Workshop entitled Upping your Game at the Wilson House in East Dorset, VT

This computer. So everybody be aware that I'm adding this recording to. So let me move on. Welcome everybody. Welcome to the continuation of our

Wilson House weekend that got abruptly interrupted by

a hurricane or tropical Storm. Henry

Berta, the

executive director of the Wilson House, wanted to to speak to us for a moment. So I'm gonna give her the stage and ask you to speak up. Berta,

absolutely. Thank you, Malcolm. I really appreciate it. First of all, I want to say I hope everybody got home safely and just in time. And the storm really didn't materialize in Vermont other than a lot of water, but no wind. And so we didn't have any

damage to the house, etc, that we thought we might have with trees and so forth. Earlier this summer in a Facebook post, I said gratitude is enjoying a great summer in East Dorset, and it certainly is. And the generous donation that you folks gave to the Wilson House just plays right into that. We're so, so grateful. It was a great weekend for all of us. We enjoyed meeting all of you.

We hope to welcome you back this time next year. And in the meantime,

if anybody's interested in that volunteer Academy in the winter, be in touch with me. We would be happy to

give you a chance to show your talents at the Wilson House. But again, my thanks on behalf of our board and all of our staff for being with us. Thank you Malcolm. Thank you. Berta and and I have not shared with everybody yet, but we are collection on

Saturday afternoon yielded $920.00 for the Wilson House. Yay. And we gave an additional $1000 from your entry

fees to the Wilson House. So we gave a total contribution of $19120.00. So thank you everybody. That's much, much appreciated. Thank you.

People are asking about the audio recordings of the weekend.

The audio recordings of the weekend have not been been put into a position that you can download them yet. I will get them sorted out after we complete the event. I need this last one or two sessions to to complete the event.

Then it will will get changed into an MP3 format. It'll get loaded up on archive.org. It'll also get loaded up on

another site, and I will e-mail all of you the link as soon as that's done, probably Sunday,

somewhere in that time frame.

And on that note, I'm going to change my view to speaker view and ask Chris to pick up the thread.

All right, thank you, Malcolm. You know, I, I really want to thank Berta and Meryl and all all the people that help out at the Wilson House. It really was a great weekend. You know, for anybody that hasn't been there, it really is. It's a destination type of a retreat or workshop.

And Malcolm, thank you so much for organizing everything. You know, there was there was so many moving parts and you just did, you just did a, a, a great job. And Steve, you know what a pleasure was doing, doing this workshop with you that it was really an outstanding, an outstanding thing for me to be have been a part of. So, so on, on Saturday night,

Steve started to touch a little bit on, on step 10 and just

quick, quick review.

You know, we've, we've, we've fully conceded to ourselves that we're alcoholic and everything that that means. We've come to believe that there's a power that can solve this problem and move us, move us forward into some type of, of emotional, physical and mental health. We've made a decision to engage in whatever this Alcoholics Anonymous thing is going to look like,

you know, place ourselves unreservedly under the care and protection of God and and and wisdom in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're we're we, we make a an inventory of the manifestations of self, the the major manifestations of self. It really have defeated us, our grocer handicaps. We share that.

We share that with a sponsor of Spiritual Advisor. Some people use priests. You know, there's a lot of,

there's a lot of latitude in that. I prefer, you know, doing it with a sponsor, but that's not absolutely essential. But we share it as honestly as we can, holding nothing back.

And and then we take a look at the concepts of step 6 and step seven. You know, we're move, we're moving into

a relationship, a working relationship with God

as, as we're doing this, it's

if we've been doing our job, we're becoming aware and we're becoming awake to the fact that there's a, there's a power, there's a power that we're starting to really get in touch with. And we look at Step 6 and Step 7 and we realize that, that these, these handicaps, these, these difficulties

that, that we've discovered in the fourth step and, and any, anywhere else where we discover them,

they're really going to be too large for us to just whittle away ourselves. We're, we're working on this relationship with God and we become willing to have the, the character defects that we really find objectionable. We become willing to have those removed. And then we say a prayer for God to take, take all the good and the bad. You know Steve, Steve said on Saturday night.

Good and bad. Listen,

didn't know the difference between good and bad. The things that I thought were good when I came into AI ended up being bad and the things that I thought were bad ended up being good. So I'm a really bad judge of good and bad. So, so God take, take all this stuff, all this stuff. Give me, give me the power, give me the direction. Help me grow

in effectiveness and grow an understanding and grow in relationship with you

and fit me. Fit me to be of service to my fellows because it's dawning on me by step seven that this whole thing is about

creating a new Chris who is not just interested in his own plans and designs and how things impact him, But this new Chris is now all of a sudden starting to pay attention to the other people out there in the world.

And, and, and, and there's an awakening to the fact that I need, I need to help where I can and I need to be of service where I can. And then, then we look at steps 8:00 and 9:00. You know, a lot of damage in the past. Some of us have more damage than others,

but it's absolutely essential, I believe, to make an effort to try to set right the wrongs it it's just it's incumbent to to to become free. I need to be conscious of the fact

that I've done what I could to set right the damage in the past. So, you know, I put a list together. I become willing to make these amends and I actually go out and I, I, I start making up. And by this time a wholesale transformation is underway, You know, in my personality and my behavior, in my, in my belief systems, it's a fundamental, you know, change in perspective

up and an abundant amount of power is flowing in the, the spiritual power that enables me to do, do the things that I couldn't just do on my own self-centered, self aware, you know, perspective. I, you know, I'm, I'm all of a sudden, you know, speaking and doing all this crazy stuff that, that I never would have felt comfortable doing before. So this is power that's, that's coming in. And I'm starting to understand a little bit about freedom too,

being free of the shame, the guilt, the remorse of the past. As I start to clean it up, I become, I become free of the emotional attachment to, to, to the, to that past, you know, that painful past. And then we, you know, we, we, we move into step 10.

This thought brings us to step step 10. You know, you know what, what thought? The thought of the promises that the men step promises. They're they're, they're amazing promises. You know, one of my favorite is I can be alone at perfect peace and ease.

What a what a great price. You know, there are periods of time in my life where I don't know about anybody else. For one of my favorite things to do in between all this service and working and family, you know what I like to do nothing. That's what I like to do. I like to do nothing

and it just be alone at perfect peace and ease and just being like a meditative state, you know, sitting on the couch and my wife will come in and she go, what are you doing? I'll be like nothing. What do you mean nothing? But but it's it's one of it's one of my it's one of my favorite promises. So the concepts of these promises, you know, bring us

bring us to Step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.

You know, if all you do is highlight the instructions and Step 10 and Step 11, it's, it's not a huge heavy lift. You know, this is this is really this, this is really, really stuff that any of us can do. Now, another thing, you know, I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here. One of the things I've really been discovering in this year,

and because this big book really is alive for somebody like me,

I gain new perspective every time I go through it. I learn more about it every every year, every month that goes by. And I'm, you know, I'm still in awe of just the, the, the quality of this writing and the impact that this can have on the, on the alcoholic, the solution to alcoholism. But what I'm really seeing these days is I'm seeing the mystical qualities of Bill's writing more and more and more,

you know, we've entered the world of the spirit is in here. That's, that's, that's a pretty, that's a pretty mystical statement, you know, like this is deep, deep stuff

that that can be accessed by anyone who's willing to take the action. That's, that sets it up and it, you know, it's, it's amazing to me. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past.

So it's giving us some instruction. We've entered the world of the spirit. Our next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness. It should continue for our lifetime. And then and then there's some there's some watchwords and these go all the way back to like step the Step 3 information on page 60 to 62, right? It says continue, continue to watch for selfishness,

dishonesty, resentment and fear.

Those those are the major manifestations of the self that had defeated me. And so, so the self doesn't get completely eradicated. We we have, we have to be aware of the manifestations of self. We need to recognize them as such.

And then we need to we need to take action

and the action it says we take is when these crop up, we ask God it wants to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly. If we farm anyone now that's all previous step work that the the step exercises that we're we've done. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. It even stretches a little bit into step 12. You know, this, this the Oxford Group, the the Oxford group way back when they understood

sometimes you can get, you could get somebody in and you could evangelize the hell out of them. And, and they were soapbox standing come to Jesus people like crazy. And a year later they burned out. They, they got, they, they, you know, found other things to do with their time.

And so that they concentrated on a concept known as continuance. And this was, this is an Oxford Group principle continuous, you know, I talked to, when I'm talking to my sponsors, I, I emphasize over and over and over again

consistency, consistency and meeting steps, service and sponsorship, you know, consistency in those four areas,

an equal sign to recover, you know, permanently. If there's permanent consistency, there's permanent recovery in these, in these, in these principles and these steps. So

love and tolerance of others are on code and we've ceased fighting anything or anyone.

Now, when I first read that, I was like, you've got to be kidding. What about my neighbor? You know what? You know, what about at work? You know, I'm not going to let him step on me. You know, I had all these reasons why, you know, what about the, the, the, the, the contentious group conscience where you got to stand up. You know, I mean, how do you, how do you not fight anything or anyone?

And, you know, I've got to tell you,

I'm at a point today where I can honestly send you. I don't fight anyone or, or anything. I, you know, maybe I disagree, you know, maybe, maybe I've got another perspective, but I'm not engaged in the fight anymore. You know what I mean? Here's a good one, especially for the new people. For by this time Saturday, will will have returned. And then there's a whole series of, of alcohol promises,

the, the promises that we were going to remain separated safely

from alcohol. There's probably 10 of them. And, and again, you know, people, people that relapse, I have a feeling for the most part, the relapse occurs because they, they haven't taken the action to get up to, up to this, up to this step.

You know, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna bounce it over to Steve now because I have a on Zoom, I, I can keep talking. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna be conscious of that and hand it over to Steve.

Thanks, Chris. Good evening, everyone. Steve Lee, Alcoholic. Yeah,

I don't suffer from the same self restraint that Chris does, but I will do my best. And and I wanna start also by saying what a great time I had this past weekend and sorry we had to cut it short, but so great to spend time with you guys and so great to spend it at at the Wilson House. Bertha, thank you and and your crew for being such wonderful host.

I'm really grateful for that. And,

and I'm going to say a couple of things that wrap up on step 10 because it just made me think about it as, as Chris was talking. And, and one of those is, is the point he made that that as we did here to the 10th step, It says because we are current, not through with the steps, but we're current in our efforts in applying those and beginning those amends and, and, and being current, it says I've entered the world of the spirit,

but I've entered the world of the spirit in the same way that I enter the foyer of your home. I, I am barely in, you know, I've just stepped in and, and, and

doing 1011 and 12 and adding the prayer and meditation and working with others and practicing these principles in all my affairs gives me access to the rest of the spiritual house, you know, and, and I want to go deeper and deeper in and sit down and, and make myself in home

and

to cease fighting anything in anyone. You know, it says here that we continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. And I will tell you, I, I, when I showed up here at, at step 10 the first time, I was absolutely honed in on looking for that resentment, dishonesty and, and fear. I was just looking at it in you rather than in me. I was noticing it still in, in the, the folks around me and I didn't realize that this is really where I,

I want to hold that mirror up. And, and if I am looking for those things in myself and not in a not in a, a self obsessive way, not in a beat myself up way, not in a be a harsh judge of myself way, but just in the way that, that I look in the mirror before I leave the house in the morning. You know, I get dressed and I will tell you. You can't tell it when you run into me during the day. But at some point that morning,

I looked in the mirror, checked my outfit out and said, all right, this will work. I'm taking this out today.

This is the package and and sometimes I forget to look closely enough in that mirror to see that I've got a blemish on my shirt or a tear in my slack. So, you know, and and so all through the day, and I know you guys do this because I know many of the people on here are as.

Self-centered as I might tend to be that that several times during the day, if you walk by a if you walk by a mirror, you're for sure taking a glance and seeing how how you're holding up during the day.

Actually, if you're walking down the street, you're liable to look into a window to catch your reflection just to see if this package looks as good as it did when I left this morning.

And that's a little bit of what that 10th step is, our version of taking that spiritual look at ourselves, you know, and that's particularly true as I begin to full step 11 into this and I'm preparing myself for my day. I'm getting grounded and connected with the with God and with me as so I can go out and be useful to you

and but that can wear off pretty quick. And so I need I need to check in the spiritual mirror several times a day to to see if my

it used. I was going to say to see if my hair was still neatly combed, but that hasn't been an issue for quite a while. But

yeah, but so, so it's just that's kind of that spot check inventory that's a ten step talks about, right. And so I just kind of wanted to touch base on that. And and then when I'm transitioning and as I said Saturday, it is my belief now. I mean, in essence, we begin steps 10 Lebanon actually steps 9/10/11 and 12 kind of all at the same time.

Now it's kind of hard to do all of those same things and 11 motion, but there's not, I don't wait till I'm done making amends to begin cleaning up my new mistake. It says I do that as I go, as I go about cleaning up the past and and I certainly don't wait until I'm done with my amends before I begin to

embrace and embark upon that prayer and meditation that continue that that that effort to

become closer and grow that conscious contact with God. So these things kind of begin at the same time, right? But the transition from as I'm transitioning from 10:50, the book says that

that we have, we have carefully followed directions. We've begun to snitch the flow of his spirit into us. So obviously when I enter the world of the Spirit, I begin to sense the flow

of his will into me. And it says I began to get developed this vital sense. So I'm, I'm, you know, I've got the,

I've got the normal 5 senses, you know, our human senses of, of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. Now I got to tell you at my age about three of those is pretty, pretty significantly diminished,

but I've still got, but now I'm getting this vital six cents, which is a spiritual sense. We talked earlier in the book about the 4th dimension. And and when I'm in that 4th dimension, that's when I have entered the spiritual world. That's, that's the spiritual dimension that's added to the three-dimensional world that I'm living in, of height,

width and depth. Now we've added the spiritual components. So I got 4 dimensions in play and I've got 6 senses in play. Man, I'm armed and dangerous now, right? I am ready

to be out in the world in a new way. I have I have more at my disposal. It radically changes my experience of you, my experience of me, my experience of the world at large. I am seeing things differently. I'm feeling things differently. I have access to things that I did not have access to. They're there. And and I got to tell you, as I mentioned the other day, that that that I'm in and out of that 4th dimension and I am I

off and on with my access to that sixth sense because because self shows back up and the book will tell me as I'm engaged in this eleven step that I remind myself

and self, by the way, is, is my ego, my mind. I remind myself many times each day that I will not mind be done. I have to check in the spiritual mirror to see if I am if, if I'm still connected

or have I begun to run the show again. Because in fact, that happens so subtly that I don't even always recognize that it's happened. That's what this self examination is about. I mean, courage to take a quick feat many times during the day. And at the end of the day, I've given a review to kind of see how I'm doing in that. So to check myself again before I call it a night. And

but, but I want to stop and, and, and tell a couple of stories that many of you on here who, who have,

who I've spent time with before, have heard me tell. But they're the only stories I got. I can make some stuff up and I'm prone to, but these, this ones true. And because you heard me talk earlier in the weekend, those of you were, there was my resistance initially

to the idea of a higher power, to the idea of God, to the idea that I might access this higher power, whether it whether there is such a thing or not, I certainly didn't feel like I had access to it.

And this 11th step is encouraging me to seek through prayer and meditation

to improve upon, to build upon, to initiate this conscious contact. See this consciousness. I'm walking around spiritually asleep most of the time. And this is telling me no, let, let's get let's make a conscious contact and awareness of this power. Not only have you stepped in to the foyer of of the spiritual house,

aware that you're there, stop, look around, take it in and then build upon that. And yet I was uncomfortable with all aspects of prayer and meditation and even the language. And again, I won't revisit all that I talked about it, but at about at about 12 years sober, I began to use a phrase

regularly that said I was struggling with meditation.

And we often hear people talk about that, you know, and it's certainly not universal, but many of us will say that meditation is perhaps a little, a little different for us than prayer. We seem to embrace the prayer aspect of things sometimes a little more quickly than we do meditation. Again, that's not universal, but that certainly was true of me. And

I, I was talking to my friend Danny B who lives in Houston, TX, or just outside of Houston in Spring, TX, that some of you know, and

I'm telling Danny about this. And I was going to a, an, a, a conference that Howard Collins was going to be at. And Howard was a devoted practitioner of meditation. And Danny said, you need to go talk to Howard when you get there and talk to Howard about your struggle with meditation.

So I get out there. It was in Oregon. I go up to Howard and and I said, Howard, I'm struggling with meditation. Now, if you know Howard, you can't imagine how excited that made him because he just went old Steve. He rubbed his hands together like a praying mantis. He went, oh, Steve, He said, let's go to my room. So we head off to his hotel room

and he said, what are you doing now? And I said, well, how are they really not doing anything now?

And he just tackled, he went, oh, I see your problems. Not technique, it's commitment. You're not struggling with meditation, you're not meditating. He said, are you willing to struggle? He said, because what you're saying is you're you're not, you're not meditating and having a problem with that. Willingness is your problem. Discipline is your problem. Commitment is your problem,

he said. Are you willing to create a space and time where you can struggle with meditation?

And he says, because that's what it's going to take. He said, then you'll figure out what happens in that space and time will evolve. You get, you get to do, you know, it says here in in step 11 that it's an individual adventure, right?

When we talked earlier in the book, which said that each of us in our own language and from our own point of view, talks about how

he established a relationship with God. It says there may be a wide variation in the way each of us conceives up and approaches that power. So my approach, I tend to think of my approach as my approach to prayer and meditation. That's how I'm trying to get close to this higher power. And so some of us will will, you know, take that quiet time and, and, and

sage or incense and chant and, and some of us will, you know, do guided meditations and some of us will just do some contemplated meditation. It just doesn't matter. AA doesn't tear. In fact, I'm encouraged. It says our libraries are in treasure trove. And now we would say Google is a treasure trove of, of information for us to seek. And I've done a million different things because I don't do any of them well.

So I just try them all. And, and I do believe that I am, I am served well by the effort at least as much and by the commitment and by the discipline than I am by what happens in that time. I can't always determine what happens in that space and time, but I can commit the space and time for it to happen. And, and I have found for somebody who resisted the commitment for so long

that the commitment itself

seems to serve me pretty well in a way that I didn't expect. So that's phase one of that for me. That's what this 11th step has. You know, my approach to that has, has been a little bit. I I I want to tell one more aspect of this eleven step and then give it back to Chris.

It talks about the fact that if I, if I stay engaged in this prayer meditation, if I constantly throughout the day remind myself many times each day that will not mind be done.

If when I am agitated or doubtful, I pause and ask for the right thought or direction and I'll stop here. How many times in in your meeting do you hear somebody bring up this part of the 11th step boy? When agitated, we pause and they almost always reference the agitated that hardly ever reference the doubtful 'cause we're we're often we're hardly ever doubtful. We're often agitated

and but I have to stop and make sure I fold both of those in there and say Emma Emma many times each day reminded myself am I pausing and saying oh man, God, what about now just reminding myself to invite God into these into the circumstances of my day. But after a while, this our book suggest that that in in the morning, if I ask

you know that on awakening, if I ask God to divorce my thinking

from South to self seeking dishonest motives. If that's out of the way, I see the world different. SO10I that's what I'm saying. God divorced my thinking. Make sure my thinking isn't clouded by those things by fear, by those seven deadly sins, by pride. Make sure those things aren't coloring the way I'm seeing the world. And if it moves that out of the way, it says my thought life will be placed on a higher plane.

And it even says that that I will begin to get this intuitive thought.

And then I began to rely upon now that's scary. It follows up by saying I'm going to make some big mistakes doing it. But the story I tell connected to this. And again, some of you heard it, but I was headed up to Marty's part of the world about 15 years ago, going to the Ontario Regional Conference. And man, I had a, a new food and a big head. I couldn't wait to go. I, I was excited and, and this was a big deal for me and,

and I got to the airport in Nashville to get on the plane that was going to fly to Detroit and connect to, to Toronto for this,

what I considered this big important thing that made me important. And so I'm, I go to the gate area in Nashville and there's a woman, young woman really holding an infant and, and the mother was just sobbing inconsolably.

And I see this, she's talking to the gate agent and I see this, but we go on and board. It was a small regional jet, you know, whatever that has 50-60 people on it. And we get on and the flight attendant comes on the plane, every seat is filled. And she comes on the plane and she says this woman's brother has been critically injured in a car accident in Detroit, and she's trying to get to his bedside

in the hospital. Would anyone be willing to give up their seat?

Well, intuitively, I knew the right thing to do was give up my seat. I mean, immediately I knew that I needed to give up my seat. But I started thinking, my mind got involved and it was, it was clouded by pride. It was clouded by fear. And as I thought about it, I thought, well, wait a minute, These people invited me. They paid for this ticket. If I don't take this flight, I won't be there in time to do what they invited me to do.

My God, if I don't get to Toronto, all of a, A in Canada, they could crumble

if they don't get to hear my talk. And

so, you know, and as I'm thinking about it and thinking about it, pretty soon they close the door. Nobody gave up their seat and we took off to Detroit

later that night. I'm standing up on this stage in front. I don't know whether a couple of 1000 people, 2500 people

given the talk, talking about spiritual principles,

having missed an opportunity to practice the spiritual principle, given a talk, knowing that the guy they thought they invited would have given up his seat on that airplane.

And man, it just crushed me. And I made a decision then. And I, I've, I've done pretty good with this decision since then. I've decided to listen to the intuitive voice. I think I make as many mistakes as I made before, but I'm just, that's, if I'm going to make the mistake today, I'm going to make it listening to the intuitive voice. And it makes me listen more closely when I make mistakes because again, I will confuse God's voice for for, you know, my will for God's voice

pounds. But, but that's OK. That's gonna happen on either side of that equation. I'm gonna make mistakes. And I've decided to err on the side of trying to trust that intuitive voice because when I am, the

intuition implies that it's not of me, it's not of my brain, it is from somewhere else. And that's why we want to get the channel clear. That's why that prayer meditation is to Get Me Out of the way. So that intuition

will will present itself in an authentic way and those choices will be made on the truth rather than some some fuzzy version of it I give myself.

So, Chris, I'll get it back to you, my friend.

Thank you, Steve.

Or so early on in, in my experience with Alcoholics Anonymous, I,

I was not a big prayer.

So my sponsor was kind of encouraging me a little bit along the way. And when he finally got me to start to do morning and evening prayers, here's how he locked me at he said, Chris, some some days you're going to pray. Some days you're not going to pray. I know you. So the one thing I want you to do is I want you to pay attention to how the days go

when you pray and how the days go when you don't pray. And within three or four weeks, you know, I've, I've had a prayer discipline ever since 3030. Some years meditation I was more confused about and my, my, my perception of what meditation was was colored by

a lot, a lot of Eastern meditative techniques. You know, I started to read, read books on on meditation. I, I, I started to read a lot of

books on centering prayer and, and really what, what, what all that stuff did was give me a real good vocabulary. What, what really helped me was when I actually sat and meditated,

like so much other stuff in Alcoholics Anonymous, I've always wanted to figure it out. I've, I've always, I've always needed to know why. Why do I, why do I need to do this?

And the, the thing that was more transformative than anything else for me was just just taking, taking the action, whether I'm good at meditating or not, whether I'm going to struggle with meditation or not. You know, how about how about how about giving it, giving it a, a shot

And you know, I absolutely adore my meditative Times Now, you know, and it's not just, it's not just upon awakening and it's not just in the evening. It's, it's, it's when, whenever I get in, whenever I get an opportunity to do that, you know, this, this realm of the spirit

that the book talks about is, is really a comforting place to be. Now you know, the, the, the basic disciplines in step 11. When we retire at night, it gives us a number of instructions,

uh, constructively reviewing our day, you know, look for manifestations of self and how they've screwed you up and try to take action upon awakening, upon awakening is very cool. It asks me to, to, to look at what's coming up today. But you know what, What am I going to be doing? Is there going to be any challenges? Do I need to prepare for anything?

Is there anything that I, you know, I need to get done? Is there anybody I need to talk to?

You know, do I owe any of my sponsors a call? You know, it's all consultants, all constructive stuff.

They, you know, they say an unexamined life is not worth living. And I'll say for an alcoholic and unexamined life is difficult to live for an alcoholic. So, so, so this, this examination, the questions that they ask us to be aware of and awake to, I find are, are really, really powerful.

You know, there's some other paragraphs in here that really talk about the morning quiet time in the early auction group. It's, it's kind of important to understand that this text, what they were doing in the in the Oscar group as this book was being written and they all had morning quiet time and they all got together to do it. It was an Oxford group practice and it was a family practice and, and every, everyone, everyone would engage in this

as, as part of being an oxygen group. And I think, I think Bill took, took what he thought would fit for the alcoholic and, and, and, and left some of the other oxygen group practices aside. And I'm, I'm, I'm grateful for that today. But they saw it as absolutely essential. This, this, you know,

beginning the day with God brought in,

brought into everything, you know, brought, brought into to your operational methodology, you know, and,

and I, I've got to tell you that I don't, I don't go a day without, without doing this stuff. It would it would be we I'd feel really, really weird

as we go through the day. Steve was talking about this. We pause when agitated her doubtful and asked for the right voter action. You know we have we are no longer running the show and this is a reference all the way back to our lives are unmanageable. We need a new manager. We're we're we're not running the show ourselves. We're, we're, we're trying to, you know, we're trying to practice principles

within our behavior. We're trying to look for guidance

from God on ways to act. It's just a whole different, a whole different

setup as far as how I, I live my life. Now, you know, I've said this before, I'll say it again. A good thing is no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to any of these principles. You know, I'm glad we don't get picked off because we're not perfect. There wouldn't be very many of us left, but a willingness

and a commitment to engage in, in this stuff, I think, I think is, is all that's that's needed.

A there's always great promises when you're doing action steps. It's it says we're much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity or foolish decisions, which I'm OK with that. You know, a reduction in those things is OK with me.

We become much more efficient

and I'll tell you that's absolutely true. This one kind of eluded me for a while, but the amount of stuff I get done in a month

is extraordinary. And it's it's not like because I'm working hard, because I'm not. It's just I'm more efficient in the things that I do. I don't tire so easily because I'm not burning up energy foolishly. We Alcoholics are undisciplined, so we let God discipline us in a simple way.

We just outlined now

step 11.

There's, there's the instructions in this book,

but I also believe that there's a life to this prayer meditation, There's a life to this guidance. There's a life to this world of the spirit. And I, I, I believe we can embrace many, many different faiths, many different philosophies, many different practices. It's recommended that we we go out and we ask some priest ministers or rabbis for some good books.

I'm a huge reader. I, I, I love reading,

but this world of the spirit, this world of the spirit, another mystical reference, this world of spirit is such a cool place to be and such a cool thing to engage in. You know, it's, it's enormously impacted the quality of, of my life.

There's less turbulence, there's less resistance in my life. And, and amazingly, you know, a lot of the things that used to really drive me crazy either don't drive me crazy or I'm not inviting them into my life. You know what I mean? So, so this, this really, really is, is some cool stuff.

And you know, I'm just going to touch a little bit on step 12, Steve. Then I'm then I'm going to I'm going to turn it over to you. I'll do like a paragraph here.

Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other Alcoholics. So I think the whole 1st 11 steps are are building an efficient working with others guy. You know, like, like now I've now I've got something to carry to somebody.

In the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, I used to, I used to drive people to treatment, drive people to meetings, make coffee. I get all kinds of stuff

because I was told to be of service and that really is allowing the message of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, to to to be there to supporting the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. But to be able to carry the message of Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe I need experience. I need to have

gone through these steps, although imperfectly, maybe going through these steps so that I've had an awakening

and I can talk about that awakening as a solution to alcoholism, to somebody I'm trying to help.

It works with other activities. Fail Like what, what are other activities? How about, how about, you know, just going to meetings, you know what I mean? How about using your willpower? How how about an abuse? I mean, there's a, there's a million different ways

that I could try not to drink and I did try them,

but working with others is something,

one of the one of the best things that people started to say recently. And I wholeheartedly agree with it. He used to hear all the time, you got to give it away to keep it. Well, now you're starting to hear you got to give it away to get it. And, and I really believe that's true because when I started working with other Alcoholics, you know what,

I was a card carrying member in good standing all the way in Alcoholic and Alcoholics Anonymous. And there was something about that particular effort that I was making that locked me in. You know what I mean? It just locked me into this whole thing. And, and, and I've been continuously sponsoring people