#120 WISDOM

WISDOM IS A KNOWING THAT CANNOT QUITE BE ARTICULATED, THAT EXCEEDS THE CAPACITY OF LANGUAGE TO CONTAIN IT THAT ARRIVES NOT THROUGH ARGUMENT OR ACCUMULATION BUT THROUGH EXPERIENCE, THROUGH SUFFERING AND SURVIVING, THROUGH LOVING AND LOSING, THROUGH PAYING ATTENTION FOR LONG ENOUGH THAT YOU BEGIN TO SEE THE PATTERNS BENEATH THE PATTERNS.

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Welcome And Meeting Details

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Welcome to the gathering. My name is Roger. I'm an alcoholic. Um, if you're listening online, we meet the first and third Wednesdays every month, rain or shine, at 7 p.m. Central Time. The ID for the meeting is 728-200-4166. The password's 513-905. Is that right? 915. 915? Okay, I can't read my own line. Thank you. So again, the password's 513-915. I don't know the freaking numbers. So, anyway, it's good to have you. We're gonna have a I'm gonna share something with you that's part of this reflection I was telling you about with my uh my uh birthday coming up. And um, some of you know that I'm I'm I'm a fan of Deepak Chopra's, and uh he just released a book called Awakening in the Final Chapter: Aging with Grace, Love, and Freedom. He's turning 80. And and it's a very reflective book, it's very um gentle, it's very expansive. Hi, Allie, hi Paul, Jacqueline. Um, anyway, I'm gonna share a little bit

Wisdom Beyond What You Can Say

SPEAKER_03 1:35

um of one of the readings with you, and uh then we'll have a discussion. This is his uh chapter on wisdom, Knowing Without Knowing Why. There's a kind of knowing that comes from books. I spent a great portion of my life in the pursuit of it. I've read voraciously medicine, philosophy, physics, poetry, scripture from a dozen traditions, neuroscience, mythology, I've loved this pursuit. I will go on loving it until my last breath. But books, for all their glory, offer only one kind of knowing, the kind that can be written down. And when I reflect on that, most of us are in 12-step recovery. And if you look at the big book, there's a lot of information in it. But if if all you're doing is gathering information, it won't have a lot of effect, right? Wisdom is different. Wisdom is knowing that cannot be quite, what cannot quite be articulated, that exceeds the capacity of language to contain it, that arrives not through argument or accumulation, but through experience, through suffering and surviving, through loving and losing, through paying attention for long enough that you begin to see patterns beneath the patterns. So the first level of consciousness is the material one. The second level of consciousness is I'm starting to think about my thinking and the reality I'm creating with that. And then under that are these basic instincts, and under that is where the patterns come from, which is our history, right? So the Sanskrit Sanskrit word is prajana. It is sometimes translated as wisdom, but the more precise meaning is something like luminous knowing. Nothing that illuminates the one who knows. Knowing that illuminates the one who knows. It's not merely information about reality, it is contact with reality, direct and unmediated. And this is in the Vedic tradition, which called the ground of being, we would call it the mind of God, that pure consciousness.

SPEAKER_08 3:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_11 3:56

So an example, a couple of examples of this would be um where was that thought before you had it?

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Have you ever been working on a problem, gone to sleep, the next morning you woke up and the answer was right there? How did that happen? Right? I I when I was in my songwriting era, all the songs came through me. I didn't create them. I had a flash of an idea, and then the whole song came through. So on one level, wisdom is applied experience. I've done this a thousand times again and before, and I can see this is not going where I want it to go. That's a kind of wisdom, but there's another kind of wisdom that's beyond words, right? I don't know where that came from. I don't know how I know that, but I know it. So then he goes on to say, the path

Silence Under The Mental Noise

SPEAKER_03 5:00

to wisdom I found requires three things above all. The first is silence, not the absence of sound, but the willingness to stop generating noise, the incessant inner commentary, the internal dialogue, the opinions and reactions and judgments and plans that run like a background program in the mind. Meditation is at its most fundamental level a training in this the practice of returning again and again to the still point beneath the chatter, to the present moment, devoid of any of the noise in my head. In that stillness, something opens. Not a blank emptiness, but a kind of luminous receptivity, the quality of mind that can receive what the chattering mind would miss. Because the chattering mind is all about distraction. That internal dialogue that's always running. Why are you looking at me like that? What's that doing? Who's she thinking? Who does she think she is? Why is she wearing that? All this noise. It's constantly going on. He has a little line in here. I love this. He says, the unknown vastly exceeds the known. The unknown vastly exceeds the known. I used to hear old timers say it this way: the longer I'm here, the dumber I get, the less I know. And it's a it's a great discovery to know that I've just scratched the surface. Because that means there's plenty

Humility And The Vast Unknown

SPEAKER_03 6:40

more to go, right? The second thing wisdom requires is humility. By this, I don't mean self-effacement or the performance of modesty. I mean the genuine recognition that the unknown vastly exceeds the known. And that our individual perspective, however educated, however experienced, is always partial. It's just our experience. The Vedantic tradition has the phrase nadi neti, meaning not this, not this. It's an instruction to the seeker not to mistake any concept, any belief, any framework for the reality it points towards. That's what Jesus said. It's not me, it's the Father who does the work. And what do they do? They ended up worshiping the pointer. Maps are not territory, menus are not food. Finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. So put it in terms of your recovery. The steps are not the miracle. The steps are the process leading to the miracle. The goal I'm striving for is awakening. And as I become more and more awake, I become less and less enamored with the noise in my head and things like the obsession of drink. I have less and less to try and escape from.

Learning From Suffering Without Hardening

SPEAKER_03 8:19

The third thing wisdom requires is suffering. Or rather, the willingness to learn from it. I say this carefully, knowing it may sound harsh. I do not mean that we should seek out pain or that suffering is inherently ennobling. It is not. But there is something about the great losses, the deaths, the failures, the illnesses, the betrayals, the moments when life strips away what we thought we could not live without. That can, if we do not harden against them, open us in ways that nothing else will. They crack the persona. They show us what's real. If I'm willing to learn from the experience. A lot of times, our orientation, speaking for myself, my orientation was any time pain was present or humiliation was present, I ran from it. I pushed it away. And when you push the problem away, you push the seed of the solution away. Because the answer is in the problem. No problem shows up without the answer embedded in it. And I have to become a student of that. I have to become willing to learn, willing to grow. And so pain is a great way to do that. Struggle. There's nothing wrong with struggle as long as you go through it. You're not supposed to sit and struggle and just writhe in pain. I'm supposed to ask myself, what are I being asked to learn from this? What is this trying to show me? And then sometimes you'll talk to other people, your friends, maybe your sponsor, spiritual advisor, minister, priest, rabbi, and ask for some insight. What do I do with this suffering? Most of my suffering is caused by lack of acceptance. I want it to be some way it's not. I want it to be some way it's not. And so I suffer. I don't really know how anything's supposed to be, do I? I can ask for what I want. And if the answer is yes, the answer is yes. If the answer is no, the answer is no. But I have to be with that. And the the thing about this suffering that he was talking about that I think is really useful is I forgot what he was gonna say. So oh this I don't remember what it was. The cracking of the persona. Remember the persona is a Greek word. It means mask. It's the me I show the world. It's also the me I believe is true about me. It's my delusion. It's my delusion. And then when something comes along and smashes that, I get I get a look at me at a deeper level. I get to have a different experience. And what I do with that experience, all these things I think are opportunities and examples of grace. But I have to be able to take that opportunity and do something with it. The priority I place on the opportunity is going to be directly proportional to the result I get. And if I don't pay any attention to the and I don't give it a priority, I don't learn. And they fight with that. They fight with that obsession. They fight. This is the beast's favorite thing to get us to do is fight with stuff we have no power over. The mental obsession. The worrying, the fear. So what's going to happen tomorrow? What's going to happen next week? What's going to happen next month? What am I going to do? What's going to happen after the election? It just goes on and on. The brain has inexhaustible things to wrap itself around and worry about. So I'm going to plant some ideas about this wisdom because we've all had the experience.

SPEAKER_11 12:48

We've all had the experience of this appearance and this knowing.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

How did I know that? Well, some would say, well, it was a sum total of my experience. On one level, that's true. But there are other examples when the answers came to me, the inspiration, the spirit in me was activated, and it came from somewhere

Group Shares On Inspiration And Trust

SPEAKER_03 13:15

unbeknownst to me. So so let's uh floor's open. Tell me what you got about what you think about wisdom or what you think about anything.

SPEAKER_11 13:32

Kind of tricky.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Think about it in terms of inspiration. The spirit comes in, inspires me with an idea of thought, an emotion, an insight. Where was that before I had it?

SPEAKER_11 13:44

That's the wisdom he's talking about.

SPEAKER_05 13:51

I was I was talking to um hi, I'm Kathy Alan. Um I read this one lady's book, and she said she had lost this man. She had was in this deep relationship and was very passionate, the most incredible relation she had. And this man died suddenly. She's a very spiritual woman, and she was screaming at God as to why why was he taken? And she hears his voice that says, Wrong question. Why was he given? You know, and and that really has stuck with me of that just switching like the right question about it. And but I had to get a God that was large enough that I didn't think could do anything but love me, you know, like it wasn't nothing was done to me, you know, it's just this place to learn on earth, and and I know if I'm coming from judgment or um fear that that that I'm operating outside, I'm operating in this dualistic world, you know. If I'm if I'm angry and judging and predicting fear, you know, it's always coming from this dualistic space. Um, but when I can move out of that and say that it all belongs, you know, and it all belongs somehow. And that, but in the dualistic, I'm looking for answers, and I'm not going to get those answers, and I'll create a lot of suffering for myself, searching for things that have no answers. But can I trust? Can I get my deepest self? Can I trust that this all belongs somehow, some way, and to work with the divine and to trust the divine um within me that emerges? And yeah, like, you know, um, I have had that experience of like a thought comes in, and I know it's not mine. And I pay close attention to that, very close attention. Um and it it doesn't have to be anything long, it's it's uh for me, God is a person of few words, you know. Um doesn't need many words to get his thoughts across. But um and you know, like if if you you read different things and you think they all come together, and and when uh Scrooge, Ebenezer Scrooge, you know, when he wakes up the next day after he's been visited by all those things, you know, to your point, he starts singing, I don't know anything. I never did know anything, but now I know that I don't know. And that's it, it's and they say wisdom's always paired up with humility because over and over again I'm humbled by the fact of how little I really do know. And I think, I think I know something, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

And uh doesn't remind myself that also is revealed in the arc of time. I think I know something, and then five years later I realized that's not what that was about, this is what that was about, and I have to stay in that evolutionary mode and not, you know, not trust that everything is the empirical truth that I've been brought to, and it's different, isn't it? It's really different. And the uh the other thing that you brought up that I think is really important is people blame God for stuff that God has nothing to do with. You know, life isn't fair. That's not the point. The point is who do you want to be with it? How are you gonna go with it? What are you gonna do with it? Because shit's gonna happen, as they say. And my job is not to protect myself from getting some on me. My job is to keep my heart open so I can learn and experience and interpret what's going on when it's happening. So great loss, great suffering, great pain is a great teacher because it burns off the baloney. You know, and he he talks about humility. I was talking to, I've talked to several people about this the last couple of weeks, but when you look at the process of the steps, the first one's about honesty. Can you get in front of the truth? You're powerless. And this is gonna kill you if you don't change, but you don't have the power to change you, which is humbling, which gets me to step two. Am I willing to set aside whatever ideas and prejudice I have and proceed in the direction of this power question? And then three is the action, is the decision to go forward. And if it's not followed with action, you're just doing the uh old AA waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three. Right? You're not really making any decisions. Thank you. Who else?

SPEAKER_09 19:26

Um I'm Tom, I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Tommy. Yeah, that's um um really interesting when I think about um knowing versus uh or the unknown versus the known. And I think about you know, who I made up, who I who I was, and I when I think about how much do I really know in the world, and it's such a small little sliver versus what I don't know. And then I spend most of my time inside that real small piece and only gathering and gathering information or getting pieces that are keep that person I made up um alive. So and yet there's a there's a lot of work and a lot of struggle with that, keeping that um whatever that persona, that person I that I was supposed to be. And and I heard many, many years ago sometime it it and it hits me more and more. It was like the real possibility resides in the unknown. So when I can step into the unknown, wow, and and I really don't know, then I have some possibility of of truly growing, truly learning. And um and and then I'm really really present, even though that I was scared to step to step out into the unknown. Um and then the the the second one was suffering. Really struggled. But if I look back so far in my life, you know, I'm not gone yet, but so far all the suffering that I've had in retrospect really turned out to be pretty good. You know, it sounds silly, some people would think that's but the reality was any of the sufferings that have been given in my life, they've all turned into better opportunities. You know, the structure of being a you know a drunk, and I couldn't hold it, I couldn't hide it anymore. You know, I was hiding it for I thought I did a pretty good job for probably 50 frickin' years. I couldn't, wow, what a gift. Then then sobriety. So that was suffering. So but any suffering in my life, I look at it, it was like, you know, I lost people or you know, people dying, or you know, like they really were opportunities of for me knowing myself, but really and really most important for me getting closer to closer to God. And then in in in terms of being closer to God, I able to be closer to um to everyone else you know five years ago six years ago there's no way i would be on this call and saying anything because i had it all together i was not mr humility i'll tell you that you know and uh so thank thank god i you know i i i hit the bottom and i'm here and i'll pass thanks ton you know that that that clinging the suffering is holding on to my attachments this is the way i need it to be for me to be safe and okay and what the beast is looking for is certainty in an uncertain world there's we don't know what's gonna happen in the next five minutes let alone the next five months or a year we don't know we're just showing up and putting our suit on and see what happens right we think we know that's the problem and when when what we think we know isn't happening then we start uh to bear down on it to get it to conform to our idea of how it's supposed to be that's the certainty I'm looking for because I want a guarantee what it what's the guarantee about I want to know I'm safe I want to know I'm safe and there's no safety in impermanent things so it drives you back to this idea of the creator God that's where my safety is knowing that I'm okay regardless of what appears to be happening on the outside because I don't judge myself or evaluate myself by the quality of the exterior I do it by the interior that's why we pray and meditate in the morning to get our interior right and then we go out and see what we can do with it.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Thank

Masks, Control, And Craving Certainty

SPEAKER_03 24:00

you.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Who else Jacqueline where are you dialing in from I'm dialing in from uh North Minneapolis and it's a pleasure to be here and and I'll go ahead and share if that's okay.

SPEAKER_07 24:25

Sure you may please yeah um I'm recalling what my sponsor told me when I first came into the 12 step program he would say when you think you know you don't and when you know you don't know you're starting to know and it used to baffle me um but I get it today and I have had those um moments of clarity that I don't know where they come from and uh if I walk towards that my life seems to just get better and better and I've had the experience of uh deep suffering and uh when I would let go of what I was suffering and walk towards the unknown I was given uh bounties of uh joy so it's a wonderful place to be in the unknown and and uh just keep walking thank you that's good because you know what it's all unknown we want to tell ourselves we know it but we don't know it I don't know what's happening I think I'm gonna go here and I don't know I'm gonna have a car accident I don't know the car's not gonna start I don't know I'm getting a flat tire I don't know I'm having a heart attack I don't know anything it's so to your point where I was going at I have directions I have directions I'm aiming myself at but I don't have a specific plan or idea of how it's all supposed to unfold and some days they do really well with it and some days they do really poorly with it but I do it every day and I think you learn much more from the failures than the successes because the success has a way of lulling us into a false sense of security and then the life life comes along and pulls the rug out from one of us oh wake up that's your head hitting the ground who else thank you Andy I'm an alcoholic Andy sorry Roger uh the this is uh this brings back memories the um the first the first time I think that I felt a lesson to be learned from something that was uh a blow to the ego was when I was in treatment eight years ago and I was sitting in my counselor's boss's office and I was there to tell him about all the ways that I felt like I wasn't getting the the the quality or care that I thought that I was deserved. And uh he said to me there he said Andy do you feel you try to control things in your life a lot and I I started to kind of feel myself chuckle to be like oh if you only knew and I was about to tell him if you only knew how how disorganized and how out of control my life was and it I paused before I said it and it was the realization of step one like I'm I'm in here trying to control something from rehab and that and it's my control that got me here. And that was the sum total of all my actions decisions and everything that led up to that point. So not an esteem building moment very humbling moment but for the first time that I can remember ever there was humble and enlightened because I I saw that oh what don't I that that opportunity of what don't I know? I've done all of this wrong I'm not sure what there is to do right but it was opened up to the to the idea that it might be something else. And then a week later I come to the renewal center I meet you and it's that preparation that that sort of humbled enlightened moment of what don't I know then it changes to to what can I hear? And then the wisdom piece Roger yours was also the first where I thought you know you'd say things and it's like God I feel I've never heard that before but I feel that in my heart that's true. I know that you know and and explain that one and you're the one who said I said boy I feel like you're only talking to me sometimes in this room you kind of said don't don't ignore that that's not something to set aside there's something there. And uh boy it's powerful and to think I always think for you too that you talked about that 48 years. Who would have thought that 48 years ago you'd be you know you'd be alive you'd be sober you'd be touching people's lives in a way that um you know it's can't can't express the gratitude enough.

SPEAKER_10 29:06

It's just beautiful so thanks as always to your point who would have thought that I can become a contributing member of society on the positive side instead of the negative contribution right that I can become useful and then I could enjoy it right what a process I didn't come for free well thanks Andy My name is Kabir I'm a grateful alcoholic Kabir how are you man I'm I'm well I'm well and and it it's interesting that you asked me that question because the only time the only thing I can say when people ask me this is better than never but I don't say that all the time because they they look at me kind of weird sometimes but that's the truth better better better than ever you have a history of having an honesty problem better than ever that that's that's that's the truth that's that's how I'm doing um so I was walking down the street one day and I it it wasn't anything I mean I it's just it said something said to me man you can put a motor together but I fooled it um because you put it together um so many times you messed up so many times and I you know like working on the car and stuff that does not appeal to me at all because my hands would get oily and stuff and so um and I I tell people that I feel like um I just fail so much you know I just fail and fail and fail and fail and failed and that's the you know I mean man that's it I mean um I remember you know when I was when I was young like a kid you know it was always a question inside of me who am I and what's my place in the world well today I still don't know who I am but it it what's coming more clear to me is what I'm not and I'm not you know bad stuff you know um yeah and I'm I'm just I'm just so so grateful man for everything you know I would it would be great you know if I had a relationship with my son um but today that that doesn't that doesn't hurt me um like it used to um and the last thing I'll say is um I went to a meeting this week and the guy got a seven year chip so you know the chip comes around and we hold it and we supposed to take the chip and I say a little prayer on the chip and then something inside me said man if you wouldn't have given up you'd have seven years too but I didn't I didn't it I didn't feel bad inside you know it didn't have any like emotional emotional effect on me. You know it is what it is and you know I I don't I don't feel bad about not having seven years. It's cool with me. I mean it is what it is and it took what it took and I'm just um I'm just so so so so grateful because the things that you you said to me and that people said to me years and years and years ago it's like you know it's like it's in here now you know and it is it's it's win like that in my sales um that pushes me for it every day. And I'm I'm eternally grateful. And um I wouldn't be here without without you um and without the people like you and um um I just want to say thank you. That's all I have.

SPEAKER_06 33:05

Good to see you it's good to see you alive instead of view you yes sir yes sirin justin adecoholic Justin you alcoholic addict yeah yeah and probably a lot of other addicted things in my life um you know I I just remember being a small boy in going to school going into life and I always thought everyone else got the book to life and they had the answers and I didn't get it um you know and I went through some trauma as a young kid um some sexual abuse stuff so the one thing that the beast did for me um was it it made me I had a great I was a great chameleon or at least I thought I was I can go into a room and kind of read the room and figure out what I I would try to figure out what you wanted me to be. So this persona this face was always changing it had all these personalities all these different things of what what I thought I needed to be um and as I'm going through this journey now and all these personas are peeling off I'm realizing that wasn't me that was the beast um has been one has been life changing but two it's very relieving I can just be um I just I don't I don't have to have to put on a face I don't have to put on a persona anymore and that's the first time in my life I I've never had to do that there's I mean not not I guess I don't want to say my whole life did I always put on a face well probably but not every incident but you know it's it's just it's boy is it it's it's amazing the amount of time I have now to to see the beauty in life to see to see the the the the the color of the leaves to see the color of the sky I mean that sounds weird to say but for me I was so busy I didn't see any of that stuff I was so busy in threat assessment what do I need to do and and you know what I see now God that's powerlessness boy was that powerlessness you know he the the beast had me running up the pole down the pole up the pole down the pole take this substance take this drink do this do that and it's boy it's exhausting um you know and then when that wasn't going on the obsession was just there so the freedom to have this and I did the well I I don't even want to say the one two three AA waltz I did the one put in and let's figure out what what I can say and do to conform and keep everyone at bay um but just the oh the the the it's relaxing now I don't know it's just relaxing with that pass.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

Thanks Justin you know you were talking about the personas if there was a time in my life if you would have gotten 10 people together that said they knew me and asked them to describe me it would sound like 10 different people and this is it's not just the beast it's a protective device to keep us safe because we don't have a solution to the fear. And then when the persona breaks then I'm into the drugs and the alcohol right because I need I need some space and some some relief the other thing about the personas is I'm the only one that knows who really I am behind that.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

And so you're constantly feeling like you're a fraud because you are and even when you fit in somewhere you don't fit in inside because you know the thought that runs through my head is if you really know who I was you wouldn't be clapping you would be running right yeah it's important who else all alcoholic hey everybody really identified with what Justin shared and the whole persona thing and and I I'd say the only time I felt like I didn't have the persona on at any given period throughout my life is when I had drugs and alcohol in my system and and that just was the the anesthetic to to to get me through. So I guess the you know the whole I guess what's on my mind tonight with this idea of wisdom and the idea of finding that quietness and stillness is uh it's the recognition that uh the majority of what I've done throughout my life and still many hours of the days currently is is I'm chasing. And you know even when I don't think I am I am and it it's the only way I can recognize that is through prayer and meditation and working with other people and listening to other people's stories. That's the only way because if I'm left to my own devices you know the the next shiny thing that comes along I'll be off chasing it. And so it just comes down to where does the you know where does wisdom come from that it's it's the daily practice of prayer meditation and finding some solitude and not expecting immediate results from it is just letting it happen whatever it is and however it comes um and and know that you know just being a little bit more forgiving of myself um when I do screw up. And I think the last thing is um now I forgot what I was gonna say but um you caught that for me hang on a sec, give me two seconds uh chasing solitude oh vulnerability just I mean I I can't come close to connecting with or at a at a deep level with anybody unless I'm first vulnerable myself and that just means being able to to let everybody know that I don't guess what this is a might surprise you but I don't know everything you know and you know half the half my life has been spent trying to convince everybody that I do know everything. So there you go. That's all I got.

SPEAKER_03 40:58

Thanks colleague you know I was thinking about this idea of wisdom or thought before I had it there's a really good example of it in Bill's story. When he's in the hospital he has the third incarnation he has the the uh white light experience and then a paragraph down from there after he calls a doctor and tells him what happened and the doctor assures him whatever you're doing is better than what you had he said in the next paragraph the thought came maybe there are thousands of people who would like to have what was so freely given to me the thought came I did not come up with this idea. Right? And if he was a Native American they said vision quest that's what that is right I was thinking about two of those things that were really profound in my life it was stepson Henry who was down in autism and I would drive him to school every day and I'd sing all these songs to him because he liked everything from opera to country to row row row your boat and and we were doing uh row row row your boat now is at a stop sign stop light on the way to school and we had stopped singing and he reached forward he tapped my shoulder he said remember Raji life is a dream no kidding life is a dream and the other one was the last night I drank the thought came through me I'm done I'm toast I can't do this and I don't know where it came from but it was the truth and I recognized it for what it was just like with Henry. Those things happen frequently but I don't see them and experience them because I'm not present for them. I'm running my agenda the noise machine is just

The Pause That Invites Guidance

SPEAKER_03 42:55

obsessing about anything but the present moment. Who else?

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Ellie how's your mouth hi thank you I can probably say I had my gums done this summer and they're fantastic. The top of my mouth still hurts a little bit anyway thank you thank you for asking um uh sorry for the Blair Witch project um I obviously don't know how to handle my the zoom on my phone but pick I I think I'm on safe driving and I'm not in the car but rest assured um uh grateful to be here and um to hear the topics and the shares um I do um love it's I've been in the program a long time um but the whole idea of the pause still amazes me especially at work um and how powerful that is because so you know you sort of say oh my my first thought or interpretation is often so wrong and it's funny it's almost like now it's almost comical of like and um it's you know it's the idea of how many problems I don't create By that pause, which then, you know, spiral. And again, it's like a lot of things in A. Like, I'll do it and be like, God, this is great. This works. And then of course I totally forget to do it the next time until I make some bozo move. Um, but I also um I've been um lately really uh I I don't think of myself as having this ego, um, which is ridiculous, but I have realized that there are certain things I'm conditionally will um turn my will in my life over to. And I found myself with when it comes to alcohol, I've turned it over to the best of my ability. But when it comes to other bad behaviors, I've really found myself regressing back to the alcoholic behavior of like, oh, during the day I'm good, I'm checking the boxes, you know, I'm doing this. But then at night I like fall apart because it's almost like the old bad ideas. Allie's back in charge saying, we'll take it from here, you know, and that's exactly what the drinking was. It was the changing my mind in the afternoon. It was the I deserve this, it doesn't matter. And I started to look at more of my journal entries, and it's like, why did I do that last night? You know, now this is how I feel. And I look at it, and I'm really trying to develop a pause for behaviors because I find myself again as sort of the folding into some of these behaviors, which don't help me. They don't, it's it leads to more self-centeredness because I'm miserable or you know, not living up to these standards that apparently I've set for myself and almost in order to fail. I don't know. Um, but I just know that um I'm afraid that I'm starting to fold it into sort of like not just the cost of doing business, you know, it's like being hung over. You know, I drink and the consequences and yeah, and I hate being hung over. But then I'd be like, but I do it again anyway. So I think that part of what I'm um really uh, you know, getting learning the hard way, which you know, as a good alcoholic, you have to learn it the hard way. It's like the physical pain, but then I'm starting to get that mental pain of like I'm starting to lose trust in myself in certain areas because, and that was kind of that was the drinking. It's like, I don't know if I'm gonna drink when I get home tonight. Um, and realizing that I need to continue to put more parts of my life into um, I call it my heart, into my higher powers guide because I have people telling me, and you know, it's like I have some physical problems, and they're like, here's what you need to do. And I'm always coming up with my version of their care plan. And I don't get the results and I go in and talk about it. And luckily I have some very patient people in my life um who are like, yeah, but it's kind of like with drinking, it's like this is like a strength thing, but it's like it was like, yeah, but the alcohol, let's let's focus on that because I've got all these stories that I spin and sort of reasons why and justifications, and kind of like, because that's just how I am, that's just how I am. And again, um, the more I listen to being, you know, willing to learn or be, you know, kind of like I do with my higher power or my acupuncturist or certain people where I trust them implicitly. And then when it comes, but now I've realized I've gotten back to picking and choosing about what information I um I'm willing to accept. And um I'm getting crushed. And again, hoping that again to transfer some of this like, hey, pause, is this really what we want to do? Is this how we want to be? Show up tomorrow morning, and that that is um, you know, the drinking's not there, but you know, the shit behavior, excuse my language at the night, is there. So um, and then if I sit and listen, I get the answer, but sometimes kind of like with drinking, I'm like, yeah, but the answer is gonna say, don't do that. And um, as opposed to how can I do that without consequences? And um, so I'm really grateful to be here. And uh again, I'll work on my camera. Um, thanks.

SPEAKER_03 47:47

Thanks, Jenny. Thanks for bringing up the pause. The pause is an intervention on the goofy thinking. The pause is the call for inspiration. God, what would you have me be? We pause and ask for an intuitive thought or direction, which means I'm asking for this thing to come out of the ground of being, out of the God mind, out of the God consciousness. And that's an invitation. But I have to have the pause because I have to stop. Won't you have me be? What am I being asked to learn? Show me my next move. And sometimes you get to that by um, you go, I don't know what my next move is. Well, what's the next move that would screw things up and make it worse? I always know that I always know that one. Thanks, Ellie. Who else?

SPEAKER_08 48:44

I'm Doug, I'm an alcoholic. Hey Doug. Thanks, Roger. Um Wow. What a topic. Um you mentioned something earlier, birthdays. I I recently had a birthday, uh sobriety birthday last week. Uh and and it really it really got me to thinking, uh, how can it be that I remained sober this long? Uh, because left to my own machinations, uh, that wouldn't have happened. You know, that wouldn't have happened at all. I'm reminded when I walked into the treatment center, the thing that was on the top of my mind, uh, other than I was crazy and didn't know what to do, was yep, God's gonna get me. The God of my understanding is gonna lay it out, gonna get me. What was going to happen? I wasn't too sure, but I was convinced that I was going to be punished somehow. Uh, I guess you'd say the beast was working over time in my mind. But it wasn't until I found a little humility coming from somewhere that I began to learn something about who I am and what am I. I guess I was willing to let my guard down a little bit and maybe start listening to some people who I thought might know something about something, but I wasn't sure I was going to trust them anyway. Uh, I too had a lot of a lot of questions. Kathy reminded me of the question, like, that's not fair. Why'd that happen? Why'd God do that? And I was constantly asking the wrong question. And and it never occurred to me because I didn't investigate it enough. Uh through my experience in going to AE, I get I find myself more and more using it as a reminder of what I didn't know. A reminder of that I've always been the problem. And it reminds me that not to give up, because if I give up, all is lost. Plus, read somewhere that uh when I'm ready, more will be revealed to me. Things that I need to know about humility, about life, about forgiveness, uh, about things greater than I am, obviously. Uh I too used to wear the mask. I had a background pretty extensive in radio and television, and there you learn how to use the mask because you want to be seen in the right light. I will cover up who I think I am and who I want you to believe who I am. Uh I think back on it, you know, what a waste of time, but I was convinced I was doing the right thing. You know, and I look back on years of sobriety, and I guess I'm really grateful today of the people that I have met, and those I have yet to meet in the program uh that provide a real good weather vein for me on uh not only what to do, but when to do it and how to do it. It's uh it's a learning place for me. It's way beyond college. Um and I guess when I look back and think about it, really, it's something that's kept me alive because it's kept me sober and it's kept me grateful. Um that the God of my understanding still apparently has some things for me to do. Uh, and I think they happen to be right. Thanks for the topic. Really good. How many years, Doug? 48.

SPEAKER_03 52:54

What a thunk. Makeup, please. Nobody in my family would have thunk. I know. No one was betting on me either. I I have a saying that I use on myself and sometimes on someone who'll listen, and it is to remind me of this life is preparatory. What I'm doing today is prepare me for something that's coming down the road. I don't know what that something is. I don't know if it's a really fun thing, exciting thing, a neutral thing, a tragic thing. I don't know what it is, but I'm confident that the work I'm doing every day is building up a spiritual muscle, if you will, um a spirituality that'll get me through what I need to get through when it's time to get through it. And that's what my history is. I didn't always, you don't see it when it's you're in process, you see it in retrospect. I did pretty good through that. Somewhere I learned when it gets when things get harder, more heated, you lean in more. You don't pull back and do less, you do more, more study, more prayer, more meditation, more inventory. Turn the flame up on those knuckleheads you sponsor, right? You're busy, you're busy. And it works, it works because it gets me out of self. And that's one of our major problems, isn't it? Self-self-centered fear. Who else?

SPEAKER_11 54:34

Thanks, Doc. I'm Kirsten. Hi Kirsten.

SPEAKER_04 54:47

Hi. Um when you were talking about certainty before and our need for certainty, our need to be safe and all of that. Um something that's really helped me um be more accepting of my failures, be more accepting of pain and of and more gracious about myself and how I change. Like when we talk about who am I? Well, I'm different today than I was last week. And I hope to be different and growing. Um, so I'm different next week before. And the years after that, and all, you know, I just the one thing that's really helped me is that no matter what the situation, especially though the situation is challenging, I go into it saying to myself, I'm willing to be wrong about that. You know, I'm willing to to maybe get it wrong because um many years ago, Richard Rohr said if you gotta do it wrong, to do it right. And so it helps me to accept failure or not even call it a failure, but call it a lesson, an opportunity to see whether I could have done better or how to do it differently, or whatever it is. And um, if it is just having to do with me, that's a lot easier. If it has to do with other people, and I'm gonna be causing harm or some kind of wrongdoing, even if I don't know, you know, um, there's no peace in that. So I if I go into it thinking I'm willing to be wrong about this, uh, and even if I'm in a group of people and asked what the next step is, I can say, well, I'm willing to be wrong about this, but here's what I'm thinking. Or something like that. Anyway, the the idea that we need to know who we are, I don't really, I don't think that's a goal for me anymore. I know that in my 40s, just getting sober, it was like, whom I never figured out who I am. Oh no, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Those are things I actually said in my 40s. And and now I just have to trust that. In order for me to stay peaceful, I need to, you know, after from those higher, higher levels of behavior that we talk about all the time, you know, generosity, kindness, compassion, um, empathy, honesty, all of those things. And if I if I can keep those things at the front, the forefront of my behavior, then I tend to stay pretty peaceful no matter how many mistakes and failures or things I get wrong every day. Man, and there's many, many, many that cause me uh slight sufferings, but nothing too heavy, nothing nothing tragic in my recent history, so that's pretty good. Anyway, um willing to be wrong about it. Pause. Awesome. But um understanding that I I could very well be wrong about this opinion I'm having, let's say, or whatever. And with that, I'll pass.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

Thanks, Kirsten.

SPEAKER_04 58:05

You're welcome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 58:09

So Kirsten was talking about failure and to the beast, to the ego, to the false self, to shame, failure is unacceptable. Which is why when we make a mistake, we tend to want to sweep it under the rug figuratively, and we never learn how to correct the mistake because we're so worried about the humiliation. But it's in the falling down that you learn how to get up, and those are all gifts. Every mistake I make is a gift, and I must be uh make a lot of mistakes because I'm rich in

Failure As Gift And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_03 58:50

gifts. I'm just saying. Um, no shortage of gifts here. So anyway, uh we're we're out of time, but I want to uh thank you all for being here. Do you want to close with a prayer? Unmute yourselves. Gatherings alive and well, thanks to you. We are now in uh over 980 cities, 59 countries and territories, and we're at about 12 and a half thousand downloads. And that's because of you guys, right?

SPEAKER_11 59:28

So let's uh close with a third step prayer.

SPEAKER_06 59:34

God was doing those though.

SPEAKER_11 59:47

I'd better do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:03

I I recorded that. That'll be interesting. All right, I'll see you in a couple weeks, y'all. Thank you. Bye, everyone.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:14

Thank you, everyone.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:15

Thank you.