Three Types of Prayer (and Why None of them Seem Appropriate in AA Meetings)

I believe all prayers can be grouped into three types: Their Prayers, Our Prayers and My Prayers. Their Prayers are those prayers said or used by other people, not me. Our Prayers are those prayers said or used by me and other people who share common beliefs with me. My Prayers are said by me alone, although I suppose the words making up the prayer might also be used by others. Their Prayers and Our Prayers, when said together in a community of believers, are said to be communal prayers. My basic point in this blog entry is that I don't believe communal prayers belong in AA meetings.

When I'm sitting in a meeting of AA, I do not participate in communal prayers... Well, at least I haven't done so for the last four years or so of my sobriety. I choose to stay silent and watch and listen to others saying Their Prayers. I suppose that another way of looking at this is that they're all saying their My Prayers all at the same time to their own concept of a Higher Power. But the act of saying it all together as a group seems to make in a communal prayer, regardless of the individual intent.

My issue (and believe me, it's my issue) with communal prayers isn't that other people don't have the perfect right to do it or that groups don't have the perfect right to make (or not make) such communal prayers part of their meeting formal. They all have such a right and I have an equal right to just be quiet.

My issue is this: communal prayers seem to give the appearance, most importantly to newcomers, that those who are saying them all have a common understanding of a Higher Power and that they're all praying to the same Higher Power. To the newcomer, I'm concerned that this communal act of "ours" is one that enforces a belief or misunderstanding that they are an outsider (until they join in our circle, hold hands and repeat a prayer that may or may not feel appropriate or true for them).

Sure, I know that most AAs understand that we really don't have such a common understanding of God---but my concern isn't about our understanding that or not. It's the impact of that group format and behavior on the newcomer. To the newcomer it appears that our actions are inconsistent with our words, both spoken and written in our literature. It's particularly troubling to me that we seem limited to using Christian prayers in most all of the AA meetings I've attended: The Lord's Prayer and the Serenity Prayer are both Christian in origin.

Clearly this is a group conscience issue and I'm just speaking my opinions about how groups are handling this is my corner of the world. I do appreciate several groups in my area of the East Bay/Contra Costa County who have made a conscious decision to eliminate common prayers from their meetings: several begin with a simple and quiet period of silence for the alcoholic who still suffers and/or end the meeting with some reading from AA literature. To me, this is much more in keeping with the best practices and traditions of AA.

Until then, I just sit quietly during any "Their Prayers" that happen during AA meetings and practice "My Prayers" when I'm alone with my misunderstanding of my Higher Power or practice "Our Prayers" if I'm ever in a religious community of which I'm a member.

Take care!

Mike L.

How My 5th Step Happened One Day...

All of my steps have happened to me. That isn't to say that I wasn't involved or working them, but in each instance, and sometimes almost in spite of all the things I was doing in terms of any particular step, the step eventually, and without fail, happened to me. My fifth step is a perfect example.

For a variety of reasons, I had never felt compelled to rush through the steps or to do a step just to say I had done it. I saw that others had that urgency, but I didn't feel it. I was sort of lucky in that way I suppose.

You see, the obsession to drink had left me two full days before I first stepped foot into an AA meeting, or any other 12 step meeting for that matter. So I didn't feel pushed to do the steps quickly, or at all really, at least in terms of them being some sort of method to get rid of the compulsion to drink again. That obsession had gone already.

Ultimately, I began working the steps because each of them afforded me the possibility of dealing with some sort of suffering/pain or the possibility of providing me some increased level of happiness, serenity, joy and/or contentment. So I tried to work them, even if slowly.

I'd been encouraged in this "slowbriety" strategy by Dr. Earle, especially in terms of the fourth and fifth steps: he was of the opinion that people walking in the doors of AA should not rush into the fourth step. He believed, and I readily agreed with him, that when most of us walked in the doors of AA we were pretty beaten up already and the last thing in the world we needed was to focus even more attention on whatever wrong we had done before coming to AA and trying to get sober. He tended to recommend that people hold off on working a 4th step until they'd gotten at least a year or so of sobriety. Sure, if there was something really nagging at you or making you feel like you needed "liquid relief", you could certainly talk about that with your sponsor or whoever else you felt safe with, but absent that, he recommended that people should just focus on getting your feet on the ground and getting settled in the fellowship. The first three steps were prescribed by the Dr. if one was so inclined....he never really seemed to push it on anyone.

I probably took Earle as his word a little too much: I had not really done much in terms of the fourth step until after Earle had died in January 2003. During the last five months of his life, spent mostly in the hospital, I'd sometimes thought about the possibility of doing my fourth step then so that I could do my fifth step with Earle before he died. I ended up never really considering that because it seemed awfully selfish of me. I opted for just being there with him during that time of his life. While I know he would have loved performing that service for me, I simply wasn't ready and it never seemed as important as what I was doing by just being with him, holding his hand, helping him pee into the bottle, brushing his teeth, or just plain sitting.

Some months after Earle's death, I did sit down and write what amounted to a fourth step. I've already talked about that in an earlier blog, but suffice it to say that it was very brief. I'd already done a long narrative "fourth step" 20 years before when I was in the Jesuits and that confession had already provided me an effective means of dealing with all my past prior to age 25. I really didn't see any point rehashing and digging up what had already been resolved. As for the post-25 issues, a man who later became one of my sponsors explained what it was he found important to include in a fourth step: He felt that it was important to include anything that "made us wince". Anything that brought your face into a "just bit into a lemon" scrunchiness. That's what needed to be written down and shared with another human being. What we were really "guilty" over --- what we felt true shame over.

Ernest Kurtz (author of "Not God: A History of AA" and "Spirituality of Imperfection") wrote somewhere (I think it was in another one of his books, less talked about, called "Shame and Guilt") that most alcoholics come into the rooms of AA with two great burdens: shame and guilt. He said that guilt was what we carried as a result of what we had done; shame was the burden we carried over "who we were". The greatest shame I felt in life was the shame of being an alcoholic. I'd felt for years that being or not being an alcoholic was something within my realm of control. When I crossed the line and lost the ability to stop drinking, I felt tremendous shame over that.

I was very aware of that shame from the very first few meetings of AA and this shame began to dissipate on a daily basis as I learned more and more about the dis-ease of alcoholism. As a result, this shame was really not something that made me "wince" anymore when I was ready to do my fourth step. There were a few items from my past that did, so I noted them down in a notepad document on my Blackberry handheld device/phone. It really only took me about 2 hours, sitting on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean one day, to complete my 4th step. But it took longer before I felt ready to do a fifth step with my sponsor, Dave.

Dave had talked about the fourth and fifth step in meetings and I always felt he was talking to me when he was doing so. One of the things that he said about the fifth step when he was listening to some one's 5th step, was that he always listened for a "sense of remorse". That it really meant something to the person sharing this information. That it wasn't just some bullshit exercise being done to check off a step and somehow become part of the AA Club or somehow "ensure" sobriety by doing some sort of formalistic ritual without really meaning it.

Well, I just wasn't going to do that! But to be honest, I just didn't feel anything when I looked at the items on my 4th step list. Part of that was because I actually had shared most of all of these things with others in the context of trying to help them deal with their past issues.... By doing that, I think I accomplished the intent of 5th step....but I never felt it was quite enough to say that I was done with this important step.

Then, my sponsor invited me to join him on an AA weekend retreat in August 2003. There were about a dozen of us who went. Most of us were looking forward to time away and time to play golf with our new found or old friends.... But part of the weekend involved a nightly AA meeting for all of us on the retreat. Other than that, it wasn't much of a AA retreat. My wife was correct when she accused me of just getting away for a weekend of golf and "calling it" an AA retreat. She's highly perceptive...but she let me go with her blessing anyway. Thank God she did, because my fifth step happened to me that weekend.

My 5th step "happened" in two parts.

The first part happened while playing golf with my sponsor on the way to the retreat location.... Dave's a great golfer and I'm really just a hack who can sometimes hit a great shot. About halfway through that game, we were playing a long par 5 hole and my first shot went left and off the fairway, behind a large hedge. When I stood by my ball, I could see the green about 200 yards ahead of me....only if I leaned way to my right. The hedge was pretty much in my way and the only way that I could possibly hit the green would be to either (a) kick my ball to the right or (b) hit the ball where it laid and try to do something like hit the ball to the right of the green and pray to God that it would curve to the left. Now, hitting a ball and having it curve to the left is actually something I do quite well! I mean, that's how I got behind this hedge in the first place! But doing it "on purpose" was not something I had ever done. Kicking the ball to the right seemed the more appropriate solution, but I just couldn't do it. Dave was always talking about "Golf" as though it was his Higher Power----it was the ultimate example of ethics and morality and provided meaning to life. Now, Dave couldn't see me at this point in time because he and the others were already up by the green looking for their balls.

I ended up choosing (b) and hitting the ball as best I could and I would just deal with it. I hit the ball and for the first time in my life it did what I intended it to do! It took off around the hedge, curved to the left and landed right in the middle of the green. Everyone cheered when they saw it land and I was on top of the world. I'd "done the right thing" and it worked out perfectly. I'd never felt so good about myself. I consider this event to represent all those other times in my life when I did the "right" or "good" thing. There are many such events and all of them needed to become part of my personal inventory.

The second and more dramatic part of my fifth step experience came on the second day of the retreat, again on the golf course with my sponsor. Again, a long par 5 hole on a different course. I'd been playing great until this hole and was loving the experience of being with these three other guys and being "part of". My sponsor and I both hit great shots off of the tee, both of our balls went over and beyond a hill, out-of-sight, but apparently about half way down the fairway. As we were walking toward our balls, enjoying each others success, we topped the hill and looked down the fairway: there was one ball sitting right in the middle of the fairway in line where I thought my ball had gone (Dave's ball had appeared to have gone somewhat right of mine...). Dave pointed to it, assuming it was mine, and said, "Great shot Mike!" and then began walking over to the right side of the fairway to find his ball. He quickly realized that his ball was not anywhere on the fairway and that it must have bounced somewhere into the rough. While he began searching for his ball, he called over to me and said to go ahead and hit, he may have to take a penalty if he couldn't find his ball soon.

I took out my 8 iron and hit the ball well... It landed up on the green not more than 7 feet from the hole! Unbelievable! As Dave continued looking for his ball, cussing like a sailor, I walked up to the green. Just before getting to the green I noticed another ball laying over to the right of the green and I went over to look at it closer: as soon as I saw it, I realized that it was the same kind of ball I had been hitting that day, a Pinnacle and the same number, 3. A Pinnacle 3! What a coincidence! Someone had lost their ball on this hole and it was the exact same kind of ball that I'd been hitting. Strange. I left the ball as it was and then proceeded to walk up to the green and mark my ball and wait for the others to catch up to the new Tiger Woods.

As I bent down to mark my ball and pick it up, I realized that it wasn't a Pinnacle 3, it was a Titleist and it had a red dot on it (good golfers, like my sponsor, always mark their ball with a unique symbol or marking so that they can distinguish their ball from other people's balls...). Strange. Dave was hitting a Titleist and his marking was a red dot. Oh my fucking God!!! What had I done? I'd apparently hit Dave's ball from the middle of the fairway... And the Pinnacle 3 that was laying out there not ten yards from the green (a shot, by the way, that Tiger would have been proud of!!!) was actually my ball. I then turned to look back down the fairway and I could see Dave giving up his search for his ball and taking a penalty drop and proceeding with play. In a split second, without any real thought, I marked my/Dave's ball and placed his ball in my pocket where I had another Pinnacle 3 ball. I didn't want to admit to mistakenly hitting Dave's ball, wasn't sure how we could possibly cure this mistake without delaying the game and making me the butt of many good hearted jokes that night. So I just decided to lie. I'd keep this innocent mistake to myself and just move forward. It would just have to be one of those mysterious ball disappearing stories that all great golfers love telling again and again.

Then, Rich, one of the other guys who was playing with us was now approaching the green when he looked down and noticed the Pinnacle 3 ball laying in the grass. He checked the ball and then called up to me saying that, "Hey, Mike, weren't you hitting a Pinnacle?" Trying not to turn red, I said Yes, but that mine was up here on the green and already marked... Even pulled out my second Pinnacle 3 to "prove" it --- not that he was really accusing me of anything. He let it go and just put the ball back on the ground. My ball.

I ended up making an Eagle (two under par) on that hole and everyone "High Fived" me and told me how great I played that hole. No one seemed to have any idea about what I had done. Dave was still a little pissed about losing his ball, but he seemed to let it go rather quickly as it was just a game and he was having fun. It should have been best time in my life, but it was really my lowest point ever. And my Hell was only just beginning. From that moment on, for the remainder of the day, it seemed that the underlying topic of every discussion or story-telling was something along the lines of Honesty, Integrity, and Truthfulness. On the way back to the retreat site that afternoon, Dave told several stories about why he loved golf so much: primarily because it placed the responsibility for judging the game on the individual player: while there were marshals and judges on the course during tournaments, they weren't there to make judgments or dole out punishments. The players themselves call the penalties on themselves. It was a game all based on integrity and truthfulness.

I'll never forget how I felt sitting in the back seat of Dave's car as he was going on and on about how much he loved golf and why.... I never felt so disconnected from him as I did then. In fact, I felt myself disconnected from everyone on that trip. It was me and my secret on one side and everyone else on the other side of life. It was horrible. The longer I kept my secret to myself, the more isolated and alone I felt. It actually reminded me of the isolation and loneliness I felt those last ten months of my drinking...when my son was in recovery and I couldn't stop drinking. Isolated and alone. No one knowing what was going on inside Mike. No one.

That night at the AA meeting that we held at the end of the day, a guy named Mick told his story and toward the end really got honest with how difficult his life had been over the last couple of years due to his wife's illness. Several of us were close to tears with empathy and compassion toward him. When he finished, he said that the topic was "Honesty." Crap!!! They then started going around the circle each man taking his shot at talking about how important Honesty had been in their recovery and how much this Honesty made their recovery possible. Was this some sort of conspiracy? Did they all know what I'd done? What was I going to talk about? Was this going to be the meeting where, for the first time ever, I raised my hand and identified as "Mike, alcoholic" and then said "I think I'm just going to pass..."?

I knew that there wasn't a way in hell that I was going to be able to say anything, other than the truth. I really don't remember much of what others talked about that night, I was last in the circle to talk and Dave was sitting to my left. He'd share first, before me. When he was done, I raised my hand and identified...and then said that I really really didn't want to talk tonight. But that I had to clear something up that had happened earlier that day. I then told them all what I had done from the moment of accidentally hitting a ball that I'd thought to be mine....to the moment when I bent down to mark what I'd thought to be my ball on the green only to discovery that it was Dave's. I was crying like a girl (sorry, girls!) during the whole confession. When I finally finished, it was quiet for a few moments. Then Rich, blurted out, "You mean you hit Dave's ball??? You hit his fucking ball?" I nodded and he and everyone, including me, started laughing so much that they were on the floor. It must have taken ten minutes before anyone could talk. As things were starting to calm down, I leaned over to Dave and said that what had bothered me so much about what I'd done was that he'd once said something along the lines that we recovering alcoholics are now going down a path where we "do the right thing." I clearly didn't do the right thing. His response was to smile and say, Well, there's another part to that, and that is "We do the right thing, except when we don't". And that's perfectly ok. We pick ourselves up and try again. It was ok.

I then leaned over one more time and told Dave that I wasn't going to give him back the Titleist ball with the red dot. That it was going on my bureau and would forever remind me of this day. He laughed and said, "Of course!!"

Some weeks later, I told Dave that I needed to meet and go over my 4th/5th step with him. Ultimately, my 5th step was something that happened to me that night when I shared with this group of men what I'd done, how I'd separated myself from them by my actions and what I needed to do to recover the connection I had with them.... A connection that I so desperately needed to have with them. It really didn't involve going down any list of wrongs from the past (I'd actually already done that in a variety of other ways). It involved a deep felt admission to myself and to another human being (actually, about 15 of them!) the exact nature of my wrongs.

And the exact nature of my wrongs was that I mistakenly thought that my actions, good or bad, separated me from others, from God and from my true self. Nothing has ever been farther from the truth. Nothing.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Trick: Giving It Away!

At this morning's 6am meeting at the Lafayette Hut, the chair mentioned an experience he had when he first got sober two years ago when someone gave him a 24 Hour chip after a meeting and how much that meant to him ever since. It brought to mind two of my favorite "chip stories":

The first happened toward the end of my first year of sobriety, sometime before Dr. Earle went into the hospital and when he was still able to attend meetings on a regular basis. As I've mentioned before, Earle got sober June 15, 1953 and two days following, I was born. Since I was 48 when I got sober, I believe this story happened sometime after June 2002, when Earle would have picked up his 49 year chip. It was then that Earle decided to give me and another guy, Rich (who really was like a son to Earle and who had a couple of more years sober than me...but who had known Earle for much longer than I had...) two of the 48 year chips that he'd received the prior year. I suppose that knew that he meant a great deal to the both of us and that we were both simpletons-enough to find this gift of a 48 year chip really a big deal!

Anyway, I carried that 48 year chip around in my pocket for months, right next to my cheap plastic 6- or 9-month chips. I'd often reach into my pocket while walking and hold on to the 48 year chip as some sort of talisman or lucky charm. It was thick and metal and had a heavy feel to it. It also always reminded me of Earle and of some "Earleism" (e.g., "Self-disclosure is the currency of AA: it's the thing of value that we exchange with one another." or "We desperately, desperately, need one another!!!"). But I also felt somewhat self-conscious about having this 48 year chip in my pocket when I only had 6 or 9 months! I mean, what if I got run over by a bus one day and killed. Someone would find a 9 month AND a 48 year sobriety chip...probably give that to my wife who would then give it to someone in AA who would then announce to the group that Mike must have been going around pretending to have 48 years of sobriety when he really only had 9 months! Come on, give me a break! That would have meant that I got sober when I was 9 months old! But that's the sorts of thoughts I have sometimes, even now.

The self-conscious thought continued though until one day I was attending an NA meeting, which has never been a real part of my recovery practice. I was attending the NA meeting though because at that meeting my son Pat was chairing and he was also celebrating his second year clean... I almost said "clean and sober" but Pat doesn't say that: he's clean. Alcohol is really just a drug like any other drug. But I digress. I listed to Pat's chair and there's simply nothing more moving to a father with one and a half year's sobriety listening to his seventeen year old son tell his story and then receive a two year chip. During the time for chairing, I never felt so at a loss for words in my life. The only thing that seemed to come close to expressing how proud I was of Pat was to reach in my pocket and pull out Earle's 48 year chip. Pat had fallen for Earle also and even spend one night with me in the hospital sitting with Earle during one of my "Earle watch" commitments... Pat slept most of the time, but he was there for Earle nonetheless.

I knew that Pat would appreciate it, so I raised my hand and told Pat that I was giving him something now that meant a great deal to me: Earle's 48 year sobriety chip. I loved Earle a great deal and thought of him daily since his death. I wanted Pat to have Earle's chip. But I told him that if he lost Earle's chip, I'd kill him! Everyone laughed, including Pat....but I told him I was serious! Then I laughed. About a year later I was looking for something in Pat's room --- it looked typical: like a tornado had just blown through the room. I noticed a wooden box on Pat's bookshelf and opened it up (respecting another's privacy has never been one of my strong points!) and found all of Pat's clean chips and 24-hour NA key holders. There were many of them--it took him 5 months before something clicked and before the clicking happened, he wasn't able to get much more that 5-10 days continuous clean time. Anyway I dug through the chips with my finger and at the bottom of the box was Earle's 48 year chip. I smiled, glad that I didn't have to kill my son.

I was just about to tell you my second special chip story, when I realized that I've already blogged about it!!!

http://mikelrecovery.blogspot.com/2008/02/gift-that-never-stops-being-given.html

I'm so glad that I hadn't already told the one I just told today!!! I sometimes do that!

Take care!

Mike L.

Expectations

I was talking with a friend (with 25 years of sobriety) the other day and he told me that he was getting fed up with the meetings he'd been attending and was needing to move on and find better meetings. While I sympathized with him (and gave him some suggestions of some new meetings to try out), I also said that in the past I've had similar conversation with another friend with long term sobriety (33 years) who was getting ready to explode if he didn't find other meetings to go to, the one he was going to was driving him crazy!

What struck me about the second guy with 33 years is that the meeting he was talking about was one that I attended on a regular basis and one that I actually quite enjoyed. In fact, I include it in a group of a few meetings that I consider "home-like" in that I go to them regularly enough that everyone knows my name...just like the Cheers pub was home for Norm. Now, when he said the meeting was driving him crazy, I knew without him telling me what the specifics were underneath that frustration: people being rude during the meeting (talking while someone else is sharing), certain newcomers whining about the same stuff (again and again and again, day after day after day, week after week after week!), etc. I actually refer to that group as "The Wild West of AA". Great meeting, but I suppose not for everybody.

But for some reason, the stuff that was driving him to the edge of insanity and/or homicide, didn't really bother me at all...or not much anyway. Why was that? Today, I realized that it had to do with expectations. I was having very different expectations from meetings than my two oldtimer friends. They seemed to want order, politeness, courtesy, solutions, respect, etc. I just wanted to be there to hear solutions (or at least, problems that were calling out for solutions!), to meet/help other suffering alcoholics and most importantly, to see myself reflected in each person there (especially those folks that annoyed the shit out of me!), etc.

Anyway, I remembered something that once helped me massage my own expectations of others. It's called "The Paradoxical Commandments" and there are various versions of this floating around the Internet. Many of the versions are ascribed to Mother Teresa....but in actuality, they were written by a young man when he was in college I believe and who appears to be living with a long term resentment over the plagiarism being used by others with this literary work of his.... You can learn more about him and this by going to: http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/

Anyway, here's the version I committed to memory. I use it infrequently, but when I'm struggling with someone not meeting my expectations it's really come in handy!:

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered...
LOVE THEM ANYWAY!

If you do good,
people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives...
DO GOOD ANYWAY!

If you are successful,
you will win false friends and true enemies...
SUCCEED ANYWAY!

The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow...
DO GOOD ANYWAY!

Being frank and honest makes you vulnerable...
BE HONEST AND FRANK ANYWAY!

What took you years to build,
may be destroyed overnight....
BUILD ANYWAY!

People really need you help,
but may attack you if you help them...
HELP PEOPLE ANYWAY!

Give the world all you have,
and you'll get kicked in the teeth!!
GIVE THE WORLD ALL YOU HAVE GOT...ANYWAY!

Take care!

Mike L.

You Are Perfect, Just the Way You Are...

This is what Earle, my first real sponsor--grandsponsor to be more accurate--used to repeat me me and others again and again and again. He would phrase it differently and sometimes, it would simply be hidden in one of his stories... Much of what Earle tried to pass on related to this one simple truth: there was simply nothing wrong with me. I was perfect just as I was. I didn't need to change anything. Period.

Truthfully, I didn't believe him for a minute. There was much wrong with me, both now and all through my past. How could a disease be present in a perfect flawless person? A disease was "wrong" -- things weren't right when someone was sick. I tried to ignore Earle and there was much being said in meetings that seemed to support my strong suspicion that Earle was simply delusional and off on some well intentioned philosophical tangent. Seemed like many in AA were saying there was much wrong with us alcoholics and that these flaws all led to our drinking and were the underlying cause of our illness. We were, doesn't it say oftentimes in the Big Book, selfish and selfseeking and these were at the root of our drinking and our alcoholism. And, surely, if we didn't combat such flaws with all our might and willpower, we'd surely drink again. I mean weren't the Steps specifically designed to change us into something better than we were before we worked them?

But he was a stubborn old man and didn't seem to have any qualms about telling such folks that they were wrong --in fact, perfectly wrong! -- about believing that we were flawed and/or defective. We were perfect and if we'd just accept that truth, we'd find peace. And if we didn't find peace, well, that was just perfectly OK too.

Step 1 didn't pinpoint a defect in me when I acknowledged my powerlessness of alcohol: there's nothing wrong with being powerless over alcohol. It's simply just the way we alcoholics are. It's not a flaw, it's a condition. A fact. True, many of us learned to be ashamed and/or guilty about the growing suspicion that we were alcoholics...but we've all learned things that were simply not true.

Step 2 didn't say there was anything wrong with our hopelessness and insanity, it showed a way out of such hopelessness. Were it not for such hopelessness, we simply couldn't ever have achieved or experienced hope!

Step 3 did not say that we were less or bad before we placed our trust in something greater than ourselves. We did then what we knew how to do....when we knew better, we did better (thanks Maya Angelou!).

Step 4 did not say that we should do an "immoral" inventory, it said a moral inventory: inclusive of all that was. Nothing more than an honest appraisal of everything, so-called good and so-called bad. Were it not for all of it, we'd not be were we were now: and now was simply just the perfect place to be!

Step 5 didn't encourage us to disclose this moral inventory to another so that the other could confirm how wrong we were, quite the opposite: the sharing of the inventory was clearly intended as a mechanism where we could experience the full acceptance and love of another human being. They were there to listen without judgment or condemnation. We would hopefully walk away from that experience feeling that we were no longer alone, isolated...in self -constructed prisons.

Step 6 encouraged us to let go of the false idea that there was anything truly wrong with us. We should let go of such ideas and let them drift away with or without anyone's involvement. They'd served their purpose and we were done with them. Or, they'd not yet served their purpose and we weren't done with them. Or there was really no "purpose" to them at all. They'd helped us be more compassionate, loving, forgiving, tender, kind. Or they would.

Step 7 requires an attitude of humility: an attitude of openness to learning. "One is humble when one is willing to learn" Earle would often say. For me, the humility in this step involved being open to learning the full value and goodness of all that was part of me, without exception. If I'd ever characterize some part of me as "bad" or unacceptable, Earle would ask me, "Mike, what's wrong with that?" I'd try to answer as clearly and as honestly as I could, but he'd simply repeat the question again, "Well, what's wrong with that?" The more years I'm sober, the more I understand that the ultimate answer to that question is simply, there's nothing wrong with that. It's perfect.

Step 8 helped us acknowledge and list the harms we'd done others over the course of our lives and to become willing to go about mending what we'd broken or harmed in our relationships with others. We'd grown tired of loneliness and wanted to reconnect with others.

Step 9 was simply the beginning of a never ending process of reconnecting with others and rebuilding a full and vibrant human life. A new way of life.

Steps 10 thru 12 were a daily and ongoing process of transforming and growing as human beings.... "We are human be_ngs, not human was_ings" I heard someone say once in a meeting. We were rejoining the human race after a painful bout of self-hatred and denial about who we were. We found freedom by sharing what we'd been given with others who suffer from the same dis-ease that we have.


Since Earle's death, I've come across many wise words from others who seemed to believe just as Earle did....

You are perfect just the way you are. With all your flaws and
problems, there is no need to change anything. The only thing you need
to change is the thought that you have to change! (Zen saying)

Watch the catepillar become a butterfly! Does it not transform? Why then do we think that we're responsible for changing ourselves? (Zen saying)

Put this program into action a thousand times: 1. Identify the negative feelings in you; 2. Realize that these feelings are in you, not in the world, not a part of external reality; 3. Know that these feelings are not an essential part of “I”, these things come and go; 4. Realize that when you change, everything changes! [Note: in the next chapter he goes on to say that by these statements, he does not mean to say that we have to change anything!] (Anthony DeMello, Awakening)

Change? Don't worry! It's simply not an option! (me)

Ever Get Stuck in a Step?

I heard someone once share that their sponsor told them that if they ever found themselves stuck in a step (which oftentimes happens with the 4th and 8/9th steps...), that while the steps were meant to be worked in order, that she should always know that she was free to work any step that contained a "1" in it, even if it wasn't "in order".

She also noted that Step 11 has two "1s" in it and that means that this particular step could be doubly worked at any time no matter where someone was in terms of working the 12 steps!

I've always found this helpful to me. I know that I personally did not work the steps in order. I did begin at Step 1, in fact, I think I began that steps a full 10 months before I walked into my first meeting of AA: it began the moment I realized that I truly couldn't stop drinking! And I continued that step as I walked into these rooms and probably focused primarily on that one step for at least the first full year of sobriety.

But I didn't really go next to Step 2, I jumped ahead to Step 9 and started trying my best to repair some of the damage I'd inflicted on my wife of 20 years as a result of my drinking and all my fruitless attempts to "control and enjoy" my drinking. That attempt, well-meaning as it was, probably caused more damage than healing....but I stumbled through it and eventually realized what I was doing (as a result of some great guidance from my sponsor...after the fact as is common for me!) was not appropriate or helpful. I then returned to Steps 2 and 3 and so on....

It took me about 3 1/2 years to completely work through the Steps, I was really in no rush as the obsession to drink had left me two days before coming into AA and the slower and gentler way was working for me. I did develop a routine "maintenance program" (Steps 10, 11 and 12) from very early in my sobriety --- I began to deal with current day harms and making amends as needed (Step 10); developing a daily series of meditation/prayer exercises (Step 11) that I could do while commuting to work and doing whatever I could to help another alcoholic (Step 12) and share whatever amount of the message that I could carry at that point in time. I've kept that daily maintenance program, which includes many meetings each week and blogging here as often as I can. My life is full and I rarely feel "stuck" anymore.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Twelves Steps of AA: A Circular Not Linear Process

Early on in my recovery, I heard quite a few people motivate themselves and others in terms of working the steps by means of the following "carrot": if you work the steps (in order, of course) you will have a spiritual awakening, and thereby, be able to stay sober. That always sort of bothered me because my experience was that I had such a life changing and obsession obliterating spiritual awakening two days before my first AA meeting and as a result of that experience, my obsession to drink vanished and has yet to return in over six years.

I even remember one meeting where an oldtimer told the group that the only way to have this spiritual awakening was by working all twelve of the steps! Luckily, another oldtimer chimed in and offered a dissenting view: that the 12th step says: After having had "a" spiritual awakening as the result of these steps... It didn't say: "Only after having worked these steps did we have a spiritual awakening... " AA is not in charge of doling out "spiritual awakenings" and such awakenings are not the sole possession of recovering alcoholics or AA.

That said, I do believe that my own spiritual awakening happened on the morning of October 20, 2001 and I also believe that that spiritual awakening was a direct result of the working of the 12 steps of AA. But it wasn't me who worked the 12 steps that led to my awakening, it was my 15 year old son and two other young people who began getting clean and sober earlier that year in 2001. My son Pat began his recovery at 15 years old in January 2001, roughly speaking, when he began a drug treatment program at Kaiser. When he began his recovery, it was the first time in my life when I couldn't stop drinking. Until then, I could stop and I proved I wasn't an alcoholic many many times by demonstrating to myself and others, if necessary, that I could stop anytime I wanted to. I did that stopping many many many times. The stopping would always end up with a "starting" though --- whenever I got to the point that I (and hopefully others) was convinced that I had actually stopped.

Well, when Pat started his recovery, I couldn't stop drinking. Sure, I could manage it somewhat and keep it hidden (it was horrible!!!), but I couldn't stop. For about ten months, I think I drank some alcohol almost every day "in secret". Usually while Pat was safely in his 12 step meetings.

Although it took him some months to actually "lapse" in his using/drinking, it will soon be seven years since his last use of a mind-altering drug. His awakening or moment of clarity happened May 10, 2001. In June, he'll turned 22 years old.

My guess is that Pat's waking up was the direct result of someone else becoming transformed via the 12 steps and this program of recovery. I know without question, that my awakening on the morning of October 20, 2001 was a direct result of Pat and two other kids getting clean and sober and working this process to the best of their ability, one day at a time.

In this way then, I see the 12 steps as being a circular process beginning at Step 1 and working around a circle "clockwise" until we get to 12: when we do that, somehow the miracle of AA spreads to another and allows them to begin their own personal journey of recovery at Step 1, and so on and so on. The process is certainly not linear, not something that we go through and complete---no such thing as a AA graduation or "certificate of completion". It's a ongoing, ever evolving process.

While the disease of alcoholism/addiction may be genetic in nature, I've become absolutely convinced that recovery is wildly contagious and impacts all others around us, whether we know it or not.

Take care!

Mike