maybe there's something in beads, right? The hippies did the beads. I had beads when I was a hippie, right?

And I will do the beats. I, I, I went back, I went to back to the Buddhist for a while and I like Buddhist,

started reading all kinds of spiritual literature. I, I did a meditation. I found a meditation that I sometimes used to this day

it's it's called I am the place and it's a very centering thing. I'm the place where God shines through him and I are one, not two. I need not worry, fret or plan. He wants me where and as I am. And if I be relaxed and free, He carries out His plan through me. Use that for a long time. Still use that sometimes. Today I did all this stuff

and it's all good. The book says it's all good. At the bottom of page 87, the bottom of the last full paragraph, it says be quit

to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they have to offer. There's a whole world out there full of stuff

in addition to not in substitution 4

And that was the mistake I made. I never did what it talks about on page 86 and 87. And consequently when I was about 17 or 18 years sober, I guess I somewhere in there, I know it was after 15 and not 20, a guy that I sponsor came up to me and he was sober over 10 years. He was sober a long time and he he's asking me pointedly

for concrete direction on what to do in step 11.

Well, the problem is is that I don't have a home run for him. I

done so many things that I don't really know what to tell him

because there's nothing is definitive. I mean, it's all good,

but there's not one thing where I can say, oh, this is it. And I don't get what to tell him. So I there's a fall back position sponsors use. And if your sponsors use this, it's usually because he doesn't know you say, well, do what it says in the book. You know, I guess because I don't really know what to tell him. Well, that that SOB actually started doing what it said in the book and in no time at all he was doing better than I was. I don't like that. That's a that's, that's not good.

And what is happening to him is he's reaping the emotional balance that occurs when you've pushed yourself out of the way and you're better carrying out the decision you made in Step 3, which is the point

of Step 11:00 and 12:00 and 10:11 and 12:00. It's not to hone myself into such a state of spiritual perfection. I glow in the dark,

right? The ego wants to use meditation to be up here

the way the books designed. It's to bring me right here, right with you or my fellow travelers are so I can maximize my usefulness. Remember in step 3:00, we, we took a stance

of self abandonment when I said to my, my father, I said here, take me for you to build with me and you to do with me

as you will. I don't get a vote. I'm advocating my opinion, my judgment, whatever I'll take whatever you give me. I'm out of the this is good. This is bad business. That's the position I'm trying to take now. I'm asking to relieve me the bondage of self because I can't. It's hard for me to take that kind of position and I'm doing all of that not for my own self enhancement.

I'm doing that all for one reason, one reason only, so that victory over these difficulties with the bondage of self

would put me in a position where I can bear witness to those I'm going to help of his power, his love, and his way of life. It is all to to put me in a position to help others, period. It's not for self enhancement. There's nothing in Alcoholics Anonymous that's self grandizing self and matter of fact, we're moving away from self. We're moving away.

That's the point.

And when I started doing this IA, couple things occurred. One was I found a part, a little tiny passage in step 11 in the 12 by 12 where all of a sudden I knew why the first paragraph on the top of 86 was about inventory or self examination. In the 12 by 12 it it says that self examination, meditation and prayer when taken separately can bring about much benefit and relief. And that's true.

But I'm not in the relief business. I've spent my whole life as a relief junkie.

I'm looking for something more important.

I'm looking for something that is, if I don't find it, I will die. I'm looking for freedom from the bondage of self. The book says if we don't get over this, if we don't get free of this selfishness, we must or it kills us. I have to find this freedom from the bondage of self

and I have to grow an understanding and effectiveness and fitting myself to be a maximum service to God's kids.

And so I that's the point.

And it says, even though these things taken separately can bring much benefit and relief, it said when where they're logically related in interwoven

as they are on page 86 and 87, they create an unshakable foundation for life. The reason that self examination this inventory paragraph on page 86, which actually is more detailed than the than the inventory in step 10 on the previous pages, it's actually more specific.

And the reason it's there is it's supposed to be you can't, you're not. We're not supposed to separate

prayer, meditation and self examination. They're a package, an interacting package,

very similar to what a sailor will use. If, if you were, if you were to go down here to the harbor, say on somewhere wherever there's a harbor, not on the island or wherever the the big ships are, the boats are. And you were to rent or buy the the finest sailboat money could buy. I mean, no, you spared no expense. You got the absolute best piece of equipment there was

and you decided, as we decide in step three toward, to move towards a life of self abandoned

service only you decide. Your goal is the island of Bermuda and you go to the nautical library and you diligently study the first step, nine steps of navigation and you plot a perfect course for the island of Bermuda. Perfect. Right on the money man. And you set out of that harbor and you're right for Bermuda. It doesn't matter how great your boat is. It doesn't matter how perfect your course is every single day,

the winds and the tides and the currents are going to move you off course.

It's not because you have a bad boat. It's not because you played with your tiller too much. It's just the way it is. And if you're a sailor, you must take a an examination of where you are every single day so that you can realign yourself to the destination every day. So tomorrow you're going to find yourself

off course again. Of course you are.

The clamoring of self is constant, it's consistent, and it's ever present. It is as present as God.

It never goes away

so that I can reset my course back to the destination to fall off, to reset. That's why this is a chronic spiritual malady rather than an acute spiritual. If it was an acute spirituality, I'd never leave the course for Bermuda. I just realized I was over here. I'd go like that and I'd just stay there. But chronic means it's constant,

constant readjustment, constant readjustment. And I we see people in Alcoholics Anonymous that are deluded that by the clamoring of the ego that we've arrived. We're good to go now. We're comfortable,

we don't have to keep doing this. I my sponsor, he's not really that bright.

You know, I this service thing, I God, I've done a lot of that

for God's sakes. Is there no end to my goodness?

Don't really need to do that as much. We start compromising step 10 and 11. I mean, if I ever was wrong I would admit,

but you know the chances are slim now.

And what happens, what happens is we get re inundated by self again and we don't know it. We because the ego says, oh, you're so spiritual, you know, the ego tells me that I am I, I got the deal right? Because that's what self, the clamoring is. Self always does that. And then what happens is I start to get further away from the destination and further back into self,

and then I see that I've seen this 100 times. I used to go to a noon meeting every day in Las Vegas

where it was what Scott calls an an open disgusting meeting where they start the meeting out with does anybody have a problem? Which is like, where did that come from? I mean, how did that, how did that get into a a

this is a room full of people who can't manage their own life. I think I need advice from them. Oh,

on relationships,

which they're also good at. So

every once in a while, at this noon meeting, I would see someone run to the meeting in crisis,

extreme crisis, because they've been, they've been out there on a limb, building a structure, a House of Cards, out of self, business, big money, house, marriage, kids, prestige, property, power, or at least delusion of it. And then all of a sudden something happens.

The ego. There's no problem as long as the egos getting its way. And then all of a sudden something happens. Maybe they catch their wife sleeping with someone else. Maybe the IRS starts taking stuff from them. Maybe they get busted because they got some little devious little self gratification thing going over here and they have it hidden in the closet and they get arrested for it. Something happens. And all of a sudden the House of Cards starts to collapse and now they're in panic

crisis mode. And they run to the meeting and the chairman says, does anybody have a problem? And they just raised their hand and they dump this garbage on the meeting looking to be fixed and looking for advice. Well, I'll tell you something.

You can't get advice in an A meaning. It's like trying to take a drink of water out of a fire hose.

Everybody in the meeting immediately starts sharing at them

and, and I've seen this a dozen times. Inevitably, halfway through the meeting, they can't take it anymore. They'll get up and bolt out of the meeting and leave the meeting spinning on their problem. Now they've just took a whole room full of people hostage. They've left and that they're still hostage, right? And who got helped out of that? Nobody got help. That matter of fact that we lose some of those that that guy bolted out of there because who wasn't getting the relief he was seeking here?

Chances are he went to a bar, a dope man's house, maybe a psychiatrist to get some medication. Maybe he went out and gambled, maybe went out and picked up a hooker. But the clamoring of self was in the need for some kind of self gratification, self enhancement. Self relief was so intense because you can get so far out there that you can't. I think you can get beyond God's grace. Now that sounds weird,

but I think it's possible for me to get so entrenched in self there's no room for anything else. The ego has the capacity, if I fill up with me completely, to blocking anything else from coming in there. That's why most of us, you look at Alcoholics dying of alcoholism. Why don't they get help? You can't until some, until you're broken. You can't until the ego has been reduced just enough to allow a little bit of help to come in a little bit of light,

right? These guys, we lose these guys and and the alcoholic mind and the ego will always, will always justify itself. So you think you're on the going to the Bermuda on the boat

and you start seeing chunks of ice floating by with Penguins on it. Now you have to explain to yourself, do you know there they have Penguins on Bermuda? They I they really do. You know, it's a new thing they got now. It's. Yeah, they're on a geographical. They're on AG. Yeah, right. Yeah, They they've

how often we justify, we start telling our we. You got to tell yourself that little story about how this is this isn't wrong. This is fine, right?

And we get so far out there we can't get back one of the questions daily that that always that I love and it always kind of sometimes it kind of sticks in my craw a little bit. It says where we kind and loving towards all,

all

I'm kind and loving to the ones that deserve kind and loving. I'm kind and loving the ones that are kind and loving to me. But the book doesn't say that. It says all. If if I'm serious about the decision in in Step 3, then I have advocated and given up my judgment of who deserves service.

The ultimate the ultimate spiritual path is service without prejudice.

Can you help the ones you don't like?

Can you be loving and kind towards the ones that ain't doing it right? What about the can you be loving and kind towards the people in AAA that don't have much of a program?

Can you be kind and loving towards all?

This is a big deal.

This is a stretch for guys like me

This I love this this middle of page 87 we where talks about we ask especially for freedom from self will and they're careful caution. We are careful to make no request for ourselves, only

the I, I. I think that word only in step 11 is so important because anything other than that is I'm back in playing God again.

I is, is a result of the spiritual awakening

in the steps. I went back and revisited not only my religion, but a lot of religions. And, and one of the things I realized in that came to me in looking back at the 10 commandments, which is the basis of judo, all judo Christian theology is in the second commandment. I think I misinterpreted that and I think that my teachers as a kid misinterpreted it to me

when they said that the 2nd commandment, for those who don't know what it is, it says I, I shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

That I thought I was told and educated to believe that that meant I'm not supposed to cuts and not cussing is a cool deal because it, it's, it offends some people and it, it's and it often is a vehicle for resentment and hostility and anger which pushes people away and makes them uncomfortable. But I think objectively, what would be the vainest use I could use of God's name? Wouldn't it be to pray for my will?

I mean, could you get anymore vain than that? I am going to instruct the creator of the universe.

I mean

objectively. Is there anything vainer than that?

Right, God, I I know you have it all together here, but this guy's cancer. God. Hey, what are you thinking? Hey, come on.

Kids on drugs. God, hey, come on, it's time to step up.