Episode 335 - Michael John Cusick & Ian Morgan Cron, "The 12 Steps for Everyone"

Welcome to another episode of the Restoring the Soul podcast with your host, Michael John Cusick. Today, we have the pleasure of diving into a profound and transformative conversation with Ian Morgan Cron. Ian is not just a friend to Michael but a celebrated author of books like "The Road Back to You," and his deeply impactful spiritual memoir, "Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me," as well as his novel "Chasing Francis."

In this episode, we take a close look at Ian’s latest book, "The Fix: How the 12 Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down and Out, and Everyone in Between." Ian shares candidly about his own journey through addiction and recovery, emphasizing how the 12 steps can profoundly impact anyone's life, not just those battling addiction.

Even if you consider yourself "well-adjusted" or far from the grip of addiction, this conversation will challenge you to rethink what it means to truly live a life of transformation and spiritual awakening. Michael and Ian explore how all of us, in some way or another, have compulsive relationships with behaviors, substances, or people that affect our lives negatively. They delve into the essence of the 12 steps, their application beyond mere addiction recovery, and how they serve as a robust spiritual framework aligning us with God and our authentic selves.

Ian's vulnerability stands out as he shares personal stories, including a relapse in 2020 that led to a renewed understanding and deeper application of these steps. Together, Michael and Ian discuss the importance of community, admitting powerlessness, the role of the ego, and the journey toward a spiritual awakening.

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Transcript

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Restoring the Soul podcast. I'm Michael and I am back with my perennial favorite because he's a lifelong friend, Ian Morgan Cron. Hi, Ian. Hey, Michael. How you doing? So excited to be talking with you. We've talked a number of times this week, but the podcast conversation hasn't come up. So I'm thrilled for where this will go. Your book is called the Fix and. And I'm going to have to actually read the subtitle because it's a long subtitle, but it's a good one. The fix how the 12 steps offer a surprising path of transformation for the well adjusted, the down and out, and everyone in between. What I want to start with is. On the surface, this looks like a big shift for you from writing about the Enneagram and your spiritual memoir, Jesus, My Father, CIA and Me, and your novel Chasing Francis. This feels like a big shift on the surface, but as readers get into it, I think they're going to say, oh, this actually feels like an extension and a deepening of your previous writing. So talk about why the fix and why now. Yeah, well, when I look over my writing career and also over my professional career, I'd say that my overall mission is to introduce people to ideas and experiences that deepen and improve their lives. Right. And that could be the Enneagram, that could be the life of St. Francis. And now along comes this design for living that has profoundly affected my life. And when something like that happens, I eventually get like a lump in my throat and I'm like, oh, I actually need to share this with people because if it deepens and improves their lives the way it has mine, then it will be well worth the effort. So I'm glad you see it as an extension because it's just, I think, part of a portfolio of writing that has all had the same intention, which is to help people enter into a deeper conversation with their lives and improve them. Yeah. So it helps you. So you bought the product and it changed your life and so you want to share it with everybody. Yeah. Well, that's what happened with the Enneagram too. Right? Right. So along those lines, in the very first chapter, it's the introductory chapter, you say this book is about much more than finding recovery from addictions. It's a deeper exploration into the. And you put this in caps. The big ache that fuels addictions and other self defeating behaviors and how we can fix it. How we can't fix it, at least not by ourselves. But this exploration will be teeming with hope. Because the solution to what ails us is always within reach and has been hidden in plain sight all along. I think it's important to start there in this conversation because you do such a good job. As the subtitle implies, that the 12 steps in this Design for Living, as the big book calls it is, is really for everyone. And it's easy for people maybe at the start of this podcast to kind of tune out subtly or by hitting stop by thinking, okay, I'm not an addict, but everybody's an addict. Unpack that. Yeah, So, I mean, listen, let's just, let's define an addiction. And I think you and I share a common definition, right? That an addiction is a compulsive, unhealthy relationship with a person, a behavior or a substance that has mood altering effects and negative consequences. Now, I don't know anybody who doesn't have a relationship with some person, behavior or substance with mood altering effect and negative consequences, right? I mean, human beings are wired for addiction, right? We are neurologically vulnerable for addiction. And if you don't have an addiction, you're just one click away from it, trust me. Right? Like, it's just. It's just how it goes, right? Spiritually speaking, I think we're also set up for it, right? We are people that seek comfort and pleasure, and we are averse to pain and distress. And so we find workarounds to make our lives more tolerable apart from God. God's involvement in our lives and whether that can take the form of drugs, alcohol, porn, people pleasing workaholism, you name it. I mean, there's a catalog of addictions that is too long to enumerate, right? So I think that this book is for everyone because the 12 steps go beyond just a, you know, here's a set of instructions for stopping your addictive behaviors. That's just the beginning. It's really about a whole lifestyle of living in a posture of God reliance. Versus self reliance, which for anyone that has been around Christian churches or around religion, one would think that that statement about God reliance and deepening the spiritual life would be something that we would want. And yet you can't get through the 12 steps very far. You can't get to step number two without the admission of powerlessness. And in the religious tradition that you and I share, a lot of the movement into that life of religion or faith was admitting your badness, admitting your sinfulness. And then by that confession, somehow God accepted you. And that's a little bit different. Shift in the 12 steps. It's about powerlessness and our inability to rescue ourselves. So talk a little bit about that. Yeah, well, I mean, listen, if there's one thing we can say about the 12 steps, it's that it's not a self help program. Right. Like, if yourself could have helped yourself by now, wouldn't yourself have already done it? Like, it just doesn't make any sense. So, I mean, powerlessness, the admission of powerlessness in the face of our brokenness is the. The beginning of the great adventure. Right. Some people arrive there beaten up and bedraggled. Other people get there incrementally or slowly, more quickly. But what happens when we admit that we're powerless is suddenly and paradoxically we're infused with a kind of power that we didn't know was available to us until we gave up. Right. So giving up. Right. We oftentimes say in 12 step programs, as you know. Right. Like steps one to three can be stated as step one, I can't. Step two, God can. Step three, I think I'll let him. Now, that just sounds like the gospel to me. Yeah, yeah. And we want to nail it down with chapters and verses and certainty. And part of the surrender to our. And admitting our powerlessness is actually kind of opening ourselves to mystery, that there's not just a linear. You know, the interesting thing about the steps, as I've worked them over the years and been involved in recovery, is that they're called steps and they're practical and they're concrete, and yet it's a very mysterious process of something that actually happens to us instead of something that we do. I want to back up, and I don't say this to flatter you. You know, our relationship is beyond flattering. I just, I just love this about you, that you have this wonderful gift of writing and this way with words that I think is really rare. And one of the things you do throughout the book, but especially in the beginning, is you just name things for people. And as you have seen, you communicate in small groups and large groups and, you know, church settings, you name things for people in such a way where people go, yeah, yeah, that's my experience. And you wrote these three brief sentences that I just want to say repeat and then just let you comment on them as it relates to your own story. Because there's something very different about this book, even though I said there's a thread from the others, and that is that you are way more vulnerable and personal to the point of, should I really do this? And so the words are, you Said most of us are uncomfortable in our own skin, in the world around us, and we're troubled by a sense of incompleteness. And that's been your story that you put words to. So tell me about why you would share your story in this kind of a way. Yeah. Just to be frank, right. I opened the book by talking about a relapse that I had in 2020 that sent me to treatment. And that was in many ways the catalyst for writing this book. And, you know, I think there's a universal experience which is all of us feel like fractions, yearning to become whole numbers. You know what I mean? Like, there is a sense of incompleteness, a sense of lack of wholeness, and we yearn for it just in our bowels. I mean, it's just. It's deep inside of us. And that kind of dis ease or existential unrest, right. In quietude just follows human beings. It's just our baseline. And that's one of the reasons we go looking for fixes, right? We go looking for things to numb the ache, the big ache, the feeling that something's missing, that something is awry inside. And so much of addiction recovery and actually all of spirituality is about, what am I going to do with this emptiness? What am I going to do with this existential dis ease that simmers inside? And, you know, so recovery is about learning how to live life on life's terms, to live life with that ever present sense. And now, I don't want to make this sound glum. It's not really. It's just reality. Right. And because reality wins 100% of the time, I got to figure out how to dance with it in a better way than I have before. Yeah. So thank you again for responding to that. But even the phrase we all feel like fractions and we long to become whole, that is just so, so descriptive. And as soon as you said that, I was like, yeah, yeah, that's it. So you're saying with this universal idea that not only we're all addicts, but we all have this existential longing, this emptiness where we're a fraction and not whole, and we all do something in an attempt to become whole that's actually counterproductive, that backfires, that comes to enslave us and get a hold of us, which is what the addiction aspect is. Say a little bit about, just in terms of your personal story, how that began to happen to you in 2020 and before, as opposed to the sobriety that you had, you know, two or three decades ago because you make a statement in the book saying that. That sobriety and the recovery work you did. I think you said it this way, that you didn't really get the 12 steps. There was something about it that didn't sink in to the place where it has this time, relative to before. Yeah, I mean, I think the first time around, I'd say I was auditing the class. I didn't really sign up for credit. You know what I mean? And I don't think I consciously did that. I wasn't ducking anything. It was. I think it actually was part and parcel of some of the problems that got me into the rooms in the first place, which is. I just didn't quite feel like I belonged. And I. You know, I sit in rooms and I hear the steps, and I learned a lot about 12 step. I read a lot about it. I studied it. I. But. But in terms of really living the program, I just. I just. I don't think I was. I just didn't. You know, I could give lectures on it, but I just wasn't living it. Second time around, they took on a new color and vibrancy in. In my life. And maybe, you know, it's like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Right. I suddenly was ready to go. Oh, now I get it. And so I don't. I don't know. I kind of see. I kind of see that relapse is a really great gift, you know, a really beautiful gift. And it takes a minute to see it that way. Yeah, but. But. But I do now. I see it as being like a. I don't see it as being some sort of, like, catastrophic failure on my part. I think that's ridiculous. That's actually my ego talking. If that's. If that's what's going on. I see it more as a moment in time when God invited me into a deeper place of intimacy with him. And this was the mechanism through which it happened. That is a pretty radical but resonant way of thinking about this because it's filled with compassion. And the sensibility of that is like, yeah, that's the kind of God that I want to be attached to versus that, you know, you screwed up, or that any one of our relapses or, you know, back. Back step or something like that is somehow offending God or he's deeply disappointed with us. When you're actually able to say that it's a gift. I want to just sit with that for a minute. So can I just say one thing about that? Yeah. Yeah, so it's very curious to me. Like, you know, I've had. There's been a number of people who have read the manuscript, and the only people who sometimes give me just a kind of hint of shame or, you know, you know, you should. Oh, that's, that's really not good. You know, whatever are Christians. And I'm like, wait a second now, hold on a second. Are we reading the same book? Are we reading the same Bible? Like, why would any of this surprise us that we make mistakes that. And that we're learning on the journey of life? Right. I was just thinking, I was listening this morning to Prince's song Let's Go Crazy, you know, and I love the opening line. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. And I'm like, you know, like, I don't know why this should be a surprise, right? To people that people, you know, have missteps and misadventures on the spiritual journey. And I'm. I'm not exempt from them. And what's so funny is, is the people that are the most compassionate, accepting, caring, gracious, excited, thrilled, encouraging. They're people in the basements of churches. They're not upstairs, they're downstairs in the basement where they have 12 step meetings together. It's just, you know, it just, again, this isn't a universal experience. Not every Christian has been this way, but a couple have been like a little bit like finger waggy. And I'm like, oh, isn't that interesting? The very people who should be most gracious and kind and excited to hear what you learned are the ones who place barriers between me and grace. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to co sign that crap. That's so good. So you talked about the church basements and you know, that is a metaphor, but it's also where so many 12 step meetings take place. Two of the ones that I've been a part of in recent years are in church basements. But you write in the book how Bill Wilson, the co founder of AA, the original 12 step group, said that the 12 steps are as applicable to the people up in the church sanctuary as the people in the basement. And that's kind of what we're talking about, right? And that's part about that. This book is for the well adjusted, the down and out, and everyone in between. The well adjusted may be the people that are the ones wagging the finger at you. Right. The quote, unquote, well adjusted. Right. So as a seminary graduate and as somebody that speaks to churches and organizations with lots of Christian and religious people, what's your hope for that well adjusted person who may or may not be a finger wagger but really feels like life is working pretty well for me or somehow like I would never darken those steps to go down into the basement. That's not for me. What would your hope be for them if they have this book and they've not yet picked it up yet? Yeah. I think my hope would be that they would recognize that the 12 steps offer them a program for living that they previously didn't have and that they can derive the same benefits from the Steps in terms of living a life of purposefulness, usefulness, of intimacy with God greater than they've ever had before, that the people downstairs in the basement experience on a pretty regular basis. Right. I'm not, I don't want to romanticize and, you know, lionize everyone in the basement that they're the most amazing, they're all saints because some of them are jerks too. Right. So, I mean, but they're, but at least they're jerks on a path. Right. Trying to be less jerk. That's been my experience. Right. 99% of the time. And, but, but also, maybe to also get in touch that demographic might get in touch with the unmanageability and the really the direness of their situation, that they may be out of touch with that, that, that they too have maybe living with a level of quiet desperation that they've just been in so long that they don't even know they're there. Right. And that they recognize the Steps as a solution to that problem. I was having breakfast yesterday and I shared this with you yesterday, actually with a man that we both know from the men's intensive weekend that we do. He's one of the volunteer staff guys and he was sharing about how he's in a space in his life where the organization that he's worked for for a while in his own personal journey, that they seem farther and farther apart. Like it's hard for him to feel like he belongs there. And not relationally speaking, but more kind of the DNA. And you wrote that my old version of Christianity had failed me. And you came to see that your conception of God was terribly confused and distorted. And that's again written by a guy with a Master of Divinity and a whole bunch of doctoral classes at one of the top universities and a writer of five books. What was distorted and confused or unhealthy about your understanding of God and Not like doctrinally what the beliefs that you had, but like the inner, the inner, you know, experience and core there. Yeah. You know, as we all know, right. So often the conception, the mental conception that we have of God is deeply formed by the relationship we have with our caretakers in early childhood. Right. And, you know, I grew up in a really alcoholic, drug addicted home and it was very chaotic and my parents were, you know, mentally ill and deeply distressed and distracted by their own problems, which made parenting very, very spotty and difficult at best. And I think the feeling I came to realize that I have is that God always saw me as a pest. You know what I mean? Like, God always saw me as being like, oh, gosh, here he is again, you know what I mean? Like, because that's how my parents responded to me as a kid growing up, you know, it's like, it's like he's got another problem, you know, it's like, boy, we don't have time for more problems. We got enough problems as it is. Right. And it's, it's. And I think that was just one facet of the distorted conception that I had about who God is and how God sees me. And, you know, it takes a while to rinse that stuff out of the system, you know, and to begin to realize that God doesn't see me as a pest, which was the experience I had with my parents, you know, And I think it doesn't matter how many degrees you have or years you have or anything else, we're always having to be in the process of updating our operating systems, understanding of God, you know, and I think that's just part of the adventure. You know, it's always like, oh, there's a dimension of God's character I just didn't see before. And because, you know, this is a program about spiritual awakening and awakening doesn't happen instantaneously. Right. It often happens over a long period of time. That's been my experience anyway. Yeah. So I want to ask you a question as a friend and then I'd like you to Respond as a 12 step member and a therapist, you know, priest, pastor, through the decades that we've known each other, you know, from the very first time we met when you came to school here in Denver, we actually met prior to that and I knew of you through young life. We instantly connected over personal growth and spiritual growth and depth. And we went to lunch the first time back in 1990, early 90s, and you know, we had this deep conversation about the Brothers Karamazov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and how it stirred our hearts and, and what were the implications of that for life and relationships? And, you know, you've gone to conferences and I've gone to conferences and we've been in therapy and we've shared all of that struggle in life together. And then 2020 comes and you go to treatment. And I have had conversations with so many people over the last couple of weeks, just in particular, who I've had the privilege of working with for 3, 4, 5 years in different capacities. And they're like, I can't believe I'm still here. I can't believe I'm still struggling with this. Or they'll reach out to me with a text message and prayer request or say, will you call me back? And this happened again. And they're just beating themselves up. And I guess my question to you is, why does it take so very long for change to happen? I heard you say that our degrees and our intelligence and the amount of work we do doesn't determine it. But it seemed like there was this catalyst that something happened where in the four years since you went to treatment, I think my observation has been that, that you have grown profoundly and deeply through this particular kind of work that feels like it's built on top of everything else. So I guess, I guess as a friend I want to say, what would you say to my friends that are beating themselves up so badly and wondering why they're still not any different? Yeah, you know, sometimes I'll have like a sponsor or someone come to me and they'll be like, oh man, I'm the worst of all sinners. And I'm like, don't flatter yourself. Not to mention the fact that sometimes the worst of all sinners, you know, the St. Augustine's of the world and others, usually have such a profound experience of grace as a result of their missteps and misadventures that they end up becoming our greatest saints. You know, So, I mean, it's like, I don't know, like, it seems to me that what we tend to think is that growth and transformation in the spiritual life should happen on a, on a straight line graph. But the truth of the matter is it's a squiggly graph and you just have to watch the direct, the trend. Right. Am I trending upward or am I trending downward? Right. And along the way you're gonna have ups and downs, but you gotta just keep looking at the, at the overall trajectory of the, of the, of the graph. Right. And you Know, it's. I sort of liken my spiritual life sometimes to the stock market, right? It's like, you know, it has updates, it has down days, but just watch the trend line. Where is it going over a long period of time? Not where is it going over the course of two days? And people tend to get too microscopic and self evaluation, right? They get like, okay, at this moment, I can't believe I'm doing this again. It's like, well, pull back on the lens and step back and look at the overall trend line and make whatever evaluations or judgments you want to make on that basis. And not only that, but, you know, Mike, I sometimes wonder who am I even to come up to have the audacity to say, to accurately, you know, self analyze my growth, you know, like, I don't even know if I'm, you know, qualified to do that. So I don't know. I guess what I would say to those folks is it's going to take a minute. It's just going to take a minute. Everything takes infinitely longer than you thought it was going to at the beginning of the adventure, right? Every time, yeah, I think about the Lord of the Rings, you know, and they're trying to get to Mordor or whatever it is with the Ring, you know, and every time they turn around, there's another mountain to climb, there's another hill, there's another group of, you know, orcs with daggers waiting. You know, it's like, yeah, well, that's just how it is. Yeah. Yeah. And two things strike me in this conversation. One is that how, you know, even as I asked you to speak to them, the beauty of the 12 steps is that it's not just steps that you read about in a book, and hopefully people will read it in your book, but that it's highly relational, that the key ingredient, the secret sauce, if you will, is that 12 step groups have really nailed the idea of community. That, you know, you can pick up the phone and call a group member, a sponsor, a fellow in the program and say, here's what I'm struggling with, or here's what I want to do, or here's what I just did do, and you're going to get compassion and acceptance and like, yeah, me too, kind of thing. And you offered that in your response. The other thing is that that struggle, at least within myself about, you know, why am I still here? Why did I screw up? It's about the ego. And you make a profound statement toward the end of the book where you say that whenever we're thinking about ourselves, that that's the ego. And that we get to a place where when we begin to accept the fact that this ego is there and always looking out for our own self interest, that our ego actually becomes our friend. Completely counterintuitive. So talk about that. Well, I mean, look, you know, the ego isn't bad per se. It just needs our help. It just needs good leadership. It just needs our help. Right? The ego is that narcissistic, crazy little voice in your head that is, you know, wants you to believe that you're God, that you're in charge and that you have the answers, that you're in control, that your life is manageable. And it's like, you know, always whispering in your ear, like, it's okay, baby, we got this, right? And it's like. And then proceeds to make a mess out of your life, right? And that small self, that ego self, it's just an insecure, lost, frightened part of us that wants to take the reins from God and from, you know, from life. And, you know, we just have to learn to spot when that impish little creature has taken the wheel of the bus again, you know, and that has to happen multiple times throughout the day. You know, like, I'll give you an example. Someone asked me, how do you know when your ego is in control? Someone said this to me once. I said, I'm easily offended. Like, I'll go into a store and someone will say something in a snippy voice. I'll be like, I beg your pardon? You know what I mean? And then I'm like, oh, look who's here. The ego, that little part of me that just, you know. Yeah. So when I'm easily offended, when I become frustrated because my day didn't go precisely as I planned, you know what I mean? And I become frustrated. It's like, oh, there it is. There's my ego again. And at those moments I have steps, right, that I can take to not kill the ego or destroy the ego, but really more to, right, size it, you know, like to be able to look at it and go, oh, hello. And I see that you think that life should cooperate with all of your wonderful plans. And it's not going to do that today. And so we're just going to like, get. We're going to reduce the swelling here on our ego and learn to roll with what life is throwing at us with them and do so with emotional balance. That's just what the steps do. They kind of give us these tools on many, many Many, many levels to be able to just navigate our inner and outer worlds in much more wise and loving ways. Ian, which of the steps has been the most difficult for you? And I'm guessing that you'd probably start with the first step of admitting you're powerless and that your life became unmanageable. Well, that actually came pretty easy this time around. But, you know, but unmanageability is a tough one for some people. Like. Like, because they look at their lives and they think, well, I mean, I've got two cars in the garage. I got a nice house. I've got a retirement account. I'm, you know, I'm kind of crushing it at work or, you know, I got my health. I haven't gotten divorced. I haven't. You know, they just come up with a list of reasons their life is managed but manage. You know, unmanageability can take many, many forms, right? Like, I tell people all the time, like, okay, so you didn't lose all your stuff, but how's your emotional life? Is your, Are your emotions unmanageable? Like, you know, is your anxiety unmanageable? Is your depression unmanageable? Is your rage and anger outbursts unmanageable? How about maybe, maybe you don't like the word unmanageable. Let's try the word intolerable. Is your life intolerable right now? You know, it's like, there's just a lot of ways to play with unmanageability to get people to see it, you know, I don't know. Hard steps for me. Well, I mean, I think, you know, there's no question, and this is hard for everybody, I think, is 8 and 9 made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all as step eight. And then step nine is made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. And in the book, you know, I say, look, I, I, you know, I've made. I made a list of all the people that I had harmed, not just in my active addiction, but ever, right? That's what the steps do. The steps don't just say when you were using or drinking or overeating or whatever your thing is, right? Like, it's like, just write down the names of everybody you've ever. You've ever harmed, right? And then become willing to make amends to them all. Well, part of what makes that difficult is I got a couple of people and I have a separate list that I call hell no, I'm never forgiving that schmuck list. You know what I mean? Like, like I am never gonna go make amends to that person because that person hurt me infinitely more than I ever hurt them. Right. Like, like your, your pride. And who, who's that by the way? Oh, there's the ego again. There's the ego going into self protection mode, you know, taking the moral high ground, making judgments about who hurt who worse. You. And it's like that's a hard. So I do have a couple of people left on my list, you know, that I'm. And I talk about this in the book. Like how do you deal with those types of people in your life? What kinds of practices can you begin to engage to try and soften and warm your heart toward people that you feel hurt you more than you hurt in the past? But it's so important, Mike, So to think of it this way, the way I break down the steps is you have. The first three steps are about repairing your relationship with God or clarifying or you know, re engaging or whatever the word is you want to use. Then four through seven are really about repairing your relationship with yourself. And then 8 and 9 about repairing relationships with others. And then 10 through 12 is how do I cultivate a lifestyle that promotes and supports health in each of those domains of my life going forward? Right. So it's a simple program, it's not easy, but it's pretty simple. Right. And you know, if you can work on each of those domains discreetly and then together and do so on an ongoing basis, you're going to have something that's going to turn out to look like a gospel life. That's pretty exciting, right? To have a plan. Okay, I got a plan. Here's the plan. I'm going to organize my life around living these steps and in so doing, I'm going to live a surrendered, compassionate, self aware life and I'm going to move through the world with a lot less friction and being more of an addition than a subtraction to people's experience around me. Say that again if you can. The whole thing. I'm going to live a surrendered life and move through the world this way. Because those are such compelling words that I think the person that's listening to this that's gone to church the longest and read the most self help books, they're going, I want that. And most people haven't found that until they encounter this or some other kind of spiritual path out of the ashes. Yeah, I mean, look, this is about integration. This is about, okay, so your typical person in a church pew or whatever their spiritual orientation is wherever they go, you know, like if you were to turn to them and say, what's your plan for spiritual transformation? They would go, well, they would come up with a vague description of things they do, right? I go to church, I got a small group and I read my Bible and I pray, you know, it's like, okay, great. And those are all good things. I don't want to put it down. No shame. But you don't have a plan. Like you're just vaguely swimming around doing a couple of things, but you don't have a plan. And one of the things I love about the 12 steps is that they provide us with a roadmap, right? Like, here's a plan. I'm not saying it's the plan. I'm not saying it's the only plan. All I'm saying is, guess what? Here's a time tested, evidence based plan that has literally saved the lives of tens of millions of people, maybe more. And what they have derived from this, you can too. And you can have a plan that you can get to work on and begin to realize a level of spiritual awakening and intimacy with God that you didn't know existed before. I can personally relate to the fact that like you, I have been a religious professional. And until I had an encounter with the 12 steps more recently than I would have liked to admit, I don't think I had that kind of spiritual awakening. I wouldn't have used that language. I would say spiritual conversion many years ago. I would say that I've experienced significant moments of transformation, but I wouldn't say spiritual awakening. And that was something that I don't even think I knew I needed. And you're saying that can be the end result in the process? Yeah. Well, actually, Mike, Bill Wilson, the guy who wrote the 12 steps, actually says that the whole point, bottom line, no editorial. The bottom line is the 12 steps are designed to facilitate a spiritual awakening of sufficient force that it renders our need for numbing substances. You know, substances, behaviors, relationships unnecessary. Right? And suddenly we are no longer egocentric as a result of working those steps. We become theo centric. God centric, right. And when you do that, then suddenly your, your need to have other ways of coping with life, that need is expelled, right? And suddenly you find yourself living on a spiritual versus an ego basis. This is just gospel, right? This is like people say to me all the time, I don't know about the 12 steps because maybe it's not like a Christian. I'm like, are you out of your mind? This is just the gospel in 12 steps. That's all this is. It's completely continuous. It just is devoid of all the gilded theological language we tend to throw around. It's just very, very basic. It's like, here it is, right? Get right with God, get right with yourself, get right with other people, and then keep it up. Start over, right? Just keep doing that, right? And it's like, oh, that sounds like Jesus to me. Wow, this is. This is so good. I know you have a little bit of time, but. So I want to transition toward talking about steps 10 and 11. Step four is that we made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves. So we basically take account. We list what the 12 steps call character defects. Or as you talked about in the book, you'd like to refer to them as character defenses. Because sometimes people coming in with such shame, the idea of character defects, they're not able to almost tolerate that yet. But step 10 then takes that idea of taking inventory, and it says that we continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. And. And that feeds right into step 11, which I'd really like. This is what I'd like us to kind of end on here as we land the plane of this conversation. Step 11 sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out. What does that look like for you? On a daily, weekly basis, this idea of continuing to take inventory and then to develop conscious contact with God? Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting, right? Like, when we talk about having a spiritual awakening, some people tend to think, oh, well, I'm waiting for the moment. Right. Actually, I think what the steps do is set us up for serial spiritual awakenings, right? Some that are quite dramatic and others that are just sort of the daily little surprises, Right? Because, you know, Anthony D'Mello, the Jesuit teacher, he once said that spirituality is waking up. That is how he defines spirituality. It's about waking up. And so our participation in that is engaging in practices that will improve and awaken us to the immediacy of God's presence in and around us, Right. And to then align ourselves with whatever it is that God is up to in any given moment. Right. And to cooperate with it, to be with it, to be used as an instrument in the midst of it. Right. So for me, you know, I just do what I'm told, you Know, by my sponsor and by teachers in the past, man. My day begins with prayer and meditation. It begins with journaling. It begins with, you know, there's a. Interestingly, the first thing that comes to my mind every morning. And I'm not saying this. This is just out of force of habit, right? But. But the first thing I think of in the morning are two prayers that I say in bed before I put my feet on the ground, right? The first one is, open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Give me the joy of your help again and sustain me with your bountiful spirit. That's the first prayer. Second prayer is from the third step in the Big Book of aa. It's, God, I offer myself to thee, to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. I mean, these are just the immediate things that I do first thing in the morning, right? Like to make sure that I get up and that my footing is right because, you know, life presents us with adversity and difficulties, and I have to set myself up for the highest probability of success from the moment I open my eyes to the moment I go to sleep at night, right? And so there are practices that I do, but I'm always thinking, I hope, you know, how do I keep coming back to the presence of God in this moment and what he's up to, and how do I join Him? That is a good place to end. Although I wish that we could have another five of these conversations to release to our listeners. I'm so, so thankful for the hard work that you put in with writing this book. I'm so thankful for your personal disclosure and vulnerability, and I'm trusting and hoping that this message gets out to so many people. So thank you, Ian, and we'll talk again soon. Thanks, Michael.