Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
Spiritual not religious. We say it all the time, but what really is spirituality? Just a belief in a higher power? Living in tune with the universe? We attempt to define what we mean when we say we are pursuing a spiritual lifestyle. Moving away from the physical or material things. Pertaining to things affecting the human spirit or soul. Moving from self-centered to selfless. Moving from fear to love. Where am I finding my contentment? These are all things to think about when we try to think about spirituality. Join the conversation by leaving a message, emailing us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
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7/26/20 Spiritual not religious. We say it all the time, but what really is spirituality? Just a belief in a higher power? Living in tune with the universe? We attempt to define what we mean when we say we are pursuing a spiritual lifestyle. Moving away from the physical or material things. Pertaining to things affecting the human spirit or soul. Moving from self-centered to selfless. Moving from fear to love. Where am I finding my contentment? These are all things to think about when we try to think about spirituality.
Transcript:
all right recording um i mean we should be fine but i need to be out of here by like 11 30. oh okay yeah sometimes we do get a little long window yeah we’re supposed to go tubing on the brandywine today did we need that table i know we moved it over a couple times i don’t think so i mean
if i just put the microphone here
yeah today we’re going taking
oh god i don’t want to do this anymore like this it’s the same we’ve it’s been busy you know it’s like just non-stop
do not get it so on the tech front of ordering things uh the people i bought the bundle from or now not communicating well for one i don’t know and then they’re also like apparently the boom arms were mistakenly listed on the bundles and now they’re gonna offer now they’re gonna offer uh
what are they gonna offer now can you remember what i was gonna say oh they’re gonna offer like some portion of refund for the boom arm part of it and i’m like because i can’t get them just because they weren’t supposed to be included in the bundle price and so i guess now they don’t want to offer them in the bundle price but then at the same time it’s like well the bundle itself i was looking at the prices like you know generally you think bundle everything is going to be a little cheaper for the bundle price well some of the shit’s more expensive in the bundle price and i assumed that was to cover the cost of the boom arm right so now i had to point all that out and then they haven’t got back to me in two days about it and i’m like man this is they send anything yet yeah they sent everything except the microphones and the boom arms because the microphones are on backorder and i’m like what the [ _ ] man now i’m gonna end up sending like the entire i was gonna say let me just send all this back and [ _ ] you give me my money yeah well that’s it that’s an offer but it’s like god damn it man i thought i was like close to having some gear together and then this whole laptop thing it’s like everything i’ve looked at that you really want to do with upgradeable and and decent to start and all that you’re looking at like probably 1200 or more to pay out and i was like why can’t you start at 500 and build up and it just doesn’t seem to
it doesn’t seem to work out that way if you really want something that’s going to be a for sure reliable yeah well and that’s funny when i was joking with my boss at work about that because he goes that he uses a mac for all his stuff but then all of our like office software and all our office computers are all pcs right and whenever he gets new pcs he buys the [ _ ] cheapest you know four or five hundred dollar pcs he can find right because he’s like oh they’re just you know we’ll just have to replace him in a year or two anyway and then [ _ ] when he goes to use one and how slow and terrible it is and it’s like i had to point out like well you know if we spend as much on the pcs as we do like on your mac if you spent that equivalent amount of money on a pc you’d have a great computer that would work really really well but you go out and spend 400 bucks on whatever you can find [ _ ] on some closeout clearance somewhere and then you want it to work like this 1500 thing you got sitting in your office like you’re not it’s like comparing a [ _ ] you know honda accord to a mercedes-benz like they’re similar but not you know like they’re not the same thing do you want to not meditate today to make sure we get done in time now let’s meditate anyway 10 minutes
is that better yeah it’s not too bad
let’s say what am i doing inside so again we’re going to meditate and if you don’t want to meditate with us uh skip forward 10 minutes or so and we’ll be yapping again
hey
hmm
so
quickest 10 minutes ever shut up brain
coffee grab a coffee we’ll meet you back here
i’ve got myself i think i’m going to say now addicted i’ll use that word but [ __ ] that it’s real ah what you call it like pre-workout stuff i drink in the
morning every day
i don’t know i find it more appealing than coffee in the morning right now like not later like once i drink
like it used to be initially like wake up coffee sit down drink the coffee you know before i do anything and it’d be 15 20 minutes you know by the time i drink my first
yeah which i didn’t realize that pre-workout stuff’s loaded with caffeine i didn’t even really look at it i just was like uh here’s what i’ll try this and i’ll see if it makes any difference and i didn’t really like investigate or look into it or do any research i just was at walmart one day and looked through and had some pre-workouts you know i mean i said i’ll try this one it’s not super expensive or anything and
slowly that’s just more than now like of course it’s a lot like i would call it sweeter than coffee it’s a powder you mix it with water that’s pretty sweet you know
that just seems to be like way more enjoyable now it’s almost like a i thought similar to like a cup of orange juice versus drinking a coffee which now seems sort of like it’s hot and it’s kind of bitter and it’s good oh my god this stuff is like a non-carbonated almost but it’s better
i don’t know how long he’s been running if it’s been running for like a week they’ll notice on the water bill are they on town water here i don’t know
scratch
right
if that you’re gonna have to replace
that
oh no it works
disgusting i mean just straight disgusting was so
there’s no like with those old circuits pieces or whatever there’s no like if it grabs you it’s crap there’s no
hope
you know what i’m saying there’s no like
um
same
is
my daughter’s got so many clothes they have clothes they are able to dislike and they want to buy new clothes to replace some of the other clothes that they’re just not 100 percent overboard with they’re only 80 likes i remember when people just were happy not to be naked like we were uglier but we were prettier people and i have three pairs of shoes that are all functional actually now i have two pairs of work but that’s splurge i have two pairs of work boots a pair of sandals
um
they were two months later
oh
or something for 40 bucks that felt like socks the minute i put one and i was like
dude
your body weight distribution
i was like i’m going straight back
but like my [ __ ] arch my left foot is kind of collapsed
i have somebody
didn’t hurt
just keep trying
laces where he just pinches the little thing up and i was like that’s [ __ ] convenient so i put it in my shoes
well
which i guess some of that kind of makes sense it’s like shoes now with hard soles make you walk weird lower back up and stuff whatever we need to wear shoes
is
things
and one was like the [ __ ] ex-military like super tough you know strong guy who knew
they would drop them off and [ __ ] i think the cold weather was the only place where he put some stuff and wrapped it on his feet because walking in the hole you know
what’s up but they might be in the [ __ ] middle of the jungle
his feet were just totally disgusting i mean because he had obviously done this for years and years those feet to the whole bottom
like
20 minutes
um
um
you want to talk [ __ ]
lengthy coffee break sorry too busy running my oh that’s right this is my mouth so are we going to talk about the smoking thing or we want to not ah i don’t care i mean i figured it would come up in spiritual principles
today we’re going to talk about
something
so how are you anticipating a spiritual principles conversation going
so like what what do you think or what do i think you know when we talk about spiritual principles and this being a spiritual program and um like what that what that kind of means to us or you or me and then i’d say if you were trying to explain that idea to like a earth person like you know right what does that mean and what are spiritual principles and why do they even matter like what why do we need a spiritual program
okay more just general you know what what does it mean to be a spiritual program what are we what are we yeah do you have a definition i mean i know we have a definition of spiritual are we going for more the spiritual principles or spiritual in general spirituality um i don’t know i didn’t think that far through spiritual relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul
i like that as opposed to material or physical things oh you okay i can kind of tie that in my wife was like you left early is everything okay and i was like yeah i left early because i [ _ ] went and bought a black amount and smoked it and you know and then laid out this like three paragraph answer of like struggling with this technology stuff but how everything’s mostly okay in the moment and then she didn’t text me back for like an hour and then she did and she was like i don’t know like why the [ _ ] did you even ask if that’s your response oh boy did you find out um when you can do next weeks or what day was best for you oh um no okay just let me know when you do no worries i’m pretty available to it everything i just don’t want to do it like evening-ish saturday if we can avoid it because i might be trying to sleep since i’m going to be driving at night
oh that price sounds like [ __ ] doing that
don’t brush the microphone
i don’t know if these microphones i wanted to order are even available anywhere else the couple sites i’ve checked keep saying their own backorder i’m like what the [ _ ] how do you have a shortage of microphones is everybody in quarantine [ _ ] podcasting all of a sudden like how do you run out of [ _ ] microphones right it doesn’t even seem possible we went to gamestop the other day to get a xbox controller and they’re like oh we’re out at xbox so much [ _ ] is like like out of xbox controller bounty like you don’t have [ _ ] any and they just know we have none no xbox one controllers [ _ ] wired wireless did you get one no do you need to borrow one uh he’s got one it just i something wasn’t working right i mean we’ve got like seven of them at my house that’s why i asked you one to borrow one i think he’s okay i think he’s got one he wanted a second one in case he has some friends come over he was gonna have some friends come over but then i’m not sure because he lies because i give him [ _ ] about destroying all his stuff you know because his typical kid stuff like you go in his room the [ _ ] controllers laying on the floor and the [ _ ] games are on the floor and then i’m like well dude if you don’t take care of the stuff it gets broke and then you don’t have it when you want it and so in trying to teach them that lesson the [ _ ] gets broke and then my wife’s like oh we gotta go get him a you know he plays xbox all the time he loves it he has fun we just go get him a new one i’m like no we don’t just go get him a new one like so [ _ ] controller just cost you know fifty dollars and wireless ones are 45 50 bucks and so we went to wired ones because i’m like i’m not buying any more wireless ones you destroy them so we’ll spend 20 on the wired ones and then you know but then they get broke and you know it’s the whole thing of like how do you teach them like you keep breaking this stuff and if i just keep buying you new every time you break it are you going to learn that you can’t break your [ _ ] but then she goes back to well he’s 10 and it’s something he uses all now he’s 11 but something he uses all the time and you know yeah it’s gonna break after a couple weeks if you have stuff you use all the time yeah i said no i have my phone i use it every [ _ ] day i have the same charger that i’ve had for probably two years now like no i don’t break all my [ _ ] because i know that it’s sensitive electronics and yes once during the course of the two and a half years i’ve had this phone i broke the screen once you know because i dropped it i said but you learned that oh this is sensitive electronic stuff we need to take care of it if we don’t take care of it it’s going to get broke you know there’s this fine line between
can i teach this lesson at this stage of their life is it even possible right and
and and and still you know can i sit here and watch my child miss out on the joy of something like if i’ve bought him this 300 xbox am i really gonna just let it sit there and collect dust when it’s his favorite thing to do and he my son my five-year-old broke his [ _ ] tablet screen to bits and it’s like [ _ ] i’m not buying you a new ipad right now but it it was heartbreaking to watch well it’s kind of i don’t know it’s so [ _ ] if you want i mean it’s the new sensors and everything that are behind it like we took it to a place to look into it and kim try to do it and like if the screen underneath the screen is broken there’s more to like i don’t know if it’s the lcd or just the digitizer i don’t know it’s it’s pretty [ _ ] up it’s worked for a while now we taped over it it’s just worked and we’re like [ _ ] it that’s what you got but then it’s just a digitizer it was heartbreaking yeah to watch right and so it’s like this fine line and the same time i want to provide natural consequences we’ve talked about that kind of idea and it’s like can i when they don’t understand money yet like they just don’t get it and they’re not going to until they make their own and get out on their own well yeah and like with billy so here’s a repeated thing of of the games you know he gets the disc games and i’ve tried to talk to him you know and be saying hey you got to put the game back in the case and then sit it on the thing and yeah eventually they get wore out and i get it you know it’s not that you’ll never have to replace the games obviously you will but when i go up there and there’s discs laying on the floor and over in the thing and they’re not put back into cases and the shit’s everywhere you know and then we’re re-buying games because i just have a memory for like did we just buy this game like seven months ago you know and now it’s destroyed because every time we go up there it’s laying on the floor it’s laying over in the windowsill it’s got stuff spilled all over it like you can’t just abuse your [ _ ] and then want us to just go buy new because it’s not working anymore like i hate the disc game and i’ve i’ve tried to like approach that like we have bought some of these games a couple times and i feel like i have tried to like talk about it and try to be reasonable about it right and yet if i go up there in his room right now those discs are going to be on the floor and laying on the counter and you know or on his dresser and not in the cases and his controllers are going to be wherever on the floor and his headphones are laying on the floor you know none of that stuff is like kept like neatly somewhere and if it was and it broke i’d say yeah it probably just broke you know and eventually stuff does break i mean i do understand he’s 12. but there’s a neglect factor in there or an irresponsibility factor that has to but what do you think would really teach him about that because that’s that’s where i run into i don’t think any of the consequences i give my children i get it and i don’t rebuy things usually unless it’s truly necessary but i will eventually i just right not right away i get it not on their time but i don’t feel like any of that has really truly instilled these things and i feel like part of that is uh what i’ve learned is with parenting we put in the effort now and it doesn’t actually show until they go out on their own right but the other part is i’m not sure my lessons completely get through like i don’t know what it takes to teach them i feel like i had to learn my lessons later even though my parents my father always told me to take care of my [ _ ] so well right but i still had to learn that or apply it at least later like i could not apply it at that time when he was telling me and i’m the opposite i’m not great at taking care of my stuff and my parents never taught us about taking care of anything you know and that’s where i felt like that was a i don’t say failing on their part i don’t mean it to sound so judgy and [ _ ] but like no they weren’t they didn’t teach us about taking care of anything i was just like whatever here have this you know like and there was no talk about taking care of things or it was terrible with that stuff and i’m still not great at it i’m better at it now than i was in the past but i’m still not really great at it and then that’s an area where jen isn’t really much better than me at all you know better at that than me she’s probably even a little worse she thinks about it more she might bring it up but as far as follow through or you know we’ll talk about changing the oil in the car and stuff like that i’m like look you know when i do it i put the little tag in her window because we have them at work so i just grab one and put the mileage on there but sometimes we’re busy and there’s [ _ ] going on i’m like if that comes up and it’s we’re busy and there’s a lot going on just go to [ _ ] jiffy lube they charge 25 30 bucks whatever they charge nowadays like you don’t have to put that all on me or if you ask me once or twice i’m like hey i’m not going to have a chance to get to it you know i don’t have a garage anymore i’m we’re super busy it’s not like you know i want to be laying out in a [ _ ] driveway climbing under the car you know like dealing with that [ _ ] like i don’t you know it’s really not that expensive to get it but she won’t you know it’s if i don’t do it it won’t get done so but yeah i guess and this is where my lazy parenting comes in it’s like in my head i’m like all right so what we should do is you know set a value all right this controller costs 45 or whichever one you want so now we need to do some chores to get this money you know whatever it is you know and when you get to this monetary level however quick or slow you get there you know you get whatever [ _ ] pickup number two dollars to do the dishes each night or you know maybe add some extra things another two dollars to vacuum the floor every day because we got the dogs and they’re hairy you know you vacuum every day i mean that all sounds great i won’t do it because i’m too lazy but that’s i like that theory if you also tie in that you go and buy the new controller as soon as his breaks and he has no way to play it and then until he earns the money to actually have it he’s allowed to borrow it for like an hour or two each day so he’s not completely cut off from playing you know what i mean he’s got some time so you’re not completely making his life miserable and yet at the same time he’s got the way to work to oh i can have it for longer once i get here well and what i’ve done to this point is like now it’s like all right well if you can’t because we bought them like the real expensive stuff you know the really good wireless controllers and the wireless headphones and spent you know 150 bucks on headphones and [ _ ] and he’s broke all that stuff so it’s like okay well now we go to walmart and you get the 20 little small controller that has a wire and you get wired headphones that are 20 and if you’re not going to take care of the good stuff i’m not rebuying the expensive stuff you just get whatever the cheapest stuff is and break it but then jen will argue with me and say that’s why it breaks so easy because you just buy the cheapest stuff here’s what here’s my experience with what i’ve learned through a couple of different kids so far right my older ones who got i think your older ones just get more of your strictest parenting and and all that stuff right so they are more compliant with taking care of things i’ll give them that they are but i’m not sure it’s better if that makes any sense right like they’ll take care of things better than the 11 year old and he takes care of things just a little better than the five-year-old and i know some of that’s age but even not accounting for age it’s like my oldest got the strictest angriest parenting i had really and so they’re more compliant i don’t necessarily know that that’s actually better for their life though i feel like mine’s a other way like my middle is the most compliant but my middle daughter has a lot of my characteristics as a middle child which was overachiever right always you know like but my oldest daughter’s quite irresponsible like if you looked at her car now it’s [ _ ] disastrous [ _ ] everywhere and food wrappers and dude stuff everywhere i was super compliant with all my father’s crazy you know intense rules and then i got high and you can’t talk about any of them so it’s like and that’s what i see in one of my daughters like she’s really compliant she’ll follow the rules but i could also see that some of her childhood trauma could lead her to a you know smoking or drinking or something and i’m like did i really do that better like it’s great that she takes care of her [ _ ] but is that really that good in the grand scheme of life i’d rather be alive like i don’t know it’s just that’s weird i don’t have the answers well some of it they get from us some of it i think is their personality you know like some things they’re just born with certain stuff you know and i say that like it’s all woo-woo but they’re starting to understand now this what’s passed on through your uh cells like there’s like a cellular learning kind of thing that goes on or in your dna not your cells but your dna like you have certain sorts of dna learning that’s you know some weird [ _ ] they’re starting to figure out no no absolutely and and you talk about feeling guilty i feel guilty about the dna i passed on to my kids because i know how much of a struggle it’s been to be me and i’m like [ _ ] man you’re gonna be stuck with all those struggles whether it’s through nature or nurture you’re [ _ ] stuck with a lot of that i’m i think my kids are lucky to have my dna especially you know like you got my dna here that’s great i’m like thank god you got my brain but oh my god you got all my [ _ ] too all right you ready yeah i think my brain’s the [ _ ] up part my genetics are good that’s my crazy [ __ ] up life experience didn’t wrecked it for me
welcome back to recovery sort of i didn’t say all right or so before i said that this time on purpose and uh now i’m dropping my pen anyway i’m jason i’m a guy in long term recovery as always here with billy i’m also a person in long term recovery and i think we’re going to talk about spiritual living spiritual principles spirituality some kind of [ _ ] like that today i mean honestly we’ve had these uh these really cohesive great last three episodes so i’m almost kind of feeling like we’re due for a shitty one honestly so i figured we could just talk about nothing and people can hate it and then we’ll get back on the ball with step eight next week um just a little housekeeping stuff um you know always uh check us out twitter instagram facebook we we meme and talk and just banter about recovery and caring about people and all that great stuff um definitely want to thank daniel again for for last week that was a really fun episode to learn about smart recovery a lot of good feedback people enjoyed it people liked his take on a lot of things um i did talk to stephanie on instagram this week the only person i mean i got some other feedback too but she she had some a couple of things one the faster scale that daniel had mentioned she said there’s an app for it and so if you were interested in that faster scale of checking yourself out and self-evaluation there’s actually an app for that so you can look that up and she also mentioned that she loved the fact that he said that smart puts a lot of emphasis on the quality of recovery over the quantity and you know that she has not had that experience in 12 step um that it’s always kind of like the focus of if you have more clean time you are better or have more right or have a better say or opinion and i do agree with that to some extent not completely like i i you know i i personally will look at people and evaluate and judge their recovery and be like ah you might have 25 years but you’re a [ _ ] kook right is that a is that a derogatory term what kook i thought it was crazy but is that like uh i mean i think it’s well i think calling somebody crazy is slightly derogatory yeah you’re right
strange but i think if you call someone a kook yeah i i just it occurred to me that might be rude and i don’t want to be damn well what am i going to say here [ _ ] how about that they’re kooky uh i’m gonna take that out um yeah so i’ll judge people’s recovery and definitely say you know yeah you have 25 years but you’re out of your mind you’re not really doing any work on yourself um whereas this guy has three years but he’s really self-reflective but there’s some thing to our culture over time about that i mean i don’t know i was always raised that like you respect your elders that their life experience means something that they have value just in just living as long as they’ve lived and seeing as much as they’ve seen entitles them to a certain amount of respect but what about the guy and i’m picturing a certain individual and i’m not going to name any names obviously because that’s brutal uh for that individual but okay so there’s a guy i guess he’s got like 25 years now i don’t know maybe it’s the low 20s and this guy was like area chair for like eight years just because nobody really wanted to do it and he i guess like the power aspect of it even though there’s no [ _ ] power and service and uh he would like run the area as if he had the ultimate say in the thing or like really so if you don’t understand the area chair position basically you’re just there to kind of mediate the meeting yeah director yeah you’re not really guiding the conversation facilitator yeah you it’s not your opinion that matters really you’re not even supposed to bring an opinion you’re just supposed to kind of show up honestly my opinion of what the president’s supposed to do too they’re just kind of supposed to do what the people want not what they [ _ ] want um but so yeah he ran it as if it was all about you know the direction he wanted to go with n a or something and then always hitting on the new young ladies you know attempting the 13th step it seemed you just watch them all over the facebook comments as soon as there’s a picture of a girl that has a little cleavage on it it’s a hello beautiful comment underneath and it’s just like oh my god like [ _ ] his 20-some years what the [ _ ] like and i’m not saying we don’t all struggle in some area he’s probably does a lot of nice things i’m sure he picks up a newcomer for a meeting i’m not trying to completely bash him but it’s like why would what does his life experience really have to offer me in spirituality and spiritual principles yeah well i think two things first and foremost it’s like any uh rules quote unquote rules that we have in life there’s usually outliers or things that don’t you know fall under that general living rule um so yeah not every old person that you go talk to has a good outlook on life you know what i mean like some of them are [ _ ] crazy maybe they’ve mentally deteriorated or whatever whatever you know every older person that you talk to isn’t necessarily have a great opinion but in general when you talk to people that are 60 70 80 years old their life experience means something i would say similar to recovery if i talk to 20 people that have 20 plus years or more 15 of those are probably going to have some really valuable helpful information maybe all 20 will have valuable information in one area or another right but i would say probably 15 of those 20 are going to in general be living a pretty good life a pretty sound spiritual life and five of them are still going to be sick or crazy or some combination of those things so does that mean i say all right well then clean time doesn’t mean [ _ ] because a few of the many that have it suck you know yeah i was trying to think of why else we might do that and like in an area okay so hmm if you think of a trade for example so you know we have this going back to the sponsorship thing so we have people that have trades and then you have you know these sponsorship and you have your journeyman well not every journeyman electrician is a [ _ ] great electrician some of them are still hacks right some of them are still going to take shortcuts they’re going to do shitty work and just because someone’s done electrical work for 30 years doesn’t mean they’re good at it but if you went out and looked for electricians you’d probably want one that’s been around for a while or that’s more than like an apprentice or more than somebody that just got out of school you would think oh if they’ve been doing this for 25 or 30 years they probably have some good information and that’s interesting i i like looking at that with doctors you would think you know a doctor is better when they have seen more cases basically like the longer they’ve been around the more chance they have at identifying or having experience with running into whatever it is your your malady is at the moment right and yet at the same time there’s also plenty of doctors who the longer they’ve been around the less they want to listen to you because they might feel like they know it all now at this point they’ve done it for 20 years you’ve read google for a day right like so it is that dichotomy of like are you using your experience wisely or do you know it all now that you have experience right right i was thinking one of the other reasons we might be scared to value quality over quantity would be it’s such a dangerous game when you’re talking about drug addiction when you’re talking about overdoses and fentanyl and and all these chances of you not coming back like yeah it’s great to say hey he had a lot of quality and then he accidentally used for a day but that quality doesn’t go away and he came right back but it’s just so scary to think that these people won’t come back right it’s not like uh and i’m not trying to belittle any other form or way that we can manifest in our addiction right like i’m not trying to say that that overeating is any less awful for your life but generally you can value the quality of overeating clean time would you call it right even if they have little moments of relapse without the fear of losing the [ _ ] individual and i think that might be it might not be a great reason to to value quantity over quality but it might be a reason why we were hesitant to say oh the quality is good it’s okay you know that that you messed up right there and and did that because it’s a fear that you might not come back right and now just to to defend my topic that i picked today a little bit since you didn’t like it so much um to me that’s what like the quality is like the understanding principles understanding values understanding the type of people that we want to be you know what i mean like that’s what to me quality means so i’m gonna really look for people in recovery that have the qualities that i want more so than just people that have a bunch of time like i just don’t go out and go oh well anybody with 15 years or more can be my friend that’s the only people i want to be around no i’m going to look for people that are living or that have values in their life that are similar to mine you know and and in that case at least in my immediate support group i try to pick people that i feel like have similar values some similar spiritual goals spiritual principles in their life that i would have and those are the people that i want to put myself around it’s interesting so and we and we are like the culmination of our closest friends like that is a good judge of where we are in our life i think i’ve heard that before and it makes a lot of sense i’m just i don’t want to get way too off topic and i always do anyway but uh so if we go out and we make friends with people who are very similar to where we’re at right which i absolutely that’s what we do why wouldn’t we we want people who are like us and are living like-minded things and yet i would almost think if i want to grow or continue to grow i would almost need to search out people who are past where i’m at at all times i can’t really just settle in the place where i’m at unless i guess the place where i’m at is i’m trying to grow more and then i guess we’re all growing together but that’s that’s interesting like how do you do that how do you find people that are where you want to be and yet hang out with people who are where you’re at well i don’t yeah i i think if you’re looking at it from uh like strictly a skills perspective what i would call a skills perspective um the ideal place to be i would think would be in in both like i want some people that are better than they’ll say fishing let’s say i want to be a good fisherman well i would want some people that have a little more experience that are probably a little better fisherman than me but it’d also be nice to have some people that are a little less experienced or less skilled because then i can try to take those skills and teach them to somebody else and that process of learning and giving would reinforce you know yeah reinforce it or or help me figure out like hey i was trying to teach this skill and i keep teaching it this way and it isn’t really working out like maybe there’s a different way to look at this or a different way to think about it or a different presentation of it and at least my understanding of recovery is that’s the ideal place for me to be is you know i should have a sponsor i should have some people that have some things that i want in my life but then i should also be in a position of helping people or or guiding people that are maybe not where i am and then the flip side of that is there are always going to be people that have certain uh understanding skills or abilities of complex principles that are better than mine no matter how much time i have or how much time they have so someone that’s coming in with a year or two years clean might have a way better understanding of being in an emotional relationship or how to connect intimately with their wife you know that’s a skill that i just don’t really have that well at the time that i have clean so you know that’s interesting yeah so i’m just thinking like uh it’s almost in that teaching that i not only get reinforced and reminded of what i need to do right like when as soon as i tell somebody hey man you should probably hit some more meetings if you’re not feeling good maybe you should call some people in your network work the steps like that helps me feel better it’s in that that i’m reminded often of my solutions and then there’s another step to that where i’m also not just reminded but i’m i’m questioned about why right and then i’m forced to figure out where i stand because when i just have ideas about where i stand i don’t generally ever doubt them i’m just like yeah that’s where the [ _ ] i stand i’m about that right and then when people say well why are you about that right well why why would we do this this way how does that really benefit us i’m forced into one of two things first i got to think about it well well why the [ _ ] do i do it that way right why is there a better way and and then if i don’t know i get to seek out the answers from somebody who you know maybe gave me the information hey you had told me before to do it this way and now this guy asked me why when i told it to him and why do we do it this way right and i’m also forced to like finally figure out if it’s really where i stand or not like i have to delve into it now and really like does this really make sense or am i just doing this right and and it’s cool it kind of gives me perspective on my own my own [ _ ] then i really need to know i get to find out where i stand and why and if i really believe in that kind of stuff yeah which i think all kind of leads us into our topic so we we won’t get too far off the beaten path of uh whatever spiritual stuff yeah so and what i sort of first thought about was you know we hear this saying in uh it’s in one of our readings that we read in our fellowship but we hear it a lot like we are a spiritual not religious program and it’s like okay so well what does that mean you know what i mean and what does it mean like if i say like i am a spiritual person or would i think that people would describe me as a spiritual person like what the what does that mean what does that look like how is that relevant to being a drug addict you know um for me personally it ties in with some of this in the way that what i learned when i came in to uh recovery when i first got introduced for the longest time i didn’t know why i was such a horrible person or why i felt like such a horrible person why i felt so bad about myself why i just i thought i was such a piece of [ _ ] and such a miserable failure and uh what i personally have come to understand or come to believe is that it’s because i had some uh values some beliefs some understanding of of spiritual principles in my life and i wasn’t living up to any of those i was you know i could say oh yeah i want to be honest i want to be trustworthy i think those are important things i want to have you know quality relationships but then the way i was living like i was lying to people i was stealing from people i was doing things that that were against my beliefs and so that contributed to like my low self-worth my low self-esteem which then fed my desire to get high you know i would go back to getting high because then i didn’t care about all that stuff as soon as i got straight or sober or whatever word you want to use there i would go back to feeling like a miserable worthless piece of [ _ ] you know and and i couldn’t figure out how to break that cycle you know because to just stop using didn’t fix the problem it wasn’t like i stopped using all of a sudden i’m like hey i’m a good person and i’m this you know uh things are going to get better in my life now i was like no i stopped using and just felt like a bigger piece of [ __ ] because i was forced to look at the reality of the way i was living and so it took me some years to to come into the fellowship to start to realize okay these are principles that i think are important in my life and how can i learn to live those in my life and when i do that i gain self-worth self-esteem um you know i feel like i’m a good person and then i don’t necessarily want to get high and destroy my life on a daily basis you know because i feel like i have a good life i’m a i’m living a quality life
i think a lot of people get lost along that path they think that if we just come in stop using drugs then things are just going to start to get better life’s going to get better and some things will i mean you’ll you’ll maybe you’ll start taking a bath maybe you’ll be able to get a job you know what i mean you’ll become you know employable you’ll get some of those things that we talk about social acceptability um but that’s another saying in our program it’s like social acceptability does not equal recovery so you know for me a big part of my recovery is learning what spiritual principles are and then which ones are important to me and how to take those principles and apply them in my life so for me the process of recovery isn’t just i come in i stop using drugs i get a job and then my life falls into order it’s like no i got to learn about these principles and learn how to live them yeah i and just for the record i wasn’t against this topic at all i i was just sitting there kind of in a a little bit of a funky space when billy texted me about it and i was like it’s not a bad topic i’m just not excited by it but i wasn’t excited by anything at that point in my life it was like i’m just feeling kind of meh about life um which is okay sometimes and so i think what’s interesting for me is that when if you would have asked me uh six days ago what is spirituality right or or being spiritual and how do you pick that out out of somebody like what people in your life would you label spiritual my first thought at all times when they say it’s a spiritual not religious program is that spirituality was somehow similar to religion but different right and so you know i understood what i meant by that that’s religion was a set of rules about believing in a higher power spirituality was just believing in a higher power right you have your own ability to talk to this higher power and figure out your relationship with it and how it works in the world and there’s no [ _ ] set rules or dogma or anything about it you you just believe in some [ _ ] and you connect with it right and that’s okay that’s cool so if you just said pick out spiritual people i would have said people who had a belief in something and then since we’ve got here this morning my mind has changed that that’s not what spiritual means even though that’s what i’ve thought for years now we look at the definition the first one for spiritual relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things and so does that include what i said yeah absolutely right but this i think encompasses something a little bit more than just the fact of a higher power right to me i i guess if you want to get technical maybe the spirit or soul only exists in a higher power type belief maybe uh a strictly science believing person might say a spirit or soul doesn’t exist but maybe they would interchange those words with like uh consciousness or awareness or something right but basically the to me the idea of this is that it’s people who are less focused on what society is telling us we need to have or own or buy in order to be okay and more focused on what our internal consciousness says we need to be okay and so that to me changes a lot because then it encompasses people who don’t believe in a higher power for sure which is where i was interested in this conversation was hearing your take on all that and that’s kind of exactly why i find it you know somewhat interesting to talk about there are a lot of things i’ve heard in 12-step programs you know that i i sort of fell into early on because like say people said it so it must be true and these people have more time than me and whatever and a lot of that was well the first thing you got to do is come in and get a god you know and without god you’re gonna and some i don’t want to diminish the need for powers greater than ourselves or looking for solutions and answers outside of ourselves like all that’s incredibly important i don’t know that i need a god to be a spiritual person you know i can live a spiritual life like like there are atheists or agnostic people that can still live spiritual lives you know or be considered spiritual people and i don’t think god or a belief in some power outside you know some greater power outside of our self you know mystical magical being is the the soul a foundation for a belief in a spiritual life i found kind of this definition which i kind of liked it was talking about spiritual principles so it says a spiritual principle is a truth or creed that we choose to live by they are different from values because they don’t include things such as family and finances they are universal concepts that help us to become better people so it’s like i don’t need you know uh organized set of values and beliefs handed down to me from a church or a synagogue or a mosque or whatever to figure out what my values and beliefs are and then to figure out how to live them to become the best version of myself that reminds me of a it was a meme or some little internet thing that i found that said that like traditions were peer pressure from dead people and i love that because i don’t ultimately buy into tradition too much i don’t need to buy people cards on their birthday like that was something my mother found really important and still does i don’t right i don’t need to support hallmark in order to tell somebody i love them on their birthday i think that just doesn’t apply to my life right i don’t need christmas to look a certain way there’s ways i like it to look and there’s traditions traditions right that my family and i like to do together we like to do things a similar way sometimes year after year but because it works for us and we enjoy it not because i feel that i’m supposed to right we if none of us want to bake [ _ ] cookies this christmas then we don’t want to bake [ _ ] cookies i don’t need to feel like i need to do it and so that’s kind of what that reminded me of is that i don’t need to have this set of values that’s based on what my parents gave me or or anybody else in society tells me i need to find these creeds not that you know catholicism or or judaism or anything gave me but that i come up with right that’s the spiritualness for me i get to pick what i think matters and then apply it in my life and that’s what i think you were talking about that’s when i am happy with me and i think i’m a good person right and that i think is how we find the the joy in life you know the freedom to be who we are to like the people that we are to be comfortable in our own skin like that’s that is a result i think of living by our values and beliefs you know and it’s not always easy you know like it’s sometimes it’s difficult um before you know the podcast we sat here and talked about some things with parenting it’s like i find myself in conflict with with parenting sometimes it’s like in my head i’m like well i want to be this loving understanding compassionate supportive person and at times in the day you know i come home from work i’m tired i want to eat you know whatever excuses i make and you know my son comes down hey i broke my xbox controller and then i’m like what the [ _ ] man why are you you know and i lose my [ _ ] and i start yelling and complaining and try to you know almost make them feel bad and it’s like that’s not the person that i want to be you know what i mean and so it it takes me uh i have to well i don’t have to recovery is choosing to try better to be the person i want to be not necessarily the person i am you know in the moment and to take that that xbox controller example which uh i i guess was recorded on the youtube version of this that we we chattered about but to take that one step further it’s also the conflict of the people we want to be right yes i want to be a loving caring parent yes i also want to be a parent that can instill the values of like taking care of the things you buy and and you know making wise decisions with money and then taking care of things so you don’t have to spend extra money on things you’ve already taken care of it and it still works right and so i want to instill both of these and how do i how do i make those two different principles that i’m trying to give my children or that i’m trying to act in how do i make them coincide and work together right and is it more loving to just get my kid another xbox controller because it’s so heartbreaking that they they don’t get to do one of their favorite things right because i would i would want to get a new golf club if my golf club broke uh you know whether it was my fault or not i would still want to get a new one if what am i just never going to play golf again because i’ve you know had a bad moment but is it more loving to teach a lesson in that moment or or how do i apply the lesson lovingly like sometimes these values or not values these spiritual principles or or creeds that we come up with for ourselves are in conflict and it’s like how do we [ _ ] make that work together right and then how do we uh what what sort of order do they play out in our lives you know what i mean like for me being loving and understanding and compassionate if i were to write it out on paper or tell someone that those were my highest values you know that’s that’s what i that’s the person i want to be but in that situation that’s not the way that i acted right like in that situation what i’ve done is put you know basically money you know because of that’s what i look at oh now i got to go out and buy something new because you were irresponsible it’s like i’m living in conflict to the values that i have and then at the end of the day when i lay down at bed for me it’s kind of going through my day or going through a tenth step and and realizing like [ _ ] you know i acted this way and it’s not the person that i want to be you know and and that’s why i have this uh discomfort or disease in in my spirit at the end of the day dis ease uh for we’re very close to the 30 minute mark let’s go ahead and take our break and we’ll come back and maybe get into some principles
yeah it seems like wow i just pissed right before we started
d ah
sunday morning is a beautiful time to be alive i hope you’re having a good day out there
so
i feel like my posture will be better when we get microphones that’s how i’ll sell it to me it’s a health it’s a health choice i’ll be able to sit back and actually talk instead of feeling like i lean forward all the time
so where do we go from there i feel like we’re done
well
i’m like all right no we covered spiritual yeah we could talk about a couple basic ones i thought about
i mean i got a lead in with another question about the definition and then yeah we could definitely get into some i’m here and it’s a non whatever you want to call it seculars if that’s the right word our psychology today has 10 spiritual principles
for virtues
oh a says 36 spiritual principles of a a
there was an n a one here too that’s it only 36 that’s a a oh let’s see how many spiritual principles list 184 yeah we got to be bigger
this list scares it there’s only 12 on this one
somebody just came out of the little house over there uh yeah they’re doing their uh
what you might call it uh harm reduction out of there are they leaving the other office
i think eventually i mean that was no yeah i think they said that other office over there was too small to be like the office office and the harm reduction office and i think eventually they want to not be there anymore right that’s going to be the goal but they’re in the lease now so i think denise is up there going to not be there interesting so just kind of like i guess jim wanted to try to keep the lease mostly because that guy’s worked with him quite a bit in the beginning well we’ll try to kind of live out our lease and then go at the end of that to keep a keep a good relationship because apparently the guy that owns that building has some you know community ties and business ties in the community so right trying to leave a relationship and a good yes good standing or if we don’t get into that damn i was just thinking about something to tell you i can’t remember now
no idea that quick um oh i had to turn down i turned down another in-person meeting yeah it’s another one that’s indoors it’s the second time i’ve had to say i’m just not there but the same meeting place my my old home group is getting ready to move into the same indoor meeting place that’s allowing meetings right right now they have monday and thursday and i’ve turned both meetings down to share i’m like it’s just i’ve heard it’s crowded no mess a lot of times i’m like that’s damn my old home group is getting ready to move there on wednesday and like sometime in august i got a sponsor celebrating and i’m like [ _ ] man i really feel like it’s the right thing to go to that but i don’t want to be in an indoor meeting so what do i do with that well so like my home group has been outside but only luckily because of weather like we don’t have a cover so if it were to start in the one week that it did rain they were inside i just happened not to be there because i had something else going on but like my home group if it rains we would be inside yeah indoor with 15 people is a lot different than indoor with 80 people yeah like this is a room with like 80 people in it and oh so everyone would definitely be close well i don’t i don’t even know how close they are really but it’s just gonna be a lot of breathing i don’t know if they’re wearing masks probably not yeah or at least half and half right yeah we went to a meeting saturday like that and people were supposed to be wearing masks but then as the meetings going on they’re [ _ ] taking them off and nobody’s really saying anything and then you know right pull them ass down drink my coffee and [ _ ] so i’m like okay even even if i decide it’s the right thing to go right i’m gonna go down for his anniversary i’m gonna stand way the [ _ ] out of the way away from everybody no tell 20 people i can’t hug him even though i haven’t seen him in a long time i’m have to feel weird about all the judgment from that i’m going to stand off to the side i’m gonna have to like go up six feet away from him and share at the end of the meeting and then pull my mask up to hug him right like that’s gonna be [ _ ] weird and then the two people who’ve asked me to share there who will both probably end up being at that meeting and be like oh he came to this [ _ ] meet but he couldn’t lead our meeting like it’s just so much and i know i’m not supposed to worry about what other people think but it it’s all there oh yeah there’s a lot of anxiety [ _ ] man yeah like don’t celebrate dude no i mean he he called and like asked he’s like man you’re gonna make it be important i’m like oh you’re crushing me i just realized so next month i’ll if because i stay clean obviously i’ll celebrate 20 years we’re going to [ _ ] be on vacation the week of my anniversary so i won’t even be around here to get my 20-year key tag i’ll be in [ _ ] ocean city on the actual day of my anniversary and then we won’t even be back that week i’ll have to wait the next week which i already told jen i’m like why don’t you gotta wait like a week and something after your anniversary like it doesn’t even feel the same after that yeah i’ve celebrated two months late before i don’t get it oh yeah see and i don’t care like to me it’s not even about the celebration it’s about the day like that day i’ll feel very emotional and nostalgic and it’ll feel you know like a big [ _ ] deal and then two days later it won’t really see my i don’t the day does nothing for me whatsoever like i don’t even give a [ _ ] but the the anniversary celebration itself that meeting that’s always makes me feel emotional oh wow completely out yeah yeah i don’t even think about the day very often except do i want to go to a meeting to get a key tag or not half time i don’t like hey get tomorrow or something i don’t know i feel like that’s the most important it’s the day that’s the [ _ ] that was the moment it was the surrender maybe i’m not done i know what people tell me sure old-timers so you’re not done you’re just fighting time yeah so i can bring us back in with this other uh somewhat i was trying to piece together a definition without looking it up like what would i say we’re going for an n a when we say we’re going for a spiritual life so i could lead in with that yeah all right let’s do that because we’re already at 10 30.
we’re back and we’re still talking about spiritual spiritualness spirituality spiritual principles i i don’t i’m [ _ ] making up words now i don’t know um in trying to come up with like a definition of what we’re trying to do you know because we try to explain this in ways that that the newer member who’s got you know three days clean and doesn’t understand the [ _ ] 12-step lingo or recovery lingo or the family member or just the curious person could possibly find a way to relate this to their life or at least get an understanding of how it could apply in someone’s life so i was trying to picture like what are we really saying when we say we want to live a spiritual life in recovery without looking up the definition though i did really enjoy the definition that we gave but i the best thing i could really come up with was that we’re trying to move from a self-centered way of life to and this is where i got a little lost like my initial thing was like we’re moving from self-centeredness to god-centeredness right and i’m like well that doesn’t [ _ ] apply for some people for sure so we’re moving away from self-centeredness into like a a world-centeredness a society-centeredness where we just want to include others in our thoughts like our selflessness like okay yeah so we’re trying to a spiritual life is a move from total self-concern to being concerned about other things besides just us like how is my neighbor feeling how is that person who just went through this situation how is my kids current situation affecting them not how it applies to me right like i tend to do this with everything uh oh my child’s turning 15 this october well oh my god that makes me old right no that makes my child turns 15 this [ _ ] october it’s about them not me so i just it’s interesting i guess is that do you think that’s a good definition of spiritualness yeah and and so it’s funny like i’ve when you talk about your child and how it affects you i’ve from a recovery perspective and talking to my wife she’s pointed this out to me like if i have a sponsee that’s celebrating an anniversary or even her so she just had her anniversary we’ve just celebrated her 31 years congratulations that’s awesome and uh you know immediately what i do is put all this pressure on myself about what i’m gonna say you know what i mean like oh [ _ ] you know what am i gonna say how am i gonna you know how am i gonna handle this and it it immediately turns all about me instead of being in the moment of like wow this person is really celebrating this great thing and how can i honor them how can i you know what i mean like it’s it’s about i want to sound good at their anniversary like i want to take the [ _ ] center stage and and be the highlight no absolutely it’s funny i just watched uh with my some of my older kids i watched knives out last night uh it’s on amazon prime it’s like a murder mystery kind of comedy movie it had some i don’t know it was advertised a while back i just finally got the chance to watch it but it basically the guy the father of the family died and then as the detectives are interviewing all the family members they make it all about them and like their portrayal of what happened the night before always it was different for each one even though it was the same thing happening each one pictured themselves center stage and i was like that’s [ _ ] hilarious i do that yeah yeah and and i think that’s the one of our biggest problems you know as addicts is we tend to live in this self-centered self-serving world everything’s about me all the time and i don’t reflect on how my anger my agitation my whatever affects my kids or my wife or you know the dog when i come in and yell at the dog for nothing you know so we agree that that we are trying to move from a self-centered way of living to a more selfless thinking about other things outside of us type of life like i think that’s a pretty easy agreement for people in recovery but does that encompass what we would call spirituality is that a good definition for spirituality or spiritual living or is that just something else that we’re trying to do um i mean at least for me i can only talk about myself like my goal is to try to basically a value or or a principle that i’ve come to place highly in my life is to do no harm to not harm others so you know my goal is to try to live a spiritual life that causes the least amount of harm to the people around me or to myself um i don’t know how that answers your question i’m trying to like i’m trying to look at this definition relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things and so i what i’m just realizing about this definition is it’s saying as opposed to material or physical things so my question was kind of like okay so someone comes into recovery and their va their belief systems are what’s important to me is you know maybe more of a hedonistic lifestyle and i don’t say that in any derogatory way but maybe that’s what they’re interested in is the concept of i’m here for a short time i don’t believe in the afterlife i just believe in bringing myself pleasure right now right which is i think the concept of hedonism um but that’s usually entirely about material or physical things that bring pleasure sensations and so if that’s their belief in what’s good for them does that is that in contrast to spiritualness or spirituality i’m trying to not say spirituality for some reason i keep saying spiritualness which isn’t a [ _ ] thing uh is that in contrast to that because spiritual in this definition says it’s not about material or physical things it doesn’t say it’s not about pleasure but i almost feel like there’s justification for it doesn’t matter how it affects others it’s about pleasing myself in in that kind of theory so i’m just they wouldn’t be moving away from self-centeredness necessarily in their belief system and i i wouldn’t say their belief system is wrong i’d say it’s different than mine but well and i think those come down to judgments you know almost like we talked about in the beginning of this are you know what do we consider spiritual people you know obviously someone that you might say oh i think that’s a very spiritual person i might not necessarily think is a spiritual person and and vice versa like that’s going to depend on on what i look at as spiritual um and then you know i’d relate that to like say what we talked about in the beginning which is what do i consider quality recovery you know what is when we talk about you know it’s it’s quality versus quantity all right so what does that mean to you you know what you consider someone’s with a quality recovery you know what does that look like that might be different for you than it is for me i’m wondering if this move away from self-centeredness that’s not really material or physical that okay so like for instance you were talking about uh you know making or or sometimes your brain can try to make your wife’s anniversary about what can you say to sound good or or look good right and i’d struggle with the same things i’m not putting this on you but that’s not a material or physical thing but i feel like it’s still something external that i’m chasing that i’m still trying to move away from in my spiritual practice like i still want to move away from that but it’s not necessarily it doesn’t fit in that definition of like being material or physical it’s just another thing that i’m trying to seek outside of me to be the answer to my problem so maybe maybe for me spirituality is not seeking external things in order to feel better maybe that’s what my my real definition of spirituality is it’s doing internal work to feel better and not seeking any kind of outside thing like that spiritual definition sort of limits it to moving away from physical or material pleasures or or things maybe my spirituality is moving away from anything outside of me because i can get accolades or or things from other people or you know it doesn’t necessarily have to be a thing i don’t have to go buy a computer to feel good or a car and i think i mean at least for me and i might be bastardizing the english language but for me like the difference between a spiritual principle and a value like those are kind of close but the difference is a spiritual principle is more in a in a metaphysical context it’s more of a uh idea not something that i can uh put like a concrete measurement on um it might be like love or hope or trust or faith like those aren’t things that that you can like measure you know you can’t you can’t see them you can’t touch them you can’t feel them but if there’s nothing wrong to say like i value financial success and then i measure that by saying i live you know above the poverty line or i make 300 000 a year like for me personally for someone to say that say oh i i value financial success i go out and i work really hard i own my own business i make 500 000 a year like and that’s what i you know put that success on like that’s all fine there’s nothing wrong with that it’s not making a judgment on that value that’s a value that they have but that’s something that you can kind of almost see and touch and feel so whereas a spiritual principle you know like love you know i can’t say well i value love so i’m gonna have five people in my life that i love now you know like it’s it’s a different okay but so are you saying i don’t i don’t know where we’re going with that exactly like are you saying can both exist at the same time is that possible can you have the value of seeking these external things like a financial success and then also isn’t that going to come into conflict with the spiritual principles where we’re talking about moving away from that um well i would say no i would say that i can have values and live a spiritual life i mean i don’t maybe some people view a spiritual person as being like the buddha who had no i mean that was if you’d look at i i think what most people would say is like the ultimate spiritual person being the buddha you know which and and buddhism in general like that’s a lot of that philosophy is kind of not about materialism or material things me personally i don’t think those things are mutually exclusive i don’t think you can only be spiritual if you detach and disconnect from all material things you know like i think you can have both of those things right i think i can care about you know having like a nice home and a nice car and you know some financial stability in my life and still live a very spiritual life i don’t think they’re in conflict i don’t think they have to be right they don’t have to i think like me they frequently do go into you know conflict uh and yeah and so you know i keep referring back to the definition as spiritual is relating to or affecting the spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things and i think that’s maybe where my wiring and i don’t know if this is a human thing or an addict thing probably a human thing because the more i learn the more i think everything’s a human thing i don’t think we’re really that different we might go to another level with it extreme but i think my wiring is that i take these material or physical things and try to fill my spirit or soul with them i try to appease the the dis-ease in my spirit or soul with these things that i place value on right you call them values i value making money i value uh uh being looked at as somebody who can pull an attractive woman right like i i value being looked at as a guy who’s respected in the community when really those things really rob me of finding a true way to fill my spirit or soul because i’m using them and they’re not the right shape or size to fit the void that i feel i guess yeah and i think that’s where those things become dangerous when we’re using those outside things to to fill that void then what we start to see is our our spiritual principles these principles that we think are important our spirit suffers because i’m trying to use an outside thing to fill that spiritual need right they make that a little simpler tie it back into like money monetary stuff so i don’t think there’s anything wrong with yeah i have to go to work and and make a living and i want to provide for my kids and that kind of stuff and that’s you know the balancing act of like well how do i do that but then still be like available to be loving and caring and and supportive of them and different endeavors that they’re having in their life um how do i be careful not to get so caught up into work that i become absent from my home life you know and i find myself in those kind of conflicts a lot it’s like well i need to be financially successful in order to support them in these certain areas but then i end up working so much that i’m never home and then that financial piece has overtaken you know my spiritual side you know my values have overtaken my spiritual beliefs and now i’m not really being loving and caring and supportive of my family anymore i’m just providing financial stability which puts those things in conflict so i guess maybe spirituality doesn’t have a an exact definition for any group of individuals it’s almost specific for each person right but things we can look at is are we more focused on us or are we also taking into consideration the people around us what makes us feel content with ourselves at the end of the day what actions like lead to that content feeling within ourselves um what how are we trying to what are we trying to do to feel good today right like am i using uh food to try to feel better or am i using you know reaching out to a relationship or or searching for prestige or am i using the fact that i’m just happy with the way i treated someone right and maybe another factor might be like we’re trying to move away from fear-based action and into love-based action and like maybe these are kind of the guides and what that might mean for each individual person they could mean different things right we all need to do that self-evaluation of like am i going too far at work am i stepping on the the co-worker next to me to try to get the the promotion ahead of them right or you know am i even going further than that and like completely setting them up to get fired so that i get the promotion like you know some people are going to be okay with certain behaviors at certain points in time in their life i’ve definitely been okay with what i would call now shady or behaviors at different times that i’m not okay with anymore right and that kind of ebbs and flows but i think it’s one of those things where we just gotta look at these different aspects and these are maybe those are like four good questions to ask maybe that should be the new [ _ ] step 10 like daily inventory like what am i using for contentness today right am i only looking at things that you know and how they affect me or am i also considering how they affect those around me am i doing things because i’m scared of a particular outcome down the line or am i doing things because they they feel loving to do right now like those are some interesting questions to ask yeah and just you know for the the co-worker thing like there’s great value in like showing up for work on time being a productive member at your job you know trying to do your part maybe even go a little extra like those are all good things and if you show up and do those things and then get the promotion over your co-worker that’s fine but if you take it to the point where it’s like okay well now i’m gonna like sabotage this person i’m gonna like slip notes to the boss about what they’re not doing or find subtle ways to highlight everyone else’s shortcomings like that is what i would consider not spiritual so it’s not necessarily the goal of trying to get the promotion that’s the problem it’s the way that i go about doing that that’s the problem you know it’s okay for me to live a life that i’m want to be like happy and free and have what i consider to be success like those are all good things those are important you know it’s important to my quality of life but when i start doing it in a way that that makes me feel like guilt or shame or embarrassment or remorse or regret you know then i probably need to take a look at that like those are things uh those are signs that my spirit is is not where it should be that i’m not living in accordance with my spiritual values and i think this is a really really tricky thing for for addicts alcoholics non-addicts humans in general because we are sold a message from our society that’s maybe not so spiritual in nature uh in in almost my whole day really in dealing with society it’s you don’t need to live this spiritual way uh and and maybe this is different in other parts of the world in america it definitely feels like hey everybody for themselves pull yourself up by your bootstraps get yours [ _ ] everybody else to some extent right and then maybe later on well we kind of care about people a little and so drug use right it was very easy to see when i was getting high it wasn’t that easy to see but as soon as i attempted recovery it was easy to see that’s not acceptable according to society right whereas maybe somebody who goes out and gets drunk very frequently or parties or goes to the club every friday and saturday and then you know has a couple beers with dinner like there’s almost like a right to protect that for some people right like i can come home after a hard day’s work and have a couple of cold beers there’s nothing wrong with that right like there’s this societal view we’ve been sold by big alcohol mind you that that that’s very normal right there’s nothing wrong with that you should defend that that it’s almost like in the [ _ ] bill of rights right you should defend that ability that has a couple cold ones with your crabs or whatever the [ _ ] you eat in your you know neck of the woods and i just feel like it’s so much harder to to live a spiritual life or to even see that i need to once i’m here because nobody in society is telling me that like buying a new car is not the solution for my the way i feel my spiritual malady right they’re not saying hey don’t try to date attractive women that’s never gonna fix you they’re like yeah [ _ ] yeah he’s dating that hot girl that’s great for him right so i’m sold these messages like you know rich athletic people are better than everyone else and it’s like it’s hard for me to see that that’s not what i really need to work towards maybe like maybe there’s another option of what i can work towards which is spirituality yeah and i think that’s where you know in recovery hopefully we’re lucky enough to see some people around that have these values and principles in their lives those people are in society too it’s not like recovery only has the monopoly on spiritual principles right or spiritual people i think that personally is an appeal of organized religion for a lot of people we see these individuals within those organizations that express the highest and best values the highest and best principles of those religious practices you know these not all but some really good pastors and ministers that will teach you about god’s love or jesus’s love or you know forgiveness and acceptance and humility and all these great things and those are appealing i think to people in general um i think we do have a problem where we’re getting a mixed message from society and uh what i would call capitalism you know like consumerism consumerism yeah and this capitalistic view of things and and that can sway us uh in what i think is a negative or wrong direction i just want to throw allah’s love in there too because we don’t we don’t say a lot about uh islam on here we talk about buddhism and christianity a lot but yeah islam too they’re all relevant and i’m not that familiar with muslim faith so it’s hard to talk about it i i don’t i just don’t know enough about it it’s never a religion that i’ve spent a lot of time exploring so same i just want to make sure to start saying words i don’t know i just wanted to throw allah’s love in there yeah exactly um and you know i think that’s one of the big problems that’s a sickness in our society right now i think we’ve lost the the importance of spiritual principles and spiritual values and to me if you look back like you know on jesus like i think that’s the values that typically when people talk about jesus or the values that are expressed what made him this great wonderful figure you know historical figure if you want to say it that way you know was that he like totally sacrificed himself to death so that other people could have these freedoms and yet today it’s like we live almost an opposite way of like i gotta defend my freedoms from everybody else you know [ _ ] you i’m not giving up nothing you know i’m holding on to everything i got you know and it’s a it’s almost the opposite to me when i look at how society lives and how people act versus what we think are the highest ideals and highest values of these historically religious people but that’s my ah anyway so i think like when you look at something like addiction okay let’s get back to addiction because i was thinking of this how long do we have to keep beating this dead horse of well it’s a moral failing we need to lock these people up we need to shame them we need to make them feel guilty and embarrassed and you know plaster their mug shots on facebook you know that seems to work really well like how long do we have to keep going down that road and failing as we completely lose the war on drugs and we completely just keep you know dumping millions of dollars more in taxes down an empty hole that is i don’t know anywhere that the drug problems gotten better by this approach but yeah we keep doing it over and over and over again and when you look at some areas at least right now where it looks like we’ve had success where there’s been success it seems like are where we become more accepting where we become more loving and supportive where we try to meet these people at their level of suffering and to address some of that suffering and then lift them up out of those different situations um and that looks like the better way to deal with addiction that seems to be the better way to deal with mental health issues that seems to be the better better way to deal with uh neglect and abuse and trauma you know and slowly i think at least in some of the more uh social aspects of the social services aspects of society i think that’s the way things are going um it would be nice to see that reflected more in the overall view of society societal change is so slow i remember listening to a history podcast that talked about changes in society in rome and they said it was the basic concept was they were meant to be made slowly over time and they gave an example of a time when a guy tried to like force progressive change quickly and how wrong it went and i don’t remember the entire concept of it but it was really well laid out and i was like damn that does kind of make sense that we change slowly for a reason because too drastic of a change almost uh just doesn’t work out very well um you talked about jesus and these high aspirations and it just i don’t for whatever reason it brought up a one of jesus’s teachings for me and it just seems kind of relevant maybe it’s not at all but i’ll tell you say it anyway because [ _ ] it right um i remember and i encountered this like in my kids sometimes and in myself i’m sure i probably don’t see it as well in myself but my kids will be nice to their friends but like not as nice to other kids or something along those lines right and they’re like well why would i be nice to that person they’re mean to me or or that person is mean to other people so i don’t want to treat them nice and i remember jesus’s story of uh the the taxpayers right and basically i guess in biblical times the taxpayers were horrible horrible people i don’t know maybe they were the irs right but they were just considered really nasty vile people and so his point was even they’re friendly to their friends like even they treat their family at home well yeah what does that really say like everybody can do that that’s easy it’s easy to treat your family well and your friends well of course but are you treating the people you don’t like that much well because that’s really [ _ ] saying something and i just feel like that’s relevant to the concept of spirituality and moving away from that self-centered view right like yeah it’s easy to treat people well that please me or that bring me satisfaction those close to me those loved ones but i think the spiritual view is to go beyond that and to treat all people pretty well right it’s to consider all people like hey i don’t like that guy’s actions but a there might be some reasons he acts like that like maybe he went through some tough [ _ ] right and and now he’s here and he acts like that and i don’t have to be mean about it or just be who gives a [ _ ] how he acts my spirituality is about my internal condition it has nothing to do with how much of a jerk that guy is like do i want to go home and be a jerk just like him because that’s what i am if i treat him like a dick or do i want to go home and be like yeah man i love spiritually even though that guy was a jerk right and and yeah and for me that’s what recovery this process of recovery has been about is learning about those principles and how to how to be that like i said all right i want to be a loving person okay well what does that look like how does it what does that mean to me when i go out into the world and you know whatever somebody doesn’t hold the door for me it when i’m walking in the store or someone cuts me off in traffic number one am i still you know am i willing to be loving to that person you know am i willing to to try to be compassionate and empathetic towards them also and i don’t think that’s the only place it counts but i i do think there’s something about that’s might be for me at least more of a judge of where i am than how well i treat my family or friends like they’re going to get a better well maybe not always my family they get some of the worse to me too but i think the how i treat people i’m not really that fond of might tell me more about me in this moment than anything else like that might be a better uh bar to like judge myself on not to judge myself harshly but just hey where am i at my level of practice in this spiritual principle today well not you know was i loving and kind to my adorable five-year-old that’s [ _ ] easy most of the time uh but was i loving and kind to the guy who cut me off in traffic yeah and you know that’s for the recovery process and step work like that’s the importance of like a tenth step for me is is being able to look at those situations because as we get into daily life like some of this stuff some days i’m just going through the motions of of life and i go to work and i come home and i i’m not even present right i’m not even really being conscious about how i treated the [ _ ] clerk at walmart or how i treated the person in traffic that cut me off you know they cut me off and i start flicking them off and yelling cuss words and blowing the horn and then i just go on about my day and i don’t even you know it it’s in one ear i express my anger and it’s out the other and you know then i go on about my day and so through this process of recovery i’ve sort of learned to take a minute or you know a few minutes each day or at least every couple of days and kind of look at that like hey how am i doing you know am i checking in with myself how am i feeling about myself right now and learning to identify those red flags of like when i’m not living according to these spiritual principles or when i’m not living according to you know my values and beliefs um because you know these staying kind of on that path of living by these principles and living by these values and beliefs have been what’s made my life the happiest and most content and most fulfilling for me personally yeah i’m thinking about so uh a neighbor of ours who how to say this not rudely in any way uh she’s so her son is in the same grade as my five-year-old son and we you know they started getting on the bus and so i i interacted with her a lot on the bus stop in the mornings before you know quarantine obviously and school shut down and it’s a it’s awkward our relationship is awkward you know i i would say maybe she’s a little bit of a strange individual i i could see a lot of people looking at me and saying that’s a little bit of a strange individual so that’s not a judgment right that’s just she’s different than me uh and i am different than her and so that whatever reason our vibes it’s very awkward when we’re in person and she had asked me god i don’t know like nine months ago or something if we would watch her dog and take care of her chickens while they’re on vacation and today’s the day they’re going on vacation right and so i’m not a guy who hates animals by any means i question our use of animals i i almost to some extent think we use pets as an external thing to fill us up spiritually internally to to you know relate it to this topic but i’m not big on having animals in my house personally i would rather not have animal hair on the things i sit on i would rather not have the animal smell in my house i would rather not have you know animals get sick at times i don’t want to deal with any cleanup of that kind of stuff like i’m not big on it really it’s just not my thing at all honestly uh i feel kind of the same way about my kids when they’re babies and drooling all over everything and [ _ ] i’m like oh my [ _ ] god that’s gross but whatever i would just choose if i if it was up to me completely to not have animals in my house and so there’s dogs coming over today and i’m not hugely thrilled about the concept of this dog being in my house for a week and i’m like can’t we just leave it out back my wife’s like it’s too [ _ ] hot for that i’m like is it really like there’s shade he’s got a dog house out there like we’ll get water cold i’ll put ice in the water whatever right and she’s like no that’s not gonna work and so looking at this from a point of spirituality and spiritual principles these are the kind of conflicts i can have in my life right and maybe this seems minor to some people maybe it’s i don’t know my spiritual belief is that i would like to help this family out i want them to be able to go and have a nice vacation to not have to worry about their dog i don’t want them to not be able to go on vacation because they can’t afford to board the dog i don’t want the dog to suffer because nobody watches it for a week like there’s a whole lot of things i don’t want to happen right so i i generally feel internally like i did the right thing to say i would help i wanted to help i wanted to be a useful human right that’s that’s my goal so i believe i’m being in tune with my spirituality in that sense in the other sense what i have to do to be in tune with that spirituality by agreeing to that is going to be uncomfortable and that’s where i think i struggle at times like i don’t always want to be physically uncomfortable in the moment to feel better later and that’s generally what my spirituality calls on me to do it says be physically uncomfortable and go do the [ _ ] dishes instead of sitting here which feels much better and you’ll feel better about you later get up and go to work and you’ll feel better about you later even though going to work sounds like it [ _ ] sucks right now and it always seems to involve me doing some physically uncomfortable now thing to feel better about me as a whole later and that’s rough for me do you struggle with that spirituality concept or uh i mean obviously in some areas yeah you know if it was easy then i would just do it naturally all the time but it’s it’s not and i think any level of like it almost gets to what you’re talking about with society like we live in this society now that tells us that everything’s supposed to be easy and comfortable and and you know serve us in some sort of way and that this notion that we’re supposed to like suffer a little bit in any way or go without something you know for any length of time is totally foreign like that’s totally like well [ _ ] i ordered something from amazon it should be here like two hours from now you know like that whole concept we have a society that just feeds that you know what i mean like oh i can’t just have you know regular ice cream it’s got to be like over the top with [ _ ] gummy bears yeah gummy bears all i can think is this old simpsons episode where chief wiggum had the entire police force wearing underwear and he said oh he kept saying if it feels good do it yeah and you know just to get like swords of religious thing like i think that was always so i tend to think like religion is specifically christianity is is taken old societal struggles and formed it into this nice story this nice presentation that people can look at and and go like yeah i see and now we’ve gotten into this literalism which we take all this stuff completely literal which i don’t think it was meant to be literal i think it was meant to be anecdotal or whatever and so i think there’s great value in looking at some of the anecdotal stories of you know religion um and in that i would say when you look at the things that represent sort of the devil or satan or whatever it’s always like self-serving you know greed lust envy jealousy it’s it’s all those kind of things and i hate to say but that feels like what our society is feeding right now the most you know what i mean it’s i want this right now you know someone else has this big tv well i need a big tv you know what i mean oh you have a 50 inch tv well [ _ ] i only have a 40 inch tv well now i need to go get a 50 inch tv and it needs to be here tomorrow i can’t wait a while to have that i deserve it now and uh like our culture’s feeding that [ _ ] you know it’s feeding the devil you know right and you know what the the jesus version of that story is like no you know we’re we’re better off all of us are better off when we give more of ourselves to others when we love people that aren’t lovable when we show compassion towards the the you know the [ _ ] and the prostitutes and the homeless and the lepers and and these outcast dredges a society like when we show love and compassion and faith like that is the the quote-unquote keys to heaven you know and i don’t believe that heaven is this mystical place that we get when we die is a place that we can find now and it’s a place that we can find like internally we can find this like happiness and content and this feeling in our in our spirits if you will and inside of ourselves that’s like [ _ ] this feels good you know what i mean like and it’s not that surfacy like i just ate a big giant bowl of ice cream feeling it’s an internal feeling of like i am really content that hole that you’re talking about in my soul that i try to fill with all that other [ _ ] that i try to fill with the hot woman and the new car and the bigger house and the more money like that hole is the the devil hole that i want to fill with all that immediate lust stuff that’s never satisfied that’s never filled that’s never complete and you know that that spiritual whole is filled with love and compassion and faith and trust and you know those those uh giving of ourselves to help others is where you’ll find spiritual fulfillment not necessarily momentary minutes of bliss right i can never i don’t think i’ll ever hear anyone say the words devil hole
not specifically take that somewhere uh yeah no you mentioned that the whole concept of like everybody lives in debt and credit and because we want it now i can’t wait till i can actually have the money built up to buy that thing i need it now let’s do it on credit and so we’ll you know get it all wrapped up now and i’ll pay later i’ll deal with the consequences later um you know i looked up the definition for patience one time and and so this kind of just bringing it to the the things don’t feel good in the present that i have to do or they feel uncomfortable or they take work right the definition of patience one of the definitions at least is long suffering like that doesn’t sound pleasant or comfortable right that’s not what we want why the [ _ ] would i want patience when i can have it now when somebody gives me the option and tells me you need to have this now it’s better for your life why would i want to wait and suffer for a long time that sounds terrible but i think that is i don’t know the key to joy i i hate to [ _ ] act like i have the answer for that and we see this in our physical lives too as much as in our spiritual lives like we see in our spiritual i mean our physical lives like i i currently i go exercise you know almost every morning out of the week i don’t [ _ ] like it it’s not like i don’t get a whole lot of joy and fulfillment out of it i know people say they do and i think they’re full of [ _ ] i think they’re just saying that to make themselves feel better i don’t know how anybody could [ _ ] like it but whatever i just know for me but the reasons i do it are because like i want to physically be able to go out and live and enjoy life and if i don’t you know i’m 45 i’ll be 46 this year i think um yeah i’d lose track but you know i wanna get older into my 50s and 60s and be able to still go out and hike and camp and enjoy the world and do physical activities and if i don’t put that work in now you know i’m gonna start to have physical ailments and we see it over and over in society with the the you know it’s the same with eating you know i i don’t like to eat healthy if it’s not good you know it’s not as satisfying or fulfilling as a [ _ ] twinkies or you know a cheeseburger or whatever um it’s hard to eat that salad all the time it’s hard to give up desserts and sweets and carbs but if i don’t there’s a consequence that comes along with that and i’ll gain weight i’ll have health issues possibly diabetes you know what i mean and so we see that in our physical life too and it’s the same thing in our spiritual life it’s like the easier softer way unfortunately isn’t always what’s best for us right we do tend to use the the band-aids after the fact i and and i’m i’m not judging society i’m judging myself i mean i’m currently struggling with uh you know not being able to pass the [ _ ] gas station by without stopping in and buying a black and mild which if you don’t know what that is it’s a pipe tobacco wrapped in a [ _ ] cigar casing and uh i quit smoking i quit vaping and yet here i am struggling with the [ _ ] thing all over again because it it feels good yeah it’s hard to pass it up and and get past that that it feels good for some reason i’m drawn to that kind of [ _ ] right i was just thinking you were talking about the the religions and the anecdotal evidence and whether it’s literal or not and i i think it’s been too many years since we’ve created a religion that we just can’t relate to the ideals and anecdotes in it anymore right like you scientology i’ll pass i don’t know much about that one either but um no so like if you i was thinking okay if you read the the buddhist like literature right and and and you look into buddhism they’ve got a lot of anecdotes too but i feel like they’re harder for people nowadays to understand kind of like that that a program where it’s all written in old you know parables and about old topics i had a i had a chemistry teacher trying to teach us about you know uh concept and chemistry and he was like remember when you were little and you made mayonnaise in your basement and i’m like no bro we didn’t [ _ ] do that here and he was he was from a place where that was normal right like they did weird stuff i’m like no i don’t that’s [ _ ] what are you talking about anyway the buddhist like parables are harder to relate to and really grasp you really gotta dig for like what the [ _ ] are they even talking about with this lotus blossom and all like i don’t get it right because they’re just so far ago and foreign to us and i think christianity is becoming the same way like what the [ _ ] do you mean even the taxpayers like you treat their friends nice so i think you and i need to make a new religion with new anecdotes that are updated same it’s probably the same principles and parables they had we just need to update them to modern times like this bro was at the [ _ ] gym machine i wanted and i waited for it patiently or something like you know what i mean we need to update it so people can understand it now and maybe then they’ll grasp the anecdotes and i i know this sounds kind of humorous but i really think we need to write this book and i think people would get something out of it yeah well and it almost goes back to the the similar like if if you know time really equals value like you know in recovery or if old people really can add value to your life with their input it’s almost the same with some of these older things that we look back on it’s like religion we look back at it and there’s some value there but it’s so outdated it loses any meaning and i think that same thing happens with the like a lot of these uh anecdotal stories like they just don’t apply to modern times like how do we update you know some of these whatever religious teachings or or buddhist teachings or bible teachings to like modern times to relate to [ _ ] facebook or cell phones or you know computer games like we need that [ _ ] updated i think i think that’s our goal i think that might be our new life goal probably not i’m too lazy for that but somebody should take that idea and run with it because that’s [ _ ] brilliant or unless it’s already been done so they do it with the constitution all the time too it’s like we look at a document that’s 200 years old that’s almost irrelevant to life today and we’re like we got to do it just by the constitution you know it’s like well it doesn’t address a lot of [ _ ] that we have nowadays it doesn’t doesn’t deal with modern problems right no no absolutely right and and we talk about you know we’re a connected society now and i just think that’s so misleading because the internet is an incredible [ _ ] tool but what it’s connected us to is the internet right it hasn’t really fostered connection to other humans or to spirituality right because be i think we’re getting more disconnected from the people around us because of it all right the further we get to technology we’re actually disconnecting from people we’re in a connected world but we’re just not connected to other people anymore and so to me that is a move away from spirituality away from being centered with others and being back to self-centered connected to this internet yeah i agree i think yeah we’re losing connection to community connection to spiritual centers or spiritual practices in our life and our society is suffering for that so while i don’t have the answers for that i do think we have exhausted this topic and i know you are running out of time today so go out and be [ _ ] spiritual people god damn it even when it’s hard yeah but anyway do the hard [ _ ] and feel good about yourself later or don’t do the hard [ _ ] and then we get what we get from that and then we’re you know yeah and and like most things you can just to get a general idea there’s some lists of different spiritual principles around you can google lists of principles there are lists with hundreds on there there are lists that have 12 basic ones you know that are like basic ones but for me it started off with some basic things you know and and i’ve learned that that was the process of recovery in the first couple of steps i learned about two or three of these spiritual principles and i started learning how to apply them in those areas and then as my recovery grows i learn how to apply those principles in a deeper more meaningful way um but there are some basic ones you know there’s like a list of like 10 or 12 that are that are pretty basic that if everybody just tried them a little bit we’d be in so much of a better place yeah so hit us up with your definitions of spirituality or spiritualness which i just keep [ _ ] making up and saying anyway and and tell us about how what this all means to you and uh look forward to step eight next week see you
well that was fun
good stuff now he’s calling nice weirdo yeah edit out kook political conversation with janice what’s she oh if it’s okay so she goes dinner with her sisters last night and of course they’re all you know i’d say racist but they’re like the tip they say all the typical like white people things to answers to like black lives matter or any other stuff why can’t all lives matter just the stuff that you’re just like ugh really i’ve read a really cool thing about that the other day but so she’s and you know everybody wants to like now they’re like oh you’re a marxist if you believe in you know which i don’t think most people even understand what marxism is or they even know they just say that because that’s what fox news says all the time like it’s some kind of insult like oh you’re a marxist like and that’s what i want to say to people i’d say what do you think that mean when you say that what do you what do you mean do that you know and well that’s what i told her i said you got to ask them what they mean i said i know some about marxism what i know it to be then there are different applications of some marxist ideology that aren’t necessarily marxism you know what i mean right and and i said most people say that [ _ ] and they don’t really know what it means they don’t really know it’s like an insult they’re calling you that they don’t even know what the insult is right right well i listen to a podcast about what it takes to change people’s minds and in general it’s almost [ _ ] impossible to change people’s minds the thing they found is most effective which isn’t still all that effective but it’s the most effective thing they’ve learned so far is to show people that they really don’t know what they’re talking about nicely not right in a mean way but yeah asking them well and when they prove to themselves that they really don’t know the concepts they’re talking about they’re more liable to be open-minded to learn or even to look you know yeah if you say hey okay so in general you know marxism is is a criticism of the ills of capitalism so do you think there aren’t any ills of capitalism do you think that’s serving our community well do you think that you know that that it’s working out pretty good that we just have some sort of weird unfettered capitalism going on i mean right and you know i don’t necessarily agree with some of the marxist stuff i’m not a marxist i don’t you know whatever but i understand the issues that they’re bringing up
turning people’s labor into like a
commodity that is valued by the market seems pretty uh dangerous yeah and the way it’s worked out over the last whatever 200 years doesn’t seem to be helping the greater good of the society i don’t know i if i was to sit back and look and make a judgment on it it ain’t working out so [ _ ] good right you know we have these tremendous rates of poverty we have this tremendous you know uh condition where our society has now gotten to the place where you [ _ ] can’t even own a home unless you have two working parents you know you can’t have a parent at home that’s able to raise the children and instill these values and then our kids are sent off to [ _ ] school so that the parents can work all day and that’s like the whole thing is [ _ ] up and it’s the industrial machine that’s created that so you know marxism and original originally was a criticism of those problems that are you really a person that believes they aren’t there like and i’m sure there are