Character Defects and Amends – D. and Chris S. – Big Book Workshop – Austin, TX – Part 5 of 10 – Bob D,Tom I

We come in and most of the time, a lot of times we need to overhaul it. So this is a very, very powerful, powerful process. It sets us up to be more successful. It's being more compatible with people. And it's a do-over. See, we didn't make some do-overs. My parish was blowing up about two years ago. You know, I was married to someone for many, many years in A&A. And it had gone more and more sour over the years. And it just got to the point where there was really, you know, I wasn't able to meet the needs of my wife. Things were going in the opposite direction. There was, you Know, love was pretty much disappearing from this relationship. And it got to the point where, you know, I moved out and started to become violent. And there's only a couple of times where I will advise somebody to leave a relationship because I'm not an arbiter. You know, I would rather somebody stick in there and practice every possible principle they can until that's worn out. And it became violent and I really needed to leave. I think there was some emotional sadness that was happening because of this particular relationship and I moved out. And you know, I'm thinking, you know what? I'm staying single for a while. You know what I mean? I really need to work on some stuff. And the miracle of Facebook happened to me. Everybody in here on Facebook, oh, my God. I want to go back 30, 40 years. I left this film, Andrea, who I'm incredibly excited to. There was an issue that was in the 60s, and I don't know if it's 80s. And in fact, in those days, he and I had some moral lines that we would cause. But I was very attracted to her. We were very, very interested in her. The last time I was with her, I was actually at a bar in the town of Pennsylvania sucking fishes and beer. And if you're new or just coming back and you're a pitcher of beer sucker, that's an important warning sucker for our brothers and sisters. And, you know, that used to drag away, you know, across the social media. And what happened was, you know, when I was over-served at midnight and she came there with me and she saw I was wavy trunks and she blew me off and said, all right, hold on a second, why crash the car that night? You know, my eyes just spun around on some ice He didn't raise the button to go backwards in his car. And he got thrown out the back window. So I come to him looking up at the sky and starts my laser still in the car. And I'm looking in the back of the car, and I'm thinking, oh, you know, look, the car is still running, so what do you think I do? Well, you go home. What are you going to do? This is what I'm going to have. I'm trying to go home, but I don't know how much it is. The car has three flat tires, there's no window left in it. The trash can is slamming the brain, it's the middle of nowhere, and I start running home. And I'm being humbled about three miles an hour down the road. Come on, why are you holding me? Why are you... As I drive by, you're out, and then you land on me. I'm going to ask you a question. I don't know what else he does. He pulls me over, he walks me over. That's funny. He grabs me. I don' t want to start saying anything weird. You know what I mean? So it was a city officer and I was like, last slide if anybody there. Shots were always happening. So, he goes, where are you going? And I go, yes, sir. He goes, it's 30 miles. You know how many miles? You know, it goes, 20 miles. That was my first DUI. Now, I don't see this girl since that day. And, you know, she pointed me at the window and said, you were fun, but you're so much fun is the way she described it to me. So I thought that you were on Facebook. And, uh, and, you Know, we got together for coffee. And, You know, it moves on from there. And we've been inseparable. And, um, you're over the last year together. And, you know, we got married about four or five months ago. And I've got to tell you, this is a two-over of all two-overs. But I have to tell y'all, I'm operating on completely different principles now. I suppose I've participated in this recovery process enough that God has been able to remove and unblock me and allowed me to outgrow a lot of the problems that I've had in future relationships. And this is the first time in my life I can really honestly say, I put her welfare ahead of my own. And I'm operating from the sense ideal that asking people who don't live with these things is false and you should do it for your future. And that's all the same stuff. at work and in the community, it's a unique experience for me. I never thought it was going to be as important as it is today in this time that we're facing. It's a risk to us all, but on the top of that, we have a little bit of a chance to get through this. And I think that's another way that we can do something. One of the things that I've really I just found that there's always that kind of difference you have between the three of them, but it's more of a one-on-one approach. One is the last model and one is the next one. Yes. Thanks. Thanks so much. Thank you. Good work. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's been fantastic to talk with you today. I'm sorry, especially in this period where we've just heard from some of these podcasts before the program came into existence, it was a tough question to ask. And so I did most of what it takes to hear. What do you think about doing a trial with a child that's invested in education? I think since we've known students who are positive, supportive, and just want them to be happy, even if they're not good, I think they are successful. It's hard to come up with a good piece of art that would make the world more important than the things that are most significant, more or less. It's a lot. It's not a lot, but it is a lot in and of itself. And I know that you hear me say this. The movement through this place has been on my mind for quite a few years now. I hope you can understand. Even though I have to go through all these different stories, But all of the stuff that we've talked about here, for example, is text-based and it's not all text- based. And so I think it's really important for us to be able to do this in a very specific way. However, if anybody has any questions, please let me know in the comments section. If you have anything you want to say to people who might be interested, if you're interested in people with a color that should work for them, I'm going to go ahead and talk to you about some of the things that are part of this project. So, it's up to you to tell us how you do it. It's really important to know what state you're in. You want to know where you're from. You have to know who you're talking to. You've got to know your peers. You've gotta know your constituents. Because if you don't know who they are, you're not going to know them. I think it's important to see that. I've had experience with more than 1,000 calls for four days a week. And the reason that happens is it's not just because you have a doctor. You don't just have two or three doctors who have seen that in your life. You know, it's hard. And it's also very hard for people They have no fear for the future, or not to fear, but yet there's a lot of hope that they're going to get what they want. It's not just about the future. It's more than anything. We've got 25 years in all of this, and we still haven't seen it. Why do we have all of these? Because, as I said before, it is easy and long to do. We have lost 50 years in the news, but it's not that long. It's 4,006 years. It's more than that. That's what they're saying. They're saying, you know, it's a perfect year. You know, it's kind of 85 years. It's a good year. It's going to be excellent. And if you notice, is now that very little has come to bear on me, there's no reason I need to be up here for a few more minutes if it's not going to be able to get to that point in time. It's a fair deal for the first thing I want to take this country to the ground and really try our best to stop all of this I was told that I had to go home, and I was willing to do it. But I thought, what's the point? What is the point of doing this? What's the purpose of doing something like this? I started thinking more and more, how do we all have a better relationship with each other in this moment? I'm more of a human being than I am myself. The next four and a couple years, I've been exposed to the Joe and Charlie thing. So I understood a little bit more about how the two and how all this is not us or Seth. And then I was going up to my sponsor's house. And again, this was an area that didn't have a lot of experience with the big book. And he goes, what are all those columns? Where's your sword? And I'm like, you know, just bear with me. You know, bear with you a little bit. Let me do this. I've learned from some tapes. You know what? Let me just share this with you. And he's looking at his head. You know why? I read him the incident story that I had written. Like a lot of us, I have to do some elaboration. Any sponsors out there that hear a lot about this? What do you do about that elaboration? Well, either of them just said it here. Let me put this in context. I mean, they'll go on and on for about ten minutes setting the stage so that they don't look so bad. You know? I did a lot of that. But I shared this inventory. And this was basically my first diss-deaf experience was confessing. And I got a lot out of that because I was basically confessing things that I already knew. When I shared this fifth step that was based on the alcoholics and art of the source step, there was a huge ebb. There was a big shift. I started to really be able to see how I was moving out of the false belief systems and the resultant dysfunctional actions that went along with those belief systems. I started being able to move away from that. And I've had subsequent experiences with missteps that have been very, very profound. There's a number of warnings in the book during the misstep. There's about seven or eight places where it says you best not hold anything back. So I was as honest as I could possibly be every single time when I did these. But like Bob said earlier, sometimes this process is like peeling away. Every single time I do inventory, I'm looking at a deeper perspective of my character. I've gone a little bit more below the horizon than I was able to do so prior to. But in this, some of the instructions for me as a person doing this stuff is, take the green light key and go to it. Which was also done glorying every character, every character defect, every dark granny in the past. Those are my instructions. That's pretty specific. That means all of it. Even Cincinnati in 1972 was arrested. You know, it means everything. It means everything because to get free of these attachments to our behavior, we're attached to this negative behavior until we can get rid of it, we need to be forthright. We need to basically be completely honest with somebody somebody. And I'm always worried about the person who I'm doing the fifth step with, thinking poorly of me, and that never happens. Because again, like Bob said earlier, you know, there's really nothing new. We're way more similar than we think we are. We really think that we are unique. Our case is a complete separate entity from, you don't know, this problem. It's just not true. We all pretty much make the same mistakes, we're all pretty much driven by the same fears and the same selfishness. And it manifests in similar ways. Now to get free of them, you need to get honest about it. So basically, I share this now, the instruction for the person hearing this text is to be closed mouthed. It is to The understanding is not to try to change the direction of the spiritual exercise. It's to allow a person to share this with you. I've heard at least several hundred missteps, and it says that I need to be prepared for a long time. One of the things that I see some sort of contemporary students is they've done so many So these missteps, they just don't want to hear it anymore. So they started adding in all the missteps. They started shouting them out. What's this new year for? It's a new year. You're going to all see. That's not really what the instructions are in this book. The idea of having someone listening to the misstep, the instructions aren't even being prepared for a long time. The longest misstep I ever heard was 18 hours. I wanted to kill myself. Another time, the other time, one was so boring that I gave you the state of mind now while I was listening to it. Don't ever do that to me. You didn't know what to do when I was sorry. I had to make a call to somebody to ask if we could keep going on and on. So I was, I started, there was a time when there were people coming in and out of my house. It was like a remodeled door recovery center. And I heard some of these, I heard somebody's, there were 10 or 15 people who was doing two of this step with me, okay? So I talked to them and I said, you know what, I can get over here right now. Why do you need to hear that fifth step? So he came over and walks in the house, comes up to my room and starts reading. And in the middle of this, I'm starting to get a real sense that they should move. You know, I've learned this before. I certainly realize that Ken's been over my house two weeks before and it doesn't seem like that. He's doing all the work because I ordered him to come home. Now we know all this stuff and so we need to be rigorously honest. That's very, very important. I said to him, I know, I've heard this, I thought I heard this too, he's stupid. The case is on yours. We don't even have time to talk about this. I asked him just twice. They told him it was just a meeting. I'm serious about this, he moved down to Florida and I get word about a year later that the coroner knows this is a cheat. You know, he's going to bomb his guy. He's going up. He's doubling it up. Only once was what I see twice. It's like, I'm shocked during this death twice. Once a guy who was, you know, I come from New Jersey and we know we pulled here. You know what I'm saying? And this whole time, this death win It was a big, let's just say, new people movie. And it was like a total lava movie. This is good stuff. It was incredibly interesting. I know that sounds like I'm very, very disturbed by all this stuff. Listen to this little kid. He had 10 minutes on Resentments. That's the important stuff right there. 10 minutes of Resentment is an invisible light that creates a band-aid. He had 10 minutes on the pier, and he had six hours of sex conduct. I got really disturbed by this. I called my sponsor. I said, you've got to get over here right now. I told my sponsor to come over. Well, he passed away. I don't tell him what he told me. I don' t want to be the only person burdened with this. Because it was, oh, it was tough. It was disturbing. I don't think he's an alcoholic, but I think that there were deeper underlying outside issues. So, you know, this is amazing work. When you think about the STEM process, you see that it takes about as much time as a five-credit college course. And it can be absolutely transformational in your life. You know, why aren't four of us doing this? But you know what? The people who go through and do a fearless and thorough job on the steps are the minority. You know what I'm saying? You know we've become fellowship with sobriety when the golden goose is the program of recovery. So many people are settling for relief, temporary relief, when there's true freedom to be had here. You know, if there's anything that you can bring away from this weekend that I would recommend you bring away, it's as soon as you have some participated to actually get your own experience with these steps. Because that's where it all ends. A lot of people come to these things to learn more, you know, to be able to share better in need. People who are trans like this are almost, almost worthless unless you can take the information that you got and sell it to a certain group of people. As long as I can tell what it is that I'm experiencing right now. There's a lot of things that come to mind when you look at the system. It's just so clear that there's so many different things in this system. Yes, and I think that's really interesting. You know, we've talked about this a couple of times, but I don't think it's true that all these things are possible. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it, but I think it's a pretty good idea. I don't know. I think this is a really good idea, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that all of us have to try to support each other. I mean, I don't know if that's the best way to do it. But you know what I'm saying? It's really important for us to be able to talk about this and actually talk about how we can help each other as a community. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. And we just want everybody to know that Bob and I are actually going to be channeling Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson for the answers. So, above no God. All right. I get it. I'm selfish. I'm full of self-centered fear. Because of that, I'll lie. I'll lust. I'll steal. I'm greedy. I'm envious. I get resentful at you if you have more than I do. I get all this. I get it all. I get everything. But I've been that way a long time. I have defended myself against a world that is pretty scary with some of these things. I have offended myself against the world that seems very lonely and vacant. I've defended myself against my own sense of incompleteness and it hasn't worked out very well but yet I've been entrenched in this stuff for a long time so what do I do? I finish the fifth step, I'm supposed to go somewhere where I can be at home preferably where I could be alone for an hour I'm going to look over what I did. I'm gonna say two prayers. I'm gonna thank God trusting that I know him better because I've just trusting that I've Just cleared some stuff out of the way between me and him and I'm Gonna thank him for that but I know it better. I'm gonna look over. What I did look at the first five steps and I'M gonna say another prayer. I'M GONNA ASK IF I'VE ADMITTED ANYTHING And then at the top of page 76, it says we can answer to our satisfaction. We then look at step six, which we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. And this is a good question. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we Have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all, every one? I made a mistake that a lot of people in AMA I finished my I was a little over four years sober I finished the finished my fifth step and I said a prayer and then I went about the business of now that I have the information and now I know what basically what some of these defects were, I'm just not going to be like that anymore. And I tried to overcome these things with willpower. And there is a principle in the universe that for every action there's an opposite equal reaction. And what I discovered is often with these defects of character, when I willfully tried to overcome them, I gave them torque. and there's a later place in the book where he talks about drinking and we try to overcome that with self-will it says we usually will have a bigger explosion than ever and that's what would happen the problem with me is when I'm willfully trying to conquer these things that are vested in me is I don't have the power to do it and I can push against them for a period of time, and then what happens is it springs back almost like a bungee cord effect. And you'll be really – I can be really, really good with some of this stuff for a while, and then I just seem to out-good myself. I'm just too good at being bad and too bad at being good, and when I have a bigger explosion than ever, I come out. Or sometimes some of these defects, when you apply willpower to them, If you've ever been to an arcade, there's this game in the arcade where you take a mallet and you hit moles with it. And you hit one mole there and it pops up over there. You hit it over there and then it pops over there And it's kind of like that. These defects which are manifestations of self and self-protection and self grandizement and self validation, they pop up other ways in different forms. One of the things that became very apparent to me, as it does to a lot of us, is after you take an honest look at your resented list, you go, oh my God, I'm such a judgmental guy. Oh my God. It's just so petty and judgmental. I'll never. That's terrible. I'm just not going to be that way again. And I'm determined. And what happened in short order is I started noticing the judgmental people in AA. And I started judging the judgmential people. I became so intolerant of the intolerant, which makes me exactly like them, right? In the Tao it says something interesting. It says, the chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken. In other words, I am just as hostage to the defect I am becoming the reformed whatever with than I was when I was participating. It's almost like the guy who's willfully not going to smoke and is so intolerant of other smokers or the guy who's not drinking on self-will and has all this just judgments and intolerance of people who still drink or the lust guy or the womanizer almost like a monk but judges everybody's sex conduct in AA then you're just as much a hostage to the defect when you're overcoming it like that through self-willed as you were when you were in the grip of it. Because I have to have God's help. And there was, I didn't know that there's a prayer, I Didn't Know That There's A Prayer Here That Step Six Involves A Degree Of Honesty And Genuineness Chuck Chamberlain Used To Say That This Was A Process Of Uncovering Discovering and then discarding. It's almost, it's very, with my defensive character, it's a very similar deal that what happened to me with alcohol. With alcohol, I really couldn't come here and bring my alcoholism to you until I saw that there was no value left in drinking. As long as I was a victim of the illusion that someday, someway, I'll control and enjoy my drinking, As long as I secretly believe or fantasize that there's a party there, I can't give you this deal yet. Because I've also got some value in it, right? It wasn't until I got to a place where I had exhausted all hope of getting back to the good old days that I was able to come here and bring my drinking here. And then in abstinence, I did a lot of the same stuff with my defensive character. In Hill's story, he goes through his experience first time through the steps with Evian. And he says that, and he talks about steps six and seven differently than anywhere else that I've found in AA literature. What he says is he asks God to remove these things root and branch. Root and branch, as if they have two parts. And I think that makes perfect sense in my life. I have the consequences, but then somewhere within the defect is an inherent illusion of value or security or validation or something that's, an illusion that it serves me in some way. and so what happens is I've asked God at times to remove something but I don't really want him to remove it I want himto remove the consequences of it it's like saying to God please God take away the hangovers but let me still drink but the problem is you can't disconnect them they're a package root and branch it's the same plant it'sthe same organism it'sthesame deal and so I had to uncover and then discover the truth. And what's the truth? Is that these defense mechanisms that I've used for years to desperately try to manage my own life, to wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world, to defend me against a life that I'm afraid is going to be very lonely and boring and threatening the truth is that they haven't really worked very well the big question and Chris mentioned it and my dear friend Clint used to say this all the time, the big questions so how's that working for you and when I wake up to the truth about the defect of character it's easy to move on to ask God sincerely to remove it. And there's a willingness prayer, and I didn't see this the first time through, so I didn' t say it, but it says if we find something we will not let go, we ask God to help us to be willing. There's a... This is kind of... I don't know if I'll... It's sort of like a partnership. There's an old adage that without him, I can't. But without me, he won't. And I have to somehow align my willingness or my will with his. In other words, I haveと want what he wants. And that's been a problem all my life. I don't know about you guys, but I've always wanted. Now, sometimes I don't know what I want, but I want. Sometimes there's more or different, but I want and I have never found, I've looked, I have never found the off switch of my wanter. I've never found it and it's always been a mild restless discontent within me, a vague feeling that but I could use a little more of something. I'm not sure what, I can use a little, no, I can say sisters, I need a little more of something. I don't know what, maybe sex, money, I don' t know, but I need a little bit more of somethin'. And I've never found the off switch to the wanter. So what do you do if you can't turn it off? The book says we align it with God. I can't stop wanting so I want what He wants. I start to align it with God. There's an old story that's made pretty good about this guy who goes into the psychiatrist's office and he's just a nervous wreck and he says, Doc, my God, you've got to help me. I can't take it anymore. And the doc says, what's wrong? He says, well, Doc, our brother-in-law is living with me. He's insane, Doc. He thinks he's a chicken. Every morning when the sun comes up, he runs up and down the block naked, blabbing his arms, clucking like a bird. The cops are at my house on a daily basis. The neighbors now will not talk to me. He's ruining my life. Please do something. And the psychiatrist says, well, that's not a problem. Here, sign these committal papers. I'll put your brother-in-law in the state mental hospital. Your problems are over. He goes, oh, Doc, I don't know if I can live without the eggs. There's eggs. We don't hang on to stuff because we're self-destructive. There's an illusion of value. What's the value in anger? Well, if God took away my anger, then who's going to stand up for me the next time I'm threatened? Would people roll over me? Who would take care of me? Oh my God, maybe I'd really have to rely on God. What if I ask God to remove my lust? And what if He did? Completely. I mean, would that be something Viagra could overcome? I don't know. Because what is lust except... Isn't it really a defense mechanism against a life that I'm afraid is going to have no intimacy and be very, very lonely and unexciting and uneventful? So I need to, I settle for lust because I don't know how to connect. I use lust because I'm bored and vacant and need stimulus. I use love because sometimes I just don't like being alone with me. And it's a defense mechanism. The problem is it's defective. I try to use to ward off a life of loneliness and how often coming out the back side of an encounter that was based on self and self-gratification, how pathetically lonely I really feel coming out of the back sign of that. That's the problem with self... That's a problem with self- gratification, self-grandizement, and self seeking. It's almost, especially in the area of sex, It's almost the opposite or the mirror image of going to Disneyland on the 4th of July. Now, if you've ever gone to Disneyland in California on the 3rd of July, my God, it's 98 degrees. It's 98% humidity. You'll stand in line for four or five hours to go on one ride with 7,000 kids that have overdosed on sugar, And you'll stand in that line, in that seat, in that humidity, and you'll sweat and be miserable, and you'll feel like you're in hell, and you'll do it for 30 seconds of excitement. Self-gratification sucks. You get the 30 seconds of excitement up front, and then you feel like you'RE IN HELL FOR ABOUT SIX OR EIGHT MONTHS AFTERWARDS. and it deteriorates your whole sense of yourself and how you feel about yourself and life itself. And then you get the emotional hangover. So can I wake up to the truth about this stuff? Can I see that there's no value here? I mean, A, I guess one of the things I was afraid of is that AA was wanting to take away from me or wanted me to give up the stuff that's fun. We're not asking you to do that. We're talking about anything that's funny or works. If this worked, it wouldn't be defective. We're asking you to consider opening your mind to stuff that has really hurt you over the years. I saw a TV show when I was a little kid And it really, it really taught me. I thought of it years, many, many years later and I thought this is step six. There was a TV show when I was a little kid called Rescue Aid. I don't know if they had that where you guys grew up. It was on every week and it was about these two paramedics that worked out of a firehouse and they would go out on, they'd get calls and go out and distress calls at people who were in trouble. In this one particular episode They're called out, and they get to the scene. And there's this little girl, cute little girl. And she's got her arm waved into a vending machine, and I can't get it out. It's stuck up in there, and she's crying, and She's scared. And her parents are there, and they're hysterical. Please get my daughter out of there. And they try to pull on her and pull her out, and they can't Get her out. She's really wedged in there. Well, in a minute or so, the fire trucks show up. Now the firemen are pulling her. like saws and corches and stuff off the trucks because they're talking about cutting the door off the vending machine, which has got the little girl even more terrified. The parents are more hysterical. And the one paramedic is just kind of standing there watching the whole thing. And he kneels down to this little girl and he says very quietly, he says, sweetheart, you've got something in your hand. She goes, uh-huh. what do you got in your hand a candy bar would you let go of the it's my candy bar it's mine but if we can't get you out then it's a fine candy bar she won't budge so he backs off stands there for a minute and kneels down again I will make you a promise I promise you that if you'll let go of that candy bar, I'll get you two candy bars. She looks at him a little skeptical and she says, really? He says, I promise you, sweetheart, I'll give you two. I'll buy you two, I'll pay you two candy bars and because she trusts him, she lets go of the candy bar and her arm slides out of the vending machine. What's your candy bar? You got one, don't you? You don't hang on to stuff because you're self-destructive. I know it looks that way to your friends and family. They think you're in that case. There's a candy bar in every bit of it. I'm telling you, there's a Candy Bar. And I guess the big question is that the Candy Bar is often feared. Do you trust God? Do you believe in God? Do you really trust God if you stop defending yourself and He'll take care of you? Do you truly trust God it's easy to say what's harder to do is to take out on the streets and walk it every day to actually live your life like you're in God's hands that means I don't defend myself I don'T stand up for myself that means I DON'T have to create nothing I DONT have to manipulate I DONOT have to worry about nothing I'M IN GOD'S HANDS I simply respond to whatever He puts in my path according to the spiritual principles you've been giving me. But what's the ego cry when you just hear that? Hear me saying it. I bet your ego is going, yeah, but what about me? What about me ? It's going to happen to me. Let's see. I'll tell you something that's happened over the years, and this doesn't happen easily, but I've been forced into positions where there's no alternative it's like it talks about on page 53, where my whole life comes down, I'm crushed by some kind of results of some kindof self real binge I've had been on or some decisions I've made based on self sober and I'm facing a self imposed crisis, I cannot postpone or evade, I can't fix it I can wiggle out of it, it's coming at me consequences are coming down the pipe. I can see them coming, and I don't know. I don' t have a shot. I don''t have a game plan here. And I have to fearlessly face the proposition that God's either everything or He's nothing. See, they're going to cut my arm off if I don ''t get it out of that vending machine. And I have to trust. And I ha nd to trust it. And what happens to guys like me is sometimes we're forced to this thing out of circumstances this is not by virtue, to actually trust God, to give something up, to actually hope. Hope that you guys haven't been blowing smoke up my butt about God for all these years. Hope that he really does love me. Hope that He's really going to take care of me. And what happens is He does. And He does, and He does... And over the years, I don't know how many years it takes, I can't tell you when I started to trust God a little more easily than I did in the beginning, when I don't have to be forced into it with a lack of alternatives, where I just start conducting my life as if He's really got my back. But I tell you, somewhere along the line, you do. It's odd. Spiritual growth is a funny thing because you change, And yet, I don't know that any of us can pinpoint the moment of the change. It's just all of a sudden, one day you realize that something's different. That something happened to you. That you're now, you're trusting God. Now, when did that happen? I can't really tell you. But it sort of just happens. And then the next time the fear comes up, It's like you're, you sit on your hands and you try to act like one of God's guys even though you're scared. I love the seventh step prayer. In a sense it's kind of a reiteration in a sense of the basic principle of the third step. You know we say my creator I am now willing that you should have all of me. for you to build with me and do with me as you will that you should have all of me. And then it's, I love this, it says, I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character and that it qualifies which stand in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. I would not have said that. I think I would have said, well okay, I'm ready for you to take away every single defects a character that stands in the way of everyone realizing what a magnificent guy Bob is. Or I might have said it stands in my way of being rich and famous, or at the very least I think I'd say happy. Don't you get happy? No, you get useful. I'll tell you something, I've known happiness, it's fleeting. And usefulness, I'll take it any day. usefulness, when I have been tearing out the purpose I've been divinely crafted to do, which is to help God's kids out of my own experience when I've been useful usefulness will let you put your head on the pillow at night and feel that there's a rightness with yourself and the rest of the world. A sense of unity. A sense of peace that everything is in divine order. And you can lay your head on that pillow and sleep well. Happiness, the shine seems to wear off pretty quickly. I'll take usefulness any day. The ego doesn't like usefulness. The ego likes excitement and stimulation. But those of us that have had excitement and simulation and different degrees of happiness and of tribe usefulness, we all seem to end up in the same place. It's an odd thing. You know, often guys like me, we go through life and we're takers. I have this sense that I'm going to fill my vacancies through acquisition. You know if I have the right amount of property, the right number, if I had enough $10,000 watches, watches, if I have enough $5,000 guitars, if I have Enough $80,000 cars, if i have enough sex if i Have enough people liking me if I Have enough love, if I Have Enough, If I Have Enough, then I can fill my vacancies through acquisition. But that's a dog you can't feed full. And isn't it odd that some of us find something that is just so sweet here? You're pushed by an unreasonable sponsor into helping others. When you really know in your heart you should be helping yourself. But if you go along with it, you forget yourself temporarily and you go out and help some pathetic person, they probably won't even stay sober a year and give you some kind of credit. And then you have those moments as I've had where you spend a couple hours with a guy and you fall in love with him and you have those moments that you never had before where this stranger who can't do anything for you, he can't help you, he can introduce you to somebody that's going to help you. He can't get you a better job. He can do nothing for you. But all of a sudden, you want him to be okay more than you want you to be. You want him for you to feel okay. all of a sudden you have those moments where you care about Him that you would do just about anything to help Him. And if you've had those moments, you'll drive home that night and everything in the universe lines up and it's perfect. It's perfect It's Perfect And what happens is the way that feels is what I always fantasized it would feel like if I could fill my vacancies with enough of the stuff I think I need. And I could never fill my vacancies up through acquisition. It was always by giving. They always had it backwards. The vacancies are filled by pushing the stuff out to you and giving to you rather than pulling into me. and that doesn't make sense to a taker and I could have never bought that idea except you pushed me into the actions and I had the experience and I tell you I understand why it is our primary purpose I understand why Bill says in here that our real purpose is to grow in understanding and effectiveness to be of maximum service to God and the people without us because in that Everything that we try to fill up is full. In that, we complete ourselves. I never could complete myself through acquisition. And not from a lack of trying. Drunk and sober. Not from a luck of trying And so, we head towards usefulness. We claim this purpose. If you've ever seen movies or detectives of surrender, this is really where the surrender occurs in steps six and seven. In a movie, a war movie, what happens when someone has to surrender? Well, what happened is they throw down their total, everything they got that they could use to defend themselves with. They've got hand grenades, they've got to give them up. They've Got a knife, they gotta give it up. If they've got a gun, they're going to give it up. Anything that they could possibly use to defend themselves and they have to render themselves defenseless and what happens is they sit down and what do we do? They wait for somebody to tell them what to do and just do whatever they're told to do. See, you can't be defended and surrendered at the same time. Imagine what would happen in a war situation But some guy said, I surrender. And he has a gun under his shirt. He could get killed doing that. You have to give up your ability to defend yourself. And self-centered fear will make you crazy just thinking about that. Just thinking about it. and yet some of us come here because we get to this place well into our sobriety where I just want to be God's guy I don't want to fix me no more I don' t want to do this no more some of the great moments of spiritual growth often in sobriete sometimes 10, 15, 20 25 years sober will often come from ending up in a place where you just can't stand you. And that is when the ego has been broken temporarily. I wish it would be broken permanently, but it's been subjugated. It's been pushed down. And then great changes can occur. Great changes. Chris, take me up a little bit. Following up this step, I think we're in the best, we have the best possible attitude for the removal of our character defects. I mean, with just inventory, you know, the causes and conditions and their manifestations of our failure at life, We've just shared that with a sponsor or a spiritual advisor or a fifth-step victim. And we've unloaded all of this stuff. Now, this puts us in the best possible attitude, I think, for the removal of these character defects because we've just seen and talked about their great destructiveness. But Steps 6 and 7 really are like a lifetime process. Yes, we move through them as we initially go through the steps. But the more you look at these steps, the more you see it really is a lifetime process. One of the best stories I've heard told that relate to Steps six and seven is this little kid named Joey. He's about seven years old and he starts to get a toothache, really bad toothache, and he knows that if he goes and he tells his mother that he's got a toothache she'll give him, she'll crush up some aspirin, put him to bed, the toothache will go away. He knows that. Why doesn't he go to his mother and say mom I've got a toothpick? The reason is that he knows if he comes to her he'll get that aspirin and the toothache would go away but tomorrow morning a phone call will go out to Dr. Mengele the dentist. And he's on his way in to the dentist's office the next day, and there's going to be drills and blood and suction devices and, you know, pliers prying his mouth open. And, you Know, he knows that after that there's going to be a lot of pain, but he will end up walking away with fixed teeth. Now, when he's got that toothache, he doesn't want fixed teeth, he just wants the pain to go away. And a lot of times, that's the way we approach our character defense. We see them selfishly. We see them in a self-interested way. We just want to be out of the jackpot. We don't want to feel bad anymore. We do not want to date perfect people. We dont want everything removed. If everything is removed, what am I going to look like? All my special unique personality characteristics could be gone, you know? It says in the 12 and 12, I might need a hole in the donut. I don't want that. So a lot of times there is hesitancy. On the surface, we're willing to have these character defects removed. But there's a lifetime process for this willingness and humbly asking God to remove these character defects. When you look in the 12 and 11, it talks a lot about humility. Humility is a really, really important characteristic because humility comes from that surrender that Bob was talking about. So it's a process. The best possible atmosphere to be in for the removal of your character defects is to become willing to make amends where those defects have caused harm to others and to actually go out and make amands for where those defects of character have harmed others. You know, so we look, we then move directly from step six and seven into step eight, which is we make a list of people that we have harmed. It says in this book that we kind of made that list when we did the fourth step. And I would say most of, probably 90%, of the people in the institutions that we need to make amends for comes off of that four-step list. I like to ask the people that I work with to do a separate list, to pull it off of that four step list and do a different list. And I've found, again, I am not a slave to mechanics. If there's a way that you do your list that works for you, then that's the way you should do it. What I've done to use index cards are very different. They help me out. And what I'll do is I'll put index cards together for the people and the institutions that I've hired. And on the front of the card, I'll Put the person or institution. I'll PUT how to contact them. And if I don't know where they are, I'LL basically PUT FINE. And if, if I'm willing right then and right there to go make the amends, I'll pUT a PLUS on the top right-hand side, which means I'M READY TO GO. And, you know, I'll get in the car. I'll do it right now. I've got the willingness and I'm ready to do it. Here, however, like a lot of us, you know, we have a lot times trepidation or resistance. It's usually based on self-centered fear to make an amends. I'll put a minus or I'll ask the guys that I work with to put a bonus up there, which means you understand that this amends needs to be made. You just don't think you have the spiritual fortitude to make it right now. Now, one of the things that happens with us with approaching these amends, well, there's a couple of things. One of them is sometimes we're guilty of editing. In other words, if we're just never ever going to make amends to that bastard and we know this step process, we won't even put him in the fourth step. Sometimes we won'T even put them in the first step, but we won'T even do an eight-step. We won't even list them on our eighth step because we're never going to make amends to those bastards. Keep step eight and step nine as two separate spiritual exercises. Do not edit. Because what I've found through this process is sometimes you don't have the power to go make that amends. You may not be ready for one reason or another. That doesn't mean you omit it from this process. what will happen a lot of times moving through your list or moving through the cards is as you start to tackle the ones that have the pluses, you start To take the minuses and turn them into the plusses. In other words, there's a momentum that happens. There's a moment that happens as you Start to make amends. You start to get stronger. It adds power, that lack of power that we understand is our dilemma. And we start to get more and more power. And I have seen many, many minuses turned into pluses. I'll share. I don't know how much time do we have? About 20 minutes. About 20 seconds. I want to share this one story from one of my sponsors. He doesn't mind that I share this. He came to me. He had about 70 cards. All right? This is from a lifetime of a Raven-Robin intelligence. And he had about 70 cards in him. And he goes, before we get started, I want to explain something to you. This card here, I don't even know why it's in the pile. Because I am not going to make amends to this guy. This is the guy who sexually assaulted my underage daughter. And I know I've got a resentment. I know that I'm going to resolve stuff. but I am not going to make amends to this person. Now what the story was, was this was a family member, you know, on the in-law side who got his daughter who was 14 or 15 high and then took advantage of her and when my guy found out about it he took some action he went over to the guy's house, he beat him bloody in front of his family he got a hold of a prosecutor and he had him prosecuted, and it split the family in half. And he was still so attached to this event that even for him to talk about it, he got red in the face, as a lot of us, I guess, could understand. Now, he's got about 70 of these cards, and he starts to move through them. and he gets 69 of these cards done. And a week goes by, another week goes by, he calls me up. He goes, Chris, I can't believe it. I am so pissed off. But this one card is burning a hole in my head. I've got to do something about this. You need to help me with this. So he comes over to my house, and we talk about the approach. Bob said it earlier, good sponsorship is essential. It's vital when we're looking at these steps because if we go the wrong way with these amends, we can shoot ourselves in the foot like you have no idea. It is a really, really good idea to get someone who's very experienced with amends, and then cover this stuff. Cover your approach. Now, your approach is basically how you are going to contact this individual, and then talk about what you see the amend looking like. That may not end up being like what you look like, but you need to be a little bit prepared with this, and you need to make sure that your motives are right. You need to make certain that you're not going to be causing any more harm. And there's a delicacy to this. Now, he sat down with me and we started to talk about it. And he shared basically what he did. And I go, well what's the problem? He goes, the problem is I'm burning up with resentment. And I go okay let's look at the fourth column in the Resentment Inventory. And he was very very thorough with this. Basically what we pulled out of the fourth column was, he acted. Yes, he went over and beat this guy bloody. Yes he had this guy prosecuted. He did it out of a vengeful, hateful feeling. He did it out of just sheer anger that he had for this person. He acted from that center of rage that we had. And we looked at that and that's basically what his part was. So we talked about how to do the approach and how to do the amends. He calls a guy up, says let's meet at a neutral location. They met at a diner somewhere. And the guy brought all this paperwork. He wanted to go through all the court case and how he really wasn't guilty and all this stuff. And my guy basically says, look, I'm not really here to discuss that. I'm Not here to Discuss the Case. I'm Here to Discus Any of that I'm here to basically share with you the harm I believe I'm guilty of here. And he basically said to the individual that he operated from a position of extreme anger and resentment and vengeance when he went after this individual. He did not make amends for having him prosecuted. That was probably appropriate. He certainly made amends for beating the guy bloody in front of his family, because that came from a place of rage. Now, did he want this guy coming to Thanksgiving dinner the next year? Absolutely not. But what he needed to do is he needed to get free. After this amends, this individual changed like, he is an unbelievable example of an AA member in good standing today. He's one of the go-to guys in North Jersey to get, if you want a really good sponsor, somebody that's really going to get you moving in the right direction spiritually. And he came alive after this particular event. So becoming willing to make these events sometimes is a process. Don't short circuit yourself because you're absolutely sure you're never going to make the amends, because you don't know. The great thing about the steps is each step gives you the power to do the next step when you do it. This is about a growth process, so don't edit. If you're a sponsor, be very, very careful about giving somebody a pass on certain amends. Certain amends, you need to do that because you're going to see the motivation that the individual had. There might be ulterior motives to going and making the amends and you needと be guiding as a sponsor with these processes but I've seen too many sponsors basically say things like well you don't really need, I didn't really go around and make all you don'T really need to do that. You could be short changing somebody from their true depths of their spiritual experience, is you rob them of their ability to get right with the universe. You know, this whole process is about getting the roadblocks out of the way, the road blocks that we threw up through living a life of selfishness and self-centeredness. We put roadbloacks up that block us off from God, they block us from our fellow man, they block us off from a true, useful, and peaceful life. And a lot of this process is taking those roadblocks and moving them out of the way. And I don't see any step as more powerful to putting muscle into your recovery than steps eight and following step eight up with step nine. Now, there's a number of different kinds of amends As we move into step 9 They're broken out into categories They're broke out into the people we resent The man we hated They're break out into money that we're owed It's broken out in to crimes that we've caused It's broke out in stepping out on the misses If you can imagine that some of us have ever done that All of these need to be listed out on the cards. And we need to start the prayer process for willingness. We need to become willing. This is about how free do you want to be is the question you need to ask yourself when you're approaching these steps. Because truly what we want to escape from is the burden, the burden of self. It says now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past. This is about repairing the damage where we can. It's not about mumbling and I'm sorry. In North Jersey AA during my early years, I would go to 9th step or even 8th step meetings and the most you would hear is somebody raising their hand and sharing something like this. Oh yeah, I did my 9th steps with my wife and family and they didn't really take it very well. And that's not all the personal experience that you would share. Most of the time it was some mutton head would raise their hand and say something like this. I haven't done this stuff formally, but I'm going to take this meeting hostage for the next ten minutes and talk about my opinion on what I think this stuff is all about. Has anybody ever been in a meeting like that? Oh boy, yeah. That should be illegal. Opinions can be killing things in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's through experience. It's true experience that we really learn. And I'll tell you, that was so accepted. That kind of thing was so accepted in North Jersey in the early 90s, that type of approach to staring in the step meetings. And then somebody would come in and raise their hand and say, you know, I'm so-and-so. I'm just back from California. I had six amends that I needed to take care of. They're my last six. I'd like to share a little bit of my experience on those amends. And people would, like, put their head down. Like, oh, here's a know-it-all. Here's somebody that's making us all feel small. You know, here's somebody that's Mr. Dudley Do-Right here. And I'll tell you, it was backwards. It was backwards back in my day. If you're new, if you're just coming back, if you haven't gone through these steps, listen for people's experience with this stuff. My experiences I've gone through about four series of cards. There's been some times I've gone through the steps and I did not finish my amends. And what I did was I went, you know, things happened and I went back and I started over. But there's been four distinct times when I've going through the stats and I have finished my amands to the ability that you can finish them. I've done the approaches and everything I could possibly do with all of my cards. Now, the difference between someone who has unfinished amends and the difference Between Them and Someone Who Has Finished All of Their Amends to the ability that you can finish them is the difference entre night and day. It's an experience that you don't want to miss. How about being right with every single person in the world? I was doing a talk one time at Rutgers University. They have classes there where they train alcoholism counselors. They train people to go out and counsel us, okay? And this was like a graduate class, and they asked me to come in, and the nature of the talk was basically the efficacy of the 12-step process in alcoholism recovery. And that's basically what I did. And I talked about the resultant freedom from this process. And one of these counselors for me followed me out into the hall after I was done and started asking me, What about shame? What about fame? Don't you have to come to terms with shame? And I'm like, Whoa, whoa. This is bizarre to me. And I said, Well, you know, I don't know if I had to handle that separately. And he goes, Well what are you talking about? I go, Well let me ask you a few questions. I go, have you ever inventoried your resentments, your fears, and your harms to others in the way the big book lays out? And he goes, no. I go well then you've probably never shared that with God and yourself and another person then. He goes, No. And I go then you're probably never become willing to have God remove those defects of character. And he says, No? I go Well then you never humbly asked God to remove those defect of character? He goes No. And I guess, well, you never made a list of the people and institutions that you've harmed. And he goes, no. And I go, so you never went out and made amends for the harms that you caused in the past? And he says, no? And I goes, then how the hell do you know that your deal was chained for the rest of your life? Now, why don't you try that experience, and then maybe you don't have to read shame books every night. You know? I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. But it's my personal experience that by doing the absolute best I could to set right the past and repair the damage, I didn't suffer anymore because of it. Does that make any sense? Yes. See you back here at 15 hours, 22 minutes. Oh, good morning. Good morning, Spock. I don't have an alcoholic. Give me a moment of silence. We'll start with a prayer. Lord, help me set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I know. Everything I think about myself, everything I feel about others, and everything that I think I know about my own recovery, all for a new experience in you, Lord, a new space in myself, a new place in my fellows, and a much needed new experience in my own recovering. We started, we started, like a pod, I started climbing back to step nine, and that was the most overwhelming step to me. It scared me. You know, I would go to meetings and hear people talk about nice stuff, and you guys had wives and kids and jobs, and you were nice people. But I've got to tell you, I didn't ride years on the streets like an animal. Where I started thinking about it, it overwhelmed me. You know, I'm a real alcoholic, but I had a couple of years as a real desperado heroin addict on the street where I carried weapons and did some things that I don't know how I ever make it right. I've never been able to find him to make amends. I stole his way of life.