STEPS 2 AND 3: "We Agnostics" - A Choice and a Decision

0:01 good morning good afternoon good evening good day my name is herbert i'm an alcoholic and my i really welcome you to this i think going to be very interesting gathering today i'm going to wait for some introductions uh for a minute and i want to turn it over to melissa she represents the retreat center that supports this series the spirituality series which we do at least one a month and sometimes co-facilitated as we are today so melissa are you with us today i am i'm here there you go good day good afternoon and good evening to all my name is melissa i'm part of the mary and joseph retreat center hospitality team

0:49 the mary joseph retreat center in case you haven't heard about us we were established in 1963 by the daughters of mary and joseph and we were envisioned by the late sister mary ignatius and this retreat center an 8 acre retreat center actually started off as a couple's retreat center so we have um a little over 30 hotel style like bedrooms and if you ever get a chance to take a peek it's kind of set up like lucy and desi lucy's here desi's here but now we welcome all walks of life so in case you're in the area please stop by i would love to give you a tour here if you want more information about any of the events as well as curbs future

1:36 workshops please visit our website maryjoseph.org for upcoming times dates etc so thank you so much for giving us this time and your support thank you so much herb and thank you joe also thanks so much uh melissa always wonderful to have you represent the retreat center and support us in this administration and some marketing and because they place my material and events on their website uh the mature the the retreat center's been incredibly instrumental in my life my wife went up it we've been uh a mile from the retreat center since 1970

2:23 and my wife went there in 1983 for a women's retreat and during the next year she discovered her problem with alcohol and began to take care of that i got caught in the draft went to support her and then found out i needed help a very different story so um it over it's an eight acre uh place and and melissa's invitation is representative of the hospitality that's their charism and so there would be a spirit of welcome uh eight acres of just uh it's an oasis in the southern california area

3:09 half of the campus overlooks the ocean half of the campus overlooks the city it doesn't get much better than that we're scheduled to be together until about one o'clock my time that's about three hours we'll take a break after hour hour and 15 minutes hour and a half and basically see how the flow of this it's not scripted it's very spontaneous although it's organized both joe and i have some powerpoint supports um that also will be included in the video a recording um but first before we get into it as melissa indicated i've got an extensive background in spirituality i studied to be a catholic

3:54 priest for seven years i'm not sure exactly what joe's background is but we're probably as different as you can see on the screen you might notice that i don't and he does have hair joe would you like to say a few words hi my name's joe and i'm a different alcoholic uh hi everybody uh it is so great to be a guest here um i've been in the recovery community since uh the olympics were in montreal if you want to check google you can find out how long

4:40 that's been and um [Music] i um i'm a member of the beyond belief agnostics and free thinkers uh group in toronto we used to meet in a university of toronto classroom we started in 2009 in the fall and now we're an international zoom meeting we look forward to going back to the classroom whenever that is available but uh we're delighted in terms of how easy it's been for people especially of special purpose groups just to find each other find our tribe find people who look the same as us sound the same as us

5:27 talk the same as us and uh uh we're you know recovered the same as us and uh to a certain extent um professionally uh my uh profession is a finance and writing i write about i first started writing about billiards uh then it was finance addiction mental health music uh all of those things have more in common than you would think they they sound disconnected they all think they're the biggest drinkers in the world i'll tell you that much and um uh around the turn of the century i went looking for a secular daily reflection book and couldn't find one and complained to my

6:13 friends and they listened for a few weeks until someone said well joe if there was to be a um an agnostic or atheist daily reflection book who do you think could write it just just just saying here joe and uh i thought okay okay call to action and so i wrote beyond belief agnostic musings for 12-step life and it's been a lot of fun i do a lot of research about special purpose groups and underrepresented populations in the recovery community i i'm i'm not uh um you know well educated but i go to places that are full of doctors and

6:58 academics and i was at the recovery capital conference of canada and calgary alberta earlier this month and academics and professionals and treatment people talking about what's going on they love us uh and they tell us they give us some context the things we already knew but with the data so more about me later thanks for having me herb oh really wonderful joe and i met over 10 years ago and we i had the pleasure of driving him to a conference in arizona so we did spend some quality time together for the first time and a risk on both of our parts but it turned out well all right so

7:44 this first part is going to be a sharing of my knowledge and my experience with regard to steps two and three i come from a pretty traditional background as i said i studied to be a catholic priest for seven years and i have some information from that which i had to overcome quite frankly i didn't know that because it was the block to me i came in the program in 1984 and i'm a serious guy so i took it seriously i take myself too seriously sometimes but be that as it may um i found a step guide in four years it took that long for me to even realize that the steps were something that i needed to actually

8:31 understand and apply and have an experience with because it would change me for four years in a.a i went to meetings every day called my sponsor every day but i didn't do anything with the book or the steps other than study them by going to step meetings and book studies yeah i mean of course but the man who first talked me about took me through the steps that herb you have a lot of information but you have no transformation four years sober he saw the truth that i hadn't changed and i hadn't been changed i went through those steps at that time blowing by two and three because i i was a monk for seven years seven years of silence and i studied philosophy and

9:16 psychology and theology i know some helpful stuff and uh the next time i went through the steps three years later i had the same prejudice not in the sense of an awareness that i had a filter through which i was looking that was in fact not accurate i didn't know that i did it no i couldn't see that i didn't see and then this man in the third journey through the steps which i'll share a little bit today about uh took me at 10 years of sobriety into the book process from a different standpoint i'm going to now put some slides up

10:08 so this is myself and joe and we both have websites and perhaps we'll somebody will put that in the chat for us also i want you to ask yourself a question now what is your understanding well we're going to be talking about steps two and three they're the heart of the matter bill calls step two the cornerstone and step three the keystone of a spiritual arch through which we'll walk to a new freedom what's your i mean you've heard it in the rooms i'm not religious i'm spiritual okay what does spiritual mean i'm spiritual all right joe is spiritual

10:54 i come at it from a different path up the mountain joe refers to him as secular what does that mean and he'll explain more than i can about what that means a different path up the mountain same mountain same end game but different vocabulary probably not a different experience just different vocabulary ask yourself here right now i hope you have a pen and paper i'll be asking questions the joe will probably be asking you to ask yourself questions why are you here i mean it's saturday it's spring

11:40 we're talking about three hours why would you do that you even paid some money for it those fees by the way all go to the retreat center to support their work they've had a really tough time during the pandemic what is your current belief about god you have to hear the question though please well you don't have to do anything but i encourage you to hear the question i didn't ask you what you think i didn't ask you what you know i didn't ask you what you read what the big book says what your sponsor says what your parents said what your religious exposure has said today sitting here

12:25 participating in this event right now what's your current belief about power what's your current belief about god what's your current belief about higher power what's your current belief about a reality bigger than and other than yourself those are all synonyms the god the book says as we understand god i've adopted and adapted that to now my reality is god is i don't understand as groucho marx said and that's probably dating me he was one of the early comedians on black and white television he said any country club that would allow me to be a member i wouldn't want

13:12 to be a member of well a variation on that is any god that i can understand is not big enough the ocean will not fit in a bucket and i just am a bucket and bill says that in many places and i'm sure joe and i'll be referring to some aspects of the vocabulary in the big book and our interpretation and experience with it what do you currently believe here today about power you'll find that i'll be not using the god word a lot not because i have a problem with it i

13:58 don't it's a placeholder it's a symbol it allows a lot of conversation without a lot of awkwardness we're going to spend three hours talking about the same reality but using words i mean a whole dictionary full of words and just to avoid that awkwardness of communication we use the word god or power or higher power as we understand it or as i said as i don't understand it i don't need to understand it einstein i just love pithy p-i-t-h-y sayings that are wisdom sayings from wisdom people

14:43 the consciousness that created the problem cannot be the consciousness that solves the problem my mind is the source of my problems so i can't use my mind as the source of my solution this man at 10 years of sobriety introducing me to the set aside attitude he said convert it into a prayer which is especially in the context of this conversation it's more about an attitude it's more about an affirmation it's more about an open mind and an open heart i've cleaned up the prayer in the sense of not using the god word i've adopted and adapted to this particular

15:29 discussion not because i have any problem with the god word as i said i do not or the higher power word i do not but to try to have us have a experience broader than the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah i challenge all the words mine and when people speak you any of those of you who have had exposure to me i try to challenge it in the in the kindness love and tolerance spirit of a sometimes i slip off the path [Music] so please join me all this is is a confirmation that today at least for this next

16:14 period of time you're going to have an open mind and an open heart to listen without prejudice to listen with that open mind and open heart for the potential of having new information and or a new experience we're talking about power so that's how i begin power greater than ourselves please set aside everything that i think i know about myself the 12 steps in you for an open mind and a new experience with myself the 12 steps and especially you and it's a prayer from my perspective

17:00 not to change the reality of power but to open up my mind and heart and to be changed i actually know that i am powerless to set aside i am powerless to have that kind of open heart and open mind i don't even know that i don't know and i don't even see that i don't see and i want to be taken to a place that i don't even know exists but i'm convinced that it's possible this workshop will be based on some questions we'll ask like i already did and you'll get some information and i'll be asking you and joe will be asking you to take some action perhaps to reflect maybe to write or maybe some future readings

17:47 and then you'll have an experience which will generate more questions the questions one of my teachers said is much more important than the answers ask the question and allow the asked but unanswered question to percolate and to take you to a level of consciousness that you had not had before to take you to a place that you don't even know exists and if that sounds a bit new-agey it's not because i'm trying to put words to my actual experience at 10 years of sobriety what i discovered was having gone through the steps two different times previous to that having had dramatic and i'll explain them some

18:33 other time but not today dramatic radical changes in the way i thought and felt and behaved blowing by steps two and three did not prevent the spiritual awakening and so this third time going through the steps with the set-aside attitude i discovered that my concept of god that came from my religious tradition and all the background that i had was the very impediment to my relationship with the mystery my concept my thinking my knowledge my conviction

19:20 were the very things that were blocking me from a relationship a dynamic authentic vital relationship with history we have an open mind please close it thank you so i i i was in bondage and i didn't know it in 1984 i discovered i was alcoholic i was in bondage of of self until i in 1988 began the step work my journey going through it three or four different times over the next 20 years getting free from my addiction but more properly getting free from my unmanaged ability so ask yourself these questions

20:06 where is my life not working today unmanageability is the spiritual malady unmanageability is the human condition unmanageability is the best kept secret in the rooms most people think it's connected to addiction my experience maybe my opinion but my experience and understanding of unmanageability is has nothing to do with addiction that's why there's a dash there not an end how effective have your efforts been to have a decent life to live in emotional sobriety to live with serenity and contentment do you really want to change in light of what i believe about power

20:53 you wrote down i hope or you at least thought about my question what do you believe here's the question that oh parted the curtain for me how do i behave i wrote out what i believe it was a wonderful theological treatise a week later when he asked me that second question how do you behave write your answer out in light of what you believed you believed i was embarrassed because my feet did not move in concert with my head my fee showed me that i was a practical agnostic not a theoretical agnostic a

21:39 practical one i didn't act as if god was relevant i didn't act as if there was a power that i needed to have a relationship with i didn't have a daily consistent practice of meditation i relied on myself if i needed to do something get something achieve something i got up earlier i ran harder i stayed up later and i read more and i went to more workshops i wasn't reliant on a power other than myself i could talk a good game but i could not walk it i did not walk it so i asked that question of you to ask yourself about spirituality versus

22:25 religion the buddhists have just a wonderful image they say the master stands on the path pointing the way to the light unfortunately many of the disciples begin worshiping the finger religion is worshiping the finger the finger is a tool to point the way to the light spirituality is that relationship with the light spirituality is the relationship the steps are the tool a relationship with power this is what we're looking for a relationship with ourselves in steps four through seven a relationship with others steps eight and nine it's all

23:11 about spirituality my my translation for a sin in them would be relationship there's nothing to do with that word god or higher power or spirit the word spirit in fact comes from the greek word breath spirals a relationship with my breath a relationship with breath a relationship with life and then to live this way of life in 10 11 and 12 which is a rinse and repeat of steps one through nine

23:56 a relationship the the promise of the 12-step process is encapsulated in step 12 having had a spiritual awakening or an awakening of my spirit an awakening of my consciousness and awakening of my awareness but it's not about certitude and it's not about feeling and it's not about anything that's particularly phenomenal experiential other than change a change in the way we think and feel and behave this is the promise of the 12

24:42 steps having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps this is the message and it's done to us not by us but not without us that mystery of my willingness to take action and grace god's grace grace of life grace of the mystery grace of power other than ourself that which i cannot understand that reality that is i believe that it is i act as if it's true that's my faith decision one of my teachers talks about human beings having a core of goodness i love that phrase

25:28 the first book of the hebrew scripture the torah genesis talks about god made humans in god's image and likeness god made them male and female fabulous meditation god made humans in god's image and likeness what's he talking about this shepherd on a hill and a moonlit spring night watching the sheep writing this answer to the questions that we're asking right now god made them male and female it's interesting to note in case you don't know it

26:14 adam isn't the first man adam adam is the arabic word for earth or dirt god made humans from earth or dirt adam is not the name it's a description of where we come from we come out of the earth we have a core of goodness that gives our life meaning that life force one of the co-facilitators that you've become used to me working with is dr alan berger a clinical psychologist with 50 years of sobriety he talks about the organismic life force i'm peppering my comments with words that will

27:00 i hope make it easier for joe to talk about his experience in the approach not using the traditional vocabulary that comes out of organized religion or theology and then of course we have genetics which determine who we are family culture who we are emotions and experiences who we are and psychology and education who we are notice the the the the dolls you've seen them in gift shops they all fit into a nice package of the larger doll and each one of them looks the same that's who we are we have every one of these masks in front of us and the 12-step process

27:47 is to unmask us so that we get to the original goodness the core of goodness that life force that gives us meaning and purpose most of us have come to the program because we suffered and we experienced that we could not through our own efforts through psychology self-help religion therapy whatever it was we could not solve our addiction problem if you're not an addict this is still relevant because we couldn't solve our life problems many of the people in the rooms who have in fact been given the gift of

28:33 abstinence and sobriety still have lives that are a mess and serial suffering because of unmanageability we become brain dead to the word powerless we use it so often oh i'm powerless people places and things well listen to the words people yes places and things it's not even relevant people circumstances and events that's thoughtful vocabulary i don't have a choice that's the word i use in to replace the word powerless i don't have a choice over my addiction and my unmanageability

29:19 bill describes unmanageability in pages 60 to 62. if you want to have a startling embarrassing but life-giving experience read page 60 to 62 in the personal pronoun present tense read it out loud personal pronoun present tense as you are today make it personal 60-62 you'll have a brand new experience with the source of the suffering in your life and bill says we can't even reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power it's insufficient so is god it's in quote is god necessary this is a picture from the sistine chapel

30:05 attempting by michelangelo to create a picture of what i quoted from genesis god reaching down touching the earth to create humans somebody made the observation god's hand is really outstretched humans kind of limp not too willing to accept and that space in between represents for me the grace that mystery that i do not understand i accept it in retrospect because now it's my experience but what is it yes capital i and capital t what is it that bill is talking about the big book is talking about

30:50 god as we understand it god as we don't understand it he gives us an alternative word higher power he entitles chapter four intended to bring us through step two and it does a fabulous job he he titles it not we agnostics we doubters we people that don't believe about supernatural about spiritual in the traditional sense dr berger talks very clearly about the higher self lots of people talk about the human spirit some people talk about the holy spirit

31:38 lots of synonyms for the mystery that which cannot be named bill says that any word that we use is inadequate he says it in the big book any word that we use is inadequate because it's a finite word posed by a finite being and whatever it is that we're looking to capture in the word is infinite therefore you cannot put a ocean in the bucket what is the life force that brings that acorn to that oak tree the acorn inherently knows given the right conditions

32:24 it will sprout and it will form that hundred-year-old oak tree that organismic life force that we're talking about here it's my choice i think special key given to us in the 12-step culture is that there is no dogma there is no mandate there is no vocabulary that you must use or choose page 53 captures it god is or god isn't what is your choice god is or god isn't

33:09 power is or power isn't this mystery is or this mystery isn't what is your choice he said we're confronted with the question of faith well i confronted myself what is faith my concept faith what is it bill says that willingness is the cornerstone of the placed on the foundation of the spiritual arch through which we walk to a new freedom step three is the keystone i'm assuming

33:55 bill doesn't tell us this that the components of step four are the building blocks because at the end of step five on page 75 he says now we've walked through the arch to the new freedom he has an image here and it's wonderful to unpack it for ourselves i believe to really help us understand faith as a process the model i use is the model that i discovered in step one that i have a body that is genetically predisposed to addiction i have a mind that is different than normal people i have a strange mental blank spot in which the obsession is created a

34:41 special kind of thought and i have no power over that obsession and when the obsession hits i take the drink and i experience the allergy because of the biological genetics but obviously bill tells us that we have free will here in step two because he's asking us to make a choice in contrast to that page 62 statement that we are not able to reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power so with regard to addiction and with regard to unmanageability we don't have a choice but with regard to power or no power we do

35:28 what is your choice well my mind doesn't create faith in fact faith is the opposite of certitude and knowledge my body doesn't create faith because it's not an emotion if i feel the presence of god god's present if i don't feel the presence of god god's absence it doesn't even make any sense bill has used the model of the willpower of decision and choice this is faith this empty untangible invisible thin and dark decision

36:16 in the light of the darkness of our step one experience of no choice we're asked to make a choice the alternative is what i'm hopeless and helpless i need a power other than myself i don't know what it is i make a decision that it is that's my faith decision then my mind says well given the hopelessness of step one i'm going to make that decision not based on any evidence not based on any feeling but just based on the choice that it's the only alternative i can see right now so i accept it and that's my belief

37:04 i'm going to live as if it's true and act as if it's true and that's my trust and i've got now three clear definitions of words that are thrown around without much thought or you look in the dictionary without much clarity you look up those words faith and belief and trust in a dictionary is circular some of my dictionaries said faith is belief and belief is trust and trust is faith well that wasn't very helpful that's the snake eating its tail this has all come to me in instead in in the at ten years of sobriety when this man introduced me to the set-aside attitude and prayer

37:51 and then introduce me to unmanageability the powerlessness of my will and then introduce me to those two curtain-rending questions what do you believe and how do you behave and i was able to come to this in meditation came oops let me just go back to that end of that powerpoint because it was important step two says came to believe it's totally my experience an experience of a process that progressively took me along a journey and opened up in my case the the there's 20 different curtains that had to be pulled back one at a time over a series

38:38 of actions on my part over a series of years of staying pressed up against this process what is this power this reality bill gives us the circle and the triangle for a a and aladdin gives us the triangle and the circle for al-anon it's a perfect combination the circle representing a symbol of the mystery that infinite that has no beginning and has no end and the triangle that represents human beings body mind and will as well as the three aspects of the 12-step culture the steps are the foundation the traditions are one of the

39:26 lines coming down from the top and the concepts or the other line coming down from the top three legacies the steps for the conversion and transformation of the individual the traditions for the unity of the individual as well as within the group and amongst the group and the concepts those wonderful twelve spiritual principles for running a non-profit spiritual organization it's a very heavy word transcendent

40:13 in contemplation of him who presides over us all that's words from the big book that's that circle that encompasses the triangle we're human beings body mind and will spirit is our life force that breath in us at the very least bill suggests in appendix 2 unsuspected inner resource and on page 55 he answers the question he asked on page 45 where and how are we going to find this power he has two paragraphs and he talks about

41:00 deep inside another hundred dollar word there imminence the circle within the triangle spirit everywhere bill had that mystical insight on page 53 god is or god isn't god is everything or there is no god he says god is nothing it my interpretation of that is god is everything or there is no god the inside and the outside of all reality it's an interesting uh contemplation and meditation

41:46 so what's your decision about your concept that's really the question of step two what do you need what do you want what do you need what do you want in terms of the attributes or the qualities of power my concept of god has changed not quite annually but regularly certainly each time i did the step work but i haven't done step work since 2003 it's been almost 20 years but my concept of god my relationship with this reality this mystery i have different words for and different phrases for

42:33 over these many many many years gandhi says our concept of god changes as we do three is about another decision says it right in the step i use the term relationship the big book doesn't but it gives us five examples on page 62 and 63 of relationships father and child director and actor principal and agent employer and employee creator and created or maker and made those are the five he gives us as samples as models what relationship do you yearn for

43:20 with this mystery that's deep down inside of you this power that we need in order to certainly be free from our addiction at the very least but at the very most have the power to manage our lives yes i'm saying it that way god doesn't manage my life power doesn't manage my life anything outside of me doesn't manage my life i don't turn my will and my life over to the to god i turn my will and my life over to the care of god like the gps i get in my car i don't know where i'm going i don't know how to get there but i have

44:05 an address there is a life force and i go across purposes to the life force with my self-will the whole point of the process of becoming authentically human is to be in alignment with reality it's my car they're my keys i have a driver's license i know how to drive i have insurance on the car i know where to go but i don't know how to get there so i put the address into the gps and i listen and i follow direction and i get to where i'm going the rooms are wonderful for generating

44:53 acronyms using the first letter of words to create other words gps god positioning system power positioning system reality positioning system i can be in alignment when i sit quietly and get guidance step three is a decision for power my relationship that's that trust i mentioned earlier putting my feet into the action based on my decision about power bill calls it the keystone that stone at the arch the the at the pinnacle of the arch that

45:38 holds the entire arch together a decision for a relationship i asked you just five minutes ago to make a decision about what you want and need about a concept of power god as we don't understand it now i'm asking you what kind of relationship do you want to have what does your heart your soul everything in you yearn for in relationship it's a commitment to alignment with reality that's that serenity prayer wonderful it's become my most favorite

46:24 i do not control anything 30 years ago i threw the word away control it's irrelevant i don't have any control outside of me i don't have any control inside of me really truly seriously the word control i have influence what can i influence what can't i influence there's the wisdom and i i get wisdom over time by making mistakes and correcting them and learning from my mistakes my mistakes don't name me my mistakes guide me life is a practice i practice life on a daily basis

47:11 a decision for a relationship a decision for alignment this is pathetic herbie 48 years old four years sober free of addiction but in the bondage of self of unmanageability this is herbie today i still have the potential for victimwood i still have the potential for bondage but now i realize there's no ceiling there's no floor there's no walls there's this pathetic herbie holding on to the bars of delusion and i now have tools to drop the bars all right i'm gonna

47:58 wait on that one for a little bit maybe we'll go there all right so now that's a summary of a journey without a lot of depth but i think you kind of get the picture of it um i'm a pretty traditional big book person a literalist and fundamentalist and i believe the best of census um joe do you have any comments that you'd like to make and then we'll take a little break i think i need one certainly um a bio break uh but you make your comments and ask your questions we'll have some dialogue and then we'll take a little break and then we'll come back and you can address your journey and your thoughts about your

48:44 your uh yeah you you are i would refer to you as a fundamentalist in the greatest of senses like not not in any derogatory world whatsoever uh because i got sober in uh a place in aaa geographically it was montreal in the mid 70s and uh um sort of culturally that was pretty book primacy yes there was always a big book at the meeting that's how you knew you were in an aaa meeting it was a prop and um [Music] you know uh still some meetings

49:31 yeah now well the meetings of montreal were almost all speaker meetings there were a few discussion meetings if anything was read it would be grapevine or living sober or came to believe those two booklets had just come out and so they were the hot items you know look something new from the general service office they'd sometimes read box 459 news and notes from the general service office but almost always the meetings were speaker meetings and the learning about the program and the learning about aaa was one alcoholic talking to another

50:17 it wasn't book based learning in the time and space that i got sober in now i would come to see this as a way of doing aaa when i moved from montreal and then i moved to calgary and and in calgary it was a smaller town a smaller aaa community smaller meetings it wasn't like uh you know 50 100 150 people in a meeting it was a dozen people in the meeting maybe three dozen so they they read the 12 and 12. it was more book based and then i moved to toronto and it was more um although at the time i was still in my

51:04 20s when i moved to toronto and i was involved largely in the young people's movement and and the larger a of course but but when i went beyond the sort of young people's movement which wasn't interested in sitting down and charming ourselves about our our glorious past we were more concerned about how can we make aaa better for the alcoholics still to come what can we alter or improve not everyone's making it what are we going to do but you know like there came a time when i was starting to reach 30 that going to the young people's meetings felt creepy and i started going to the

51:51 big book meetings the other meetings and and there they they loved them some big book and i saw it worked right they were staying sober they were getting sober and um and i found it amusing that in these very sort of macho meetings um there was some real man love going on with some a little bit of a man crush with bill wilson people were quoting the book and people were referring to page and verse and treating a a like holy wrote where i heard for the first time in my recovery the steps are in an order for a reason and uh um to take somebody through the book and that sort of thing and and this

52:38 was just i'd already worked the steps i had uh uh and i would work them again of course but but this was foreign aaa to me not unfamiliar it was all very um easy to recognize but but i had to adapt to it and so a lot of the um you know non-theists people who don't believe in a prayer answer and sobriety granting type of god that i come across have a problem with the big book which i don't have because it wasn't it wasn't get god or die for me it wasn't i had to uh speak of my aaa through the words and ideas of bill wilson that was

53:24 never the case it was always sort of group uh you know go to the group go to my running mates go to my sponsor right you know talk it out um people understood in montreal like they i hope they do in your home group that i didn't need to be told i need to feel feel like i was heard and i i was heard in my group and and uh you know i often would eventually say what i needed to hear yeah so um but but i i had to adapt to that and i found it a little bit restrictive and i i wondered if i belonged in aaa anymore for a while because it seemed so like i didn't even do the steps in order

54:10 i i didn't actually get sober until i was taking my cousin to meetings i was doing step 12. and uh my plan my loosely i was a run by the seat of the pants kind of guy but loosely i was gonna get her sober she would carry the message to countless others i would sneak out the dot the back and die my tragic alcoholic death and um you know this seemed more romantic than living sober uh so um you know when people say you know you can't work with newcomers because you haven't been through the steps really you know i better stay quiet i you know nobody wants to hear what i have to say and i i was on the verge of feeling like a

54:55 stranger in my hometown yeah my hometown being aa so um i get why that works and how it works and i also get why it doesn't work for everybody because i've been on other sides of it and i i i see a a not like mcdonald's not like the same you walk in every mcdonald's it's the same atmosphere the same menu the same price structure you know what your experience is going to be aaa meetings aren't like that it's a mon paw shop the menu will be different right you're going to get fed right you know you know what you're getting when you go in you'll come out full but it's going to be different and aaa is really that it's not mcdonald's and um

55:42 so like i've had uh my fights with uh the sort of traditional side of aa but but not because of my experience i was never shunned because i didn't believe as others believed nobody even asked me what i believe they asked me as as you often say well it's not about what you believe joe what are you gonna do right you know it's a program of action right so so like our stories are identical our beliefs are completely different and uh i yeah higher purpose is been really a guiding force like i got sober from a higher purpose i saw in my cousin

56:28 life for saving when aaa was offered to me i did not see in me a life or saving i said thanks but no thanks i'll leave that seat for somebody else and uh but i was transformed by this higher purpose was that inspired by god not to my awareness but um i i'd be happy to be wrong about that but i i loved what you had to say and um maybe i will let people go on a little bit of a potty break and then what you mentioned about your experience with um going into a second version of the meeting environment and culture with the book

57:14 and the steps and the quote and the reverence for bill and the book and and that that's when a.a becomes a religion because they've captured the tool thinking that it's the tabernacle and it's not it's just the tool that leads us to the light it's the finger that's that to use your quote exactly worshipping the finger exactly exactly and so all right just wanted to make that point wonderful yeah and um all right so let's take a uh five minute break by my uh and i've only got one screen so someone can tell me if this is working yeah it's

58:00 working on mine yes wonderful okay great um and um so i i really i was telling her but i had a presentation for this but i scrapped it and uh something i'd done before and and and started all over because it was more uh arguing a case and it was less experiential and this is going to be we agnostics not me agnostics i'm going to just draw on a lot of the larger recovery communities especially the agnostics atheist free thinkers community experience with step two and step three

58:47 because i wouldn't want anyone to think well you're pretty exceptional joe there you are sober in your fifth decade i'm not uh over 40 years over so in my fifth decade um [Music] without a you know belief in a prayer answering sobriety granting god but i'm not exceptional um uh there there may be closet atheists and agnostics in your own home group so so we're going to hear from a lot of them you see it's about unity that's what tradition one tells us but unity isn't uniformity um so we're all in this together but it requires a little bit of tolerance and

59:34 making room for others and uh and humility because maybe we don't know it all i you know try in my recovery to do more of not fight the darkness but shine the light just sort of um offer my point of view and uh wherever it's helpful share it with others but not to throw stones at another approach that that doesn't seem to work for me but works great for others labels people love labels and here are some of the terms people will identify themselves as humanist free thinker secularist atheist agnostics

1:00:21 anti-theists people are going to come into the rooms and they're they're gonna be like the jim burwell that thinking aaa would be better without all this god nonsense or uh or religion has been more harmful than good but and how do we meet them where they're at how do we uh tell them to take what they like and leave the rest and um uh as opposed to telling them how wrong they are i do you know what an apathyist is very popular with the generation z crowd now we talk about millennials like their young kids you know millennials are 42 years old now you know the youngest they're 27 and when i came in i

1:01:10 was younger than that so they're the generation z and a lot of them are apotheists and what does that mean don't know don't care when it comes to the question of is there a god or isn't there a god it's just not interesting to them can we please talk about something else uh that's apotheos and then somethingists no i don't agree with that god and i don't agree with the religions god and i don't agree with bill's god uh but there's something there there's more than just the material experience in the world i'm sure i just haven't figured it out yet i'm very close i'm there's something i'm gonna get to it so

1:01:56 um there's plenty of something is and none of the people who use these titles to self-identify with them necessarily agree with somebody else some people call themselves spiritual atheists and other people say that atheism is anti-spiritual leave it for them to decide um in seattle just north of where most of you are i saw someone from saskatchewan represent um in 1990 was the first time the world convention ever had a wii agnostics panel and that's again atheists and agnostics telling their story and charlie p was there from the los

1:02:43 angeles we agnostics group and he was quoted in that tape if you if you were there and you got the tapes for the whole series have a listen he said i came to aaa a garden variety atheist 19 years later much to my surprise i'd become a much better atheist than when i got here and i found that there wasn't a single step i couldn't work as an atheist now since then there's been a we agnostics panel in minneapolis and uh san antonio and montreal not montreal but we were in toronto and uh atlanta we were going to they were asking the international conference of secular aaa to put together a panel

1:03:30 for um detroit and of course as we all know detroit didn't happen which was sad for me because it's just a four-hour drive and uh the international conference of secular a it's like icky pod the international conference of young people uh international doctors in aaa international lawyers and aaa all of those sort of special purpose aaa gatherings secular a is one of them and the first one ever uh was uh in santa monica i'll talk a little bit about that so um explaining the ineffable what are what is the language that's going to be used for people who don't use a god as a

1:04:15 marker for this transformation experience and here we see a phd candidate and their mentor is talking to them about their great mathematical formula you see lots of complicated math on the left and a complicated math answer at the right and in the middle he says i think you should be more explicit here in step two where he writes then a miracle happens this was the conference i was at the recovery capital conference this is uh dr david best who's an academic uh also i've recently learned uh the uh son of an alcoholic who never found

1:05:02 recovery but he's been studying we alcoholics and our recovery journeys for 30 years um right beside him is uh dr john kelly uh head of the psychiatry department at uh harvard and he was the head um uh academic on the uh cochrane database study which was a longitudinal study of comparing aaa to cognitive behavioral therapy and um motivational enhancement therapy just to find out what works best and they found that aaa was as successful or more successful than any of those and we could have told them this and a

1:05:49 whole lot cheaper and no waiting list so uh currently the academics and the medical world are very high on aaa but they don't look at just aaa they'll look at she recovers and people who do it on their own and refuge recovery and smart recovery and they come up with this their own a way of explaining it called chime in successful recovery and chime stands for connection hope identity meaning and empowerment and uh they borrowed this but i found this in david best's book which is called uh pathways to recovery and

1:06:35 desistance the social contagion of hope which is just all about uh the studies and and a lot of the math on on you know how many people in their first year are gonna have a relapse how many people from one year to five years are going to have a relapse and and from five years on what the percentage of relapse would be it's it um we anecdotally know this from our experience but it's really interesting to see uh the math and um this connection thing [Music] uh you know there was that great uh ted talk uh where uh um the author of uh uh scream ends his talk with saying uh the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety

1:07:23 it's connection and everyone you know i go that seems reductionist that seems kind of simplistic because i can find connection by going back to the crack house by going to my local bar i'm gonna find connection there but what these academics are talking about is the connection of what we call living in the solution or what they would call demonstrating pro-social behavior so seeing other people like us coping with life without alcohol for using sobriety as a tool instead of drunkenness and hope is contagious uh you know

1:08:08 um i got i went down my path with a lot of influences and i came back out with a lot of influences i didn't have hope for myself when i got here but you seem to have hope for me joe if we can do it you can do it and i go i don't know i i'm not as convinced but i'll see you tomorrow and here i'm still here and identity going from that identity of oh what a loser i can't drink anymore no one's going to think i'm cool to hey i'm sober in a.a and and that meaning something that i'm a proud member of alcoholics anonymous and the larger recovery community and uh meaning i talked about having a higher purpose um

1:08:56 you know uh the majority of people get sober get what they need get back to their world and uh a lot of their productivity is outside of the rooms and and the uh people who might have been um bar flies uh the the regulars in aa a lot of that meaning can be found right here in the meetings and empowerment you know power was our dilemma and we can get through life uh the music business is full of alcohol it's not an issue for me it's full of drugs not an issue for me the financial services industry uh they're big drinkers too not a problem for me i i've been empowered uh from uh

1:09:42 my experience in alcoholics anonymous uh this is from the grapevine if you're not familiar with it um it's uh it's my red tag special today highly recommended atheists and agnostic aaa members share their experience strength and here's david best word again hope something we've known for a long time this is a collection of all of the aaa grapevine articles from atheists and agnostics through the years it wouldn't have been complete without jim b the notorious ed the atheist according to bill wilson uh and this was not from his vicious cycle story which was uh in the big book

1:10:29 from a few months of sobriety this is 30 years sober in 1968 and he's telling uh to new atheists and agnostics his four points the first power greater than himself was uh alcohol the a.a fellowship became his higher power for his first two years he didn't stay there it's a a growing uh graduating thing it eventually became the idea that good and god were synonymous he found the goodness within himself and within others you called it god he called it good aren't we talking about the same thing and he found that from meditation

1:11:16 uh it helped him become his better self he found the guidance and answers he was looking for and he became comfortable and steady and so uh that whole idea of the group is a higher power jim burwell introduced us to that first god acronym the group of drunks is a higher power um one dark night 2013 maybe i'm wrong about god the thing is i don't have to be right if there's no god the program works anyway if there is he she if they must not be prejudiced against atheists uh what i believe doesn't matter what i do is what matters again uh

1:12:04 touching on um a herbism um how an atheist works a step from 2003. um [Music] so i remind myself regularly to trust the inner resource of the well person inside and the outer resources of the group the track record of others and my own history show me that i can get through whatever comes and i'm patient and do what makes sense on a daily basis this fills the intent of step two for me and provides

1:12:49 the uh benefits of step three uh so inner resource uh bill wilson talked about that in uh uh appendix two you know when i first sort of discovered the big book and i read appendix 2 and then i learned that it was actually added to the book in 1941 i said who wrote it i i couldn't believe it was the same guy who wrote everything else it was just a different attitude it didn't seem to have any of that righteousness of the recently converted it seemed to be so a gentle and yes and and and uh

1:13:35 yeah and i they said oh no bill wilson wrote that but but of course he did that with the experience of thousands of aas instead of just the experience of dozens of aas and and he was evolving as well and this idea that my own inner resource and outer resources one of the great things i borrowed from someone else who was struggling with the high higher power thing was someone told them hey you're looking for a higher power not the highest power to get sober you don't need to answer the questions of the universe you just need to find resources beyond your own efforts

1:14:20 to find sobriety that's why it wasn't working for you before you were trying to rely on your own resources find something else that works and i i like that higher power isn't highest power uh this saddens me greatly and i really want to emphasize this because uh well let's see if i can read it without crying because a lot of atheists and agnostics are in the closet you know being an atheist and agnostic in some neighborhoods and some parts of alcoholics anonymous today is like being lgbtqia in the 50s you weren't going to survive

1:15:06 if you told people who you really are and in this article written in 2015 i've been coming to this particular meeting for 10 years in november i celebrated 27 years of continuous sobriety and the speaker knows this but i won't be called on tonight in fact i'm rarely called on at all in alcoholics anonymous these days you see i'm an atheist i'm not resentful of my standing in aaa at least not often and because i strive to stay a part of aa most of the time i feel a kinship in the rooms but there are nights that i wonder there

1:15:52 are nights that i feel separate that's not connection feeling separate and um and and this person who wrote us this passage who shared this experience i consider them the exception how many others would have just left instead of stuck it out and so the question is what can we all do to make the room uh a more friendly and a more welcoming place to any underrepresented populations uh word ewing isn't an alcoholic he was the chair of our general service

1:16:37 conference reverend ward ewing uh controversially was a speaker at the first international gathering of we agnostics and free thinkers in santa monica in uh 2014 and there were people in mainstream aaa that said ward you can't go there that's not real aaa and people inside our community of atheist agnostic said why do we need some preacher's blessing you know can't one of us be the keynote speaker so there was controversy on all ends some of our members thought we were trying to suck up to aaa and uh others outside thought he

1:17:24 shouldn't lend the aaa name to our um our event but i'll tell you something about ward ewing he didn't come there to preach he came there to learn he took more notes than i took that week and he took more notes than anybody took uh he was there to learn and learn he did he talked to a lot of people and he was quite surprised that the sort of liberal idea of always inclusive never exclusive um writings and motif and our creed isn't the actual experience in day-to-day experiences everywhere in aaa and he writes this what we believe about sometimes is far less important to

1:18:12 living than what we experience experience is what transforms us belief this speaks to what herb was saying belief is our attempt to explain experience trump's explanation you might use a different verb today but anyway i won't go there i'm a canadian uh i believe the dialogue between those who are religious and those who are free thinkers agnostics and atheists and aaa can bear much fruit also a speaker at the first ever gathering of international agnostics and atheist maria h she wrote a wonderful book i would recommend to anybody who loves

1:18:58 uh poetry and uh dialogue about recovery it's called weighting a non-believer's higher power the origin of the word spirit is greek it means breath that which stirs within slows or quickens goes deep or dies out when i speak of spirit i'm not speaking of something related to or given by a force outside ourselves i am speaking of the force that is ourselves the experience of living in the world bound by body space and time woven into the fabric of human history

1:19:44 human connection and human life this is the force that feels and thinks and gives us consciousness it is the deepest most elemental most integral part of who we are it is who we are and that's just the preface whoa waiting a non-believer is a higher power um the god word um you can ask me if you want to hear about it i'm not here to give a history lesson although i've done a lot of um primary uh research in aaa archives about the history of

1:20:29 agnostics and the atheists and and attempts to get a pamphlet of agnostics and atheists telling our story in our own words but in the uk someone said hey we need one of these they said okay send us some stories and boom they put it together and we've adopted it here in uh usa and canada and it's available now in french and spanish hopefully more language is coming soon sheila's story is in there and uh so she used a a as her higher power step two and three simply became a belief that maybe this program would work for me and then a willingness to follow suggestions and really give it a try

1:21:17 this worked for me there's a story in there called living sober as an atheist i haven't had a drink for 25 years and i'm now no longer waiting for my religious conversion i'm sure someone told this individual to fake it until they make it 25 years they're not going to make it and they're not gonna fake it i'm still an agnostic i don't know whether or not there is a supernatural power but i don't believe there is uh what else we got an atheist in recovery i kept coming to meetings i made friends in aaa life started getting better i noticed the change in my luck and circumstances

1:22:05 uh you know the friends of the newcomer will notice long before they do this transformation as explained in appendix 2. so this person told their sponsor that it felt like like they had a guardian angel and she the sponsor asked if that might be your higher power or god well i said i preferred to think it was uh the power of the rooms and the support of the people in them that's a humanist approach as opposed to a theistic approach all i know is that i could not have gotten sober on my own i have a good life now i work the steps i do service i help newcomers i share my experience strength and hope in my own

1:22:52 experience i do not have to find god to stay sober i owe my life to aa and the people in it um living sober you know i uh you know i can i can get the hair coming up on the back of other people's necks when i naively say you know the big book was good it was like three years of our best experience with uh you know a few dozen aaa members but this living sober this is like 40 years experience with half a million aa's experience why don't we read this

1:23:37 instead and i say it innocently it was written by barry leach and if if bill wilson was our messiah this would have been his apostle because he worked hand in hand with bill wilson barry l was the person who was at the aaa clubhouse when the person walked in and said would aaa accept me and um he had to call bill and bill asked did this uh african-american cross-dressing heroin addict who just got out of prison did they say they were an alcoholic

1:24:24 yes we can all see they're an alcoholic well then what more should we ask that was barry and he was the author of living sober living sober sold seven million copies if it wasn't in the shadow of the 45 million selling big book we'd be pretty proud of that and living clean is n a's version written in 2015 and i'm not saying living sober is better and let's burn big books i'm just saying for a lot of people in secular recovery it is their aaa program a little different than uh sort of the 12-step model but but in practicality it's all about the 12 steps

1:25:10 and in n a it says our right to our own spirituality is unconditional uh the lawyers would call it an inalienable right uh and uh can't be taken away and uh that also means we must also uh allow that right to others any single definition of spiritual principles would be too restrictive for us um and in living sober the point is there's no prescribed right way or wrong way each of us uses what is best for ourselves without closing the door to other kinds of help we may find valuable at another time

1:25:56 and each of us tries to respect others rights to do things differently so there's a whole bunch of aas instead of just me and just ask if you want to hear more about my own personal story and if you want to explore and discover and if you want more information come to a agnostic atheist meetings in fact do what you tell your sponsees online you can go used to be 90 meetings in 90 days people are doing 90 meetings in nine days right you know it's they're all just a click away but uh this link will take you to a list of uh uh a variety of atheist agnostic free

1:26:45 thinkers humanist meetings um uh and uh there's probably 16 hours a day of meetings all around the world uh there's information about the international conference of secular aaa our first one was santa monica we went to austin in 2018 toronto in rather 2016 2018 was toronto in 2020 we were supposed to be in washington dc it's been twice postponed we hope to be there the last weekend in october covid permitting and check your local directory a lot of directories now when you're searching for a meeting there's a filter you can find just a big

1:27:31 book meeting just an open meeting just a women's meeting you can find one that might say secular and and how about that there's a look at that there's a uh heathens meeting uh in my uh same clubhouse that i go to my home group in and you can check it out we always say at beyond belief agnostics and free thinkers group that we are secular by format everybody is welcome here and everybody is the is free to share their own personal experience and their own beliefs without fear of uh dissuasion persuasion or criticism we just try to create the sort of environment we would like in in any

1:28:18 meeting anywhere and uh if you search secular aaa on spotify or apple you'll find uh the podcast which is just some of the international secular aaa panels and speaker meetings we do a monthly international speaker meeting you can come to them on zoom in person it's the first um the first sunday of every month uh um and uh you can or just listen to them on any device anytime anywhere you want and any questions you have of me or um fact checking by all means let's keep this conversation going i'll give you the slide deck to this i'll put it in

1:29:05 the chat you can help yourself to it but i would uh love to hear anything you have to add or say if we don't get it covered today people are always surprised that i answer my own phone not all the time not right away but always happy to hear from people and with that i will stop sharing and uh say thanks for my attention herb thank you really so much for sharing this broad panoramic view of alternative approaches and alternative thinkings and some resources to support that because i think that's

1:29:51 really important um you made a couple comments that i will i want to just either highlight or or or supplement and and built in the big book is very clear we want to be inclusive never exclusive you made that point i mean i think bill really had this vision of it was literally a mystical insight and and he confirms that my by my interpretation in the preface to the very first edition in 1939 he says we believe our way of living may have its advantages for all

1:30:38 our way of living and you mentioned the principles see i i never knew that there were principles with all the background all the education all the self development and four years sober i never really had consciously thought about principles and and now in the last 10 years dr berger and i i've been doing workshops on emotional sobriety that's the heart of it is to identify principles operating principles doing the steps made me aware that either i had principles that i wasn't using or that i didn't have some principles

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