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April 11 - Dropping the Word · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:02
  Hey, this is the Daily Ripple, and it is April the 11th, and here's the Ripple.
• 0:11
  Oh, cool. Speaking of MCs and rappers, are we on? Yeah, we're on cool. Speaking of MCs,
• 0:17
  I was joking that pastor sounded like a rap name. This is April the 11th.
• 0:22
  My name's Zach, and we're going to be dropping the word. You heard?
• 0:26
  You ever like that intro?
• 0:29
  I'm sure y'all appreciate that.
• 0:30
  Okay, so get the tomato weights out.
• 0:33
  The Stone.
• 0:34
  Blame feels powerful, but it keeps me stuck.
• 0:37
  As long as someone else is responsible for my condition, I remain unchanged.
• 0:42
  Golly, that's heavy.
• 0:45
  Growth begins where blame ends.
• 0:48
  Ripple One.
• 0:49
  Practical.
• 0:50
  Today I will remove blame from my vocabulary.
• 0:52
  I will examine my reactions before pointing outward.
• 0:56
  Where have my own fears, prejudices, or insecurities shaped the outcome?
• 1:00
  I cannot control what others have done, but I can take responsibility for how I respond.
• 1:06
  Ripple 2, Spiritual.
• 1:09
  When I release blame before the Father, the Holy Spirit forms humility and clarity in me.
• 1:14
  Following Christ's example of forgiveness, I've become less defensive and more honest.
• 1:19
  Over time, freedom replaces resentment, and responsibility replaces accusation.
• 1:25
  It says, I mean, it talks about blaming, and it says on page 66 to conclude that others were wrong as far as most of us ever got.
• 1:35
  And that's as far as I ever got.
• 1:38
  I mean, I always blamed everybody.
• 1:40
  And, you know, if I took a little bit of responsibility, I would still, they still, I blamed them still more.
• 1:46
  You know, I would put my name in there just a little bit, but I did this, but you did this.
• 1:51
  That's right.
• 1:53
  But coming, you know, when I come back to, you know, I'm the problem and I touch everyone.
• 2:01
  You know, I found that to be true.
• 2:03
  Especially more and more I've inventoried the more and more I know that everybody I've
• 2:08
  tucked so much.
• 2:09
  I've been a...
• 2:10
  What about boundaries, Corey?
• 2:12
  I don't have boundaries.
• 2:14
  You know?
• 2:15
  What do you mean, though?
• 2:16
  I just, if you're willing to take responsibility, you know, in this world and say that in each situation, if I'm disturbed, there's something wrong with me.
• 2:25
  Right.
• 2:26
  So what about boundaries?
• 2:28
  What does that mean for boundaries?
• 2:30
  You know, that's kind of what I think about in that.
• 2:32
  But I've seen through experience that it never is detrimental to me or the situation to pray and then say I'm sorry to another person.
• 2:42
  Never.
• 2:43
  It's never.
• 2:44
  It's never too much.
• 2:45
  I mean, maybe I could find myself in like a violent, potentially fatal situation where it would be like a bad idea or whatever.
• 2:53
  But ultimately, like on the day-to-day situations I find myself in, there's no harm in accepting fault.
• 3:02
  And I don't necessarily have to accept fault in order just to say like, I'm sorry to have robbed you for the situation or whatever.
• 3:10
  Yeah, the only thing that grounds against you is your ego, right?
• 3:13
  All I had to push is against is the ego.
• 3:16
  And, man, it was funny because I used to tell people this.
• 3:23
  I used to sponsor guys and tell people this.
• 3:26
  And this is not how it is.
• 3:30
  But, you know, when I talked about others in the men's process,
• 3:36
  it could affect others.
• 3:39
  I said, well, you know, it could hurt me.
• 3:40
  I could be others.
• 3:42
  It's going to be painful.
• 3:44
  It's going to be painful, Doc.
• 3:46
  I was thinking about in this, as long as someone else is responsible for my condition as far as it pertains to alcoholism, then there's nothing can be done.
• 3:57
  And there was some sense that no one was coming to fix me and that I was going to have to at least walk through the doors of somewhere.
• 4:14
  I was going to have to take some effort, which is crazy because the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit we're powerless over alcohol, which is easy to assume powerlessness over everything.
• 4:27
  Right. But at some point there's something we've talked about grace a good bit in my stint in recovery and and that whatever that level of grace required to get my ass in an AA meeting existed to where I had to assume some responsibility for the alcoholism to get to AA for the for that the grace that is sobriety to start to take effect.
• 4:49
  You know, I was, uh, I was sitting in a jail cell and it was after the SWAT team that came to the house and, uh, man, and I'll, like, cause I was in the suicide cell. I don't know if you've ever been there, but you, you, there, so there's a, you, you're naked and you got like a half suicide blanket vest thing that you get to choose either to use as a pillow or a half pillow, like a mattress, half mattress or a half blanket.
• 5:18
  that it doesn't, it's not comfortable.
• 5:21
  And, you know, so there's roaches in there.
• 5:22
  There's the uncles and the grandparents
• 5:24
  and all that stuff at the top of the ceiling
• 5:26
  and then the runners are the medium size
• 5:28
  and the little guys are on the floor.
• 5:31
  Anyways, but I was sitting in there
• 5:33
  and, um, but, you know, well, anyways,
• 5:36
  you know, it was cool when they gave me shoes
• 5:38
  and I just, they didn't have another cell for me.
• 5:40
  So they just kept me in there
• 5:41
  and they let me wear clothes after a couple of weeks.
• 5:45
  Um, but, so I was playing, you know,
• 5:47
  taekwondo with the roaches. But anyways, what I was getting at is when I was sitting in there,
• 5:54
  man, I still had this pride. And I think Bill talks about it too. I was like, you know,
• 5:59
  I was still blaming people. You know, it was not me. And sitting in that cell alone, you know,
• 6:06
  I think it talks about, you know, in Bill's story, it says on page eight, it says,
• 6:14
  I, who thought so well of myself and my abilities, you know, he still has this pride.
• 6:22
  And this is the third time he's been to treatment.
• 6:25
  And I see it all the time.
• 6:26
  You get a couple good night's sleeps and some food and you and I'm good to go.
• 6:31
  And I was good to go in that jail cell.
• 6:34
  And you were talking just a minute ago about having some responsibility.
• 6:39
  There's this click in this, you know, I think, you know, the phenomenon thing, right?
• 6:43
  This is why we can dig, I mean, I think,
• 6:45
  why you can dig so deep into this stuff because it's a phenomenon.
• 6:49
  It doesn't happen every year.
• 6:51
  It happens once in a while, according to Carl Young.
• 6:54
  Well, one out of ten.
• 6:56
  And, you know, one out of ten is a lot when you start looking into millions.
• 7:01
  But I think it's interesting because, you know, these moments,
• 7:04
  like you had a moment.
• 7:06
  Bill had a moment.
• 7:08
  I had this moment.
• 7:09
  But without those moments, will we be sitting here?
• 7:13
  or would we still be out there?
• 7:15
  I don't know.
• 7:16
  But I think it's an interest here at all.
• 7:18
  So in here it talks about in the spiritual,
• 7:21
  when I release blame before the Father,
• 7:24
  the Holy Spirit forms humility and clarity in me.
• 7:26
  And I think like in Matthew 7,
• 7:30
  it talks about judging others.
• 7:32
  And this is where it says,
• 7:33
  do not judge or you too will be judged
• 7:36
  for in the same way you judge others,
• 7:37
  you will be judged.
• 7:38
  And with measure you use,
• 7:40
  it will be measured to you.
• 7:42
  Then why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye
• 7:44
  and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
• 7:49
  Oh, did I tear the heat on the bone there, Corey?
• 7:52
  Suffered that he been holding that one for weeks.
• 7:55
  Him.
• 7:57
  God, I mean, you guys were doing all your secular stuff.
• 8:00
  I just thought I'd bring it back into the, you know, to the word.
• 8:04
  But that's what I was thinking about that.
• 8:06
  Thanks for dropping the word, Blankie.
• 8:08
  Drop him, dropping the worst.
• 8:10
  Well, a plaque's a big deal, right?
• 8:12
  Like, it's a big deal.
• 8:13
  Absolutely.
• 8:14
  I mean, yeah.
• 8:15
  And I think when we focus on what we're, you know,
• 8:18
  what your problem is takes to focus off of myself
• 8:22
  and what I should be looking at as far as, like,
• 8:25
  what my shortcomings might be in that particular situation,
• 8:29
  you know, when I'm judging you, you know.
• 8:32
  I don't know.
• 8:33
  It also mentions in here, mentions humility.
• 8:35
  And I'm a, you know, for me, and we've talked about this,
• 8:39
  You guys have probably both heard me go on a pirate about humility and the definition in the 12 and 12 about humility and that it's attainable.
• 8:46
  And it's certainly attainable in recovery and it's purposefully attainable or attainable in spiritual worth.
• 8:53
  You know, it's who I really am with sincere desire to become what I could be.
• 8:58
  And in page 28 in the big book, it talks about that we're children or children of a living creator with whom we can form a relationship.
• 9:09
  as long as you were willing and honest enough to try.
• 9:12
  You know, so for me, that's what the humility goes.
• 9:15
  But Christ's, you know, Christ's example of forgiveness is certainly that judging part.
• 9:22
  And then earlier in Matthew, you know, because if you're ever interested in like what Christ thinks about how to do stuff,
• 9:31
  you know, you read Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount is going to be his, you know,
• 9:36
  essentially his philosophy for the way you should live your life.
• 9:39
  And all the answers that you really ever need are right here, you know, in this portion of the Bible.
• 9:47
  And I can't find it.
• 9:48
  Let's see, judging others.
• 9:50
  And it talks about the don't have raka, which I think is, you know, it's anger towards your fellows.
• 9:59
  And I can't find it now.
• 10:00
  I'd be sitting here just trying to fill time to try to find it.
• 10:04
  But it talks about before you go to judgment with that person, that you should make peace with them before you go to court.
• 10:11
  You know, before you go to the court of public opinion or your opinion or whatever, you know, before you demand restitution, that you're better off just to make peace, you know, before you even get there.
• 10:24
  You know, and to me, that seems like humility in action.
• 10:29
  And, you know, we talk about dubious luxury of normal men.
• 10:33
  You know, some people can get angry.
• 10:34
  Some people can hold resentment.
• 10:36
  Some people can get through that.
• 10:37
  I personally, you know, it eats my lunch if I stood in it too long, you know.
• 10:43
  Well, you were talking about like a melody.
• 10:45
  And, you know, I think I've encountered them, and we've kind of talked about it a little bit.
• 10:51
  But, like, you know, encountering people that act, like, you know, if you listen to them talk, you would think they were the most humble human being, right?
• 11:01
  Yeah, I know that.
• 11:02
  But I think that's like a...
• 11:05
  But I think, you know, I can't sit in a room by myself and find humility.
• 11:12
  What?
• 11:13
  I can't find humility just sitting here thinking in my own head.
• 11:20
  Yeah, but I don't think it's humility is like a feeling.
• 11:22
  I think it's just a state of being.
• 11:25
  Yeah, it's a place.
• 11:26
  And I think that, I mean, for me, in that, I think this is a word that gets a bad rap, because in the rooms, you would say, well, if I was to stand up and say, well, I have humility, people are like, oh, you're arrogant.
• 11:41
  You know, and I would say, well, no, that's not true, because I know what I am.
• 11:44
  Yeah, because you also, because it also says almost none of us like the self-searching and leveling of our pride.
• 11:51
  The confession of shortcomings which this process requires, right?
• 11:54
  Yeah, but that probably, you know, because I know who I am through that, right?
• 11:57
  Right.
• 11:58
  And I know where I'm, you know, I know all that stuff.
• 12:01
  So that being, knowing who I am comes from that.
• 12:04
  Right.
• 12:04
  Well, later on in that, in the fifth step in the 12 and 12, it talks about until we had given somebody our story, but also heard somebody's story.
• 12:13
  Right.
• 12:14
  That we didn't really join the brotherhood of you.
• 12:16
  Kinship of man.
• 12:17
  Kinship of man.
• 12:19
  Right.
• 12:20
  You took your glasses off.
• 12:21
  That's serious business, man.
• 12:22
  Yes, I'm resistant for serious, but wires of me.
• 12:26
  I was just finding a little bit of the big book to support or coincide with releasing
• 12:33
  blame through the Holy Spirit and forming humility and through Christ's example, specifically
• 12:38
  of forgiveness and just how in our daily instructions or what I like to call the daily
• 12:43
  instructions on 86 to 88 that it says when we retire at night, we ask for God's forgiveness.
• 12:51
  And I just, there's some power in that, the power of praying to be relieved of a resentment or blame, you know.
• 13:01
  I've had some interesting experiences in my marriage since I've been sober, and it was necessary for me to delve deeper into reliance on God in a more faith-based experience than what alcoholics, well, than the surface-level alcoholics anonymous experience.
• 13:20
  And part of that was taking insight from Christian literature to work through blame and forgiveness, you know.
• 13:31
  And it was necessary.
• 13:32
  I just didn't find the context in Alcoholics Anonymous to support that for me, you know.
• 13:39
  I did do a four-step and wrote around it.
• 13:43
  And it was two people involved.
• 13:46
  So, you know, itemized each person and did what we do.
• 13:49
  You know, anybody was necessary to dig a little deeper into the forgiveness piece of the Lord's prayer as instructed by in the fox.
• 13:59
  And I went through there and I read the letters like it suggested I spent a lot of time in forgiveness.
• 14:05
  And it's like.
• 14:07
  In the same way that I don't think I could have removed from the obsession to drink from myself, it was like purely through.
• 14:17
  extensive prayer and contact with God and asking God over and over. So it was repetitive. We've
• 14:23
  talked about the repetitive nature of growth and spiritual growth. And, uh, it was, I can say it
• 14:30
  wasn't anything. Well, obviously I said the things I did, but I didn't effectively remove,
• 14:36
  um, that from myself. Yeah. I think there's some serious power in, in that, in making contact
• 14:44
  through God. And I think that when we do, I understand the Holy Spirit as it's illustrated
• 14:49
  here in the intercessory between me and God or Christ. But even in that speaking of speaking prayer,
• 15:00
  you mentioned even one of you sharing with another person. I think that's part of what
• 15:05
  this is talking about is kind of illuminating that gift that is the sharing of or verbalizing
• 15:14
  with each other, but ultimately
• 15:17
  through intensive
• 15:18
  prayer to
• 15:20
  God.
• 15:22
  And I was,
• 15:24
  you know, you were talking about kind of like
• 15:26
  what AA has, and
• 15:28
  you kind of talked about it,
• 15:30
  not in here, but you know, the
• 15:32
  institutionalizing, you know, AA.
• 15:34
  Tell me. Right.
• 15:36
  Yeah, the central fact for my life that AA
• 15:38
  had become the central fact for my life.
• 15:40
  And, you know, I ran
• 15:42
  and you were there.
• 15:44
  I mean,
• 15:44
  I'm just as a pretty strongman,
• 15:45
  but yeah,
• 15:46
  I bet.
• 15:46
  But I mean,
• 15:47
  you were a part of that
• 15:48
  and you know,
• 15:48
  you,
• 15:49
  like,
• 15:49
  cause you know,
• 15:50
  man,
• 15:51
  you know,
• 15:51
  you used to call,
• 15:52
  you know,
• 15:52
  I used to be on the phone
• 15:53
  with guys,
• 15:54
  take them to the book
• 15:55
  and you know,
• 15:55
  cause I couldn't,
• 15:56
  I didn't want to feel
• 15:57
  the way I was feeling
• 15:58
  cause I was about to go
• 15:59
  away to prison.
• 16:00
  Yeah.
• 16:01
  And,
• 16:03
  you know,
• 16:03
  I think it happened
• 16:04
  that,
• 16:05
  you know,
• 16:05
  there was a morning
• 16:05
  that I decided
• 16:06
  cause I take an Uber
• 16:08
  downtown every time
• 16:09
  I have core
• 16:10
  cause I didn't know
• 16:11
  when I was going to go to prison.
• 16:13
  And so I didn't,
• 16:13
  but I didn't want,
• 16:14
  you know,
• 16:15
  the people at my house
• 16:16
  having to worry about
• 16:17
  going and getting the car,
• 16:18
  right?
• 16:18
  Yeah.
• 16:19
  And I didn't want any of that confusion.
• 16:20
  I didn't want the,
• 16:21
  you know,
• 16:21
  any of them
• 16:22
  having to take any
• 16:23
  response or a burden for me.
• 16:26
  And there's this morning
• 16:27
  that I,
• 16:29
  I was sitting there
• 16:30
  and I was like,
• 16:30
  man,
• 16:30
  I need to get more
• 16:31
  out of myself.
• 16:32
  And like,
• 16:33
  you know,
• 16:33
  I would be calling people,
• 16:34
  whatever.
• 16:35
  But then I started writing
• 16:36
  a prayer list of people
• 16:37
  that I knew
• 16:38
  that were going through
• 16:38
  some hard things.
• 16:40
  And that prayer list
• 16:41
  became very big. And, you know, I even had to call him because I was like, man, like, you know,
• 16:46
  now I'm like praying for people's like, you know, there's serenity and, you know, but maybe they
• 16:52
  don't need that serenity anyways. It's this confusing thing. But man, you know, I started
• 16:55
  getting more involved with this God versus the structure of AA. I mean, I stayed in AA and did
• 17:01
  the stuff I was supposed to do there, but started relying on God more than AA. And I think that
• 17:08
  flip for me was probably one of the most like crucial flips in my life but i don't know i was
• 17:14
  just thinking about that after you said that yeah well it's easy to make that institutionalized
• 17:20
  uh a recovery program i mean i certainly did it you know i mean it's not hard to do that there's a
• 17:25
  metric there i mean go to a meeting no say this for any prayer i was fine see what you know read 86
• 17:31
  through ADA, good. Right? There's no, you can measure that. And for like the ego, the ego loves
• 17:39
  to have, it loves to compartmentalize, you know, for me. And that's really, I guess, the difficulty
• 17:47
  and why we spend a lot of time in Alcoholics Anonymous talking about faith is because it's not
• 17:54
  tangible. Well, not as we know it, not yet, right? Well, you're introduced, it's not,
• 17:58
  You haven't had effective results that you can measure in your life.
• 18:03
  I don't know.
• 18:04
  I disagree with that a little bit.
• 18:06
  Because until somebody points it out to you that when you get up in the morning, you put your feet on the floor, that is essentially fake.
• 18:12
  It's your floor.
• 18:14
  Well, that's what I mean.
• 18:14
  We have that.
• 18:15
  When first introduced, you have no tangible proof.
• 18:19
  Right.
• 18:19
  And it's difficult to accept.
• 18:21
  Right.
• 18:21
  We spend a lot of time talking about it.
• 18:22
  Right.
• 18:25
  So, yeah, to be institutionalized, spiritual institutionalization, however you want to call that, like by way of Alcoholics Anonymous, is easy.
• 18:36
  It's measurable.
• 18:37
  I don't have to trust.
• 18:39
  I don't have to risk.
• 18:40
  I don't have to.
• 18:42
  There's no, it's, I can get into a mechanical mode and do those things and be satisfied when I lay down at night.
• 18:49
  I checked all the boxes.
• 18:50
  And there's an app so that if I want to be satisfied, I can just go on the app and be like, oh, Step 11 app.
• 18:57
  Yep.
• 18:57
  Did that, did that, did that.
• 18:59
  See?
• 18:59
  Good.
• 19:00
  Right.
• 19:01
  Which is amazing.
• 19:02
  It's an amazing target to set your sights on brand new with no growth behind you and get to a place.
• 19:10
  Right.
• 19:10
  And you talked about the ways you were doing it wrong before, but that's all part of your story to get to now.
• 19:17
  Right.
• 19:17
  You know, and I subscribed to the rules of AA and had to kind of tear down what I thought spiritual, what a spiritual life looked like or spirituality.
• 19:28
  But yeah, it's easy, man.
• 19:30
  It's easy.
• 19:30
  But this asking God to remove a resentment or to make, to give me the spirit of forgiveness is, I'd never done anything like that before.
• 19:42
  I don't know.
• 19:42
  I did NAA what y'all did because y'all said y'all did it and it worked for y'all.
• 19:47
  But this was brave territory, quote, unquote.
• 19:50
  You know, it's like a new territory.
• 19:53
  Prayer.
• 19:55
  Father, search for my heart and remove the instinct to blame.
• 19:58
  Through your spirit, teach me humility and shape my life in the forgiving way of your son.
• 20:03
  Amen.
• 20:03
  Amen.
• 20:04
  Amens.
• 20:33
  .