Recovery Radio
KMP300.
Regular piping hot cup of French roast
coffee here
from Trader Joe's mixed with some Don
Francisco's Hawaiian hazelnut. It is
freaking delicious. And
and look, I don't want to make anybody
jealous. I don't,
but I'm about to. And I do owe you an
amends
for
what I'm about to tell you.
Maybe
I'll pray about it. But
I'm having pizza for lunch,
so
I don't know.
I feel like I I don't want to make
anybody jealous. I don't I care about
you. I love you. I don't want you to
hurt.
But, you know, just full transparency
here. I'm having pizza later today. So,
I just wanted you to know that.
Okay.
Enough of those shenanigans.
It's true, though. All right.
There's a book by Em EMTT Fox called The
Golden Key and 22 additional essays. I'm
going to read something from it
and then tie it into the big book of
Alcoholics Anonymous and then talk about
my own experience. And
that is the plan. So, I'm going to read
a lot of this, not every part of it, but
I'm going to read a lot of this essay
called The Key of Destiny. It's on page
19 if you happen to have that book.
There are a few great laws that govern
all thinking
just as there are a few fundamental laws
in chemistry and physics and in
mechanics for example.
We know that thought control is the key
of destiny. And in order to learn
thought control, we have to know and
understand these laws just as the
chemist has to understand the laws of
chemistry and the electrician has to
know the laws of electricity.
One of the great mental laws
is the law of substitution.
This means that the only way to get rid
of a certain thought
is to substitute another one for it.
You cannot dismiss a thought directly.
You can only do so by substituting
another one for it. On the physical
plane, this is not the case. You can
drop a book or a stone by simply opening
your hand and letting it go.
But with thought, this will not work.
If you want to dismiss a negative
thought, the only way to do it is to
think of something positive and
constructive.
It is as though in order, let us say, to
drop a pencil, it would be necessary to
put a pen or a book or a stone into your
hand
when the pencil would fall away.
If I say to you, do not think of the
Statue of Liberty,
of course, you will immediately think of
it.
If you say, I'm not going to think of
the Statue of Liberty,
that is thinking of it.
But now having thought of it,
if you become interested in something
else,
You will forget about the Statue of
Liberty.
It sometimes happens that negative
thoughts seem to besiege you in such
force you cannot overcome them.
This is what a call what is called a fit
of depression or a fit of worry perhaps
a fit of anger.
In such a case, the best thing to do is
to go find someone
to talk to on any subject
or
go to a movie or play or read an
interesting book or a good novel or
biography or travel book, something of
the kind.
If you sit down to fight the negative
tide, you will probably succeed only in
amplifying it.
Turn your attention to something quite
different,
refusing steadfastly to think of or
rehearse the difficulty.
And later on
after you have completely gotten away
from it, you can come back to it with
confidence and handle it by spiritual
treatment.
Now I'm going to turn to the big book
and I'm going to keep this very simple.
I'm just going to read a couple of
things.
There's more we could read, but I'm just
going to really
keep this brief, uncomplicated as
possible.
Page 68,
third full paragraph, last
two sentences.
We ask him to remove our fear and to
direct our attention to what he would
have us be.
That's what I just read about.
We ask God to remove our fear and then
think of something else.
Ask God to direct my attention to
something else.
70
second full paragraph
halfway through. If sex is very
troublesome,
we go to meetings and share about it and
talk about it endlessly and rehearse it
and we try not to think about it. Just
kidding. If sex is very troublesome, we
throw ourselves the harder into helping
others.
Are you ready for this?
Page 76
at the top.
Uh we then look at step six. We have
emphasized willingness as being
indispensable. Are we now ready to let
God remove from us all the things which
we have admitted are objectionable? Can
I now take them all? Everyone.
We still cling to something we will not
let go. We ask God to help us be
willing.
When ready, we say something like this.
My creator, I'm now willing that you
should have all of me, good and bad. I
pray that you now remove from me every
single defective character which stands
in the way of my usefulness to you and
my fellows. Grant me strength as I go
out from here to your bidding. Amen.
I just read step six and step seven.
When I went through the work
in 1992,
when I was about two and a half years
sober with this understanding that I'm
talking about now,
I had a completely different experience
than I had
earlier when I was
spending a lot of time looking at
rehearsing, sharing about, focusing on,
studying, trying to ignore my character
defects. When I was doing that, when I
was highlighting the 12 and 12 in my
very early recovery, I was a mess. I was
more
uncomfortable.
Going back to what EMTT wrote,
if you sit down and fight the negative
tide, you'll probably succeed only in
amplifying it.
But when I went back through the big
book,
that message that I understand and have
today
that's so simple and in alignment with
what I just read from EMTT Fox
changed my whole life.
The focus isn't on fear anymore. The
focus is on love.
I know I have character defects. I know
that I come up short daily. I know that
I
um make mistakes daily. I know that I
have selfishness now that I can't see
yet.
That I'm I hope that I will at some
point.
I've learned these things,
but these things I watch for them. Like
the big book says, we continue to watch
for these things,
but I don't focus on these things
because I have found that like I said,
when I focus on these things, I amplify
them.
So I very deliberately focus on
as best I can what I think God would
have me be,
which is not somebody who's talking
about my character defects
and amplifying them,
discussing them endlessly over and over
again and studying them over and over
again. I had to do I had to write down
my
character defects in step four
and so I can identify them
and give them to God.
And I have to do that when I do
inventories now.
But aside from, you know, gathering up
that trash and
putting it on the curb for God to
remove,
I don't
it's not my focus
and it
has made and makes all the difference in
the world for me.
Well,
my focus today is going to be on pizza
that I'm having for lunch. So,
my new modeling gig,
I'm doing a a photo shoot for a
non-alcoholic beverage
called
Um,
you know what? I'm just going to abort
this joke. I'm stopping.
All right. want to give a shout out to
uh
podcast Greater Than Yourself and the
Sober Gratitudes podcast. And
want to say hello to
Chelsea and