John L Speaking to the Barcelona "Easy Does It, But Do It" meeting on January 24, 2024
The Daily Reprieve
Barcelona Meeting - John L
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Daily Reprieve, where we provide essays, speaker meetings, workshops, and conferences and podcast format. We are an ad-free podcast. If you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by going to donate.thewreprieve.com and drop a dollar or two into the virtual basket. Please consider donating monthly by clicking the "Donate Monthly" button. However, one-time donations are always welcome. Just click the "Donate Now" button. Now, without further ado, this episode of the Daily Reprieve. [Music] Today, the 24th of January 2024, we're very happy to have with us John L. from Washington State, USA. Sober, since the 19th of November 1991, he will be sharing on the topic of humility a closer look. You're now on, John, you have 25 minutes to share. How would you like to be timed? Yeah, I mean, let me know. I'm never good at gauging how long in the presentation I'm going to give this going to last. I'm horrible at that, but yeah, give me five minutes. Perhaps something like that. We'll see how that works. I will do that. Thank you. Okay, sure. Get away. Okay, well, again, I'm John, grateful, recovering sex symbolic from Washington State in the United States. Vancouver, Washington, if any of you knows where that is, it's right happening to be right across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. I often confuse with Vancouver, British Columbia, so different country, different place, all the different. Anyway, so I entitled today's talk, humility, a closer look, and upon thinking about it further, I could have also entitled it humility and invitation to reflect, which is kind of how I want to take this. So pick whichever title you want to pick it. Now, at the end of the slide, which one fits, closer look, and invitation to reflect. So, and I want to say at a time that this primarily my talk today is primarily informed by the AA 12 steps and 12 traditions, largely, and of course, by my own experience, strength, and hope. So now, I want to start out with four definitions of humility, you know, what humility is and what it is not. And there's a I've captured these things, not necessarily word for word for many one place. So you have to bear with me and take certain amount of liberty there. So there's a popular definition of humility, which is humility as a modest or low view of one's own importance. Then what I called an enlightened definition is, which means informed by the psychology of a healthy sense of self combined with new age spirituality. And that enlightened definition is humility is the ability to view yourself accurately as an individual with talents, as well as flaws, all being void of arrogance and low self esteem. Then there's what I call the spiritual definition of humility, which comes out of documents that are spiritual texts. And that is humility is that trait or aspect of character that drives us to acknowledge who God is and to submit to his rightful authority over our lives, which means to do his will. And that's a key word in all this is well. And finally, there's the 12 step definition of humility, and this comes straight from the 12 and 12. And if you want to look for this, you can find it some times I've changed words for 10 reasons of syntax or whatnot, or taken a portion of a sentence because it captures what I want. So you'll have to get in there with me on that. But from page 72 of the 12 and 12 humility at its most basic level is, quote, a desire to seek and do God's will that straight out of the 12 and 12. Now, I'm going to do several readings from the 12 and 12 here that I've picked out not they're not coming in a particular order, it's just as supports the theme that I wanted to present. And what I've done in this is where the word humility is used, I've substituted this, that definition, a desire to seek and do God's will, where the word humility is used in virtually all of the following excerpts. Okay, so when they say that, you'll know I've substituted, so I'll begin, and as I say, considered an invitation to reflect closer look as you will. One, all the 12 steps and from page 40 of the 12 and 12, all the 12 steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to to their principles. And so we trust to God's will. So it's, I want to establish the notion that that there's required sustained and personal exertion. It's, it's not a passive kind of thing. This business or humility. Secondly, a desire to seek, and this comes from page 58, a desire to seek and do God's will amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are followed by a students and a sincere attempt to become what we couldn't be. And what I want us to pay attention to there is another here, notice the clear assertion of a need to take action. Humility is not just a feeling or a state of mind. You know, a sincere attempt to become what we could be. It requires action. It is that just a, as I said, a feeling or a state of mind, moving on. And, and this is, I get back from page 70 and the 12 and 12, beginning right at the top, step seven, humbly asked him to remove or shortcomings. Since this step so specifically concerns God will, God's, since the step so specifically terms, concerns God will. What God's will is and what the practice of it can mean to us. Indeed, obviously, you love something out here. I apologize for that. The practice of indeed the attainment of a greater desire to seek and do God's will as a word and as an ideal has had a very bad time of it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood, the words themselves are often intensely disliked. Many people have had even a nodding acquaintance with a desire to seek and do God's will as a way of life. And again, I just want to emphasize, ever from the reading humility, again, that desire to seek and do God's will is a way of life. You know, it's a way of life. It's again, more than an attitude or a feeling. So, what does it mean? And that's of course, as those of you who have worked the steps now fits in with the steps. My fourth point in these, this comes from pages 72 and 73 out of the 12 and 12. Russ, the process in gaining a new perspective, one was unbelievably painful. It was only through repeated failures that we were forced to learn something about a desire to seek and do God's will. It was only at the end of a long road marked by success and defeats and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency that we began to feel a desire to seek and do God's will as something more than a condition of groveling despair. It's anything but that. It's much more positive and much more active. Every newcomer and essay is told and shouldn't realize it's for itself or herself, that this humble admission of powerlessness over lust is the first step toward liberation from its paralyzing grip. So it is that we first see a desire to seek and do God's will as a necessity. But this is the barest beginning to get completely away from the aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of the desire to seek and do God's will as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for a desire to do God's will. Again, I obviously had some trouble, so I printed this out, leads to a light. A lifetime geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once, rebellion dogs our step at every step at first. So, again, putting into perspective and all of you that have worked this will know this, putting into perspective what this looks like for us, we now do it perfectly. I don't care if we've been at it one day or a million days, we don't do it perfectly. The rebellion can decrease, but it can always be there, and we get a one day at a time reprieve from it when we seek God's will and desire to do it on a daily basis. Next, during the process of learning more about a desire to seek and do God's will, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude towards God. This was true whether we had been believers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that the higher power was a sort of bushly pinch hitter to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, he began to evaporate. Many of us who thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now, the words of myself, "I am nothing but Father doeth the works," began to carry bright promise and meaning. We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into desire to seek and do God's will. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for a desire to seek and do God's will as something we really wanted rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step 7, humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. And indeed, I think that wording, which obviously is when we've all heard of many, many times. It really takes on, to me at least, a new meaning when I say humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings. Really saying, "I want to know what your will is, and I want to try to do it. It makes, I think, enriches the notion of asking Him to remove our shortcomings that gives it a life." And so, if I'm saying, "Okay, my shortcoming is that I'm too quick to be irritated or get angry." I'm really asking Him to remove my shortcomings. I'm really saying, "Okay, instead of getting angry, "God, what would you have me do? What would you will be for me? What does that look like? And how can I become aware of that and stay aware on a daily basis?" So, that simple, what, seven word or whatever it is, sentence there, takes on, for me at least, a whole new level of meaning in terms of the action that's implicit in it. And, sort of, my final reading from the book, which in that part by way that I just read came from 74 and 75 and 12 and 12 in this final reading from the book comes from page 76 and 12 and 12. And it says, "The seventh step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us with a desire to seek and do God's will as our guide to move out from our ourselves and towards others and God. The whole emphasis of step seven is on a desire to seek and do God's will. It is really saying to us that we ought now to be willing to try the desire to seek and do God's will in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over lust and came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of a desire to seek and do God's will could enable us to find a grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope for the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have." Okay. So, and again, to me, when I read that, it really speaks of the all-encompassing nature of humility as it's defined here. And particularly as it relates to that broader notion of not just sobriety, but recovery. Well, a comment on that a little bit in a minute here, you know, I have a feeling I'm probably not going to take 25 minutes and if I guess that's the way it is, that's the way it is. But in any case, for me, and I'll say this in preface to some of these other thoughts that I'm going to share, the real journey is about recovery. That's a real journey. It's a journey of recovery. And I'll comment more about that. So, one, some thoughts. We need an active living humility in order to gain more than simple, though not necessarily easy sobriety. Indeed, as we all know, you know, as alcoholics like to talk about it, and really what we do in our program too, we can white knuckle sobriety. Now, how long you can white knuckle it and how successful you'll be and if you stop, whether you stop and stay, stop, there's another story that is another issue. But certainly at least for some short periods of time, maybe longer for some people. Now, you can gain sobriety just by white knuckle. However, without humility, we stay, we remain essentially what I think of as dry drunks. In other words, as, again, a tradition, in other words, our self-centeredness goes on largely unabated and unchallenged. And I'll speak to my own story there. In the early years of my time in the program, I had sponsors and people that supported me and helped me. And I think everybody was doing their best, and I think there were many things that went unaddressed. And those many, actually a good long time decades. I laugh, it's not really funny, but there's, it's, it went on a long time, and it took me a long time of just hanging with the program and coming back and listening and sharing and talking to begin to notice things or at least things were forced upon me, maybe I'll put it that way, that brought me to understand more and more that while I was indeed sober. I was in certain key areas of my life, not what I think of as recovering in the fullest sense of the word. And so, you know, I would have things happen like, I mean, for me to speak to it, to give you a specific example, I was always at war when I was driving a car. I was always at war with everybody else around me. They were following me too closely or they were going faster than me and what am I going faster for you. I mean, you name it. I mean, the most idiotic and trivial things would really get under my skin. And there was times when I would want to get, it was in the road road rage like, why road rage like sort of situations where I would speed up or slow down in front of somebody to make my point, you know, that kind of thing. I was doing crazy stuff. And, and what, what forced me to look at that differently was doing it once with my wife and my, at that time, about 10 year old daughter in the car with me, and couldn't have resulted in something bad. It ultimately didn't. But after the event, they both climbed all over me. Totally appropriately so. And, oh, wow. Okay, see, I thought I was only five minutes in them said I've got five minutes left. Wow. Okay, this is typical at any rate. So I realized at that point, I needed to change that behavior, because I was in a recovery enough to respect them and know that I needed to do what they wanted. So I changed the behavior. Well, what didn't happen. And this is where, you know, you can, you can even change behavior. And that was a positive thing for a lot of reason, some of them practical, you know, you don't want to get shot and you can out there as well. No, it can be real ugly. But I never stopped and said, Hmm, John G, how is it that you have this upset with everybody around you driving your car? What the heck is that about? You know, and a desire to seek and do God's will was not part of my thinking at the time. It was about staying sober and trying not to be offensive to my family. But that spirituality, if you know any hadn't come to me and took a while for that to come along. And as I go on to say, you know, I can briefen it up here because I know only a few minutes. Our first step in any 12 step fellowship is to abstain from whatever problematic behaviors brought us to our program. We're drinking, we stop if we're acting out sexually, we stop it from gambling the families rent money away, we stop. Our second step is to launch ourselves on to the road of recovery. And that's to me, the long run is key in the long run. These two steps are overlapping and iterative. You know, one informs the other without sobriety. And without sobriety, humility and the recovery that comes along with it are virtually impossible. Likewise, without humility and the recovery that companies it. True long term sobriety is virtually impossible. So they play off with another. And I want to mention something that I discovered in looking at this. That's a prayer. So it comes from Catholicism, I'm not Catholic, but it happens to be. I just found it. It's called the litany of humility when it's written in the form of a prayer. And what it does, if you want to look at it again, and it helps me to see all the many and often subtle ways that I focus primarily on myself. Making myself the center of all that I experience and perceive. And in doing so, lose sight of God and others. And I'll just give you a couple of examples. Not on as I say, it's written in the form of a prayer. For me, the purpose it serves is the way I can make myself the center of things. You know, and all these verses are written from the desire of being esteem, deliver me, and it's Catholic. It's the delivery of Jesus. You can fit in whoever your high of how it is and whatever his name is, but I'll hurt him for that matter. But the desire to be esteemed, the desire to be extol, the desire to be honored, the desire to be consulted. From the fear of being humiliated. From the fear of being forgotten. From the fear of being wrong. All of those are ways that I and there's more. Another one is that others may be chosen, and I set aside, grant me this grace to desire. So all of these are ways I can make myself the center of things. And when I do that, it just really takes me away from my connection with God and with others. It just really is a derailleur. And the more I'm in connection with God knows the more the blessings and grace of this program come to me. It's just the way I found it to be over and used. And so to close here, the bottom line is that my focus on humility not only allows me to be of service as I believe my higher power desires, but also frees me from the spiritual self obsession. It ultimately leads me into darkness, isolation and self destruction. And while you don't know my story, believe me, when I say darkness isolation and self destruction, I'm meaning that very concretely. I blew my life up 32 years ago with my acting out. And as a final thought for this, you know, an indication to reflect or close to what the humility. I just have this. Here's a thought for you. How does humility show up in your day to day journey of recovery. And with that, I will conclude. Thank you. Thanks all. Thank you for watching. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Sorry. Thank you. You're me and Margot. Thank you. Thanks for sharing and we appreciate your willingness to share your experience, strength and hope with us today. Yes. Hi, Nancy sex. Oh, John is so good to hear you speak and I hear your voice on the phone, but not so much. See your face. I want to thank you too. I think there've been a number of times when you've been on the schedule to speak at this meeting and then for some reason or another keeps getting bumped back, but I have a question. I'm not sure if you'll like it, but can you share how humility shows up in your day to day life. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it's even for all of us, I think. And for me, it's it really shows up as a pause that I take. First of all, I mean, it's got two parts. You've got to think and it's got a thinking part and feeling part and action part. And it comes out, first of all, by pausing whenever I feel any kind of tension or disturbance. I mean, some of these can be real obvious can be overt sort of conflict. But other times it can just be a subtle nagging or discomfort. And as our program says, you know, if anything disturbs us, it's ours to own. And I don't think owning means about fault, fault implies something that I don't share for. But owning is about empowerment and empowerment in a healthy way. And so any time I'm bothered, then I take time to pray, maybe I journal, maybe I just sit and think, whatever is fits at the moment, whatever my situation could be driving in the car, I'm not going to write anything down. It could be anything. And then the next question is, okay, what action do I need to take? A recent example was I can just back at Thanksgiving, I was visiting and I think you might have heard me show about this Nancy and my Friday night was, but I was back visiting my daughter and her family in Colorado and, and I'd had some very brief exchange with my wife, which was negative, just couldn't have been more than six words, but it was, the tone was clear and I was really irritated with her. And then I got to reflect on it and I thought, okay, so I, what did I do? I exposed my kids to that. And that I don't think was what my higher power would have wanted. And so I had to go to them and say, hey, listen, I exposed you to something and it's what it shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened with my wife, even though I had to make an immense to also, but it made an immense to them. And I actually got for my daughter. Thank you, she said. So it had bothered her, what I wanted, what I should have done, I didn't retrospect. I heard this the other day. And a share is, is, is taking that next step of saying, is there, is there any other way I might have harmed you or disturbed your upset you just to open that door fully. But so humility is, to me, then Nancy give that question, it is just, you know, having that awareness, that perspective and the willingness to act on it. And often that's by making amends. And sometimes it's just a simple change in behavior. Maybe it's an immense to ourselves because we are very much and should be, in my opinion, as I'm continuing to grow in this program, the target of those amends. You know, we owe ourselves lots of amends because of the attitudes we've applied towards ourselves that are not out of our power. They're out of our own ego. So anyway, I hope that answers your question, Nancy. Yeah, thank you, Jen. It's also nice that you're continuing to grow. Absolutely. The journey is not over. I, to put it in simple terms. I don't think that journey is over until they throw dirt on us, you know, and until that time, hopefully we're on the path. It's a good path to be on. It's not onerous. It's not burdensome. It's not, Oh, my gosh, I have to do this. It's joyful and enlightening because every, the blessings we get are hard to measure. Thanks, Nancy, for the question and thank you, John. And I'll call on myself. First, I wanted to mention, I believe that, that prayer was printed in the essay a long time ago because I ripped it out. It was adapted, you know, some of the language for us. And so it is program literature. Oh, I didn't know that. Interesting. I just want something there. Pretty sure it's the same prayer and had a question too. When you were talking, I thought, wow, I, you talked about taking action. And I thought, I could say, God, I am seeking your will. Regardless of what I might be feeling at any moment, I could say it out loud as an action. And I wondered if you had any thoughts about taking action. To become, you know, a humble state of mind. Yeah, I mean, I think starting with what you were saying, Margot, is really makes sense. I mean, I think that's where it has to begin. I think that's the sort of spirit for me. I guess I qualify all of this stuff for me. That's the spiritual posture we want to have. It's that that kind of openness and willingness to even ask that to be aware of that's what we're looking for is what understanding God's will. And then then that next part is the desire to do it. And that means, okay, to the calls for action. What do we do? Maybe it calls for inaction. Sometimes I'm wanting to go march off and do something. And maybe what is the kind, loving, caring thing to do is to not, you know, every thought of mind does not have to be expressed to everybody else. And I'm talking even ones that are perhaps well intentioned that I would be embarrassed to say in public. But that doesn't mean they need to be shared. It depends. And I think we look for discernment with God's grace and to do that. So, you know, I think that I think what you're saying, Margot, is where we have to start. And then I think for me, at least the next question is okay, is there something I need to do right now to do concrete, like, you know, is it go right now and write something down and do some journaling. It's at the call somebody up, whatever, it's gonna be a million things. It's it to go. You know, my, my, some of my wife is in the kitchen, preparing dinner and I'm working on something that's legit, but, you know, she had a long day or whatever. Oh, maybe I should go out there and help her. Those kinds of things. And I guess, I guess that's a key piece because in my prior life, I would just not think of that. I just wouldn't. And it's not like I wouldn't be aware that maybe she was out there and tired, but I wouldn't gauge my response to it in the same way I do now. I just look at it in a much different level where it's not about me and meeting my own needs and I'm the center of things. It's what can I do to be a service this program is it is I think I read one of the readings is about us serving our higher power and our fellows. That's what it is about. And whatever religious faith you've come from. If there is one at all, that's often just so central, you know, how do we serve. So, so yeah, it really can express itself in all sorts of ways, but it begins again, Margot, with what you're saying, you've got to, you've got to ask that question first and or be in that posture on call of the spiritual posture first. Thank you, John. Max, did you have a comment or a question? That's okay. Come question. Yeah, John, thank you very much for your definition of humility, desire to seek and do God's will. When you said that, I thought, am I really being humble, because I often say, you know, what's God's will for me, but actually seeking it and doing it is another story. And then when you ask the question at the end about how does humility shop in your day to day life. I want to ask you that question, but none of this is already asked you that question. But for me, it's like coming to this meeting, for example, haven't been to this meeting for ages. I laugh now, but it's kind of like God's will that I tumble myself. I know there's others in recovery that I can learn from. That's one of the keys to my recovery. So my question, you mentioned about white knuckling. So how would you know, so how do you know if it's been white knuckling and not, you know, surrendering? Have you any thoughts? Sure. Sure. Very good question. Very good question. You know, I think, I think when we white knuckle knuckle, we feel an experience of struggle of a different sort. It's like we're battling on our own and it's like, in fact, and I'll go back to my sexual sobriety. There were lots of times when, you know, I'm blessed that I didn't, that I have the right of sobriety that I did because certain situations I very little, very little doubt that I would have sustained. I really think I was blessed that way. But when we are not white, when we are white knuckling, there's that sense of struggle. Okay, I can hang on to this. I don't want to do this. I shouldn't do this all that. When we are not white knuckling, when we've gained so much of what I think of as that spiritual higher ground, at least higher ground for me, then it's, it feels like we're doing what's right for us. It doesn't feel like a battle. That's that sort of the obsession that's taken away. And we're doing it because it feels right. And to do what we would have otherwise wanted to do doesn't feel right. It feels bad. It feels bad in a number of reasons. It's bad for ourselves. It's bad for the people that we're engaged with. It's bad for families or friends or whomever. It's just not good. So the white knuckling just has that quality of struggle and strain and sort of we're pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps and by gosh, I can do this. Whereas, whereas when we are not white knuckling and we're recovered, it, it, it, the obsession tends to be much less. It goes away sometimes completely for periods of time, one day at a time. I think Jerry commented on that. Maybe it was Jerry that, that, you know, this is one day at a time. That's how we do it. And we're grateful for that. And that one day at a time. There's that sense of freedom. I don't have to go through the day saying, Oh my gosh, I hope somebody that's a trigger for me doesn't cross my visual path or something like that. I don't have to be able to ask. Because when I'm in that place, I don't have to white knuckle and that's the behavior feels good rather than something that I, I just have to do because I'm tossing it out. You know, that's the difference. Hope that answers your question now. It does. Thank you, John, grateful. You bet. Thank you, Max, for the question. Thank you, John. Daniel. Hello, Daniel J. sexaholic. Thanks, John, for your share. I appreciate it. I don't know, this might be a little bit humorous, but it strikes me that 12 step business meetings are excellent tools for learning humility, acceptance and tolerance. At least that's been my experience. My question is, and I asked this of a number of speakers because I'm truly interested in how this works. How has your concept of your higher power changed over the past 30 years? How has it evolved? And if so, in what way? What was it like before and now? Yeah, since it certainly has changed. And yeah, it's a great question. And perhaps the answer is complex. I can make anything complex. If it's simple, I can make it complex. I'm good at that. My first experiences with the concept of God were really, it was just about going to church. And it wasn't because my family went to church. My family didn't. I went with a friend who happened to be Lutheran. And so I went to the Lutheran church and then later on, my stepfather came into the picture and he was hardly what anyone would call a godly man. He was an alcoholic and a rage-aholic and I suffered in his hands, believe me. But in his way of thinking, he thought that I needed to go to church. I guess he thought that I was going to be trouble or something. And so I needed to go to church. And I mean, I was a kid that I was straight arrow as you could be and just didn't cause problems. I never had problems in school and yada out all that stuff. But he decided I should go to church. So I got confirmed. I only church. I knew it was a Lutheran church because I'd gone with a friend as a kid. So I got confirmed in the Lutheran church. And so there was this going through the motions, not any real spirituality, any real sense. And it sort of continued with me for me that way throughout. And even into early adulthood, and then finally I had a friend who was a colleague who was a churchgoer and he went to a church over in Portland, Oregon. And I really went sort of with the thought of a sense of community and family. I liked that idea. And really, just really, I didn't have much of a concept of God at all, except that I had come to know that at least for me, God was not some guy with a white beard that lived at about 100,000 feet in the sky and gave your Christmas presents. I was pretty sure that wasn't what he was. Fast forward to 11, 1991. I didn't start the program that day, but that's the day that I became dry, let's say. Because on that day is when the bomb that I had carefully designed and built, blew up in the middle of my life. And that was the first point in my life that I had to look in the mirror and say to myself, you know, you don't know what the heck you're doing. And in spite of all my arrogance and pride to the contrary prior to that, you don't know what you're doing. You are a mess. And that was true. And I looked at myself and said, I don't even think I know who you are. And it was in that brokenness that I knew that I needed something more than myself in that notion of accepting a higher power grew out of that. And it came very much in the form of this program. The meetings I attended and the people that I met and knew and formed relationships with. And so it was just really began, Daniel, just as a sense of needing to rely on something that one was different than anything that I could fully understand. And two that worked in ways that I didn't get. I mean, I couldn't explain to you exactly at any point. I probably still can't exactly how my higher power works. I just am very convinced that my higher power does work and exist and create something for me. So the concept of my higher power has I guess since that time has changed only in that I am more since that time of first coming into the program. I mean, has changed only in that I am just that much more convinced that I need that higher power and that that higher power does guide me that I can trust it, that it comes to me in all forms through meetings, through conversations, through quiet time, prayer, journaling. And I really make no attempt to really be to explain it. I really don't. I think that's key. But years ago I heard a quote. I mean, some of you will remember Bishop Desmond Tutu. He was, I think, an Anglican Bishop in South Africa. And he was being questioned about what God did or did or didn't do in a certain circumstance, something along those lines. I didn't remember the question. But I remember his response was, we shouldn't try to be too smart about these things. And that's always stuck with me because what he was really saying was, you know, let's not inject our own ego into this too much. There's a God we don't understand and fully don't think that we do. And in fact, depending on what spiritual texts you refer to. And so I'm God says, Hey, I'm different than you. You're not going to be me. You're not even going to get me fully. So just trust me and that will be it. So, and that's going to be good enough. You know, you will not fully understand. And so that's, that's a real worthy answer to your question, Daniel, but that that's kind of where I am with it. It does feel like a shift. And I guess the main difference is it's strengthened. I am comfortable with those definitions with that level of insight. I'm comfortable with that. It works for me. You know, that God shows up for me all the time. Thanks, John. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks, John. So we have about five minutes left and we have a question from Katrina. Yeah, hi, John. Thank you very much for your share and everybody who's doing service in the meeting. I have a question. I'm looking for experience, strength and hope on have you experienced in your recovery that you had a defect of character. And it was really very persistent. You did inventories after inventories and it just seemed it wouldn't get any better that eventually it got maybe better. And I think, yeah, I'm looking for some hope that things get better eventually. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm asking for. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, again, another great question, Katherine. I appreciate it. Yeah, I certainly have. When I first got into the program, I used to say, John, sex addict and approval junkie. I used to refer to myself as an approval junkie. And over the years, my sense of that grew, what that was about was not only approval, it was really about affirmation about acknowledgement. If I told you about my family life, you'd see where that came from. It was pretty ugly and not healthy. And this day and age, we probably would have been taken away from our parents, frankly. But in any case, I agree to know that that it was not just approval. It was even more basic than that. Just pay them over here to even see me. And again, I could give you examples from my childhood, which would illustrate how I felt incidental. Oh, by the way, my kin is standing there observing all this, you know, that kind of thing. And so back to more pointedly to your question to train. When I think I started to notice was my tendency to put spin and want to put spin on everything that I said and did everything. It was so omnipresent that was just everywhere. And it was so subtle. So, and I could be making an immense and I'd be putting spin on it. Everything had this bottom, this underlying motive to to influence how I appeared to other people or to gain their acknowledgement and recognition, even if very suddenly, I mean, because I'm, you know, I'm pretty good. I can mind my P's and Q's and I can say the right thing. But as I was saying earlier, what what you wrote to do is to say, wait a minute, why am I doing this or doing that? But you can't do that until you're aware that there's an issue. And that's where part of this program comes in hanging in there with it. It's a long term ongoing journey. Don't be rate yourself if that's a struggle because we all do, because it took me years. I mean, I don't mean like two or three decades to finally begin to peel in and say, wait a minute, there's some smells funny here. That's how I like to characterize things before I even have a full intellectual grasp. It's almost visceral. There's something there's something funny here. Some smells funny. What's going on? And to begin to notice how much I was putting this bit of spin on everything. And that's where the humility part comes back. Yes. Okay, God. Dare I let this go? What do you want me to do? And by the way, part of humility and the whole thing is trust. We know that. And I certainly did not start out trusting in higher power. I don't know that I trusted anybody. Probably not even myself, but certainly as I began to see this for what it is, I began to say, okay, wait a minute. I can tell this is creeping in there. And it was catching it kind of early. And this may be nothing like the defect that you're perhaps referring to specifically. Okay, that's right. But if you stay with it and you keep working at things, well, the promise is in true. Thank you, Caitrine. Thank you, John. Thank you so much, John. This has been a fantastic meeting. Bye. I would like to thank you for listening to this episode of the Daily Reprieve, the best source for experience, strength and hope for SA members. Please subscribe to this podcast to be alerted of new episodes. 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