Stay Free - Russel Brand - The Real Reason You Keep Relapsing…- SF723

00:00:09.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Brand,

00:00:26.000 Russian, We're dedicating our time to talking to people that can facilitate spiritual awakening, help us to learn how we can access the fuel, the fruit that is our birthright, and also to people that help with energy independence and food independence, ways of decoupling yourself from a corrupt state.

00:00:55.000 We're also talking about forms of protest that might be successful.

00:00:58.000 That's why I was fascinated when Tucker said, don't pay your credit card bills.

00:01:00.000 How do you get out of this system, this crunching mortgage death grip system that wants you in continual debt paying endless tax?

00:01:08.000 For the spiritual component, you could read my book, Russell Brand How to Become Christian in Seven Days.

00:01:13.000 There's a link in the description for that.

00:01:14.000 You can have the audio book.

00:01:15.000 For free of charge, which I think is better because it's me talking, and surely that's what you need more of.

00:01:21.000 And today's guest is also someone that's going to be incredibly helpful because Rick S. wrote this book that shows how the literature around the 12 steps, and any of you that have had an addiction issue, it's likely that 12 steps has been part of your recovery.

00:01:36.000 What Rick S. has done marvelously in his fat book here is helped us to understand where particular spiritual principles from scripture are being applied.

00:01:46.000 Apply to the 12 steps.

00:01:46.000 He'll be coming up in just a moment.

00:01:49.000 But if you haven't got Rumble Premium yet, get Rumble Premium now.

00:01:53.000 And if you ever see Russell Crowe on the path, treat Russell Crowe with respect.

00:01:59.000 And I'll tell you what happened the one time that I ran into Russell Crowe as well, because it was one of the best days of my life.

00:02:08.000 Stay where you are. 0.99

00:02:15.000 Don't fucking push him on me. 0.99

00:02:22.000 Like when he was being Maximus Caius and live with his hand in them crops. 0.98

00:02:26.000 Just wants to run his hand gently over the crops.

00:02:29.000 He doesn't want you running at him.

00:02:30.000 I love Russell Croft.

00:02:35.000 If you can add, make Well, they're asking him to sign it in character.

00:02:54.000 He won't like that.

00:02:54.000 Did you see the South Park Tugger?

00:02:57.000 I loved that stuff.

00:02:58.000 I loved that.

00:02:58.000 Fighting around the world.

00:03:00.000 When I met Russell Crowe, it was at a crossing in Los Angeles.

00:03:04.000 I saw him crossing the road.

00:03:05.000 I pulled over.

00:03:06.000 I went, hey, all right, Russell.

00:03:09.000 All right, Russell.

00:03:10.000 We both used that voice.

00:03:11.000 I don't know why.

00:03:12.000 I used his.

00:03:13.000 And Russell Squared, I thought of it as being, which is a place in London that you can sometimes visit.

00:03:19.000 He was a shambling and glorious and magnificent man who's been chewed up by that system.

00:03:23.000 You can sort of see it.

00:03:24.000 You can see how he would have gone into that gladiator phase after Romper Stomper, his first Australian movie, full of optimism, only to emerge on the other side.

00:03:34.000 How anyone does, no matter how brief their skirmish with Hollywood is, disappointed and with a peculiar taste in your mouth, knowing that you are on the edge of something diabolical and dreadful.

00:03:45.000 In a sense, the people that I worry about most are the ones that have lived there forever Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio.

00:03:50.000 How are they?

00:03:52.000 How are they surviving in there?

00:03:53.000 I hope they're okay in there.

00:03:55.000 That machine, that vast and ghastly machine.

00:03:58.000 I'm very grateful to have escaped it, although I never would have thought that would be where I'd arrive, you know.

00:04:04.000 I never would have thought I would have gotten to that place.

00:04:06.000 I also get mistaken for Russell Crowe a lot, a lot.

00:04:08.000 And it can't be that I look like him.

00:04:10.000 It simply must be they go, Russ, he's called Russell Crowe.

00:04:15.000 Russell Crowe.

00:04:16.000 That's who you are.

00:04:17.000 I've signed all crafts as him, but I always, I'm as firm as here.

00:04:20.000 Right. 0.99

00:04:21.000 Don't be a dick. 1.00

00:04:21.000 Stand well back and I'll sign it for you. 1.00

00:04:23.000 You sign it Maximus?

00:04:25.000 Always.

00:04:25.000 Yeah.

00:04:25.000 He goes, it's funny the rest of the video.

00:04:27.000 He goes, no.

00:04:29.000 No, I'm not signing it as Maximus. 1.00

00:04:30.000 Don't take the fucking piss. 1.00

00:04:32.000 That's one down from shoving me. 1.00

00:04:34.000 Okay.

00:04:35.000 We can't make this show without the support of our partners.

00:04:37.000 Here's a quick message from one now. 0.97

00:04:39.000 Who knows when the government will decide to switch you off or hunt you down like a pig? 0.58

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00:05:53.000 As you know, I'm 23 years clean and sober from drugs and alcohol.

00:05:57.000 The way I stay sober and clean is by participating in decentralized groups where the leaders are just trusted servants, where your identity is secondary to your shared purpose.

00:06:10.000 But no one's trying to undermine your individual identity, and anyone can join.

00:06:13.000 It doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter what you believe in, whether you believe in God or don't believe in God at all.

00:06:18.000 There's a common and shared purpose.

00:06:19.000 Today, I'm talking to someone who wrote a very inspirational and influential book on the subject, Rick S. If you're interested in addiction, alcoholism, spirituality, if you're interested in detaching yourself from the rigid grip of a culture that always seems to find its way back into you, you get off drugs and suddenly, I don't know, food or pornography or some other form of identity will get hold of you.

00:06:45.000 The truth is this that I reckon if I'd have.

00:06:49.000 When I was very young, I understood the spiritual principles that are behind the 12 steps.

00:06:53.000 It could have saved me a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of aggravation.

00:06:57.000 Certainly, I'm raising my own children with an awareness and understanding of the 12 steps as best as I can.

00:07:01.000 But here's someone that wrote the book.

00:07:05.000 The Fat Book is the name of this book, which is a sort of a pun on the Big Book, which is the affectionate name for the book by Bill W. and others that gave the name Alcoholics Anonymous to the 12 step group Alcoholics Anonymous, which the traditions of suggest that no one. Can claim to have any ownership of, and also in general, no one can speak on behalf of, and that's a very sort of smart principle.

00:07:32.000 And indeed, it's the 12 steps and the 12 traditions that I want to talk to our guest Rick S. today about.

00:07:37.000 Here he is.

00:07:39.000 Hey Russell, how are you?

00:07:43.000 Rick, thanks so much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:07:47.000 I'm really enjoying your book.

00:07:51.000 And I've never really had a guest like this before.

00:07:55.000 And can you explain what your position is when it comes to the writing of this book and why you're known as Rick S. rather than anything else for the purposes of this conversation?

00:08:07.000 Sure.

00:08:07.000 Well, it's about the anonymity of the spirit in the program.

00:08:12.000 And, you know, the writing of the book actually became a holy ambition.

00:08:16.000 It's a whole story that I can tell you about.

00:08:19.000 But it is the outpouring of the work that I've done within.

00:08:23.000 You know, helping people to recover from alcoholism for 35 years.

00:08:29.000 Yeah.

00:08:30.000 Well, thank you for that.

00:08:31.000 Someone gave me the book recently, and I've written a book where I didn't have sufficient spiritual fortitude to do it anonymously.

00:08:44.000 You'll see my name's written above the cross, but that cross is made of flies, and those flies represent sin and brokenness.

00:08:51.000 That's my book.

00:08:53.000 As I said to you, I wish I'd read your book before I wrote mine because.

00:08:56.000 One of the things I particularly enjoy is how you've taken the Alcoholics Anonymous book from which the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous takes its name, written primarily by Bill W., but to some degree by Consortium, which describes the problem of addiction to alcohol and the solution.

00:09:18.000 One of the first things that fascinated me, and indeed that I have written about in my book, Rick, is the correspondence between Bill W. and Jung because of Jung's.

00:09:30.000 I suppose synchronous pre involvement in the establishment of the fellowship.

00:09:37.000 Maybe that's an interesting place for us to start with Carl Jung and is it Roland Hazard?

00:09:44.000 Yeah, that's a very interesting place to start because, you know, Jung writes a letter back to Bill Wilson.

00:09:52.000 Bill Wilson writes him this great letter.

00:09:54.000 And if you want to know the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill lays it out in that letter.

00:09:58.000 And Jung writes back to him and he says, you know, the formula is this Spiritus contro Spiritum.

00:10:05.000 Which in Latin means it takes a spirit to defeat a spirit.

00:10:09.000 And, you know, the thing with Alcoholics Anonymous today versus where it was years ago is that, you know, if you take the population, 100% of people who are old enough to drink, whatever age you put that out, 80% of them go ahead and try alcohol or drugs.

00:10:26.000 Of that, 20% develop some kind of problem.

00:10:29.000 And of that, 20% end up with what the Big Book calls as a real alcoholic.

00:10:35.000 And it's wildly different.

00:10:37.000 So, what Jung is hitting on, and he gets to, he writes that letter a week before he dies.

00:10:42.000 And he says, I wanted to be more open with Roland, but I couldn't because I was a psychologist.

00:10:49.000 And he believed that the human mind had the ability to connect with the divine.

00:10:55.000 The ancient Orthodox Church calls that the Nus, that part of the human psyche or the eye of the psyche that can connect with God.

00:11:03.000 And in recovery, it's step 11.

00:11:06.000 We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.

00:11:10.000 The assumption there is that the person trying to practice that step has made conscious contact.

00:11:16.000 That is, consciousness is actually tied to God.

00:11:21.000 And this, in the Western church, this is gone today.

00:11:25.000 The Western church is about materialism and all sorts of other things that are happening here.

00:11:31.000 But the ancient Christian church actually believed that you could plug in and receive inspiration.

00:11:38.000 And the real alcoholic. 0.57

00:11:40.000 Has a spiritual problem.

00:11:42.000 So you break the problems with alcoholism down into three parts, and it says, you know, Bill Wilson wrote, when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.

00:11:53.000 Well, the spiritual malady is our separation from God.

00:11:56.000 And we didn't create that.

00:11:58.000 We're not, you know, bad people trying to become good.

00:12:01.000 We're separate people trying to become back in union with God.

00:12:05.000 And he writes about the medieval language.

00:12:10.000 About our union with God, which was the man's need to receive Christ.

00:12:18.000 Man, I was.

00:12:20.000 Well, I gave you a mouthful.

00:12:22.000 You can add it any way you like.

00:12:25.000 I was 23 years clean and sober because of various 12 step groups that I may or may not belong to and that I am not qualified to speak on behalf of.

00:12:42.000 And what's interesting, having had the foundational experience of the 12 steps, which, as the 12th step says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, even if the intention when anyone goes into a 12 step program is to stop drinking or to stop taking drugs, the intended result, one might say, is the spiritual awakening.

00:13:08.000 It's an extremely mystical place.

00:13:10.000 You've gone very early with this concept of nous, which gives us the British colloquial.

00:13:16.000 Slang actually.

00:13:17.000 Now means canniness, brightness, intuition, a sense of understanding.

00:13:24.000 The problem in the first place is spiritual.

00:13:27.000 Now, you referred to some of the things in Carl Jung's letter to Bill Wilson, not least the fact that it was very near the end of his life and might therefore kind of represent a culminative view of addiction from Jung, like culminative after a life's work.

00:13:46.000 When he says, as you cited, and this is in your book, you quoted this letter, well, you publish it in its entirety, and I quote it at length in my own book.

00:13:59.000 He says here, I'm strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world lends the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, wickedness, if it is not counteracted either by real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community.

00:14:14.000 An ordinary man not protected by an action from above.

00:14:18.000 Interesting.

00:14:18.000 And isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil, which is very aptly called the devil.

00:14:26.000 But the use of such words arouses so many mistakes that one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible.

00:14:32.000 And Jung goes on to say that he feels like Bill W. is sufficiently spiritually sophisticated to use that vocabulary.

00:14:41.000 But firstly, what do you suppose?

00:14:46.000 I mean, like, I obviously, I'm a 12 step person and I love Jung.

00:14:52.000 So, when I first read scripture, I hadn't read the Bible.

00:14:55.000 I'm 23 years sober.

00:14:57.000 I have a kind of, you know, a mental breakdown, a spiritual breakthrough, a crisis, whatever you want to call it.

00:15:02.000 I have a weird experience of Christ, Rick, like a non voluntary, non elective in the guts.

00:15:09.000 Just all of a sudden, I know that Jesus is real.

00:15:13.000 It just comes to me in my stomach.

00:15:14.000 Jesus is real.

00:15:15.000 Like that I'd never had before, even though I had tattoos of Jesus and was fascinated.

00:15:21.000 Who's not fascinated by Christ?

00:15:22.000 Anyway, so.

00:15:25.000 When you have a sort of a Jungian perspective and a 12 step perspective, I wonder what you think of this.

00:15:31.000 You're kind of looking for shapes.

00:15:33.000 You're kind of looking for shapes and rhymes in Scripture.

00:15:36.000 So when I read Scripture, when I read what He actually says, our Lord, as well as the prophecies that announce Him in the Old Testament, some of the concepts that really overwhelmed me were things like living water, not creating systems, participation in the flow.

00:15:56.000 Now, you've already said that human consciousness is a sort of an interface into God.

00:16:04.000 And I suppose what we're saying is that the 12 steps is a.

00:16:07.000 Technique that born of crisis can lead you into a better understanding of that interface.

00:16:14.000 When did you become aware of that?

00:16:17.000 Were you a Christian when you got sober?

00:16:20.000 And can you tell us how it all works for you?

00:16:22.000 Sure.

00:16:24.000 I tried to get sober for seven years, trying to create God and go to meetings, and I could not.

00:16:29.000 And I ended up in a place where a lot of us do.

00:16:33.000 And I was in front of a man at this treatment center, and he'd convinced me of what was wrong with me.

00:16:40.000 He was the director of the center.

00:16:41.000 And I just went into his office and I looked at him and I said, Chuck, if there is a God, you better tell me who he is because I'm dying.

00:16:50.000 And he pulled his readers off his head and set them down on his desk and he said these words very simply.

00:16:55.000 He said, Rick, there is a God and he lives in heaven.

00:16:59.000 And he's already forgiven you for everything you've ever done and everything you've ever will do.

00:17:04.000 And he made it possible for you to have a personal relationship through his son, Jesus Christ.

00:17:09.000 Do you want to know my God?

00:17:11.000 And I had been the guy who denied, denied, denied you were weak.

00:17:15.000 And in that moment, my heart was ready.

00:17:17.000 You know, in the parable of the sower, the different, it finally hit the right place.

00:17:21.000 We got down and as we prayed, as you talked about in your gut, for me, it was like something was getting ripped out and something new was getting shoved in.

00:17:28.000 In an instantaneous moment, everything changed, yet everything was the same.

00:17:32.000 I intuitively knew what used to baffle me, and the still small voice said to me, You'll never drink again.

00:17:39.000 That was it.

00:17:40.000 You're free.

00:17:41.000 Get up and be free.

00:17:42.000 And I left that.

00:17:44.000 Knowing that I was free.

00:17:47.000 And I walked out of that room, and of course, I asked the guy, Hey, can you be my sponsor?

00:17:52.000 He's like, Rick, I run this place.

00:17:53.000 I can't do that.

00:17:54.000 And I'm walking back to my room, and the night watchman looks at me and he says, What the hell happened to you?

00:18:03.000 I said, I don't know.

00:18:03.000 I was just in there with Chuck and I was praying, and I think I'm a Christian now.

00:18:08.000 I knew absolutely nothing about Jesus Christ, hadn't studied a word, didn't know a thing about him, but I had a surrendered heart.

00:18:17.000 And Jesus writes in the fifth chapter of Matthew in the Beatitudes about the heart.

00:18:23.000 And he comes and he changes the heart.

00:18:26.000 And my heart was changed in that minute.

00:18:28.000 That's the spiritual experience.

00:18:29.000 You see, Alcoholics Anonymous and Bill Wilson, they didn't have a spiritual awakening.

00:18:35.000 You'll only find that in one place in the book, and it's in the written steps.

00:18:40.000 It says, having had a spiritual awakening.

00:18:42.000 The old boys went for a spiritual experience, they wanted to experience God, they wanted to know God.

00:18:48.000 And later on, they redefine that.

00:18:50.000 They add an appendix to the book and they make this awakening, trying to raise the bar, trying to get everybody to Jesus.

00:18:57.000 And I think in that process, they lose the real alcoholic.

00:19:02.000 And so, in writing the fat book, the idea was let's take the history of what these guys did, what they believe, let's go back to the original words and let's try to present that.

00:19:11.000 Because what happens when you actually receive the Holy Spirit for me to live is Christ, to die is gain, where I go, He is.

00:19:21.000 There's no separation.

00:19:23.000 There's no distance.

00:19:25.000 There's no trying.

00:19:26.000 There's his grace and his grace alone.

00:19:28.000 And when a man starts to walk in that space, well, you know, a lot can happen.

00:19:36.000 And, you know, I spent the morning, I wasn't too familiar with all of your work.

00:19:39.000 I spent the morning looking at various videos that you've been doing and, you know, attack everywhere, which just says to me, God's behind this because they're going to attack you.

00:19:50.000 They're not going to believe it.

00:19:51.000 And they're going to come from a million different angles in a million different ways to try to stifle.

00:19:56.000 That of the spirit. 0.98

00:19:57.000 They'll mock your Christianity. 0.72

00:20:00.000 They'll judge it. 0.62

00:20:00.000 I mean, who? 0.62

00:20:01.000 Come on, give me a break. 0.99

00:20:03.000 So, what the old boys did is they were non denominational, Bible totem Christians. 0.89

00:20:10.000 And the problem, the spiritual problem that the alcoholic has is the same problem every human being has. 0.86

00:20:17.000 It happened at the fall.

00:20:19.000 We didn't do it.

00:20:20.000 We're created out of original sin.

00:20:22.000 We're born separate from God.

00:20:24.000 In the book of John, it says there's only two spirits in this universe.

00:20:27.000 The spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

00:20:29.000 I come into this world filled with the spirit of error, and when I ask Christ into my life, I receive the spirit of truth.

00:20:37.000 I just don't believe it.

00:20:39.000 The world doesn't allow me to believe the work that Christ has done, so I live in unbelief.

00:20:45.000 I don't believe it.

00:20:46.000 It's a finished work, done, left at the cross.

00:20:52.000 Rick, it can be hard to live like that.

00:20:56.000 It's interesting that we've found ourselves at that, you know, even for a 12 step.

00:21:00.000 Affessionado, a pretty esoteric point.

00:21:04.000 The lexicon shift from awakening, from experience to awakening.

00:21:10.000 It's a very sort of niche kind of observation, but I agree with you.

00:21:16.000 Who would I be not to?

00:21:18.000 That it's pivotal.

00:21:20.000 I wonder, Rick, by your definition, are you circling something that I've been feeling for a long time as a 12 step person, but only for a little while as a Christian?

00:21:33.000 That, um, Sometimes, when we institute things, when things become institutions, they somehow manage to negate the key idea.

00:21:43.000 Like, sometimes I think that people are only at a 12 step thing, and I guess I should understand because I suppose that's the only thing I was doing, so that I can kind of get my life back or for the consequences to stop.

00:21:54.000 Really, you know, look, let me just get clean from drugs and alcohol so I can go on and become famous.

00:22:00.000 Or let me just go to church so that I can operate in the world.

00:22:04.000 But I am a.

00:22:07.000 You know, I guess in the big book terms, I'm a real alcoholic.

00:22:10.000 For me, I'm a, you know, it's like it's sainthood or death.

00:22:16.000 You know, like I don't have no choice but to do this absolutely.

00:22:20.000 And the problem, I suppose, for me has been in like I did enough to get, when I came in, I was addicted to crack and heroin.

00:22:27.000 I did enough to get, I realized, oh, that's got to stop.

00:22:30.000 And I also didn't, I knew that substances were in a box, that you can't mess with substances.

00:22:37.000 But, you know, I, Started to sleep around a lot.

00:22:40.000 Then I got famous. 0.95

00:22:42.000 So I had a sort of extraordinary access to cheap one night stand type sex.

00:22:51.000 And that, in a way, really arrested my spiritual development in a way that kind of might be comparable to substance misuse.

00:23:00.000 So, where I'm asking for your insights are both on how addiction can function through both behavior as well as chemicals and relationships.

00:23:12.000 And also, the very institutions that are set up to harness the Holy Spirit, even though it's so clear that what Paul is saying again and again is that your body is the temple, you are the temple.

00:23:25.000 Don't build an institution.

00:23:26.000 Don't build an institution.

00:23:28.000 And it seems that, you know, the fact that someone as individualistic and obviously self centered as Bill W managed to do this and not turn it into the Bill Wilson's technique for recovery, starring Bill Wilson.

00:23:44.000 You know, the fact that he managed to do that is a sort of an indication that he demonstrated the sacrifice that we all need to sacrifice, I suppose.

00:23:51.000 So, yeah, the two questions are the way that addiction can present outside of substance.

00:23:55.000 And the way that the institutions that are meant to remedy it somehow incline back towards worldliness.

00:24:02.000 Sure.

00:24:03.000 The big difference today, there's $1.2 billion a year being spent on addiction.

00:24:09.000 And remember, I said that 20% of people who use drugs or alcohol end up with a problem.

00:24:15.000 But of that, only 20% end up with what the big book calls a real alcoholic.

00:24:21.000 That's the spiritual dynamic.

00:24:24.000 The wages of sin are death.

00:24:26.000 That's what the book of Romans says.

00:24:28.000 And I become spiritually dead.

00:24:31.000 I become morally corrupt.

00:24:33.000 I lie.

00:24:34.000 I cheat.

00:24:34.000 I steal.

00:24:35.000 I do all of these things.

00:24:36.000 We like to say that alcoholism isn't a moral issue.

00:24:38.000 It's like, yeah, it is.

00:24:40.000 I got moral problems.

00:24:42.000 I've got spiritual problems.

00:24:44.000 And what ends up happening is in the moment of temptation, and this hardly gets talked about anymore, but when I got here, we used to talk about it.

00:24:54.000 It's temptation.

00:24:55.000 And the big book, and you'll find a section in the fat book there that it shows you all the places that.

00:24:59.000 Bill Wilson talked about temptation, and then it shows you all of the places where it talks about inspiration.

00:25:06.000 Inspiration is not a motivational speaker, it's not a sponsor, it's not a group, it comes from God.

00:25:14.000 And it says that we would recoil like our hand from a hot flame when we're spiritually well.

00:25:20.000 The thought's still going to come yes, there is a devil, he is going to tempt, but we will intuitively know what used to baffle us, we'll recoil like our hand from a hot flame.

00:25:29.000 That kind of intuition.

00:25:32.000 Comes through God.

00:25:34.000 And Bill Wilson also used this term.

00:25:37.000 He called it the strange mental blank spot.

00:25:40.000 The evidence of the spiritual death is the alcoholic's inability to recall with sufficient force of memory what happened the last time he took a drink.

00:25:49.000 And I pose to you if you can't remember something, how can you defend yourself against it?

00:25:57.000 Now, if you don't have that, you can take cognitive therapy.

00:26:01.000 You can do all kinds of different things to.

00:26:03.000 Rewire your brain and all this stuff that's going on on the internet.

00:26:07.000 But if you've got the spiritual break, if you've drinking long enough or hard enough and you're spiritually broken, you will not be able to get that defense back absent that intuitive thought that comes from God.

00:26:21.000 We are inspired in the moment.

00:26:24.000 And that's what it means to walk hand in hand with God, knowing that when the thought comes, I pivot.

00:26:30.000 You know, there's a law of opposites in this universe.

00:26:32.000 For everything, there's an opposite up, down, hot, cold, right, left.

00:26:36.000 Everything has an opposite.

00:26:38.000 I know what fear is.

00:26:40.000 And when fear comes, I need to learn to pivot my thoughts back to faith.

00:26:44.000 Wow.

00:26:45.000 This thought's not of you, Lord.

00:26:46.000 Give me the next right thought in Jesus' name.

00:26:49.000 Asking for the next right thought without claiming God's name is meaningless.

00:26:54.000 Who are you asking?

00:26:55.000 So, those are some of the nuances that are in the fat book that has been so left out over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous.

00:27:03.000 You know, 66% of America claims to be Christian.

00:27:08.000 Let you walk into those rooms, they say, Oh, don't talk about Jesus, you'll scare off the newcomer. 0.86

00:27:13.000 I'm going to scare off two thirds of the people who walk in by, you know, making it a little tin God.

00:27:19.000 And the big book never, he never uses the name create God.

00:27:24.000 There is no, the word does not exist.

00:27:26.000 It is your own conception.

00:27:28.000 Your own conception is your understanding of something that actually is.

00:27:33.000 And he closes the book calling him the great reality.

00:27:36.000 And the great reality is something that exists independent of all things.

00:27:41.000 It only refers to a higher power twice, and once it says we have to follow the higher power's dictates.

00:27:47.000 That's rules.

00:27:49.000 You know, so what?

00:27:50.000 The language of things back in the 30s compared to where we are 80, 90 years later in our understanding, our unchurched life, and our willingness not to attend church.

00:28:03.000 Don't get me wrong, I didn't step foot in a church for 13 years.

00:28:07.000 My wife had to convince me to go to church.

00:28:09.000 So I was watching one of your videos, your Sunday morning thing with your wife.

00:28:13.000 I thought that was just great.

00:28:16.000 I really did.

00:28:16.000 My wife says to me one day, Hey, I love what you and your friends do.

00:28:19.000 I love your life of service.

00:28:21.000 I love the way you study the Bible, but we're going to raise kids.

00:28:23.000 Don't you think we ought to take them to a church? 0.88

00:28:26.000 And when I got there, I could see where religious people were right. 0.98

00:28:30.000 I could take what I'd learned in the Bible with the people that I was associating with trying to recover, and I could look at these people through a whole different lens and I could see them as described in the book of Luke. 0.59

00:28:43.000 I'm a prodigal.

00:28:44.000 You're a prodigal.

00:28:46.000 We come home, he's happy.

00:28:47.000 But our brothers are sitting there.

00:28:48.000 We're selfish, self centered.

00:28:50.000 That's why we.

00:28:52.000 Some people that arrive in the traditional church are self seeking.

00:28:56.000 Which means to want to look better than you actually are.

00:28:59.000 And that story in Luke 15 is about those two people.

00:29:03.000 And I like to say, God only makes two kinds of people selfish and self centered or self seeking.

00:29:09.000 And when I could start to look at my brother with the same brokenness that I have, which is selfish pride, it's all pride.

00:29:16.000 It all roils back to pride.

00:29:18.000 Pride tells me that there is no God, and pride tells me that I am God.

00:29:23.000 And that doesn't change until a man is ready to lay down his life.

00:29:27.000 And the longer you stay, you're really fortunate you had a second bottom.

00:29:31.000 The longer a man stays sober based on his own willpower and the power of the room, that human shield that Young talked about, the more difficult it is to come to know Christ because you'll think that you've got it.

00:29:45.000 And then one day you get hit with the strange mental blank spot and you're like, I was just sober 20 years.

00:29:51.000 What happened?

00:29:52.000 We hear it all the time.

00:29:55.000 Even though, Rick, I've always queried the allergy component.

00:30:00.000 I've always felt that step three was more important to me than step one, in so much as if I didn't know and accidentally I drank a bit of vodka and no one told me that I drank vodka, would I involuntarily start drinking vodka?

00:30:14.000 You know, I like, you know, that's where it's sort of a bit of a question mark.

00:30:17.000 But like, I accepted absolutely, you cannot drink again.

00:30:21.000 You cannot drink again.

00:30:22.000 I accepted that very, very early.

00:30:24.000 The problem was, is that I was able to create, I guess, placebo facsimile pseudo.

00:30:32.000 Dependencies, both in relationship.

00:30:36.000 With the sex and love addiction, I was either being obsessively promiscuous or just devoted to some sort of earthbound goddess woman, just putting too much pressure on them and wanting them to be perfect and stuff.

00:30:49.000 And then, when this second bottom, as you describe it, i.e., a sort of a cracking open of the heart, a total breakdown, which in my case came when allegations were made of serious sex crime, like rape and all that, and I'm standing trial.

00:31:04.000 In October, by God's grace, if truth and justice are real things, then truth and justice will be done.

00:31:10.000 And when, so that, but that happened at the same time as my boy had heart surgery, and it was such a sort of a crack, like he was 12 weeks old, and so much of what you said then about like this, this was very real.

00:31:24.000 And I didn't sort of see it till I could see it, you know?

00:31:27.000 Like I didn't want Christ because I'm Christ, and I couldn't even see that's what I was doing.

00:31:34.000 I couldn't even see that that's what I was doing because I know how ridiculous that is because I know my impotence. 0.76

00:31:39.000 I know my fallibility.

00:31:41.000 I know that I can't do basic things.

00:31:45.000 You know, I'm not making a plausible claim to be a deity.

00:31:51.000 But in terms of my conduct, I was sovereign.

00:31:55.000 I was king.

00:31:56.000 I want that.

00:31:57.000 I don't want that.

00:31:58.000 My pleasures and pains and fears were my fierce Pharisaic religion.

00:32:04.000 Like, I can't ever do that. 0.90

00:32:05.000 I must only do that.

00:32:07.000 You know, it was like I'd protect it to the end.

00:32:10.000 So, but what would come, Rick, was suicide.

00:32:13.000 Like, I can't be alive anymore.

00:32:14.000 And it was in that I can't be alive anymore that what happened was the golden calf fell apart.

00:32:21.000 Like, who I thought I was and what I thought I'd made was annihilated so sort of fiercely that I felt like I can't be alive.

00:32:31.000 And in that moment, Jesus, Jesus, He came as a man, He came as a baby.

00:32:39.000 The Holy Spirit.

00:32:41.000 The woman conceives, Mary conceives, the Holy Spirit.

00:32:44.000 He comes in total vulnerability.

00:32:46.000 He comes in total perfection.

00:32:48.000 He lives maximum perfection, maximum wisdom, maximum sacrifice.

00:32:53.000 And then, like, I'd not read the book.

00:32:54.000 So, whether you're like the thief on the cross and you don't know who's this guy, I can tell he's God.

00:33:00.000 I can tell he's God.

00:33:01.000 I don't know how.

00:33:01.000 I've never been to church.

00:33:02.000 I don't know nothing, but I know this guy.

00:33:04.000 This is God.

00:33:04.000 He's what he says he is.

00:33:06.000 Or you're, you know, Saul of Tarsus reconstituting your Pharisaic.

00:33:14.000 Theological wisdom to being his devout servant, you know, wherever you are on that, wherever you are on that wide, wide spectrum, or John the Baptist, I mean, you know, like the wild man in the wood, you know, wherever you are, once you know he's real, something changes.

00:33:32.000 But I've got to say also, though, you know, I've been in the last couple of years, Rick, I've been in so much pain, so much pain, like I'm feeling sort of crushed to the point of I can't be here no more.

00:33:46.000 And then the pain releases, and I it normally comes with insight.

00:33:50.000 So, how and to your point a minute ago, temptation v. inspiration obviously the temptation v. inspiration moment in scripture is the temptations of Christ and like where Him and the devil directly interact.

00:34:05.000 Uh, and I heard recently we live in a Faustian world, in and and Faust is, I guess, Faust accepts it like many of us, me, I would, I did it would, if the devil comes and goes, Hey, do you want.

00:34:18.000 Like to be able to be in charge of the whole world.

00:34:21.000 Like, I'm, yes, please.

00:34:24.000 Like, I'm not, I'm not able to, like, you know, now I'm broken.

00:34:28.000 I'm so broken, you know, I'm so broken that I don't be in business with that stuff.

00:34:32.000 So I wonder what, like, so, but still, I guess, yeah, you've made a distinction.

00:34:37.000 People that have alcoholic and chemical dependency issues, is it that we absolutely have to have a spiritual solution and people that don't have it are able to somehow survive?

00:34:46.000 What, you know, if it's not actually about the substances, what is the distinction?

00:34:52.000 That's really good.

00:34:53.000 And it's, you know, do you have that strange mental blank spot?

00:34:59.000 And the reason why Bill Wilson spent so much time on step one, we're going to go talk about step one.

00:35:04.000 You hit on step four a little bit, and I'm going to circle back to where you are.

00:35:07.000 That was a mouthful.

00:35:07.000 I'm going to try to follow it all.

00:35:09.000 But if a man does not understand what is wrong with him, if alcohol comes in my body, I have an insatiable desire for more.

00:35:20.000 Until I understand that, I'm not going to take the bit.

00:35:24.000 A horse, the scriptures say it's useless if it won't take the bit.

00:35:28.000 I am going to do anything to remain God.

00:35:32.000 And when we start on step four, before you get into the resentments and all that, it says, first, we sought out the flaws in our makeup.

00:35:40.000 The old timers did step six in front of step four.

00:35:44.000 Yes, sir, read it closely.

00:35:47.000 If you don't understand what you're solving for, how are you taking an inventory?

00:35:51.000 And how can you take a fearless inventory unless you've surrendered your life to Christ and you have faith?

00:35:57.000 So the old timers looked at our greed, our anger, our lust.

00:36:02.000 All of those things.

00:36:03.000 And Bill Wilson later on in the 12 and 12 on page 69, 66 rather, sorry, he writes about no one wants to be so angry that they murder, so lustful enough that they rape.

00:36:14.000 And he goes through the seven deadly sins.

00:36:16.000 But when you look in the big book, he only mentions it in one paragraph.

00:36:19.000 Why?

00:36:19.000 Because they already did it.

00:36:21.000 That was the fundamental where you started.

00:36:23.000 So what happens is we go, we get some relief, we're in this human shield and we're, you know, doing our thing.

00:36:30.000 And if we're a real alcoholic, we're going to relapse.

00:36:34.000 We're going to drink again because no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

00:36:40.000 If we're not that description and we have some other alcoholic problems that cognitive therapy and group support that can solve that issue because they haven't gone to the spiritual brokenness, the rooms are full of those people too.

00:36:56.000 And they all think they've got the same thing and they don't.

00:37:00.000 So here I am, I'm spiritually broken.

00:37:04.000 I need to interact with God.

00:37:07.000 I have this strange mental blank spot, the inability to recall with sufficient force of memory.

00:37:11.000 If it comes in my body, I'm going to have this tremendous craving, but somehow I fail to recognize that I'm going to turn from one to the other.

00:37:21.000 We talk about going from drugs to alcohol.

00:37:23.000 You talk about going from drug to sex.

00:37:25.000 You talk about our greed, how we want the world to look at us.

00:37:29.000 Man turns all these different ways because there is a devil, and it's a spiritual warfare going on.

00:37:36.000 He wants you quiet.

00:37:37.000 He wants you to be of no service to God.

00:37:40.000 God's got you, Russell. 0.88

00:37:42.000 So why don't I shut you up?

00:37:44.000 I'm going to bring all this controversy around you. 0.95

00:37:46.000 I'm going to make all this stuff happen because I'm going to shut you up.

00:37:50.000 I'm going to give you no credibility. 1.00

00:37:51.000 I'm even going to have Christian people questioning your Christianity. 0.98

00:37:56.000 It's like, get off the cross. 1.00

00:37:57.000 We need the wood.

00:37:57.000 Who are you to judge me?

00:37:59.000 I'm going to stand in front of the Lord.

00:38:02.000 I'd rather stand in front of Him knowing that I profess His word.

00:38:06.000 It says, by the blood of the Lamb and the confession of your mouth, they will be saved without our testimony.

00:38:12.000 People have nowhere to go.

00:38:13.000 But we get hung up on all this other stuff.

00:38:16.000 And, you know, Dr. Bob, in his last speech, he writes, he says, look, don't get caught up in these Freudian concepts.

00:38:23.000 They have absolutely nothing to do with our work.

00:38:26.000 This thing is simple.

00:38:27.000 It's about love and service.

00:38:29.000 And his first, his favorite scripture is love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, soul, love your.

00:38:35.000 I'm sorry, it was about service.

00:38:39.000 Seek ye first the kingdom of God.

00:38:41.000 Sorry, I'm confusing my.

00:38:43.000 Things here, but seek ye first the kingdom of God.

00:38:46.000 And you walk into any AA, Alano club, or meeting, you'll see on the wall, first things first.

00:38:50.000 Nobody knows what it means anymore.

00:38:53.000 And the old timers were talking about that.

00:38:56.000 When you read the old stories, they all talked about Christ in the Bible.

00:38:59.000 Bill Wilson writes in As Bill Sees It, I believe so firmly that Christ could do anything.

00:39:06.000 I had the unconscious conceit to think he would do it right there and then through me in the way that I chose.

00:39:13.000 You might know what that feels like, right?

00:39:16.000 And he writes that after going out and preaching for six months to people, and nobody's getting it.

00:39:21.000 He goes back to Silkworth, who tried to introduce him to the great physician out of the book of Luke, and Silkworth says, Tell him about.

00:39:28.000 The allergy, tell them about the disease.

00:39:31.000 When a man knows that there's going to come a time that, absent God in his life, manifested as the Holy Spirit receiving that intuition, we intuitively knew what used to baffle us.

00:39:46.000 He's going to drink again.

00:39:47.000 So they have a choice.

00:39:48.000 You can stay scared in the rooms, or you could be free.

00:39:52.000 What God has made free is free indeed.

00:39:54.000 I walk a free man, you walk a free man.

00:39:57.000 Bottles don't have it, it's nothing. 0.55

00:40:00.000 You know, and you talked a little bit about Jesus and his birth, and there's Mary, the Theotokos.

00:40:05.000 She's the first person to give her life to Jesus.

00:40:08.000 She could have turned down that assignment.

00:40:10.000 God will never violate my free will.

00:40:13.000 If I want to keep going on being God and get all my debauchery, I get more.

00:40:18.000 He's a good father, he gives me more of whatever I want.

00:40:21.000 And a lot of people have trouble following and understanding that.

00:40:26.000 Freedom.

00:40:28.000 My human spirit is fused irreversibly, nothing can separate me from the spirit of truth.

00:40:35.000 Then the only thing that's going back to God, and it tells me in the 13th chapter of Corinthians, God keeps no account of my wrongs.

00:40:42.000 When that man said, He's already forgiven you for everything you've ever done and everything you ever will do, what a burden lifted off.

00:40:49.000 But we want to heap it all back on.

00:40:51.000 Like somehow we have to do something different, right?

00:40:56.000 All Christ wants me to do is seek Him.

00:40:58.000 Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of your righteousness will be bestowed upon you.

00:41:05.000 I think the reason people find it hard to understand is because.

00:41:08.000 In the end, Rick, it's extremely mysterious.

00:41:13.000 It's extremely mysterious.

00:41:15.000 And I want to say that the other thing that I was doing while being clean from drugs and alcohol, but still in self, was exploring, reading, learning about Eastern mysticism, Upanishads, Vedas, and spending time with like teachers.

00:41:40.000 From those traditions.

00:41:42.000 I don't want to make it out like I was on some weird quest, I was getting on with life, but I was reading those kind of books and stuff.

00:41:47.000 And what interests me, what I think they do well, or at least in the westernized version of that, which in a way is quite one could do a quick history of that in your country, I think, because of course there's like in the 1950s, the beats start to mess with that, which is near, you know, near contemporary to the establishing of AA.

00:42:11.000 You know, like the countercultural movement, the Beatles, and like the Maharishi coming to your country.

00:42:17.000 What I think that when Americans describe Eastern mysticism, whether we're talking Ramdass or Ginsburg or, you know, Alan Watts for a Brit, like there's a good focus on this idea that you touched upon there seek thee first the kingdom of God, of the presence in the moment, practicing the presence of God, as Brother Lawrence, the 16th century French.

00:42:45.000 Monk would have it.

00:42:47.000 And in Christianity, as well as perhaps in 12 steps, this mystery understandably gets somewhat obfuscated because it's complicated to continually surrender.

00:43:03.000 The great Sandy Beach, who was, you know, like a Floridian sort of 12 step speaker who I always have really enjoyed, God rest his soul.

00:43:15.000 What I liked about him.

00:43:17.000 Is that he was very able in a folksy and accessible way to help me to understand that we were dealing with something extremely mysterious.

00:43:26.000 That what begins, as our conversation did, with understanding dependent, you know, spiritus contra spiritum, that you need a spirit to overcome a spirit, that we're participants in something quite holy and quite difficult to understand.

00:43:43.000 In Eastern mysticism, they make that very clear like, stay in the present.

00:43:47.000 Be in the present moment.

00:43:49.000 Focus on the breath.

00:43:51.000 Feel your body.

00:43:52.000 All of these techniques, I think, Rick, are good at helping a person to understand something like the living water or the Holy Spirit.

00:44:03.000 What they are absent of, of course, is Christ.

00:44:08.000 God comes to earth as a man, as part of the word, the vibration.

00:44:13.000 It's impossible to conceptualize living God outside of time, outside of space, through time.

00:44:19.000 Through space, the extraordinary pact of taking on sin, things that actually can't be understood, I don't think.

00:44:26.000 They can't be understood by, you know, I can't understand them.

00:44:30.000 That doesn't mean that's not the absolute limit.

00:44:32.000 I recognize that now.

00:44:34.000 But, like, but, you know, what I think, what I've experienced in both the 12 steps and in my encounters in the Christian church is this mystery component is put aside, understandably, because it is a spiritual program of action with a 12 steps and Christian church has got to survive in its host nation, whether that's the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England or the plethora of American institutions.

00:45:00.000 It's got to survive in its host culture.

00:45:02.000 And it seems to me that part of the cost of that is the, if not suppression, a curious mental blank spot when it comes to you are dealing with God now via and through your own consciousness in this moment.

00:45:21.000 Now, why is that so important and why?

00:45:24.000 Is that something that doesn't seem to be at the forefront of contemporary Christianity or contemporary 12 steps?

00:45:33.000 Very, very.

00:45:34.000 Man, you asked some good questions.

00:45:37.000 So, when you look at any other, and I don't like religion.

00:45:41.000 First of all, to be Christian means Christ within.

00:45:46.000 We were made to accept Christ and receive the Holy Spirit without, as you talked about earlier, all the Pharisees.

00:45:54.000 Religion stack that goes on top of it.

00:45:57.000 But when you look at every other, and I'm going to use religion just for a placeholder of that word, when you look at every religion, they're all about works.

00:46:07.000 Works.

00:46:07.000 And you'll even hear it in the room Works, works, works.

00:46:10.000 Do the works.

00:46:10.000 It works if you work it.

00:46:12.000 Okay, no.

00:46:14.000 In Christianity, you receive Christ and it's an outpouring of Him that lives within you.

00:46:19.000 I can't do any of the works, He has to do them for me on my behalf.

00:46:25.000 Right?

00:46:26.000 And it's an outpouring of who I'm becoming.

00:46:28.000 I'm justified at the moment I accept Christ.

00:46:32.000 I'm in.

00:46:32.000 I like to say I'm on the bus.

00:46:34.000 I'm not sure where my address is going to be, but I'm there.

00:46:34.000 I'm going.

00:46:37.000 And then the sanctification process comes, where life starts to.

00:46:42.000 I start seeking and trusting, and I become sanctified in that process.

00:46:47.000 And what we do is we take away the mystery and we think we can solve it.

00:46:51.000 You can't solve it.

00:46:52.000 God is incomprehensible.

00:46:54.000 If you haven't read Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy, I suggest it.

00:46:58.000 Take a look.

00:46:59.000 Norman Grubb writes this little pamphlet called No Independent Self.

00:47:03.000 And then there's a little book I just published for the monks of Mount Athos called Theosis.

00:47:09.000 That's a whole nother story.

00:47:09.000 What do you mean?

00:47:10.000 You're publishing books for monks now?

00:47:12.000 That's a niche market.

00:47:14.000 We'll get right there.

00:47:16.000 That's a good story if we get there.

00:47:17.000 But, you know, English is a terrible language.

00:47:22.000 And I explain this in the fat book. 0.99

00:47:24.000 When the Bible says in the book of John, it starts out, and that's where time begins.

00:47:29.000 In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word is with God.

00:47:34.000 That in Greek is the logos.

00:47:36.000 And guess what that word, if you go look it up, means?

00:47:39.000 It's the creative intelligence of the universe is one of the attributes of the Logos.

00:47:44.000 So Bill says, Choose your own conception of God as long as He's not bound by time and has no limit.

00:47:52.000 Where's that take you?

00:47:53.000 Our Father who art in heaven, outside of time, without limit.

00:47:57.000 Hallow, holy, and separate be thy name.

00:48:00.000 They ask the Lord how to pray, and He lays all of life down in front of us, and we don't stop to chop it up and look at it.

00:48:07.000 So if I've received the Holy Spirit and it's dwelled in me, I have received that power that's released in the second chapter of the book of Acts, right?

00:48:18.000 Boom, and the Spirit will be upon you.

00:48:19.000 I need to believe it.

00:48:22.000 I need to really understand what Galatians says.

00:48:25.000 You know, I have been crucified with Christ, and I myself no longer live, but it's He that lives within me.

00:48:31.000 The life that I now live is by trusting in the Son of God.

00:48:34.000 What is crucifixion?

00:48:36.000 It is a slow, miserable death.

00:48:40.000 The minute I receive Christ, I'm justified.

00:48:43.000 I'm as spiritually perfect as I'm ever going to be. 0.97

00:48:48.000 The old man needs to be crucified.

00:48:52.000 And that comes through reading, searching, and mostly helping others.

00:48:57.000 I heard in some of your videos you talked about it, it's about service.

00:49:01.000 They ask Jesus, what's the greatest command?

00:49:04.000 Love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, and soul.

00:49:06.000 But I add to this, and he gives us the action step of seeking God love your neighbor as yourself.

00:49:14.000 That's the action step.

00:49:16.000 I got to have an outpouring for other people and not be so worried about.

00:49:19.000 My petty things are going on.

00:49:22.000 It's going to go.

00:49:23.000 God's going to take care of it.

00:49:24.000 I got to trust in that.

00:49:25.000 I just got to keep walking forward until I receive whatever it is that I've got coming next.

00:49:33.000 But we Christians, we want to turn it into the 12 steps became a formula.

00:49:39.000 Hank Parkhurst tells Bill, hey, write this thing out.

00:49:41.000 And he puts it in that little chart where we now have the 12 steps.

00:49:45.000 And you mentioned the golden calf earlier.

00:49:47.000 In AA, we worship the 12 steps rather than the God who created them.

00:49:52.000 They've become our golden calf if you just do these things and just do them.

00:49:55.000 No.

00:49:56.000 Step three receive, believe, and let the Lord walk you through that process.

00:50:04.000 Take a fearless and searching moral inventory so you can get the garbage out of the way that stands between you and Him.

00:50:10.000 Look at how your sin nature might try to manifest itself in the future through your lust, your greed, your envy, your sloth.

00:50:17.000 Examine that and know what opposes each one of those sins.

00:50:24.000 There's something that opposes every single one of them and start to train your brain.

00:50:28.000 And here's where cognitive therapy kind of, you know, misses through it's man trying to reprogram your brain.

00:50:35.000 You hear about it all the time.

00:50:36.000 You know, my frontal lobe is connected to my cerebral cortex by neural pathways, and I can just retrain my brain.

00:50:43.000 Well, guess what?

00:50:44.000 That's what the Lord does.

00:50:46.000 He instantly rewired mine.

00:50:47.000 Sounds like He instantly rewired yours.

00:50:50.000 But now I've got all these things that I have to do while I'm going through the process of justification, and I'm going to get fought every step of the way because He knows He's lost and He wants us quiet.

00:51:01.000 He does not, the liar does not want the truth to be out there.

00:51:06.000 He doesn't want one person to listen to you on your podcast and go, I need to believe in Christ and get on his knees and accept the Lord.

00:51:14.000 So, what's he do?

00:51:15.000 He attacks.

00:51:16.000 He attacks us and he tries to shut us down.

00:51:19.000 It's why you go into an AA meeting, don't mention Christ here.

00:51:23.000 What are you kidding me? 1.00

00:51:25.000 How do we get so far away from the truth that we won't even talk about the things that the old timers did? 0.99

00:51:31.000 Which is why I'm so happy there are so many people buying that fat book and digging into our history, the scripture, and how it all fit. 0.97

00:51:40.000 Yeah.

00:51:40.000 It's truly.

00:51:43.000 Yeah.

00:51:44.000 I love some of the parts of the book that I'm most enjoying and most finding useful in my first go round.

00:51:52.000 Is you did provide 12 scriptures for each of the 12 steps.

00:51:58.000 And just now, you talked about the seven sins versus the seven virtues.

00:52:04.000 Now, people that are not familiar with 12 step ideology may not know that perhaps the idea of the Ism, you know, as they say, alcohol comes in bottles, alcoholism comes in people.

00:52:17.000 That the ism could be understood to be sin itself.

00:52:21.000 And I like this aspect of sin that's seen as a kind of false frequency, the counterfeit frequency, like in a Luke 10 18 way, like that when the hubris and false pride leads to a fake circuit, the sin circuit.

00:52:38.000 One could even envisage it neurologically, I think, Rick, as like the Lucifer, the Fake light, you know, given that neurological information on some level is electromagnetic, it even could be a false light.

00:52:50.000 You might even see it as a false light.

00:52:52.000 You know, the cities are full of false light, the sky are full of false light, you can't see the stars no more.

00:52:59.000 The inward constellations of neurology invaded with false phosphorescence.

00:53:04.000 So when, like, the counteracting measure to sin you offer here in this table, you say lust, like you offer it here on page 259 of your book.

00:53:17.000 Lust, excessive sexual appetite, yeah, I had that, can be counteracted by chastity, by purity.

00:53:24.000 Now, what, so like if you're in a moment, you're feeling lust, what are you proposing?

00:53:29.000 Like one, you take it immediately to the Lord?

00:53:32.000 Boom.

00:53:34.000 The minute, the minute it comes, Lord, this thought's not from you.

00:53:39.000 Get behind me, Satan.

00:53:41.000 What does he say to Satan at the end of that period in the desert?

00:53:45.000 Get behind me, Satan.

00:53:46.000 And he says the same thing to Peter.

00:53:48.000 He rebukes Satan.

00:53:50.000 The thought he gives us the cardinal teachings of Jesus Christ show us what to do in every moment.

00:53:55.000 When that tempting thought comes, I got to put my thought line back God, give me the next right thought, give me something pure, let me think of you, let me think of your scriptures.

00:54:04.000 I got to turn away.

00:54:05.000 And in early recovery, that happens hundreds of times a day.

00:54:10.000 I mean, hundreds of times a day, the tempter's coming, and then he'll come in your dreams.

00:54:16.000 You hear people talk about drunk dreams.

00:54:17.000 You ever come in your dreams, you wake up and you think you got loaded and you didn't, you had dreamed it.

00:54:22.000 Because he comes, your mind never goes to sleep.

00:54:26.000 As long as you're breathing, that thing's there.

00:54:28.000 So he'll come at all different times and attack.

00:54:31.000 And it's learning to stop in the moment.

00:54:33.000 Then you'll hear people in AA say pause, right?

00:54:36.000 But if you don't rebuke, ask for the next right thought, proclaim it in the name of Jesus, it has no power.

00:54:45.000 There's one name that is above all names, it has all power.

00:54:47.000 There's one who has all power.

00:54:49.000 That one is God.

00:54:51.000 May you find him now.

00:54:52.000 God is a title, Jesus is his name.

00:54:56.000 Bill Wilson writes in the 12 steps You will come to know God and you will call him by name.

00:55:01.000 It's in the 12 and 12.

00:55:02.000 He was, it's, it's, it's, Veiled in there because Bill wanted people, it was like breadcrumbs to find it. 0.95

00:55:10.000 See, the ism is a belief system.

00:55:13.000 When you show up at Alcoholics Anonymous, your belief system, right, which is stored in the back of your brain, the things that we believe, the things we act on instinctively, we intuitively know what used to baffle us.

00:55:26.000 The instinct is booze and drugs are good because the tongue has the power of life and death, and we believe what we say.

00:55:36.000 So, when we speak, oh, God, booze and drugs, it's so good, it's a party, it's this, and it's coming out of our mouth, we're creating a loop and we're actually programming our minds. 0.87

00:55:45.000 So, when garbage comes out of our mouth, who's hearing it? 0.93

00:55:49.000 I'm hearing it. 0.93

00:55:50.000 That's why I have to change the way I speak.

00:55:52.000 That's why I have to change the things that I do because I'm hearing it and I'm programming myself.

00:55:58.000 So, I get here, and when you have an ism and you have a belief system that's already there, your frontal lobe does the reasoning.

00:56:08.000 If you've already got a belief, it doesn't stop to think.

00:56:11.000 That's why on page 42 of the big book, it says we have these strange mental blank spots the inability to recall with sufficient force of memory what happened the last time we took a drink because we already believe it.

00:56:25.000 So in the second step, when it says we come to believe, how do we come to believe?

00:56:29.000 Faith comes from hearing, hearing of the word of God.

00:56:34.000 I would suggest to you, faith comes from hearing whatever you allow through your ears.

00:56:40.000 It's all programming.

00:56:42.000 It's all, and I, you know, it's just how the human mind works, which is why cognitive therapy for some people can work.

00:56:53.000 For others who are spiritually bankrupt, broken, moral issues, it's an issue because an ism is a belief system.

00:57:03.000 Alcoholism, sexism, right?

00:57:06.000 All these different isms, Buddhism, you know, racism.

00:57:10.000 Their belief system.

00:57:12.000 Now we're trying to turn alcoholism into alcohol something disorder.

00:57:17.000 AA's rewritten their whole book and woked it out.

00:57:22.000 In fact, they want to change the part of the big book that says that if you still have, shoot, there's something wrong with the spirituality of your man's program if he still thinks of drink.

00:57:39.000 It's on page 101.

00:57:41.000 They're talking about changing it.

00:57:42.000 They want to take anything out.

00:57:45.000 The world that gets us away from being in perpetual therapy, right?

00:57:51.000 I mean, a billion too is a lot of money.

00:57:55.000 When I got here, they, you know, they didn't have any, none of that was going on.

00:57:59.000 What we did was we learned about God.

00:58:01.000 That's not to mention them.

00:58:03.000 That, I think, is.

00:58:04.000 That's not to mention the money that's getting spent, sorry to interrupt you, Rick, but the money that's getting spent on therapy is nothing compared to the money that's getting spent on alcohol, the money that's getting spent on drugs, and the money that's getting spent through Medicaid and various.

00:58:15.000 Taxations and systems of control and prisons.

00:58:18.000 Now, I want to say, like, there's two things to follow up on what you were just saying.

00:58:23.000 Like, spell, like, the word spell, Alan Moore, the graphic artist who sort of, like, created some pretty good things, like Watchmen and stuff, he pointed out that even the word spell relates to what you said with the tongue, that we are creating reality, that we are co heirs with Christ and co participants with him in the creation of reality.

00:58:43.000 I like that.

00:58:44.000 And when you say something like, you know, take every fort captive, I heard from a Great teacher of ours here, Jamie Winship, who wrote a great book, Living Fearless.

00:58:53.000 That take every thought captive is not just, you know, negative thoughts, all of them in terror.

00:58:58.000 Where did that come from?

00:58:59.000 Where'd that come from?

00:59:00.000 Where's that one going?

00:59:01.000 What does that one want?

00:59:02.000 You know, and like when that might seem, I think a lot of people feel like, well, I can't do that.

00:59:08.000 But if you're an alcoholic or drug addict, all day long you're thinking about yourself anyway.

00:59:12.000 Like, that's all I'm doing anyway.

00:59:14.000 I want this, I don't want that.

00:59:15.000 That's good.

00:59:15.000 No, that's bad.

00:59:16.000 How does that global event affect me?

00:59:18.000 How does that traffic jam affect me?

00:59:20.000 Every single thing automatically run through this sort of Counterfeit factory of Luciferian false light.

00:59:27.000 Now, the thing that I want to get to now is another issue that I think this is important.

00:59:36.000 Because of the function of 12 steps, it's pretty clear, you know, like AA's primary, you know, I'm talking actually now about traditions.

00:59:44.000 Like that, because AA, in order to preserve itself, has traditions that I'm not querying or questioning those traditions.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - May 29, 2026

The Real Reason You Keep Relapsing…- SF723

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