Caldwell K. AA Male

**Caldwell K.** (0:02)
Over 40-some years of being in this field, I noticed certain things that I can't explain, and they kind of get my mind to work. And for example, I would notice certain staff people who could walk into a day room with patients acting out, and they walk into that room, and all the patients calm down.
Then I got another staff member who was sent into the same situation, and they don't say a word and all heck breaks loose.
So I'm wondering, what is this all about? You know, what's happening here? I noticed, too, that some clinicians just seem to have better outcomes than others. And a lot of times, they're doing the same types of technique. They just seem to do better statistically. I also am interested in why, for example, people can walk up to you with a problem that they couldn't solve. And when they get in your presence, they solve the problem and say thank you and walk away. Does that ever happen to you? Yeah. Do you know why that happens?
Well, I'm going to try to explain that in a couple of other things to you as best I can. These are just things that fascinate me.
Let me just start with the punchline, if I can, and tell you what I hope to do in a short 50 minutes.
If you look at the ego from a spiritual perspective, and you look at the ego, and it tends to be developed between the ages of 2 and 10
And what happens during that time is we end up with a lot of unconscious programs that guide our life. Actually, they say that by age 14, that 80 to 90 percent of what you do is pretty much predetermined by these old types of unconscious programs. There's programs, for example, like Power and Control. I don't know if you've ever gone to dinner with anyone who has Power and Control issues, but it always seems to go like this.
They ask you, where do you want to go to dinner? Well, they've known where we're going to dinner all day long. And so here I am, I'm trying to guess what the right restaurant is, and I'll start out with seafood. No, I don't feel like that tonight. Greek, well, I had it last week. Italian, you hope you get to the right one. And then finally, you get to the right one. What about barbecue tonight? And she looks at me and says, that's a wonderful idea you had. Like, I had anything to do with it at all, you know? These are, that's just kind of an innocuous example, but what I like to do is to look at these old programs. Actually, if you bring them into conscious awareness, you take the power away from them. And so when we start to look at this, I talk about the development of ego and its unconscious programs, and we say that the ego causes a lot of suffering and misery, and I think the reason for that is that it lives in the past and future, and it's very fear-based. And if you think about it, all of our misery is in the past and future. Your past is where guilt and shame are, your future is where your fear and anxiety is, and it's only in the moment. When you get over here in the right hemisphere, if you're mindful, for example, that we can find some peace and solitude, because in the moment, it's really impossible to have conflict. And so when we talk about spiritual things, as we will, what you actually see is some movement from left hemisphere towards right hemisphere, and at least in 96 percent of the people who are left hemisphere dominant, in other words, they have Wernicke and Broca's area, speech and speech comprehension. And so if you think about that and look at it, the ego being in the past and future is a source of our conflict. So what we do is we get into a spiritual program. And AA, in my mind, I've been in AA for well over 40 years. And it just seems to me that it is as strong a spiritual program as anything else I've looked at, which is contemplative Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a little bit with the Tao. But I tell you what, it's an amazing program. If you look at the first three steps, what you're doing is dealing with control issues. And that's a major power and control is a major deal for the ego. It wants to be in control. It wants to have power. It's always looking out for me. What's best for me? So if we look at this, spiritual programs, any good spiritual program, if you work it with humility, honesty, will deflate the ego. And when the ego is deflated, that which you truly are, I call it the soul or self. You can call it Christ consciousness. If you're a Hindu, you can call it Atman. But it's that part inside of us that divinity is, if you will, there's divinity within us. And so if you look at that, what happens is you don't have to acquire anything spiritually. I have a lot of friends who go to India and all over the place, and I hope they have wonderful vacations, but you can do the same thing in your living room. I mean, as much as anything else, what we're doing is as we deflate the ego, that which we truly are is realized. You know, that true self or what you like to call it, Christ consciousness, God consciousness, starts to come to the front. So, I think the important piece there is that you've already gotten it. You already have it. It's all there. All you have to do is realize it. And of course, that takes a bit of dedication and work. There's nothing easy about it, necessarily. Now, if you look at true self or soul, when it flowers, when it really starts to come into its own, what it does, it changes your worldview. You know, over the years, I've come to realize that it's my worldview that causes me misery and suffering more than anything else, the way you look at the world. And what we'll talk about, at least for a few minutes, is the worldview of the ego is more narcissistic, is more grandiose, if you will. For the worldview, I think, of our soul, of our self, as we start to gain more time in recovery, or we have more time in the spiritual program. It is this piece that really comes to the front. And I think what happens is, the worldview is more a worldview of gratitude. When you look at the world from gratitude, the world is a much different place. You see, to me, spirituality is sort of like climbing a mountain. You know, the higher you get, the more the world looks different, right? The world hadn't changed a bit. No, it's just the way you see it has changed. It will determine whether you have problems or spiritual opportunities. You know, so as we start to look at this and think a little bit more about it, what we start to see then is that shift towards right lateralization. There's been a little bit of research on that. But anecdotally, I feel pretty confident that that's what happens because as a person grows in their spirituality, they spend more time alone. They spend more time in the quiet, the silence, you know, which silence actually is the first language of God, they say. So as we look at something like this and sort of think about all of this, that worldview is really important. And you know, at a certain point, there is what is called a flow.