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May 15 - Peace Through Knowing God · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Hey everybody, this is Corey, this is the Daily Ripple, it's May 15th, peace through knowing
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  God.
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  The Stone, resentment clouds the heart and disrupts peace.
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  When I hold on to it, I distance myself from the very presence that brings clarity and rest.
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  Ripple One: Practical.
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  Today I will notice where resentment is taking root.
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  I will not justify holding on to it.
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  Instead, I will bring it into the open and begin the process of releasing it, even if
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  it only in small steps. Ripple Two: spiritual.
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  The more I know the Father, the more peace settles within me.
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  As I follow Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to work in my heart, resentment loses its grip.
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  Peace is not something I manufacture.
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  It is something I receive as I draw near to God.
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  But it says, resentment clouds the heart and disrupts peace.
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  And I think, for me, someone like me had always just done that.
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  And I saw this topic, and I decided I was going to take a little deep dive into it.
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  So if you're part of this program, of any of the programs that use the Book of Alcoholics Anonymous,
• 1:23
  page 65 is a good place to start.
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  in the big book.
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  And it,
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  because it gives me this example
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  and it tells me how I do it.
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  It says, Mr. Brown,
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  I'm resentful at Mr. Brown.
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  The cause,
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  well, his attention to my wife,
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  he told my wife of my mistress.
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  Then Brown may get my job at the office.
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  And then it goes on to the right
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  of how it affects my self-esteem
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  and this and this and this and this.
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  But then on down, it talks about this guy's also resentful at his wife.
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  Well, his wife misunderstands and nags.
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  She likes Brown and wants house put in her name.
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  And these are just resentments.
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  And, you know, it tells me I got to get, you know, tells me I have to master these.
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  And it tells me a life, I can't be angry about these.
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  Well, how would I not be angry about Mr. Brown told my wife and my mistress?
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  Well, that's like the bro code.
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  His attention to my wife.
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  So Brown has attention to my wife.
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  Brown may get my job at the office.
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  My wife likes Brown and wants to put the house in her name.
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  So I think about that and I think, well, as someone like me, I'm viewing it like Brown's
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  moving into my house. He's sleeping with my wife. And Brown's getting my job. That's crazy.
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  Like Brown is taking over my life. And, but the thing is, when I flip the page on page 66,
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  it tells me I have to be free of anger. The grouch of the brainstorm were not for us.
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  They may be the dubious luxuries of normal men, but for the alcoholic, these things are poison.
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  Then it goes on to say I have to master these, and, you know, mastering has full knowledge.
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  When I look back at some, I wanted to pull out, you know, I wanted to pull up some old things, but, you know, when I go back and look at the things I've done to others, you know, it's usually, you know, I usually put myself in a place of fear coming into a relationship.
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  Frightened, they might know who I really am, so I lie about who I am.
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  You know, just time and time again, it comes back to me.
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  But when I go further in here, it says,
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  we found that it is fatal for harboring such feelings.
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  We shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit.
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  So, you know, I like the way Michael, he put this in here.
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  You know, I distance myself from the very presence that brings clarity and rest.
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  to me, that'd be God. So if God brings me clarity and rest and these resentments hold me back from
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  God, well, to me, you know, and the only way I can do this sobriety thing, or I mean, you know,
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  go to like normal life, you know, for me, like, you know, how cool it is to have this power and
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  to be able to have, feel this presence of this power in my life. So I think about what I got to do,
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  Like, you know, tell me what I, this book tells me exactly what I have to do.
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  Then he goes on to say, I really like this one today.
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  He put, I will not justify holding on to it.
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  So I don't get to justify it.
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  Huh.
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  Well, I've justified holding on to all these things for a long time.
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  My birth mother, you know, I had this thing where, you know, I felt, you know, she had kind of abandoned me.
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  That it took me a lot of years of maturity and, you know, even going through this process to say, you know, man, she did the best she could with what she had.
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  And it was lucky, like, you know, I'm here today.
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  It's only by God that I'm here today, really.
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  And then it goes on to say, I will bring it into the open and begin the process.
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  And I'll bring it into the open.
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  So bringing it into the open, I would, it kind of sounds like on page 84.
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  And page 84 says, continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.
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  When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.
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  We discuss them with someone immediately.
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  So that'd be bringing in the open, I imagine, and going through the process.
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  Well, the process also tells me, make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone.
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  Because really what it is, and you know, this is cool because this book tells me pretty much everything about me.
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  It says on page 64 of the big book, first we searched out the flaws in our makeup, which caused our failure.
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  So maybe I'm inadequate.
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  And I kind of, when I look at this and I think about a resentment and maybe had an ex or something, you know, I really like to point the finger at them.
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  I really like to say, you know, they did this, they left me, and it affected this, this, this, and this.
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  Well, what did I do to them?
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  Maybe I probably wasn't good enough for them.
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  And so really I resent fault myself, but I want to point the finger at them.
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  Or maybe I had some things that I still was going through in my life, and I wasn't, you know, in a position.
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  But I can't blame me for some reason because the house always wins, right?
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  If the house always wins, it is that attitude never lets me be free of this.
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  And if I got to change my attitude, and this book tells me, I think, in 25 different places,
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  it says the word attitude.
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  And then it says in 27 different places, the word recovered.
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  So attitude and recovered are two things I think go hand in hand.
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  So when I go through my life, you know, how do I do this?
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  And I was doing my morning meditation thing today,
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  and I was looking, you know, and I've done this before,
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  but when it says continue to watch,
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  continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear,
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  because over here it says, holding on to it,
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  the more I know the Father, the more peace settles within me,
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  Oh, the Holy Spirit to work in my heart.
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  Resentment loses this grip.
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  But what about when resentment comes up today?
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  And I go, because usually I play the whole tape through for me.
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  It's nine times out of 10, I play the whole tape through.
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  So what happens is the resentment comes.
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  I act sometimes maturely and spiritually with it, but sometimes I don't.
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  Sometimes I got to go through the whole process.
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  And I think the whole process starts around the third step.
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  Am I willing to give this over to God?
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  My will and my thoughts, my life and my actions.
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  Will, thoughts, life, action.
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  But am I willing to give all this over?
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  And then I inventory it because for some reason, I don't know why it is for me,
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  but maybe that process is the only thing that I've found that helps me be free of it.
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  But it doesn't just stop at the fourth step.
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  because the house cleaning steps in the program is 4 through 9.
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  And, you know, I'd like to not, because I don't think, you know,
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  that's not what I don't think.
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  You know, I was sitting in a thing the other day,
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  and they were talking about the maintenance steps,
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  and I'm not going to get on this big tangent about this,
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  but, you know, I don't believe that 10 and 11 and 12 are maintenance steps
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  because on page 84, it says our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.
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  So that doesn't really look like I'm maintaining.
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  It looks like I'm growing.
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  But anyways, so like when I think about maintenance, you know,
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  or not maintenance, when I think about this, the personal house cleaning,
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  and if it only starts at 4, well, then 5, then 6 and 7, then 8 and 9.
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  You know, I can't, I don't know if I'm always going to get free of this stuff just at the step four.
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  You know, and that's kind of like if my sponsor likes to talk about making a cake, baking a cake.
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  What if I just put the eggs and the flour and those ingredients in a bowl?
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  Well, and I'm trying to make a cake, but I just stop at the first step.
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  I don't think I'm going to get anywhere.
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  I got, well, you could get, you know, obviously you got some, you know, you got some cake batter.
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  But I'm not going to bake a cake.
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  I'm just going to have cake batter.
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  And if I got to go through this process, there's a process,
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  and I believe in the process.
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  And the process tells me I do this, this, this, this, and this in this order.
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  But Corey thinks that, you know, usually what my ego tells me is,
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  oh, I don't have to do that anymore.
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  Oh, you know, I just have to do this.
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  And, you know, I'm spiritual, Corey, today.
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  And I did my prayer, meditation, and this and this.
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  And so this is really cool because it says,
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  the more I know the Father, so the more peace salvage that's within me.
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  And we've been talking about this a lot.
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  And it says on page 75 of the big book, on the last paragraph,
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  It says, we thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know Him better.
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  That's after the fifth step.
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  So after the fifth step, why would I know God better?
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  Because I just found out some truth.
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  And maybe God is truth.
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  Maybe God is love.
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  Maybe God is everything.
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  And I think we talk about this a lot, but on page 53 of the big book, it says,
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  When we became Alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis, we could not postpone or evade.
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  we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or God is nothing.
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  The more and more this process of my life evolves,
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  the more and more I find that God is everything,
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  and God is more than everything that I could have ever imagined.
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  So when I look at that, and this thing's evolving, and it's coming up,
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  and I'm knowing more truth, and it's getting me to more of this one person,
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  I find so much.
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  You know, maybe we're not looking at, this is not a self, I mean, to me, it's not a self-help thing.
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  I think you can go into the proposition that maybe God is nothing and go in this as a book study of just words in a process.
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  And maybe through that process, you find a higher power of your own understanding.
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  That's kind of what I did as well.
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  And page 145 of the big book, this is cool, because it says,
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  The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear.
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  Jealousy, you know, that's a corroding thing in my life.
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  You know, I can get, man, I don't know about you guys, but like I get jealous, envious.
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  And those are those things that just really block.
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  I mean, it disrupts my life.
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  It puts me on this, like, roller coaster.
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  And, you know, normally if I do that, that stuff happens.
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  I got to just sit down, be quiet.
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  And usually an intuitive thought comes to my head, like, hey, call somebody and check on their day.
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  Because I don't want to disrupt anybody else's life because of what I'm thinking in my mind that's usually not true.
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  In Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1, it says,
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  A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
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  The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.
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  The eyes of the Lord are everywhere. Keep watching on the wicked and the good.
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  The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.
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  It is amazing when I get angry.
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  Me and my significant other, we were going out to eat.
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  It was so funny because we were going out and I got these crocs that are like loafers,
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  but they look nice, but they're really not nice.
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  And they're like $5 or whatever, but I think that they can pass as nice shoes.
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  And so I'm sitting there and I put my shoes on and she looks at me and she goes, I said, you know, are these going to be okay to wear?
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  And she's like, you know, it's not like we're going to a nice restaurant.
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  And so immediately I didn't take it as like, you know, I didn't take that as sarcasm.
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  I took that as like, hey, she's not, she's talking down to me about where I'm taking her out to eat.
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  And that put me in a spirit of anger, put me in the spirit of, you know, maybe I'm not doing good enough for her.
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  Maybe I'm, you know, inadequate.
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  And immediately I get this, like, these feelings and this anger, you know.
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  But, you know, and I'm really glad she was in a spiritually fit place that day because she, you know, we talked about it and she told me what she meant.
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  But, you know, I was like, you know, this place isn't good enough.
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  Well, what if she hadn't been in a good place, right?
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  And both of us just go down this tornado of saying this and saying this and saying this.
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  And it doesn't happen that way.
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  And that sometimes happens.
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  Because just somebody says one thing, and it makes me not feel good enough.
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  So immediately after I don't feel good enough, I got to make sure.
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  And maybe I say something to make them feel worse.
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  On page 104 and 105 in the 12 and 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says, we discover that we do
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  receive guidance for our lives to just about the extent we stop making demands upon God.
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  Demands upon God would be demands upon other people, too, because if God is everything,
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  then God is other people.
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  So maybe I need to quit making demands on other people.
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  And then it says to give it to us on order in our terms.
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  Almost any experienced AA will tell how his affairs have taken remarkable and unexpected turns for the better when he tried to improve his conscious contact with God.
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  He will also report that out of every season of grief or suffering,
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  when the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust,
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  new lessons for living were learned.
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  But, you know, so I say this seven-step prayer every morning.
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  The seven-step prayer says,
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  My creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.
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  I pray that you remove every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.
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  Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.
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  But what was wild was I was sitting there with a guy, we were doing the prayer, and I forgot some of the words.
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  And I just said something on the fact of, help me be more of love.
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  And then I kept on going through the prayer.
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  And what a weird deal because, you know, he was just telling me how angry he was.
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  And, you know, I maybe, you know, but I found that God works in ways that I can't even describe.
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  I can't comprehend how God works.
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  And who could, right?
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  And that was the weird thing is I've tried to for a long time in my life.
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  I tried to explain the Supreme Being.
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  understand the Supreme Being, but if I'm not the Supreme Being, how am I going to understand it?
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  And we're going to wrap this thing up here pretty soon, but I was thinking about this this morning.
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  So this is talking, and this kind of goes back to what I was just saying, but this is on page 46 of the big book.
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  It says, we looked askance at many individuals who claim to be godly.
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  How could a Supreme Being have anything to do with it all?
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  and who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow.
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  Yet in other moments, we found ourselves thinking
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  when enchanted by a starlit night,
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  who then made all this?
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  There was a feeling of awe and wonder,
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  but it was fleeting and soon lost.
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  And I think about that fleeting feeling,
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  you know, and as it's things today are fleeting.
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  And, but I got this thing in my head that is very,
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  it's heavier than it is fleeting today.
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  it is the process of wrong and right.
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  And if I'm treating people right
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  to my best ability during my day
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  and staying on track with that,
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  and, you know, I mean,
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  I don't do it perfectly,
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  and usually page 84 is a good example
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  of I got to go back and make amends
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  when I mess up,
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  just like I did messed up yesterday
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  with going out to eat.
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  Just like the other day, you know,
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  So I judged this person and did this and put me in a little spiral.
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  But I had to practice this.
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  And if I don't practice this, I'll tell you in my own experience what happened after being sober for a little while is I quit doing this.
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  Then I quit doing this.
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  And then I slept around over here.
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  And I started lying over here.
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  And my wife became I, I, I, I, I.
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  And I found that it's not about me.
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  Because my whole life's been about me.
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  And so today I make it about you.
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  I try to.
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  It's still about me.
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  But I try my best to try to help others and get out of me.
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  Because if I don't get out of me and I stay in this world,
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  And I don't know about people on here that listen to this, that don't listen to this.
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  I don't know.
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  But I know me, if I wasn't free of some of these things, I would not have the ability to go up in my mind and think about things.
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  Go hang out up there.
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  Because I used to not be able to.
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  And I don't play well with others.
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  But today I do.
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  I'm able to because I'm not able to...
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  I don't get as angry as quick.
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  Sometimes.
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  And I'm able to understand that, you know, I'm not here for me.
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  I'm here for you.
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  So I'm going to end this with a prayer.
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  And so it says prayer, Father, draw me closer to You.
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  Through Your Spirit, remove the resentment within me and lead me into peace that comes
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  from walking in the way of Your Son.
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  Amen.
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  And we're not bringing up any arguments while Michael is not here to defend himself, so don't worry...