The topic of step 2 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

There we go,

cats out of the bag now. So anyway,

for the recording, Tim Alcoholic. So with with, we're gonna be talking about Step 2.

There are three ways around Step 2. There's the shortest way round. There's the short way round. Then there's the long way round. Now we can't get away from the fact that we've got the big book. There it is. It's there, it's published. It's too late. If we were going to, if you or I were going to object to being published,

we'd have to go back to 19381939, object to it then. But we can't do that, so we're stuck with it. So that's what we got. That's the long way round. So We're Agnostics is our long chapter. It may not be the longest chapter, but it's a bit like February is the longest month, or at least it feels like it. We Agnostics feels like the longest chapter to me

and honestly, with a lot of responses you try and take them through. We're Agnostics. By the time you got to the end

that 87 times as confused as they were when they started. So what I'm going to present is like the Super short way round

and then a short way around. Then we're going to go through the chat and say how I use the chapter. So the shortest way around, I'm going to use a word Kippur. It's what, well, my father would have said, if you're effed, you say I'm not. I don't want to say the word effed in its full forms. I'm going to say kippered instead. So if you you say to the newcomer or the person that's in trouble, you're clippered.

Step one says you're kippered. You're kippered when it comes to alcohol. You're kippered when it comes to everything else.

Look around your Home group. Look at Susan and Clive and Bobby and and Albert. Well, they used to be kippered and now they're not. If you do, if you do what they did, you'll get what they got, which is they were unkippered by the program. So look, they're sober and they're having a nice time. Do you want to be sober? Yes. Do you have a nice time? Yes. Or you do what Susan, Clive and Bobby did, and that's basically all that step

falls down to. In essence, it completely bipartisan. All of that sort of nonsense about the higher power and all. My first step too, was very much like that. All Doug said to me was the only thing you need to know about the higher power is you're not it, which means you submit the process and everything else takes care of itself. What am I praying to? You don't need to know, you just need to do it. What's prayer? You say the words and mean them.

God, please help me do this. And then you'll get given direction. You'll get given strength. How do you know you get given direction? A useful thought comes into your mind, like call your sponsor, go to work, go to a meeting, keep your mouth shut. You know, useful things like that. Direction does not come in the form of a fax from God. So hey, this is from God. It comes in the form of inspiration, intuitive thought or a decision.

It looks like your own thinking. But if you if you look at the clothes label on it, you will actually discover that it's, you know, it's coming from a higher place. So that's the that's the quickest way around. And if someone is not really taking on board much information, then that's a really good way of doing it.

Don't be

wrong footed by sponsees who are sober for several decades,

or have postgraduate degrees or other signs of external, you know, worldly competence.

Some people scrub up really, really well. But in practice,

they can know no more take on board information than a completely rattled newcomer who's two days off the drink.

If someone is very unwell, they're very unwell, and that effects everything.

Sometimes their shortest way around you think it would be reserved for the people who are still basically coming off DTS. Sometimes you have to reserve it for the people who are, as my friend Tom says, educated beyond their intelligence level. And as Don Pritz said to Joe Hawk, you know enough about recovery to kill yourself and others. Too much information can be as much of a problem as too little. So that's why the short way round is super helpful.

Now a slightly longer way round this is so this is that was the shortest way round. I'm going to do the short way round now, which is which basically covers the ideas in Wii agnostics, but in a broken down form and without all the long words, without the prosaic steel girders

and other choice quotations.

So this is how, if I have to present Step 2

in a little more depth, but without going through the chapter, this is how I'll do it. My mind is broken. It sometimes wants to drink. Drinking is a bad idea. If I obey my mind, I'm in trouble. So I need to obey something else. Let's call that thing God. And that's where you bring other people in, you know, is it? Is that going to work? Well, Sue does what her higher power wants, and Sue's sober. Clive does what his

once and he's sober. And this is where you bring in other people's experience.

You say, have you heard, you know, these people share at the Home group and you know, the sponsor says yes. And do you agree that Sue and Bobby and everyone else were completely powerless over alcohol when they were drinking? They had no choice but to drink. And when they drank, they had no choice but to drink buckets.

Yeah, that's definitely the case. The way you drink. Is it like the way they drink? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I drink like them. I drink like them. OK, So we just established you are like Sue and Clive and Bobby and Albert. Great. We've established that you've got the same condition. Are they sober now? I think so. No, no, no. We can't be mushy about this. Are they? So, yeah, they're sober now. So they have acquired power

that they didn't have.

And that's what a higher power means. It's a power greater than your best efforts. So they've they've got a higher power now. Don't worry about God, they've got a higher power. They've got a power they've got access to a power they didn't have access to before. Now this power,

let's see, let's put you in the ring with this power. Can you keep Susan and Bobby and Albert and Clive? So no. Well, in that case, that power is more powerful than you are. It can keep them sober. You can't keep sue sober, but it can keep Sue sober. Therefore, it's not just a power greater than them, it's a power greater than you,

and you've just tricked the person into admitting that there is a power greater than themselves. In admitting that there is a power greater than Sue, and that they are not greater than the power greater than Sue, that power is greater than them. You don't have to invoke any arguments about the higher power being a doorknob or the number 9 bus. My friend Melody had whales as her higher power.

We thought genuinely that it was the principality just to the West of England. And it wasn't. It was actually the the, the aquatic mammal, the way

she she like she lists, had tapes of whale music or something. And I think there's a lot in that. But anyway,

what's the point? The point is you don't have to define what the power is. You have to look at the effect of the power. Like you can't see the wind that you can see the effect of the wind on leaves, on trees. And that's the bit that's relevant. So when people try to get all, all sort of scientific, well, I'm scientific so I can't believe in God.

Well, if you're really scientific, what whatever God is, whatever is keeping them sober, that's the scientific approach. Something is keeping them so, but God is that which is keeping them sober. Tom tells a very good story about a woman who couldn't get her handle on the higher power,

so

she stayed sober. She went to her meeting, she got a sponsor, she did some steps and at the end of the year she was hoovering. End of her first year, she was hoovering and she was hoovering around this green chair in her living room. And

that green chair was the green chair she sat in to drink. She drank in that chair for years, watching the television,

and she realised in the year she'd been sober she'd not sat in the green chair. And so she concluded, My higher power is that which keeps me out of the green chair. It needn't be any fancier than that.

The higher power is what keeps me out of the green chair.

And then you universalize it. You say what? Well, if this power can keep everyone else sober, you have to presume it's going to work for everyone. If 10 people switch a kettle on and it boils, if you switch the kettle on, do you think it's going to boil? Or do you think the kettle is going to respond differently to you switching it on because you got like special magic fingers or something? Now you have to presume it's going to work for everyone and prove otherwise. Rather, I don't know if it'll work for me. Logic would say no.

If it works for a gazillion people, it'll work for a gazillion plus one, and that's enough to get someone through Step 2 without having to touch the chapter We agnostics. I'm going to run through WE agnostics

with some quotations on what I do with them.

So first of all,

it defines this is on page 44. It defines alcoholism. It says if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. And the conclusion there is you and I owe Spawn C and I have a problem. With no solution within ourselves,

how do we know what we've done? Step one, we've established that we can't stay sober on our own.

Next bit to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live life on a spiritual basis and not always easy alternatives to face.

Now what the book is saying here is there are two options. You either basically die of alcoholism or die without die without active alcoholism or you throw yourself fully into the program. Now this is an important point here, which is there is no third way. A lot of people think they can mess around for months or years safely by doing like, you know, 47% of what a A has to offer and somehow remain safe, but that's just not true.

So you've got to get clear those are the only two the only safe option other than alcoholic drinking is full throttle A A next passage. There's a passage which starts off if a mere code of morals are a better philosophy of life was sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. And then it goes on. The point of that paragraph that I make is so we got a problem, we got a solution.

The problem is not lack of information.

You've got the information that a drink is a is a really, really bad idea and that you can never drink safely, but that information is not enough to keep you sober. If that were enough to keep you sober, we'd all only need 1A, a meeting ever, and then we'd be fixed.

If information, if lack of information is not the problem, what is the what is the problem? And then the book tells us that this chapter is actually very well structured, but can take a bit of work to pull the structure out of it. So the next quotation,

the passage which starts lack of power, that was our dilemma.

So information is necessary, but you need power. And the image that I use with this is if you want to make a soup, it's no good tipping the ingredients into a saucepan. You need heat to cook the ingredients. So that's like information and powering. So the the information doesn't actually really do anything without the power behind it. What is power? The ability to

implement an idea. Let's say the idea is. I wouldn't bother worrying about that. If you can't do it

about it, there's no point in worrying about it. That information is not enough to get rid of all of your anxiety forever. You now have all the information you need to stop worrying for the rest of your life, but you'll probably discover you need a little bit of power to actually implement that.

So we've decided we've got a problem. We don't have a solution. The problem is not lack of information. The problem is lack of power.

This at this point the sponsee says, But I don't believe in God or I don't like God or I'm a recovering Catholic or just, you know, the usual, the usual things.

The books argument at this point is very clever. It says

it's a matter of willingness.

So it sidesteps all of the arguments. And so we have to understand what is, what is willingness? It's the it's willingness is the state of mind which immediately precedes action. So if you're willing, what you'll have to be willing to do is to give this experiment a go, which means to act as if there is a higher power that can keep you sober and you take the action first,

and that will convince you in a way that no argument can. There's a little trick I get from A Course in Miracles to help someone that's super resistant

and it goes like this. Stage 1.

This is when I'm resistant. This is what I do. I don't like how I feel now. Now I may still be super resistant to an actual solution, but I at least I can admit

how I feel right now sucks. Great, next. So that's point number one. I don't like how I feel now point #2 So I hope I've been wrong. I hope I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, I'm really kippered as I'm going to be unhappy forever, so I hope I've been wrong.

What flows? And that is #3 So I don't like how I feel, number one. Number two, I hope I've been wrong #3 I would like a different way to look at this. It doesn't say that there is one. But if I hope I've been wrong, just the notion I might be wrong implies, well, there is a right. So I hope there is a different way to look at this. Four. Maybe there is a different way to look at this. I go from hope to speculation. Maybe there is a different way of looking at this. 5th What can I lose by asking so I don't like

I feel now I hope I've been wrong. I would like a different way to look at this. Maybe there is a different way to look at this. What can I lose by asking that can just crack the door open

the next point. So it's hard to proceed with willingness, with the action without any notion of a higher power. So this is where the book says, much to our relief, we discover we didn't need to consider another's conception of God. Now that's a very clever line because what that means is

whatever God you decide you don't believe in, maybe you know some version of the God you think you were taught about as a child or whatever, or what some what society is telling you God is. You can totally disregard that. You don't need to argue against those conceptions of God. You can just throw them out and then you start with a blank piece of paper. So my higher power is whatever is keeping my sponsor sober. Let's start with that. Whatever is keeping people in my Home group,

whatever power of goodness flows through the universe. I mean, there are 100 ways of doing it, but you start with a blank sheet that you rip up everything you think you know and start with a blank sheet of paper and go with one idea that you can work with. And there, as I said, there are lots of different ideas. And at the very least, I don't think it's a good idea to have a person as a higher power, even a dead person

or indeed the a a group. And he's because The thing is, you don't have access to the a, a group 24 hours a day.

You do have access. Whatever is keeping the people in your Home group sober. How about have that? And then you've you've it's a just a very subtle distinction, but then you've got something that you can rely on 24 hours a day.

The next question in the big book, again, I think this is very clever. It says, do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? Note, it doesn't ask you to believe in, it asks you to believe that there is one.

Like you can believe that the Conservative Party exists without believing in the Conservative Party. These are two entirely different questions. So is there a power greater than myself? Is simply answered, well, there is a power keeping other people sober, and that power is doing something I couldn't do to those people. I can't keep them sober, but it's keeping them sober. So it's more powerful than. So you've now demonstrated that there is a power greater than yourself.

And that's how the chapter breaks down. It separates out the question of is there a power from? Could that power help me?

Next, there's a whole passage about being handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. And it it's a long passage. I'm not going to read out all these passages, but I'm doing them in order.

Basically what the book is saying is alcohol is a great persuader.

Which means you don't have to persuade them. Often it will require a slip or seven slips before someone is willing to basically discard everything they think they know and just try on a new idea for size.

The next difficult bit or the next part of this process is

why should we

believe

that this power exists?

And it, it gives the example, it's what we've already talked about the other people in a, A and there's a whole long passage about this.

What does it say?

Here are thousands of men and women worldly? Indeed, they flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater themselves, to take a certain attitude towards that power and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. So you take the example of people in a a as demonstration that there is a power.

There's next in the book, there's this appeal to open mindedness and it talks about, and it's a very long section, but about how open minded people are about new ideas with technology. And if you're, if an old piece of technology doesn't work, then how ready people are to try a new piece of technology in the hope that it's going to work better.

And then it says, well, look how messed up you are,

the bedevilment section. And there's a line which is very misunderstood,

was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was. Now this is just, it's very rarely talked about that line. But I think what it's saying is, look, if you're willing to be super open minded about the new Bluetooth headset and you're willing to pay £30 for a new type of headset you've never tried before, which may fail

because you hope that your phone calls will be clearer when you buy it,

that you've got the capacity for open mindedness, this is a matter far more important than your Bluetooth headset. So how about you show the same open mindedness with spiritual matters that you're that you show with material things? That's what that passage is about.

And there's a little summary line where which basically pulls together everything we've done so far on the chapter. And it says when we saw others solve their problems by simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe.

So Sue's in a good mood this week after she's been praying. We had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. In other words, you're jiggered. But the God idea did. Look, Susan, a good mood. Sue's doing better than you, and she believes in God.

Next, it talks about the role of logic, and I think this is important. People sometimes think in Step 2 that they're being asked to believe something or do something, which runs against logic,

and the book is saying the absolute opposite. And it's completely reasonable to think that if a gazillion people take certain actions and their lives are transformed, that it will work for you too. That doesn't require some leap of faith. That requires accurate observation and trusting people's stories about what happened to them.

But there's one element where faith is required,

and it's this. It's and this is the difficult shift. You can speculate that what works for Susie and Bobby will work for me. I can speculate that, but I can't prove it in advance because I haven't. If I haven't taken the action yet, it's unproven. And faith is the courage to take the actions based on that logic and speculation.

So again, it's like if you

jumping off a diving board, 100 people jump off a diving board into a pool below and they're all fine. Now you stand on the diving board and it looks rather different. I don't like water very much. I don't like my head going underwater and I don't like heights.

This is because I'm a coward. Very happy to admit that

and I'm weak minded

now. There's no, there's no absolute guarantee that you're going to be OK. And if 1000 people jump off the diving board, there's no guarantee that you're going to be OK. But it's a reasonable assumption. It uses that phrase in the chapter, a reasonable assumption. Faith is jumping off the diving diving board. It's taking the action based on the on the logic, the speculation, the reasonable assumption.

So the the logic will get you 99% of the word way there that you need that tiny leap of faith, which is the faith to take the action.

It also talks about the universality of the higher power. Either God is or he isn't. Either there is a power which effects people's lives or there is not. Either there is a people are getting sober randomly or there is some system involved. If there is a system involved, it's a universal system. You go to any group for long enough and you'll see people of different intelligence levels, different education levels, different people who are smart in different ways.

There are lots of different ways of being smart. Everyone's smart in a different way. And it's not like the program only works for one type of person. If you listen carefully, you'll hear all sorts of different people getting it. You'll hear people you don't like very much getting sober and getting well. You'll hear people you disagree with on everything getting sober and the people you agree with on everything getting sober. So it's universal. God is either everything or God is nothing.

It talks about

then the book talks about the capacity for faith. So faith is being willing to take an action despite there being no guarantees. I look at the faith it It asks you to look at the faith in your own reason and if you've ever,

well, if you're like me, you've made lots of mistakes in your life based on your own assessment of situations. Yet do you not go to your own mind

for answers again and again and again, even though your mind has failed you before? So the ability to put faith in something to take, to take it action, to take a step without a guarantee of success.

You know, as a drinker, certainly towards the end it was like Russian roulette. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it was ghastly, but I had the faith to take the action of having the first drink,

trusting that it might be OK this time. That is faith. So you can pretty much demonstrate if you manage to carry on drinking in the faith in the face of

the dwindling pleasure of it, the increasing side effects, then you have the capacity for faith. This is simply pointing an existing faculty, this capacity for faith in a new direction which is at the program. See, this is what you want to demonstrate to people, that you already have the capacity for faith. You just need to point it in the direction of a, A

and then it's it. Now it talks about the inherent nature of God consciousness. It says deep down and every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God.

Some people will connect to that. Honestly, a lot of people won't.

And if you, if they don't connect the idea of God being deep down inside them, then you can't. You can't argue it. There are lots of, there are lots of passages in this chapter that I have to, I skip over quite lightly because they just don't work for a lot of people.

There are bits of step one. There are certainly bits, you know, all of step three through to 12. I, I wouldn't take the risk of arguing with any of it. There's lots of what's in this chapter and this is important, I think. So if people rebel against lots of bits of this chapter, let them. It's fine if they rebel against step through or step forward. There's not a lot you can do because

your your your fooling with

essential parts of the engine

with Step 2. If you can get them through the chat, great. If they hate the chapter. I hated the chapter for the 1st 15 years of being sober so I have sympathy for people that hate the chapter. I got around it another way, which is why I gave you the two, the two other methods at the beginning.

At the end of the chapter there's a little summary, and this covers the whole of the chapter, really. Circumstances made him willing to believe.

He humbly offered himself to his maker. Then he knew. So that's the order in which this takes place. The reason I'm willing to throw myself at the mercy of a power grace for myself is because I literally have no other choice. And then you take the action. And when you take the action, you discover that it works. And here's there's a great promise. When we drew near to him, he disclosed himself to us. And

I started praying in around August 1993

because I literally had no other choice.

I kept wanting to drink, and for a few months in a eight people and meetings were sufficient to talk me out of it. By the time we got to August 1993, I was finally a month sober. Everyone's arguments failed. Like whatever it was inside me had grown to such an extent that it was impervious to the arguments of other people,

even the great grandy's of my Home group, and certainly in purpose to the meetings themselves. And so I needed. I tried prayer, as I literally had no other. There was no other card to play. And I prayed. And the damn thing worked. The desire to drink at that moment just left me

that it wasn't even a prayer for sobriety. I opened the Bible and there was a line. Be still and know that I am God.

Now I'm lucky because it could have opened at a page about the smiting of the Amalekites or some Paul talking about how long people's hair should be. But no, it opened on the page about Be still and know that I'm God. But it did I I think honestly, it wouldn't have mattered where it opened. The fact I took the action, I opened the book and read the line and that was enough to open the channel and something in me clicked and I thought, I don't need to drink.

Damn, that means I never need to drink again. I now have something that can be relied on. Damn, I'm going to have to be sober now. I was really disappointed and relieved at the same time. So circumstances made me willing to believe. I humbly offered myself to the higher power and then something happened. And it says he knew. Knowledge is something which you can't argue with

perception you can. But knowledge is deeper. And that's the point. People start to take action and they have knowledge which can't be dislodged by arguments. All the arguments they've had for decades that are thrown out of window then. So anyway, that's

everything I know about everything, so I'm gonna stop there. And Alistair, do you want to feel field some questions?

Thanks. Thanks a lot, Tim.

Yeah, the meeting is now open for questions for Tim, which can be done by the raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function and I'll ask Tim directly or I will send you the message Tim and save me asking the question, then you having to repeat it for the tape

or if all else fails just way violently at the camera. And I will, I will try and get to you and I'll open it up for questions.

John, you waving? Yeah, I've got a question at the risk of sounding really dumb, So in the book, where does step two start at Wignostics or just before it? Okay, so the question, as I said earlier, I'm going to be repeating the questions for the sake of the the backup tape. So where does step two start? It's not a dumb question because the,

the table of contents in the book,

uh, does not reveal where each the steps are. I don't know if that's on purpose to make you read it so that you can't like skip to a particular step, but it's so at the beginning, it doesn't say where step one starts, but it does say, oh, well, this is step one. Like in the middle of step one, it says this is the first step in recovery. Once you start getting to the higher steps, it says we're now at step three. We're now at step four. We're now at Step 5,

so

We Agnostics is basically your chapter for Step 2.

But I'd say that this is the reason why it's not a silly question at all. The first paragraph of Weird Gnostics is actually the summing up of step one. So step one leaks over into the first paragraph of We Agnostics and then that forms the basis for Step 2.

And then also that itself leaks over

into

so between page 58 and 60, there's like a little pause where it sums up where we've been and tells us where we're going and it re basically checks one more time. Are you sure you've got Step 2? So there's some Step 2 stuff between page 58 and 60 as well. But you can I kind of cover that once I get there. So maybe if if this happens next week, I'll be covering

the beginning of how it works and then all the way through to Step 3.

What people might want to consider are situations with Swansea's in the past where things have got really complicated or sticky in Step 2, because that might form the basis for good, good questions. OK, thanks.

Another question, Tim. So based on what you just said there, so you know, you know like how it works and the actor and all that because that's all written before it says we were now at step three, didn't it? But that would be Step 3. Let's just explaining about it. Is it

well, I OK, so a little question about that. How does the actor stuff fit in

one? One of our difficulties with the steps is

the steps on the wall

or on page 59 or on the wall scrolls that we hang up in meetings don't fully match what's in the book. So like step 10 on the wall, we continue to take personal inventory. Looks like we keep doing step fours on on things. And then you look at the instructions in the book and it's about maintaining awareness throughout the day. It's like completely not what you'd expect. And step three is actually like that as well. So

there are, by the time you get to the ABC's,

let me just get the book down,

I don't have the book memorized. You need to know that

Saskia always says, I'm so glad they wrote this down and I think she's right. So it says on page 60 that three personal ideas that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism, that God could and would if he was sought. Now at this point your sponsee is supposed to be like totally up for turning their well and life over to God. You'd think

that the next thing in the book would be right though. This is how you take step three and say,

wait a minute,

if you're going to be turning your will in your life over to a power greater than yourself.

Like you're down with the idea that with regard to alcohol, that's a really good idea, but the sponsee may not yet be totally sold on the idea that everything else is a little bit of a problem as well.

So in like in the a, a fellowship, the fact that everything else is a mess is brought into step one. So, so people try and squeeze all of that stuff into the unmanageability in step one. The big book doesn't say anything about that.

It hints at it in Wagnostics and then it goes full force in step three on. Since you're already going to be turning your weather life over to God, wouldn't it, wouldn't it just be easier for everyone if you are down with the idea, if you didn't have any like emotional resistance to it? So you then that's when you got the two pages on the actor, hopefully to persuade someone

to take step three on the basis that

it's good for them as well. It's not just for the drink. It will improve everything else as well. So it's not, these are good questions because it the book isn't terribly straightforward with these early steps. It kind of jumps back and forth

and things are not in the place you expect them to be either.

All right, Thanks.

What we could do, Alistair, is if we've got oh, we've got a question from Claire.

Thank you. Thanks, Tim. That's fantastic. And this, there are so many questions about Step 2, but one thing that comes to mind is

in the past, I've made the mistake of, of getting a little bit modelled about, about when I see a new person. And so they, they get sober and then, and then they have the new boyfriend, the new job, dramatic change of appearance and, and you know, doing a lot of fellowship. I've made the mistake of believing

these, these things in the material world have become the higher power for the individual.

And it's, it's all that they're doing. And, and I think at what point. So, so if I have a sponsee, at what point do you just just leave that alone and allow it and, and, and not judge too quickly that in the place of a higher power, you're choosing the boyfriend, you're choosing the job. Because it seems that when, when there's a shift away from alcohol.

The energy is invested then into into the things around them. And and I sometimes feel like it's a bit quick, quick for me to say don't stop doing that or try to look at that.

Does that make sense as a question? Yeah. So I think what this speaks to is how you

sponsor, how you can help people and there by yourself, you know, so whenever I'm helping someone else, it's only ever really to it helps me as much as it helps them. So whatever I need to say to someone else or I feel I need to say to someone else is what my higher power wants me to be saying to me.

This is the question of Step 2. With the rest of your life like later on in recovery or people who are 251015203030 years sober. What does Step 2 mean in those situations

when you talk about making external things your higher power. A very good definition of pride is the putting of self in the place of God as the centre or main objective of one's life. Now, if you're focused on establishing a good romantic relationship and maintaining a a desirable household and

pursuing an impressive career,

this doesn't look as though you're engaged in self because it well, it doesn't look as though it's about you. It looks as though it's about external things. But those external things are totally tied up in my identity. My my identity, my value, my purpose, who I am, what I'm worth and why I'm here. And what step three is asking me to do is to have my

who I am child of God, whatever that means,

my value stemming from that. So I'm of infinite value because I exist. And what is my purpose? To be a channel for God to do whatever God wants to do through my life in the universe, as opposed to those those things, those external things, being the central main objective of my life.

A very,

might I say, vanishingly small percentage of AAS in my experience. Totally. By the idea that the solution to alcoholism lies in complete abandonment of self,

at least the first time round. I think to stay permanently sober, the idea has got to be bought at some point. My experience and frankly the experience of most people

is that what what you need to do this is that that your basic pattern you get sober, you discover after a few months, weeks, days or minutes that just go into meetings is not enough. So you get a sponsor and you get the idea. It seems very clear that if you clear up your past and if you

submit the good orderly direction of A A and sensible people around you and you achieve emotional balance, you're frankly going to do a lot better

in your relationship, in your household, in your job. So it's not that it's not true that those things will improve, but those are byproducts of the process. They're not on purpose of the process, but that's very bewitching as you, I'm sure if you go to meetings, I hear it as well. People say God has been very good to me because and then they list all of the external things they've bought

or achieved in the world.

A friend of mine says sometimes we say if, if you have, if you want what we have. And then everyone looks out to the parking lot outside to see what cars people have got.

I think Bob D talks about this notion if we have what you want. While my sponsee look, he said my sponsee looked at my wife and said I'll have that. And he did. You know, if you want what we have can be taken to a absurd extremes. So what happens is you work the program well

and everything gets better and you think, aha, that's the point of it. And then you hear someone say that blessed phrase, a bridge to normal living.

Now that's sort of if you want to know where that comes from,

it comes from an extraordinarily good pamphlet called A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a transcript of notes for a talk done by an A, a member at an external organization.

And this, the image of a bridge to normal living is actually a very complex image, which can only be understood in the in the context of that pamphlet. And it's not really generally applicable. It's not a very tight metaphor, but the way it gets used by people is to say, well, of course, you know, the first few years of a A, you have to, you know, go to lots of meetings and do the steps. But really you don't want to turn a A into another crutch. And surely the whole point of a A is to get reintegrated back into society. So

you need to, you know, we'll leave the little ones to do, to do the service. You know, I've done my stint. I don't need to do anymore. That's what most people do. And I'm not blaming them. I did it because it's what everyone is doing. A lot of people are doing. Then what happens? Somewhere between 7 and 10 years, It's usually around there. Some people hit it early, some people hit it later, but it's generally between 7:00 and 10:00. You develop

a tiny little problem with gambling or massage parlours or toxic relationships