Becoming Entirely Ready – 12 Step Workshop – 2025 – Part 3 of 4 – Sandy B.

When you go, you know, I'm going to be working on this house for 50 years before I ever get all this done. I mean, you get exhausted looking at the amount of work. And then we go, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute, we forgot to tell you. You're not going to do the work. A contractor is going to doing the work, you just list what needs to be done. Wait a moment, wait, I might there might be more. Now we'd go back. Would you have a different look then about the house? Oh, well, wait a minute. This needs to be repainted. Well, this is what we're going to tell you now. You're not going to do the work. God is. How do you like that? You're never going to be able to do it. You're going not going do anything about all these character defects, about fixing them, becoming a better person. Nothing. God's going to do it. That's how it's done. We're powerless over getting rid of all this stuff. Don't even think about it. Well, wow, I like that. That sounds great. How do I get them removed? Real easy. You just become entirely ready to have the contractor come over and do all the work, And then pick up the phone and humbly ask him. That's it? Yeah. Boy, that's the greatest news in the world. Well, if it's that simple, why doesn't everybody have a perfect house? Why aren't we all perfect? All we have to do is ask God to remove our character defects but we're entirely willing to have God remove them and humbly ask him. So here, we're going to see two slants between the big book and the 12 and 12. In the big books, it just is... What? I don't have... Well, I got a big book in my pocket, but am I exaggerating when I say that both steps are covered in one paragraph or a paragraph and a half? You know, well, if you can get really willing, you might say something like this at seven step prayer as a joke I've often said oh it says to say something like this not to say this but something like this so maybe you're supposed to make up your own seven step pray okay only kidding only kidding I love to drive sponsors crazy because they're There are pigeons that come. Well, what prayer am I supposed to say? He said, look, it says something like this. That means saying something different from this, right? Why am I saying this when it says, oh, okay. That's like saying half measures will avail you nothing. On the other hand, you'll be amazed before you're halfway through. There seems to be a problem there. Ask your sponsor to explain that one. So we're into, so the big book is accurate in that a prayer, the seven step prayer said in full willingness will work. But we still have our character defects and we said it as hard as we know how to say it and we still have a lot of our character defects so what's the deal? What is going on? And this is where the 12 and 12 is so helpful. The six-step explanation in the 12 and 12, is very, very helpful in having us understand why we still are messed up. And it starts out by saying this is step that separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, whatever. It's a statement meaning here's where the rubber meets the road. How? What are we talking about? We're talking about the difficulty of becoming entirely ready. That is the heart of the program. This is where the ego draws the line. So far, it's been going along. Go ahead, inventory. Go ahead. Go head and make amends. Fine. Go ahead. But here, that's going too far. That is going too far. You want to let God entirely in, which will replace me with God. You see what I'm saying? And he goes, no way. And so there we are. Why is it so hard to become entirely willing to have God remove all of our defects of character, which would be perfection? Right? If God removed everything, we would be perfect. Oh, well, so then we got to find a way. well, I don't want to be perfect. Why don't I want to be perfect? I wouldn't exist anymore in the traditional sense. You follow what I'm saying? My ego would be set aside and God would be in charge of everything. I would simply be a servant asking God what to do next. I would have no other identity. I wouldnít be a big child. Iíd be making my little speeches. What the hell would I do? I would be, anybody remember the sentence in the big book? The hole in the donut. That's in step three, but it really applies up here in step six. I would be a non-entity. If I simply, if all I did, I'd be like a little robot. God goes, go over there. Okay. Go over there. Go help that person. When do I get to be in charge of something? When do I, I, the I, I, what about me? This is when the fight starts. Okay, God, God. God, got. God. Got. God got. Shut up! Enough about God. What about me?! You know what I'm saying? Don't you get tired of hearing about God, God, god, god. You know, part of you is going, okay, okay. I got it. God! But now let's talk about me. and that's right here this is where the self-centeredness realizes it's going too far if we start messing around with this step this is going too far so Bill writes in there this right here, this tension he calls it the riddle of our existence that's the line out of the 12 and 12. Why are we stuck here? Why would it be so stupid as to not have the contractor come out and make our house perfect? All we have to do is pick the phone up, Acme Construction, come on over, here's my address. Prepaid, everything. Why can't we pick the phone up? He says, the real answer may only lie in the mind of God. I'm quoting the 12 and 12. But here's Bill's guess as to what it is. And he premises this by saying, having been granted a perfect release from alcohol as the result of becoming entirely willing to have God take it asking please, please, please. And it's gone. That's the real problem. We know it works. It worked on our worst problem, the one that was killing us, it worked. So why can't we just take that proof and do it on all the others? Gossip, lust, greed, envy. Why can't, we just wipe them out? Why can't ,we just wipe him out? And that's where he says his guess is the rest of them aren't fatal like alcohol was. Alcohol was going to physically kill us and if we die, meaning as a functioning human body, the ego dies Well, I think I'll allow a total surrender on the alcohol department in order to stay alive so that I can maintain the control and I'll do all the manipulating over in all the other areas and keep this ball game going that we exist separate from God. We've got to keep that separate existence or it evaporates. The whole illusion game is over, like the movie The Illusionist. Did anybody see that? It was pretty good. Two guys competing who can create the better illusion. And once you learn the secret, the guy couldn't do the illusion on you anymore. Oh, I know, there's a secret trap door in the... So it's no longer illusion, I don't even want to watch. So if we can see each illusion that the ego is playing on us, like the manufacturer of heavy burdens, we can stop paying attention to the various things that used to blow our minds. And so he says, what the ego does, it settles for as much perfection as will get us by. And I think that is the perfect choice of words for the human condition. I'm a businessman, and I think honesty is very important. What I want is a reputation for being honest. I don't really want to be honest. I want to be, I want to have a reputation for being honest because if I let God in to make me totally honest, I wouldn't be able to pull those little deals that have to be done in the business world every so often in order to stay alive you have to you know what I'm saying you've got to save the option every so often, not as a way of life but you've got to hold it in reserve. So what I want is to be almost totally honest, okay? And then he goes through all of the character defects and we find that we're setting limits just shy of perfection on all of these. So Dr. Bob wrote that gossip is one of the worst things affecting AA. You start spreading stories about each other and ruining somebody's reputation or doing this and doing that. And she's having an affair, and he just left her. He shouldn't be speaking at this meeting after what he did. And so we go, you know, there comes a time when you say to yourself, that's disgusting. That's just ridiculous. I can't believe I was right in the middle listening to that story and laughing and then I told Joe this is just God, I want gossip totally removed from my life I just want it it's gone I don't want ever I don' t want to hear it I don''t want to say it I never want anything to do with gossip well I never want to originate gossip see that's the real that's where the crime gets started is in the origination of gossip to be as malicious as to make up a story about someone that's our mutual friend that's just disgusting now on the other hand if I'm simply serving as a telephone pole with wires between them and them, I mean, I'm just allowing the story to flow along, not originating it. I'm sort of a neutral middle passer-on-er of the bad story originated by that bad person over there and merely flowing through me. So what I'd like to get rid of is all origination of gossip. You see what I did? I took a pretty strong middle-of-the-road stand on gossip. So what about lust? That's caused more problems. Just think of all the problems that lust has caused. God, you've got an obsession. There's the guy next door. There's The Gal next door, the guy at work. He wants me to go, oh, God, there's this and there's porn late at night and there is sex and everything that they're selling. I don't care if they're sellin' a cake. There's somebody in the bikini holding it up. I mean, it just, it's part of everything. I'm really, I think that if I could get rid of that, imagine how free you'd be if you could just get rid of that. Just imagine yourself zero lust. zero how do we get to zero i was just wanting some relief from some of the problems that i have now you you're down to zero what is zero okay i'm like i'm walking around i never have any lust is that like being dead what is I think this step is too extreme I mean who the hell is what is this zero zero what I would like I'd like to cut way back I was like hey I'd like you to take 60% of my lust and that's what I'd like we could do this with anything that you enjoy greed you know how much money I want to give up even thinking about my I don't need one but money doesn't buy happiness did you ever think about our money you know the founding fathers were very spiritual and and they built this country on spiritual principles, and they knew that abundance was a necessary thing for a happy society, so they created money and a central banking system so that there would be abundance. But they knew that money is not going to make you happy. So they put on the money a warning label. In God we trust. Don't trust money. Can you imagine totally relying on God for what money is providing? Almost. I can almost imagine it. In other words, the problem with this step is God. Freaking God. He cuts you no slack. You know what I mean? God is an all or nothing guy. There's no middle ground. There's not, hey, God, help me be semi-honest. Okay, son, I'll be glad to. No, he goes, no, you're on your own. You be semi honest. You ever want to get totally honest? Call me. Too extreme. Turns out the only help that's available is perfect help. There's a great C.S. Lewis story about a little boy. Sometimes I've told this in talks. A little boy had a toothache and he's a baseball player and he is in the sixth grade and the coach said, tomorrow is a big game guys. We've won a lot of games. This could really push us into the championship and don't think about the game. We're not going to talk about the games. All I want you to do is go home tonight, eat a nice meal and get eight hours sleep. Just go to bed early. You get eight hour sleep, we'll win. So he comes home and he tells his mother, I've got to get eight hours sleep. And so he eats early, goes to bed, goes asleep, about midnight a little toothache starts to wake him up. And he goes, oh God, I'm starting to get some toothache there. If I call my mother she'd bring two aspirin, I wouldn't feel the pain anymore, I'd be back to sleeping in two minutes flat. But he doesn't call his mother, he decides to wait and see if it goes away by itself. And he waits about ten minutes and it's getting worse. And he goes, you know I probably ought to call my mother and get those two aspirins and then I could go right to sleep, only miss ten minutes sleep. He waits two hours hoping that the toothache will go away by itself and then he calls his mother to get the two aspirin And he goes right to sleep, but he only got six hours. They do lousy in the game. So the question is, what the hell is going on in that kid's head that he would sit there for two hours without calling his mother? Here's the answer. He knew his mother. He knew she would give him the two aspirin. But she wouldn't stop there. she would make a dental appointment to see what was going on in the tooth and he also knew his dentist and he knew every time you go to a dentist he looks at that tooth and fixes it but while you're there he looks every other tooth in your mouth and then you have a series of appointments until you have perfect teeth he didn't want perfect teeth, he wanted two aspirin. That's That's all he wanted. He didn't want anything beyond the two aspirin, but the only help that was available was perfect teeth and that's what we're faced with in the sixth step. There's no partial help available. And so our challenge as we move through sobriety is to become ever more willing, more ready on each of the character defects that we have. How can we develop a bigger willingness? How can struggle with this? And a lot of times, our higher power just makes us struggle with things until we finally admit we really can't do a damn thing about them. And C.S. Lewis, who's a very good spiritual writer, He offers an explanation like this, that if we were to just look at something and say, God, please remove that. I'm really ready that you take it. And he did. Our ego would jump in and say we could have done that without God and take credit for it. Whereas if we struggle for eight years and failed, and failed and failed but kept coming back. Then would understand no way I could have ever done it on my own. And there's no way that the ego can take credit when it is lifted out of us. That's just one way of looking at it. it but it was uh so you can see the sixth step is the beginning of a lifetime struggle towards perfection or as close as we can get in this lifetime so we never want to stop and we never want to feel bad about failing ah god i just almost got through the eating 12 cakes a week And there's nothing wrong with forgiving ourselves as we fail, so that we don't add a bigger burden to what we have. Forgiveness is a very powerful thing and I honestly believe that God forgives me as I'm failing. He just goes, son, you're powerless. And so I forgive you. You're forgiven right now. Somebody said with the nails going in, forgive them. They know not what they do. The greatest spiritual event I saw last year was the Amish forgiving the murderer and going over to his family and helping them. It's better to comfort than be comforted. It's better to understand. It was almost like looking at the prayer of St. Francis in action to watch those people. It just blew my mind. I was so happy to see that there was something like this actually happening, and so this forgiveness is a remarkable thing, and it's very important that if your higher power is forgiving you as you're failing, that you forgive yourself as you'RE failing and not add to the burden of more weight on your shoulders keeping you further away from your higher power. We're not condoning anything. We're simply admitting we're powerless and forgiving ourselves so that we can get up and try again. I'm going to try even harder and no need to have 50 pounds of unforgiveness on our backs as we're struggling with whatever it is we're all struggling with. Everybody's got something different that you're struggling with, whether it's eating or shopping or I can't get my finances, I can'T stop having affairs, I can'T stop obsessing about him, about her, whatever it is. Politics is driving me crazy, I canN'T sleep, I got an ulcer, whateverit is. These are self-imposed that the removal of me getting my way is going to hurt because every time I don't get my way, and I want to not get my way with anything. So I am going to voluntarily dismantle my having to have everything a certain way and I know I'm going to do it kicking and screaming. No, not that. No, I don' t want to give up that. But I want to do it anyway. I've seen all the fine print, and I still want to sign the contract. Now we're getting up where humility is. You see what I'm saying? We fully understand the entire deal, and we still want go through with it. That's really wanting to seek. So one way of looking at this is, I really want to go for the whole nine yards. I really want to be able to see this world the way God sees it. Why settle for less? I'm just asking us all the questions. Why not go for it? There it is. We explained the fine print, so let's all sign the contract. We'll be happy that we did. I know that. That's where the half measures avail us nothing. And we stood at the turning point. And all of these moments are there. And then we go, why not? Now it's going to happen in sobriety. We make big leaps and then we'd go along. And then I'm going to go. And so here's another point. Why not? Whatever it is, maybe you saw a yoga thing that you think would help your spiritual program. Maybe you heard about this. Maybe instead of saying no to all these things, why don't we say yes? You see what I'm saying? We're being led. There are things that are put right in our path. Wouldn't you like to do that? I remember I was dating a girl up in Washington, and she was into all this New Age crap and all these stupid people with astrology and all the books and all this stuff. And some guy was coming to town, oh, you got to go hear Stephen Levine. You've got to hear Stephen Levin. Do you want to go? No, I don't want to. Well, I'm not going to go out with you anymore unless you go. I know something like that. OK, I'll go. did you ever go to anything where okay I'll go boy this is going to be awful but I'll be here so this guy stands up and there's a room about this big and he says oh hi everybody I think we'll start out with a guided meditation and I went he blew me away that's all I can tell you just holy cow I've read everything he's written And it's like, so we want to be open to things that are sent our way. You know, when we talk about God calling, let me just wrap up with this because it ties in with exactly what we're talking about in these two steps. You know the book God Calling? I was in a church one day and I saw a painting and I said, there's the book. and it was a Christ figure, you know, the one with the beard and this and the robe and he's standing at a big wooden door in an old cottage. You know, they were thick doors with the door knocker on there and he has got his hand, you can see, just getting ready to knock and I go, God calling. You follow what I'm saying? And I said, okay, that couldn't happen but then I'm in my head, I'm a crazy guy so I make up a story and I go okay Sandy, you're sitting in your condo in Tampa all by yourself there's a knock on the door who is it? God okay, who is it really? It's God you've been praying for me you wanted me to come and enter your life, I am here I'm answering your... Oh, come on. Just open the door. That's all that's necessary. If you open the door, the kingdom is yours. Well, how do I know it's God? I mean, come one. It could be my neighbors and then they're going to laugh in my face that I believe that it was God. I mean what are you talking about? And God says, well, your mother died about 10 years ago. Would you like to talk to her? I said, yeah. There's my mother. Mom, what are you doing here? Son, that's really God. Let him in. I am. I'm going to. I promise. I'll think about it. What am I doing? What is going on inside of me that I'm not going to open that door? Then she goes away and he does some other miracles and all that. And he's there and he just said, do you want me in your heart or not? And I went, well, I didn't expect you today, God. I mean, I think you're supposed to get ready for like when you're coming. Open the door. That's all you have to do. You walk over and open that door and I will come in. Wow, God, I know this is going to be hard for you to probably understand. But you knocked right in the middle of the last episode of The Sopranos. All of the pieces come together right in the next 10 minutes, would it be unreasonable for me to ask, could you come back? Can anybody imagine doing that? And I watch the end of The Sopranos and then I go to the door and I open it and there's nobody there. And I go, I knew it was a joke. I knew it was a joke So there it is See how hard it is? But it's so simple So what's standing between me and the door? Me! There's no other resistance There's no other barrier There's no other problem There's no other obstacle except me Standing between me and the jackpot So the more we can seek, the more мы can see through the illusions, the more WE can inventory, the more We can do this, the closer We can come to opening the door. Let's take a break and we're back tomorrow morning. Thank you all for your attention. You've been great to stay awake this long. Good morning everybody. My name is Sandy Beach. I'm an alcoholic. I'm glad to see people actually came back. That's a good sign right there. Well, let's see. I think we got somewhere up around step seven yesterday. And just to refresh the starting point, which was a spiritual awakening. We've sort of used a bookend approach to this thing. We started on this side with the goal so that we don't lose sight of it. It's this having had a spiritual awakening as a result of all this work is to have that change of vision within you take place, not within somebody else. In the beginning, you believe in it because you saw it happen to somebody else, but the point is to Have That Happen to You so that when you look around, it's a much better place to live than it used to be. And when that happens, it's lot easier to live life. You just go, wow, this is a much better place than I used to live. Kind of like what happened after three drinks. You remember that? You went in there, one, two, hey man, this is more like it. Look at all the nice people. Look at it. I'm looking in the mirror. I'm a nice guy. You remember? How much time did you spend at the bar looking in the mirror? Wow. Wow, that's amazing. So it transformed the way you saw things. That's a spiritual awakening. You see what I'm talking about? And so that's what you want to have happen is you look and go, wow, this is a pretty good world. It looks fair. I can see the point of it all. So that's the point. And then carrying the message is showing somebody else how to have that happen to them. Now, granted, along the way you have to stay sober. You have to go to meetings. And that's all essential. But the goal is to have that transformation happen to you. Then we went back to the other side and said, why in God's name would I be interested in anything like that? And we found out that we have a disease that requires that we Have That Happen To Us or it's going to kill us. I'm sure if we had a program for cancer patients and we said if you just work these steps and have this awakening take place you don't have to worry about cancer anymore they'd be in here droves we wouldn't be able to seat everybody and they'd pay strict attention okay okay okay yeah yeah yeah I'm all and yeah I got I'm gonna go to Alaska to make an amend I'm I'm going to make this happen so that I don't continue with this disease that I have. And that's what alcohol is, but as we learn in some of the later steps today, it's a subtle foe, and it makes us feel like we're well. Ah, boy, six months without a drink, I'm cured. and my friend reminded me it's on that point that we need each other. We need each other to go, Janet what's going on? You just, you look like you're back in your ego again. No patience no tolerance. What's going on? We need somebody to be taking our inventory because there's a funny thing in spirituality about spiritual progress that is both positive and negative. And this is what I mean. This is, what I made up, is an ego prayer. Now egos obviously don't pray. They're not, they don't even like to hear the word God because that's infringing on their territory. In their world, they're God and we don't need anybody else. I'm the center, I'm the baby, the king, you know that whole thing. It's me, me, me, get that God thing out of here but they're very clever and you've been fooled by your own thinking how many times? I mean it's just like Charlie Brown on the football every freaking Thanksgiving Okay, you know, that's your ego. I will not move the football. Okay. I can't believe I did that to myself again. That's what was going on inside of us. I can'T believe that I fell for that again. So anyway, in order to make a big show out of acknowledging the spiritual progress that has taken place inside of me, I might find myself saying something like this and it sounds good except it isn't coming from my heart it's coming from My ego so I might be actually on My knees God, I just want to thank You for all the things You've done for me I am so grateful that You took me from the gutter and lifted me up and took away all my anger and took way my resentments and made me have friends and gave me this wonderful program, gave me the ability to see what a wonderful world it is. You filled my heart with love. I don't know how I can ever repay you. I am so grateful that you have now placed me in a position where I no longer need to mess around with you. I am still here. I'm so happy that you had returned me to a place of self-sufficiency so that I now am fine again. Thank you, God, for getting the hell out of my life. You see how subtle it is? Oh, God finally fixed me. That's the trick. What do you mean, fixed you? I mean, it's like coming down on a parachute and going, thanks for getting me down to 5,000 feet. I'll take it from here on my own. Hello? So alcoholism is a subtle foe. And as we get in the 10th step, it says, we're not cured of alcoholism. We have a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition. And so we always have to be on the lookout for this mental prestidigitation and . You know? It's amazing. Bill writes somewhere, well, he writes it in more than one place. He writes a sentence that I think is really interesting. He says, our problems, we think, are of our own making. They arise out of us. You know what I'm saying? It's like you have a little factory down there. Hey, we're running low on problems. And then here they come. Now we got one. We didn't have one before. And so if you think about it, how is a problem, how is the resentment created? I mean, what is the dynamics of it? And I would submit to you that it's almost like a magic trick. Like if I'm a magician up here, I'm going to actually do a trick just right now. And I'm gonna cause a resentment to appear right in front of your eyes. because yesterday I saw in the parking lot one of those new Mercedes with 12 cylinders, you know, the big car. And so using that Mercedes as a way I'm not going to use my hands. I'm going to hold them still so I won't be moving them at all. And I'm gonna create a resentment right here in front of you Some guy in this room has a new Mercedes with 12 cylinders, and I don't. And that's not fair. Did anybody feel the resentment appear? you just it's that's not fair that he has that Mercedes and I don't what is it what is what is the what was made out of whole cloth it was just manufactured out of thin air we there's a resentment out of a parked Mercedes out there don't even know whose it is could be the hotel owner but in my mind looked at that and said hey opportunity for a problem let's go look at it so far so good I'm just overlooking Wow Wow then I come down why don't I have one of those yeah why don t you what's going on with the world how come he has that you don't. Well, it's not fair. It never has been fair. I know that. Well, let's think about all the things that aren't fair. Oh, God. Back when I was seven. Remember that time my sister took away the goddamn thing? Then I was in high school. Didn't get on the team. Another guy got on the Team. He got their girlfriend. We have a file cabinet that the Mercedes just opened up. Everything thing that's been unfair, that we kept very careful tab of. So we learn in here the fairness, oddly enough, is a one-way street. It only goes out from me. It's not supposed to come back to me. I'm supposed to be fair and then I'll be happy. You understand the difference? If I'm fair to everyone, in other words, It's just the opposite of what we think. If I treat everybody fairly, I will sleep like a baby. If they don't treat me fairly, they won't sleep like baby. We don't need to get even. We don' t need to settle the score. We don''t need to do anything. It's already been done by them not being fair. If they're mean, they have to go to bed after having been mean. Remember when you were mean? We still can't let ourselves off the hook for some of the stuff we did when we were drinking. So we don't need to do anything to anybody who treated us badly. It's already being done. So we only have to concern ourselves with, am I being fair? So that really takes the burden off. We don't even have to keep track of whether we're being treated fairly. It's a total waste of time. It's an exercise in problem creating. I'm going to look around and see if I was treated fairly today. And it's a setup for feeling terrible that night. As you think, here's three places where I was treated unfairly today. And when we create a world with our thinking, that's the one we go to bed in. We just lie in bed in this unfair bed. You know what I mean? I can't even sleep in this stupid bed now. and it just changes everything because we're reversing. When we get to the prayer of St. Francis, you'll see how the energy is supposed to go the other way. We just have it backwards and we think that we need and the reason we think we need is we're living in this world that we discussed earlier, the ego world that has no God and of course we need because our creator isn't there in this imaginary place and we need everything in order to keep this thing going. And when we suddenly realize, wait a minute, I am just the guy sweeping on the stage. You remember that? That's all I'm supposed to be doing. I'm not supposed to make up a story about how unfair it is to sweep on the state. and then lived in that story about how unfair everything is I'm supposed to so we're abandoning that's why Bill said old ideas avail us nothing those are the old story lines that produce terrible unhappiness we just keep repeating those same old storylines and get miserable so this is what we're inventory. And these are all the things we're trying to get rid of. And Chuck Chamberlain, God bless his soul, he just spent his life uncover, discover, discard. What else is going on inside of me that is playing a trick on me that I'm wrong about? And find it and then ask God to remove it, discard it, let go of it, Let Go. If you really wanted, if somebody said to me, could you summarize the whole spiritual program in two words? I would say, I think these would come very close. Let go. In other words, everything that we're inventorying, everything like when we're going to go make amends for the past, we're trying to let go of it. This is how we let go of the past. Somebody came up to me and said, oh God, I've had this thing, It's driving me crazy. It's the emergency of my life. I don't know what I should do. It's just the biggest thing in the world. You know what? I would say, well, how about going to the movies? Why don't you just go to the movie? I can't go to a movie when I have this. No, just go the movies. Ask God to watch that problem. You buy your ticket and then go out front. Hey, God, I'm going to go in the movies now. Would you please take it? This is the problem. You will guard it? Oh, yeah, I'll take care of it while you're in the movie. Okay. and then go in the movies and just go to the movies. That's the greatest thing you could do with that problem. You will come out in the problem movie about this big compared to that big because if it was that big, you wouldn't be able to go to The Movies with a problem that big. But if you go to THE Movies, you go, well, it couldn't be that big because I went to The movies. You see what happens? You tricked your own trickery. I keep using the word trick and illusion and all that because it's one way of explaining the ego, which is our archenemy. So consider this. I was feeling terrible, depressed. Somehow I let things, you know, they're just bugging me, bugging my head. And I said, I'm going to trick myself into feeling better. Did you ever say that to yourself? I'm gonna trick myself into feeling better. So I said, watch this. He won't even see it coming. I'm walking down the road. I come to the newspaper vending machine. Oh, I think I'll check the news. I'm really not going to check the News, but I put the quarter in, and I take it out, and I open the News. Well, this is going on. Uh-oh, the movie section. Wow, let's see what's there. So then I look at it and go, oh my God, there's a good movie. We could go to the movies. What do you think about that? Oh yeah. There's a whole new part of me that goes, yeah, that sounds pretty good. Well, why don't we see what time it's playing? Oh my God. We could actually go. Can we get popcorn? Yeah, we get pop corn. No kidding. Wow. I think I'll go with you to the movie. Okay, let's go. And I go and I'm in there and I am going, ha ha, I faked myself out. I'm having a good time. I'm sitting in the movies. Ha-ha, I almost feel like going like that to the other part of me. And so you all were with me when you saw, wow, he did trick himself into feeling better. Now here's the important thing to understand. We tricked ourselves into feeling bad in the first place. We're just getting even. you see what i'm saying we're just getting even oh you you tricked me into having a resentment i'm good i'm going the freaking movies ha ha now i got you so i'm using these little stories that's just examples of the real nature of what we're dealing with we're doing with problems of our own making. And that's in the big book, two places, if I recall. After all, we are not a glum lot. I mean, just think of all the different quotes you could... That's not who we are. We make up a story that I'm glum. Our basic nature is happy, joyous, and free. God's will for us to be happy, joyous and free." I created this great world. I gave you jobs sweeping the stage. And I promised you, you'd be happy as a pig in mud if you just swept the stage. That's what I gave you. I gave you this beautiful thing and it's a wonderful place to hang out and just be happy. Well, thank you God, but I think I can improve on that. I'm going to get out of this sweeping job and I'm really not happy and I don't need you. I'll do it myself and then off we go. So anyway, we get to eight and nine, which are probably the easiest steps to explain the mechanics of. We're rapidly approaching now, we've done so much work, the desired location that we're trying to live in, which is in step ten, which istoday. You follow what I'm saying? there's three places to be the past now and the future the now is real whenever we're in the now we are exactly what we're supposed to be where we're supposed to and when we're suppose to be that is the place to stay at all times but we don't spend a lot of time in the now, because we're very busy in other locations. And most of us have very little time for the now, because we are very concerned with the past and very concerned what the future. Now, in order to not be in the now. Now, just follow me. In order to be in that past, how do I get there? I make up a story about the past and tell it to myself. Hey, you remember four years ago when they go, oh yeah. How do I get in the future? I make up a story about the future. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sitting here, I're real happy, and my ego says to me, hey, I wonder how the future's going to be. Well, I guess I better go check it out. So I go ahead. And I go, well, wow, a couple months from now, when am I going to go, oh, jeez, that's going to be awful, I know that. And I don't know, I go over there, that's gonna be the scariest sales call I ever go on. And if I go over here, I'm going to ask her out and she's going to say no. I'm gonna feel like crap. I might as well drink now. So I spend about an hour checking out the future and I come back and I go, it's awful. I don't even want it to happen. I was just out there. God damn. So we spend an hour visiting the future, ruining the now. Now the now is oh god. So you can see what a waste of time it is to be anywhere but the now. But in order to get there, there's some work we've got to do. And this is how we take care of the past. We can finally settle with the past in steps eight and nine. And it really is a question of sitting down and having harm explained to us. you know made a list of all the people we had harmed and I thought I had done a really good job in other words I looked at the twelve and twelve twelve twelve has a lot of examples of harm and it isn't just why oh this money I wrecked this guy's house there's all kinds of harm that I hadn't thought about withholding affection do you ever do that with any of your kids you know and I'm not going to be nice to them until they behave and treat this daughter better than the son so that he'll be upset, and that will get even with him for staying out late. I mean, there's so many subtle ways that we can harm someone, which is to upset their peace of mind and to create disharmony. Bill uses that word a lot, that harm is really in disharminy. I mean, I'd come after a weekend, come back to work. I've got the hangover. I'm dying and people are coming in. They're happy. Oh boy, I had a great time. It drove me crazy they were happy. I just hated that they were happy so I'd glare at them. Hey, get unhappy like me. Then it would be fair. I'd bring everybody down to my unhappy level. That's more like it. Can't stand a happy office with people ha-ha-ha. They're all little birds. They don't even know what life is all about. Oh, so I was going to say, I thought I'd done this remarkable job. And somewhere around 20 years, I was dating somebody in the program. It wasn't going well, and my friend said, you have to go to Al-Anon. Oh, I know. I'm not going there. Well, we're not going to hang out with you anymore unless you go. So I went there in Washington. I went for 10 years until I moved to Tampa. I found this neat little group and you know what was fun about it? Being new. And people would come up there and they all knew who I was and they'd come up and they go, listen, can we ask you about this? I just got here. What do I know? It was really fun just not knowing, you know, and being brand new and just listening. Sure, it was the same steps, but it was seeing it from an entirely different perspective. And so I was sitting there, and I remember a couple of times a young woman whose husband was still drinking would come in just torn to shreds and would describe some of the things that happened. and I didn't think they were that bad. You follow what I'm saying? What, he just said that and you're that upset? In other words, I had no idea of all these, quote, little things that were devastating and I suddenly, I remember about six months later it was really sinking in and I called up my ex-wife and said, I got to make an amend at an even deeper level than I did before. And I told her, I said, it was in this meeting. And she said, oh yeah, well, I never wanted to bring that up. And I said I didn't. I had no idea that all that little stuff I was calling it in my mind was devastating a human being. So it was a great eye opener for me to see, wow. I mean, gee, it was amazing. So that's the point of this in the eighth step, made a list of all the people we had harmed, became willing to make amends to them all. And we learned in the 12 and 12 that while making the amends is very, very important, it's equally important to learn what it is in us that creates this disharmony so that wherever we go, people are worse off than before we got there and Bill called that we learn how to bring out the worst in everyone now think about that as an alcoholic one way to keep people away from you is to keep them off balance you know what I mean boom fake them out and they're over here reeling and they don't focus in on your drinking you know I mean I would make up stories when I thought my boss was getting ready to call me on something you know it's oh I just got a letter from my wife she's leaving me I didn't get a letter like that I just faked him out he'd never come down hard on me then right see how the just keep the whole world off balance well if in fact our behavior brings out the worst in people what kind of a world do we live in pretty bad world you know what i mean we get we come home at night we go god everywhere i went another ass you know What I Mean and we have no idea that we caused that my parents were having their long time ago my parents are having their 50th wedding anniversary My sister, who now is coming up on 30 years in AA, was preparing the event up in Connecticut. And she was going over the list of people that were coming. And one of them was this uncle. And I went, Sue, do we have to invite him? I mean, jeez. He's always so obnoxious and rude and abrasive. I mean couldn't we just pretend that we forgot? I mean just think it's a big event and my parents and it's really important. She said, he's only like that when you're around. what oh no we love him he's great i went what that's impossible that is impossible that that could be true that he's a great guy i know he's not i'm every time i'm with him there he is but anyway she had a lot of time in the program and you know you sort of have that extra credibility with people in the program. I said, okay, let's suppose by some weird freaking accident that she's right. So I'm going to pretend that this is the greatest guy in the world. Okay? That was my mindset when I got there. And there he was before he could react to anything. I just ran over Uncle Jack, I'm so glad to see you. Oh, my God. How is everything going? And he looked a little surprised. And then he went, great. I'm so glad to see you. How do you like that? Isn't that amazing? So out of the eighth step, Bill wants us to learn as much as we can about how we create disharmony. Why? To change the world that we live in. Once we stop doing that and we bring out the best in people, see I like to be, if I'm in the checkout line at the supermarket, I want that clerk to always look forward to seeing me. You know what I mean? Even if she's bumbling up and having a terrible day and can't get this right and it takes an extra two minutes, I wanna just say, thank you for waiting on me. I'm so happy you waited on me I want to go in the dry cleaning place and I'm picking up my dark suit for my daughter's wedding and they lost it and the clerk has to tell me this she knows she has to tells me this and I say oh don't worry about that I got another suit we'll get it next week have a good day. Wouldn't that be fun to do? You follow what I'm saying? To change our self-centeredness so we're the one person who doesn't go, you don't have my suit. Do you know how important a wedding is? I mean, have you ever done that? Do you Know how important and a wedding is? I'm the father. She already knows all this. She's trembling in her boots. So you see what's happening out of the eighth step? We're going, wow, I could change this. I could change that. What happens when we change? The world changes. Bingo. Now I live in a great world. Everywhere I go, there's smiling people. What are they smiling at? You. How do you like that? That's a pretty powerful step, isn't it? That is a big dimension out of the eighth step that sometimes we miss. It's right there in the 12 and 12. It is equally important that we extricate every detail about our own behavior that causes disharmony so that we can live in harmony with our brothers and sisters. When I think of living in harmony, I think a symphony orchestra. And Beethoven has written this symphony and then we all play our notes that have been assigned to us. and when we do and play it just like it was written by the maestro God or Beethoven in the symphony story we have the most beautiful harmony and music you can imagine but it requires playing all kinds of different notes that are written and we have to practice and learn how to do that as alcoholics we only knew one note And if we use the do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, guess which one it was? Mi. And we get out of bed in the morning and we just went, mi. And if somebody knew how to get in harmony with that, there was harmony. You follow what I'm saying? And so we went and we're in a relationship and we said, and we were like, and we went, if there's going to be in harmony in the relationship, why don't I tell you a little bit about me? And if I tell you enough about me you will soon learn how to adjust and be in harmony with me. So when there was disharmony, I assumed I hadn't told her enough about me. And so they said you've got to communicate more. I said of course you have to communicate more. Let me tell you more about me. Are you getting it yet? Me. Oh, don't fold the socks that way. Fold them this way. Me. And if somebody could pay attention, there'd be harmony. So I was willing to go 50-50. I was willing to spend as much time talking about me as was necessary. and so you could see there wasn't much following the score as written by the Beethoven I just had my own song we played it all day long me and it did not produce harmony it produced terrible results fights and discord and all of that so look how much there is out of the eighth step isn't that amazing that all of this great knowledge and then an awareness of what we're really inflicting on people with gossip and with cheating and lying. There's the whole list in the book. So the important thing to do, of course, is to run this by our guide or our sponsor who can help us see this, put it in a more clear light and also help us decide which one of these we're going to make amends to and which ones are inappropriate because as we get in the ninth step, we're not going to do that. We're not willing to make the amends if it'll hurt the other person, if it's gonna raise something unnecessarily that would cause them great sadness or anger or whatever, but we're certainly willing to do whatever it is there was a guy I just heard his story no it was his sponsor and he said this guy came to him and he was a he broke into homes and stole TVs and appliances in order to pay for his alcohol and he broke into like 25 homes and never got caught and this is years later you know five years later and he's coming up and he said well I know this step I mean I'll talk to you about it but I am NOT and the sponsor said all right let's just leave it that way that you feel it would be you'd end up in jail or that it would