The 11th tradition at the New Horizon group in Bend, OR

The format of this meeting is as follows. We will hear a presentation of the tradition from our literature literature. Then we will have about 25 minutes of share time for those who would like to share a personal experience with the tradition being studied. There will be an opportunity at the meet at the end of the meeting for Q&A. Please feel free to ask your questions in the chat at any time during the meeting. The questions will be answered by a a literature reference only.

I've asked Bridget to read the 1st 3 paragraphs of Appendix One from the back of the Big Book,

those now in its fold. Alcoholics Anonymous has made the difference between misery and sobriety, and often the difference between life and death. A A can of course mean just as much to to uncommon Alcoholics, yet not yet reached. Therefore, no Society of men and women ever had a more urgent need for continuous effectiveness and permanent unity. We Alcoholics see that we must work together and hang together

else most of us will finally die alone.

The 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous are we as believe the best answers of our experience, that our experience is yet to given to those ever yet or ever urgent questions. How can a a best survive best function and how can a a stay the whole and still survive? Thanks Bridget. I will now say a prayer for open mindedness to get us started.

God,

please help me to set aside everything I think I know about AAA and our three legacies. Please allow me to keep an open mind and the ability to learn something new through the literature today so that I may have a whole new experience with both the Fellowship as well as these 36 spiritual principles. Amen.

I will now turn the floor over to Jacob from the West Portland Group, who has agreed to be our presenter today. Thanks for being here, Jacob.

Thanks, Pam. I'm Jaygo. I'm an alcoholic from Portland, OR.

My Home group is the W Portland group and I've been asked to speak on Tradition 11 today, so we'll be talking about that a little bit. I'll start by saying that I do not represent a A as a whole. I am just one person. I'm just an average alcoholic. Middle of the road, smack tab in the middle.

And so

I'll just go ahead and start with another prayer. Thanks, Pam, for that one. But I'm going to start with the third step, prayer.

God, Ioffer myself to Thee to build with me and do with me, as that will relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do. Thy will take away my difficulties. That victory over them may bear witness to those that would help of that power. Thy love and their way of life may do that will always

the long form of tradition. 11 is on page 192 of the 12, and 12 is also in the Big Book.

Traditional 11 states.

Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity.

We think AA ought to avoid sensational advertisements. Advertising our names and pictures, as AA members ought not be broadcast, filmed or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion.

There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us

and the short form.

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, in films. A little piece that I really love about the long form that I just read is this extra sentence. There's never a need to praise ourselves. And for me, that really kind of summarizes a lot of the spirit of

not only the traditions, but

especially Tradition 11 in our relation to the public.

I'm going to flip over to

Language of the Heart, and

I have the online version of Language of the Heart that I paid for actually. So it did go to supporting GSO, but I'm not sure exactly what page it is. I do know what segment it is. So if you have the book, it is on tradition 11 October 1948,

and I think it's somewhere in the middle of the reading. Says so. The 11th tradition

Stan Sentinel over the life lines, announcing that there is no need for self praise,

that is better to let our friends recommend us, and that our whole public relations policy, contrary to our usual customs, should be based upon the principle of attraction rather than promotion. Shot in the arm methods are not for us. No press agents, no promotional devices, no big names. The hazards are too great. Immediate results will always be elusive because

easy shortcuts to notariety can generate permanent and smothering liabilities.

More and more, therefore, are we emphasizing the principle of personal anonymity as it applies to our public relations.

We ask of each other the highest degree of personal responsibility. And this respect, as a movement we have been before now tempted to exploit the names of our well known public characters. So for me,

you know, this was, this was written a little bit ago, 1948, before the traditions as we know it in its short form was actually accepted by the Alcoholics Anonymous, Anonymous as a whole in 1950 at the General Service Conference.

And this language of the heart comes from Bill's writings to the Grapevine, which

had a pretty large readership for everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous, kind of selling people on the traditions and why we need them. The whole back story to this is that Alcoholics Anonymous could have really used some public relations policy and some public attention towards towards the program. At that time,

it was not a popular program. They had just published the book and it was not selling at all. And now you have a bunch of people who didn't

have a lot of money to begin with who published a book with their own funds. It's not selling, they're not making their money back, and not a lot of people are actually getting sober from alcohol. So it looked like a pretty dismal time for Alcoholics Anonymous and a time when they really could have used some

a hand from from, you know, a newspaper or some celebrity to come out and say Alcoholics Anonymous is the way to go, you know, sign up here or, you know, a politician or whoever public figure it was.

It's really amazing to me that the entire time in this early part of a A, they were thinking about the long term of a A. You know, it wasn't about where they're at in that situation.

It wasn't about if that would have been a totally good clean thing for them to do, to advertise a A, because it was something that they had had a miracle happen in their lives. They were able to recover from alcoholism, which wasn't something that was, you know, known in the public at all that you could possibly do. The drunk wasn't even accepted by the hospitals at that time. They're turning Alcoholics away

and they had gotten this amazing gift

and they wanted to share it with the world.

To me, when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous,

I didn't, I had no idea what the traditions had to do with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the reason why I said the third step prayer in the beginning, which I think you know, for the,

for where I'm at in my program,

the third step is a necessity for each day for me to actually apply the rest of the steps in my life. I have to absolutely, positively hand over myself, my ideas of my own self, my ideas of what I think the program of a, a should be or how I am working it or how you should be working it. And that is a requirement, that little line in there.

There is never a need to praise ourselves

directly. Relates to that third step. Prayer for me

Now where I can share on this is I don't have a direct access personally to the radio host down the street or a television show,

but I do have social media. And this is a topic that comes up quite often

as

it's almost like a big opinion debate from people in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Should I post about my sobriety on my social media? And this is a question for myself, should I be now that I've gotten this gift, I've worked the steps,

I get my little chip, you know, that my local Home group has given me and they're all celebrating. I have, you know, whatever amount of sobriety, a year of sobriety and

immediately I want to share that with the people that I have harmed in the past, which a lot of those people are the people on my social media.

I remember the reaction I got when I first wrote something up there that just said

I'm I didn't write a big post. I wrote I'm getting sober one liner and I got every single person almost in my whole thing, like hundreds of comments saying like, Oh my gosh,

thank God that you were getting sober. And I got offended because I felt like all my friends were keeping from me that I had a problem this whole time.

I had no idea. And I was like, Dang, like that's, that's pretty messed up that you all thought that the whole time. They're like, dude, you can do it just one day at a time, man. Like just keep going. And I'm just like, all right,

so of course I, you know, my, my, my Jacob wants to go on there a year later and tell all those people, hey, guess what?

You know, I did this. You know, I'm the one that got that year

and I'm responsible for this coin that I got. So here you go. This is what it looks like. Fancy little triangle on it. And it looks a little like mythical or something, a little bit witchy. But you know, I want to look cool with that coin. So yeah, that it was shown to me pretty early,

thankfully by good sponsorship and getting in touch with the right people that we don't post

our coins. Well, I was offended by this. Now, like, what am I supposed to do? Not share with the rest of the world that this miracle that's happened in my life? It doesn't make sense to me not to be able to share that with everyone. And by the way, like I'm not that popular. So my social media doesn't have a million followers. I probably have like 35 or 40 people, you know, that I even know on there. So

so how is that affecting it? I'm not. I don't have this big stage.

It let's separate for a second the idea that I'm going to go

do something in the world of the opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous, because that's a whole other ego problem.

But let's bring it into myself. What in myself for Jacob, am I aiming to do when I post my coin on social media?

Of course I want recognition. Of course I want other people to see how I got that year. And the beautiful thing about that is that it just comes right back to my character defects. The the fact that I want to alter my world in the way that people look at me now as a sober human of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because of course I came into this program and I thought if I just have, if I just get sober and I work the 12 steps,

umm, obviously that huge promotion in my life is going to happen because now I'm sober. And of course God had this great destiny for me to become this amazing person in the world. It turns out I'm just a run-of-the-mill drunk that caught sober that by the grace of God is sober today and is, you know,

working spiritual program recover from alcoholism.

And the most beautiful thing that I can do is show up in my life in a way that I could not show up before. To show up as a son, as a father, as a friend. These are the basic things I was not able to do before. And so all of a sudden that has been opened up. And I say, that's cool, but I want more.

You know, that's where my mind goes is that that's not enough for me to be able to show up for my life. So I want more recognition. I want to spread this out however I want. So a lot of this, the traditions which we're still focused on, Tradition 11, but the traditions for me really speak to humility. Anonymity is synonymous with humility,

and I didn't see that when I first read it. I just saw the word that people stumbled over in the beginning of the meeting,

you know, where they just trip up on the word anonymity all the time. And I would secretly just be laughing at them. And over time, that turned into love, thank God. But

that humility that I can have that here's this program

that not everyone gets,

very few of all of the Alcoholics in the world that need this program actually get this program. And even fewer of those get it and stay here, but here. But this is this is the solution. This is how I have got sober. This is how I have got recovery. This is how I have found my higher power

and for me to go and put myself in a position where I am representing AA

and I am saying to the public, hey guys, look, I am the one that knows how to do this,

which right off the bat is a problem. If I'm saying something like that, I'm the one that knows how to do this. If you want to get sober from alcohol, then come to me. Not to my program, not to, not to this group. This. The hundreds and hundreds of people that reached out their hand to me. The hundreds of people that that held me while I cried, that held me while I shook, that gave me a place to live,

they had nothing to do with it.

I had I had all the credit. So come to me if you want to get sober. And if I'm going on my social media, I'm saying that then I did not learn anything in this program. The people that reached out to me are the people that did it for fun and for free. They didn't ask for recognition,

they didn't expect anything, and now that I get to hand that to other people, then I do the same for my sponsees.

Not everyone of my sponsees stays because I'm not the one responsible for keeping them sober.

They have a higher power, and I believe that other people have higher powers,

even the people who are not in this program, and that their higher power,

we'll figure out some weird way that I don't understand to get them in here or not if that is their higher power as well.

So letting go of the ego, having a little bit of humility, releasing me of the bondage of that self are the main factors of applying this tradition in my life. I get to do that because I'm walking as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't dress up in any other part of my life like this, and I don't dress up so that you think that I look cool. I dress up because I want to represent a A for others and because it's the tradition of my Home group. It's pretty much as basic as that,

so I will wrap up

by just relating this to hit the point. Just one more thing further, because I saw a lot of stuff on Tradition 5.

What is our primary purpose

coming back to the social media piece or even talking to other people? You know, if my social media is the group of people that I get together for brunch with and chat about how much I know about a A,

what am I attaching to

a representative of AA? If my

conversation before

talking about traditions or talking about AA or being a representative for that is my political opinion. And this isn't to say that you shouldn't talk about your political opinion. And there isn't any shouldn't or shoulds about this whole thing. Like this isn't like that.

When I post something about my opinion about politics, let's say you know I have a certain opinion about that or I have a certain opinion about

my local politics. I don't want them building the,

you know, the new building down the street, the condos across the street. There's a lot of condos in Portland

and I have a person who follows me who's trying to move into those condos. They're seeing me post about this thing and you can imagine how much more controversial issues there are than the condo thing. But just bear with me if if I'm posting about that saying, hey, I'm a representative for Alcoholics Anonymous. But just so you know.

The condos and you should also go to this church

because that's the only way you you get sober.

I know that most people in AA, like in this room know that my church and my condo problem is not linked to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know that

someone who's just getting sober

with a day of sobriety, shaking like I was, does not know that They do not see that they do. They have not. They don't. Even if you told me about traditions, which you did on the first day, it went out of my head. It was not it. I was not capable. You could tell me the most powerful speech of your life and all I would remember is that you said hi to me.

You know, like that is that I'm like, wow, they said hi to me. Now what am I going to do about where I'm going to live? What am I going to do about this? Like that was all that was going through my head when everyone like prays at the end of the meeting

and it's like sounds like this conglomerate of like weird stuff. That was my head for the first six months. That's what it sounded like inside of here. So I don't know how someone is going to understand any of that about what we're talking about here. But we can apply the spiritual principle and that is something that can be seen through our actions.

By not posting on social media, which I've had to have this conversation

with my sponsees,

I get to show an example of why I don't try to put my ego tied up with Alcoholics Anonymous.

And that is important to me because I believe that is the principle, the spiritual principle of our program.

And I really want to hit that home. That is our primary purpose to help the suffering alcoholic. And if I put a barrier between me and that suffering alcoholic who has the condo issue and I have a different opinion on the condo issue or church or political opinion, I am keeping them from the miracle that I'm trying to share.

And I tell you honestly, I don't want a lot of people in here to have the exact same opinions as me

because that would be a really crazy meeting.

I don't want a bunch of people like minded. I want all of the people that are Alcoholics because it doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter what your opinions are outside of the room if you're alcoholic. That is the only thing that I care about when we're talking about alcoholism,

and that is the only thing I want to bring into these rooms, a safe place, especially in a closed meeting, that we can come together and we can talk about alcoholism. We can learn from each other, We can share our experience, strength and hope. And that is so simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to keep me from studying those weird traditions that people talk about sometimes,

you know, that's just a bunch of rules. It's a spiritual program and the spiritual program is in the traditions, in the concepts,

in the three legacies.

So thank you so much for letting me share today on Tradition 11 and I would love to hear any questions that you guys have at the end of the meeting and also what you guys have to share. Thank you for being here and thanks for letting me share.