Hi All!
[TLDR] You do not need to read this email or do anything now. Feel free to just show up Sunday.
I am looking forward to the new workshop's first meeting this Sunday morning. Remember we are meeting at 9am Pacific Time, and the time change is going to take effect at 2am, a few hours before the meeting. If you are in some other time zone, please double-check what your local time is going to be after the time changes in the Pacific Time Zone (Los Angeles local time).
Here is the zoom link to the workshop:
Zoom link for workshopIn case anyone is not already on the mailing list, here is a shortened URL to add yourself to the mailing list. Please let anyone know who is going to attend the workshop to add themselves to this mailing list and to keep an eye out for the emails. We will be meeting once a week, and I am going to use these emails to give direction and try to make sure everything gets communicated.
Link to sign up for Stones 21-22 Mailing List:
https://bit.ly/3bwWLuZThere is no official work that needs to be done before showing up for the first meeting, but I wanted to give you all some information and a chance to be prepared if you like.
First, this is a Big Book workshop. That means having access to a copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is a good idea. You can download a free .PDF version from the AA website.
Free .pdf version of the Big Book:
#^https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/alcoholics-anonymousHere is an editable version of the title page that you can mark up with a tablet:
#^https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xZEzWefH6UrOLePxirinTUOCEOkbRjP5/view?usp=sharingHere is what mine looks like after I marked it up today:
#^https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN4nhaSZ5OZG7T5zQ7deJt_LY7JX7Ihe/view?usp=sharingMany of us mark up the book during the process. If you have access to a new Big Book and/or if you have not marked up a book before, it might be helpful to have a fresh big book to mark up. I am going to mark up a fresh.PDF version with my tablet and S-pen this time myself (I needed to remove the protection from the .PDF to write on top of it, so the link is above, and I will include unlocked versions of the PDFs for each section we are working on if people would like that).
I am going to cover some ideas here that I want to communicate about:
How much time is this workshop going to require?24 hours a day, forever, this is a way of life.
From my viewpoint, the 12 steps are about creating a perspective and a consciousness, which when done effectively will change the way you are thinking about everything, forever. I believe the situations and experiences that will be present while you are working the steps, even in between the sessions of actually meeting or reading or answering questions, is more important than the actual interactions in the process.
For a more practical answer, how much time is going to be expected to devote to this workshop to stay caught up and in the process with us. Mainly, come to the Sunday meetings or watch the recordings which will be available if you can't make the meeting time for some reason. I will be giving assignments of reading and/or writing, and there will be a lot of thinking to be done. I would imagine a few hours a week between the meetings devoted to reading and writing should be enough. Some of you will want to spend much more time, and some of you will have weeks when you spend no time at all on the work.
Some will spend 20+ hours a week focused on this work, and some of you will spend 1 or 2 on a good week, most will be in the middle somewhere. All of these approaches are acceptable to me. Make use of this process in any way you can.
Please do not stop coming to the workshop because you think you are behind.You are not required to be at any place in the work to attend this workshop, or any meeting. Feel free to show up wherever you are, feel free to catch up if you get behind, feel free to keep showing up while you are behind, feel free to keep showing up and never catch up. We are trying to live a life based on spiritual principles, you cannot be behind. You are wherever you are, and the challenges you are facing are yours. Please show up and participate in whatever way you can manage and feels useful to you. You can never be behind. Half measures avail us nothing, but a full measure of yourself might not be as much as you expect it to be on any given day, and please feel free to show up however you are, with whatever you can manage, and whatever you are dealing with.
Optional ResourcesRecordingsWe did a workshop at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 almost 2 years ago. The first meeting was 3/27/20, the last meeting was 7/10/20. We met three times a week, for 15 weeks, almost 3 and a half months. All the meetings were recorded, and the instructions were posted on the stones website
https://redmatrix.us/channel/stones. Those recordings are available and people are using them to go through the steps at their own pace. Feel free to listen to these recordings if you want to, I would however warn you that watching 3 of those recordings a week is 4.5 hours of time a week. I would prefer that you spend those 5 hours actually doing the assignments and considering what we are talking about instead of listening to recordings. If you want to, and it works out to listen to the recordings, go ahead, but this is in no way required to be part of this workshop.
Mon Wed Fri Stones Group MeetingsA group formed at the end of the 2020 workshop, and continues to meet 3 times a week Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5pm Pacific Time. The link for these meetings is the same as the workshop meeting above. Please feel free to attend these meetings, many of the members of that group are in this new workshop, and all of them are excited and interested in answering questions and being helpful to people who are going through the workshop for the first time. If you have time, and it works out, please feel free to attend some or all of these meetings. You are welcome to attend and participate, this is a great place to ask questions and get support. Attendance at these meetings is not required to be part of the workshop, and again if you have to pick between time to work on the assignments from the workshop or go to these meetings, I would suggest choosing to do the assignments, but do what feels right. If you are having problems with the work or having difficult experiences etc., the people in this group would love to hear from you and be helpful.