Willingness to Remove Character Defects – 12 Step Workshop – Part 2 of 3 – Bill S.

Welcome back, part three. As we move on through the step, thank all of you who made it back from lunch and the ones who are out on the beach. When we get through with step 12, you can go out and carry the message to those on the beat. Hi, Francine. Good to see you, dear. you have if you've never heard that young lady speak tomorrow morning you are tomorrow afternoon when is morning you are in for the treat of a lifetime go here don't miss it before we crank back up I want to share with you the story of two great old Irishmen who had a policy every day of gathering at the local pub in downtown Dublin and and hoisting a great big glass of ale together every day. Angus and his good friend Ferguson got together every day for over 40 years and drank together. Ferguson got sick, and on his deathbed he told his old friend, Ferguson, be sure to go or Angus to go to the bar and tilt one for me every day and remember me. So after Ferguson died, Angus faithfully went to the bar every day and had his two glasses of ale in remembrance of his great buddy. And then the day came in when Angus came in and the bartender sat down, sat two glasses in front of him and Angus said, no, no, take one away. Take one away, just leave me one. He says, why? He said, well, he said, it's this way. He said I've joined Alcoholics Anonymous, but I don't want to punish my old friend Ferguson. Now, and only an alcoholic could fully comprehend the meaning of that. We're doing our journey through the steps. We're finding out that the steps are cleansing, they are healing, and they are life-changing. and most of the changes we said so far take place when you're not watching as we said as we broke the lunch the next two steps are about change step six we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character we've been talking about keywords in the steps as we go along and there's some key words to change that we're talking about first of all a willingness a willingness to change it says in the steps were entirely ready that denotes being willing to have God remove all these defects of character as I said I always proceed before I got there these steps to be sort of throw away step who wouldn't want to get rid of defect why not ask God to remove them but then And suddenly you hit that step, or better yet, it hits you right between the eyes. And I find myself wanting to play cards with God and say, You can have this one, and you can have that one. I want to hang on to this one a little while. I might need that one later. And then as I looked at it even more, what I came to realize is that Bill Sanders was the sum total of his character defects. And if those are taken away, what's going to be left? Scary. And then I was led back to step three and a decision that I had made. I was also led back to that word faith. Now you hear people refer to different kinds of faith. Faith, and then there's blind faith. To me, that's a redundancy. To me all faith is blind. If I can see around the next corner, I don't need to have faith. I can look around the corners and say, nope, don't want to go there. And take off in another direction. Faith, true faith is stepping off the curb in the dark. True faith you're getting in that wheelbarrow as I was talking about earlier in my personal experience and not questioning and it's tough and this is a first true exercise in genuine faith are we truly willing for God to remove these defective characters another word comes into play humility probably one of the most misunderstood words in the english language i believe that humility and humiliation were the same thing when i got here i find out that they're not even remotely the same things they're not even from the same uh root word humility in my book is the acceptance that I cannot but that God can and will as the book tells us if he is soft humility is the acknowledgement once again of my powerlessness over my instincts that we talked about earlier those instincts that have guided us, led us, dragged us, whatever term you want to use, for most of our lives up to this point. And then that willingness to let God take charge of those instincts, to remove those defects, and to leave us as God-guided instead of ego-driven. And then, of course, the third word crops up again and we've seen it several times. Truth. the truth that will make us free. And sometimes getting self-awareness is painful. We've heard it said that the truth will set us free, but first it'll likely make you miserable. But, of course, that misery is the key to change. That misery is what brought us through the doors of alcoholic synonymous. that misery is what tells us that something has to be better out there. There has to быть something better than the way we're living it, living it. Let's look at that word willingness. Step six is about willingness to let go. How does willingness come? With prayer? Yeah. When the pain becomes too great we become willing pain is a great motivator we alcoholics above all else know that step six is based on this truth if you want to change you don't do what you want to do in other words you don' t do what those instincts tell you to do that you've lived with for so long there comes the faith that there has to be a better way now you know that's something we balk at it's something i want to argue with and every time i've gone to the doctor and he tells me i need to lose weight i said how to do that he said make a list of everything you love to eat then don't eat it well not really but it seems like that when you get through sometimes we feel like that doing the steps and my first sponsor used to be fond of saying this as a man walked into the doctor's office lift his hand way over his head and said doc it hurts every time I do that. The doctor says then don't do that. It is that simple, it is that complicated. The real problem is that we often cling to what we are even though we don't like it. We came here with low self-esteem, just not being very fond of ourselves, and yet we balk at change. I had an experience once late in my drinking. When I wanted to get away from the world, I would go out to the banks of the Chattahoochee River across the northern side of Atlanta. There's a park out there. And I'd go and sit in that park. I don't know why, because I never did look at the beauties of nature. There were a lot of things in that part that I never saw. But I'd just sit in the park and feel miserable and feel sorry for myself. And one day I was sitting there, and an old man came up. He was a rather haggard-looking old fellow. He looked like he'd lived most of his life on the street, missing quite a few keys. nearly as I could tell his last bath had probably been about six or eight weeks ago and he sat down on the park bench beside me and said boy what's wrong with you for not a while but I began to spill it out to him and I talked about my drinking and I talk about my inability to do anything about it and about what it would do to me and how I planned every day when I left my office to stop at the bar and have one or two drinks and that it never happened and that I always woke up the next morning with a horrible hangover and he said, then what'd you do? I said, well, I go to work a little while and then go back and drink some more. He just sat and scratched his head and then he laid a truism on me, real truisme of life that to me wraps up and sums up alcoholism as well as anything I've ever heard in my life. The old man put it this simply. Sounds like you've got a bad taste of can't get enough of what you really don't want. Think about that. Can't get enough of what you really don't want. I didn't want what alcoholism was doing to me. I didn' want what it was doing to my life. to my family, to my job, to my friendship. I didn't want any of that. Did I know it was directly related to drinking? Yes. Could I do anything about it? No. I still couldn't get enough of what I really didn't walk. Until the pain becomes so severe that we are willing the book tells us that we must be willing right on page 79 we are willing we have to be I had to do a lot of praying for willingness in step 6 God make me willing God help me to want what this program has to offer God make me willing to take that next great step in recovery to be able to humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. As I said, I wanted to make a deal with God. I was good at making deals with God, most of us were. But I always got kicked off at him because he didn't keep up his end of the deal. You know, how many of you spent most of your lives making deals with him? If you get me through this, And I promise I'll—I heard the story of an evangelist who was on an airplane, and sitting in front of him was a very sharply dressed businessman. And the businessman was sitting there reading his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. And the plane took off and man, the evangelist who tells a little shaky obviously didn't like airplanes all that much. The plane got up and they hit some turbulence. And that airplane was bouncing all over the place. I mean it was flouncing and bouncing. they see services the the uh flight attendants trapped themselves in and now please remain seated keep your seat belt firmly fastened we're experiencing turbulence and that old that old businessman said they started praying he said god i didn't want to get on this plane to begin with i had to go make this business deal or lose 10 million dollars but i promise you one thing god if you'll get me safely back down on the ground i promise you i promise I promise you, God, I'll give you half of everything that I own, and you know that's a lot. I'm worth $150 million, and I'll givin' you half out of it, God. If you'll just get me safely back on the ground. So that's the plane smoothed out, came in for a glass-smooth landing. And as he gets down to walk, the gangplank of the airplane, the evangelist catches up behind him and says, Brother, I heard what you said on that airplane. I heard you say that if God gets you safely back down on the ground, give him half of everything that you own. And I know you want to start right now. Businessman looked at me and said, preacher, I tell you what, I made a better deal. He said, oh, what's that? I told him if he ever got me back on another airplane, he could have all of it. Now, to me, that's the alcoholic way. I used to try to make all of these deals with God and then I would fault him because he didn't keep up his end of it never mind that I wasn't about to keep up my end of it anyway what is our purpose maybe we ought to look at that at this point our purpose according to the book on page 77 our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and to the people around us. You've heard the saying, you can't think your way into sober living, you have to live your way into sober thinking. I had a dearly beloved grandfather who was never a member of this fellowship nor did he need to be. But he had a lot of grandpa-isms that he would throw at us that I didn't understand that much as a kid. One in particular I was not to understand until I came to this program and until I hit these steps and I got to this point of having to face the reality of my shortcomings and to become willing to have them removed. And that great truism from my grandpa was this simple one. You can't live crooked and think straight. You can's live crooked and think straightforward. I can't hold on to those old ideas. I can't hold on to those ways of looking at things and yet face the world straight and honest I've got to be willing to let go and then the book tells me on page 83 that the spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it straight you can't live it crooked it won't work the wording of that step is so simple when we reach step seven we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings folks that is so simply and let's get look at what we do with it My sponsor called me one day and said, what step are you on? I said, seven. What are you doing about it? I said well I'm right now just kind of working on my character defects. He said you've been working on them all your life and look where it got you. He said there is nothing in that step about you working on those defects. It says we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. It does not say we humbly ask him to help us remove those shortcomings. It doesn't say we ask him for the courage to get rid of our shortcomings, it says we ask him who removes them. How simple can that be? And yet we're going to sit and think about them, and we're gonna talk about them. And we're going to make decisions about them. And it's about all of them. Step six didn't say some of. It said retain willing for them to remove all of then. So he won't make a deal of you can keep this one, I'll take that one. And as I said at the outset of this morning session, I believe when I got to step 7 that I was going to say that prayer that's the action of step 7 that's as simple as it gets that's all of the action of step 6 say that prayer and then don't do what that instinct says start listening for that God consciousness that we talked about and some intuition will come into play I believe that I would say that prayer and that I could lean back and visualize all these little defects floating off into the sky see there goes that one oh I'm glad to be rid of that one bye I'm going to miss you didn't happen didn't happened not a single one of my defects has been removed while I was watching not a one but all of a sudden you go through some little crisis of life some little unwanted hand that life deals you and you play the cards the way they fall and you come out the other end of it and here comes one of those wow I reacted differently I did something different i didn't freak out over this i didn' go bonkers over this most of all i went through this and i didn''t even think about taking a drink that's when you know a true miracle has happened Some years ago, in recovery, my wife and I faced a great roadblock in our lives. Our daughter was diagnosed with a very, very serious illness, and for several days she lay in the hospital and the doctors could not give us any guarantee that she was going to live. a very high fever, ice packed around her trying to keep the temperature down, trying to effect some sort of solution. My wife and I prayed and we stayed by her side and our daughter's grandmother came to visit my mother-in-law and she pulled my wife aside and said, I surely hope that you and Bill aren't going to drink over there and my wife just shook her head in shock because she realized that the thought of a drink had not entered our minds the thought of the drink had not even surfaced as a remote solution to what we were going through she said don't be angry at mom for asking that I said I'm not, I am very grateful because it gave me a reminder of one of those defects God had taken away and I wasn't watching that instantaneous thing that is the answer the escape instead we had faced the reality we were dealing with. We had done it prayerfully and thoughtfully with counsel, advice with sponsors and sponsees with programming, with staff and we had dealt with it and the old only answer go get drunk didn't even show its ugly face. You see that's all that God asked us to do. All that Bill penned for us is the message from God take away these defects my creator I am now willing that you should have all of me good and bad I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character who stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows strength as I go out from here to do your bidding how very simple it is and yet we try so hard to complicate it as we have determined there are no blanks to fill in in that prayer there are no side instructions remember we're no longer operating under our own power we have now admitted our powerlessness next. And after taking step two, three, gathering up the garbage in four and five, becoming willing to have that garbage carried out and taken away in six and seven, we're now beginning, just beginning to tap into that infinite power of the universe. We can now go ahead with and confident, knowing that our actions are well thought out and that we have a higher purpose to attend to. Keep step six and seven simple. A young man that I inherited as a foncee a couple of years ago had moved from another state and I asked him what set he was on when he came and he told me he was on step six. And I said, good, when you want to get together and I'd like to do the seventh step prayer with my sponsor, I said when are you going to be ready to do that? He said, I probably need a few more months. I said whoa, whoa, what do you mean a few months? He says well my previous sponsor told me that I needed to stay on step six at least a minimum six months and I asked him no I didn't I started to ask him where in God's name and where in that book did a sponsor find something said you stay on step six six for six months I didn t ask I didn d really care to me step six and seven go together do I wait until I am 100% absolutely positively without any question or hesitation willing before I say that prayer. No, otherwise I would be waiting six months, a year, 10 years, 15 years. I pray for the willingness. I say the prayer and then I get up off my knees and act as if. And to me God shows me the way guides me and will give me the answers. It is that simple. Then the next thing you do is sit around and wait six more months. No, you don't. My first sponsor was fond of saying that when anybody tells him that they're just coasting on the steps, he reminds them you only coast in one direction. Down. You never coasted up a hill. So, that having been done, we go on to step eight and we make a list of all persons that we had harmed and we became willing, save that word again, willing to make amends to them all. What is the harm we were talking about? Do you remember earlier? The harm is wrongful act, wrongful action. we've taken action all of our lives, but the action was based on instinct. Those instincts of preservation that we talked about, the sexual instinct, the social instinct, the mental instinct. Instead of acting on those, we are now with God's guidance going back to undo to correct or make amends for those wrong actions that we took for all those years. The step again is very explicit. It said we became willing to make amends to them all. It didn't say a representative sample. It didn' t say we picked out a handful to show that we were sincere. It says we made a list of them and became willing to make amends for them all. Now, what I suggest to the guys that I sponsor is to take that fourth step and those lists of people that you had the resentment towards, you take those institutions that you've had fears of, those people that your had fears or that you have resentments towards, and that as the result of those resentments, as a result of the resentment, as a product of those fears, you acted inappropriately toward those people. That you were wrongful in your actions toward those peoples. And that became the basis of your list for your ninth step of men. That became your eighth step list. and an eight step list in this alcoholic's book can be a strange looking thing you know there were people that I couldn't remember names for and I would have to put it as the guy that I ran into in front of the Red Lobster restaurant and got out and wrote on a piece of paper, they think I'm leaving you my tag number and my phone number, but I'm really not in putting it on his windshield and getting into my car and driving away. I didn't get the guy's tag number and I knew he didn't have mine and all I left him was a piece of paper in case somebody saw me, but I don't remember who that guy is. I'll never be able to find him, but I need emotionally to make an amends for that. So he goes on the list. You know, sadly something I'm not proud of is that there were a lot of extracurricular activities in my love life during my marriage of which I'm now proud and some of them never had names as far as I knew and I couldn't go back and make amends but I had to do so in many many instances collectively but I've had to be willing to do that. So there were a lot of descriptions of people, of notations so I could know what people. Or there were institutions, there were organizations, there was governmental agencies, all that required that I put them on the list for some kind of an amend. You know, when I first began that list, I thought it was going to have about 10 or 12 items or names on the list. I don't know about you, but when I got through that list, it was a lot longer than 10 or 12. And it just kept going and kept going and kept doing. A lot of the people that I had on my list, I felt they needed to make some amends to me. And my old way of thinking, my old set of steps I used to live by said that I knew that they owed me in amends and as soon as they made one to me, I'd make one to them. Folks, you can search and search and search in the book for that and you're not going to find it. You are not going to find that in the books. And there may be a lot of people that we make amends to that do probably owe us amends that we never will hear one from. But that's not in the Book either. We don't need to have any expectation of that. Because the book doesn't say that's what the recovery as the result of that step is about. When we finish that step, what do we do? Think about it for six months? No. No. I also believe that we don't run out and immediately start making amends. It is my strong recommendation based on my experience that we take this list and we sit down with it with our sponsor and we go over the list and the reason I believe for that again my alcoholic mind has the ability to rationalize anything and that step says may direct them in such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. I think that's one of the few leapholes that maybe Bill left a big enough hole that we could crawl through it riding on the back of a Sherman tank if it weren't for good sponsorship. Because I had about two-thirds of my amends list and I said, I'm going to leave alone because it would be, to do such a thing or so would injured somebody. he said who would it injure well I'm an other who might injure me no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, doesn't say anything about that Seth says you go and make amends except to do so would injure that person or people related to that person to their families to their friends to their livelihood to their well-being and one by one a sponsor went down that list with me, and I talked about to refresh his memory from the fifth step about what this particular person was and what their resentment was about. And he helped me to decide in each case do I write a letter? Do I meet this person face-to-face? Is it preferable? What do I say? Well, my natural inclination is the motor mouth that I am is to rehash the entire thing that I did or the way that I treated them or the day that I reacted to them or responded to them for years and years and years. Rehash the whole thing. Go through it all again. Seth doesn't tell me to do that. I can guarantee you that 99 and 9 tenths percent of the time when you go to make an amends to somebody for something you've done they pretty well know what it was you've gone. You don't need to remind them. Now, that's true most of the time. I have gone to make a few amends to people where they didn't even remember what it was I was supposed to have done. He was eating me alive. He was chewing me up and spitting me out. It wasn't bothering them a bit. They'd forgotten all about it. But I had to make the amends, not for them, for me after the first couple of amends that i made i came charging back to my sponsor and said you're not gonna believe what that guy called me when i got through making my amends to him and my sponsor handed me the book and says show me where in the book it says and they will by God accept your amends. It isn't, isn't it? That isn't what the step is about. The step is not about us getting forgiveness. The step is not a step The step is not about us getting absolved of what we've done. The step is about us making an amend. What it is an amend is changing something that we can change. If you have an amendment to the constitution of the United States it's taking one part and replacing it with another part, which changes the action or the power of the Constitution. And amends for us is to make restitution, to make right a wrong that we have done wherever possible. It doesn't say we get a plaque for doing it. It It doesn't say we get a pat on the back for doing it. If we do, that's well and good, but it's not what it's for. It's about correcting a wrong. And when the wrong is done and over and gone and there's nothing we can do to change it, there is nothing we an undo, do to undo it, then we simply let them know that we are truly, honestly, sincerely sorry and would that we could would do anything within our power to change that wrong I often in amends that I have made where I have done so with a letter when too many miles and circumstances prevent face to face I've said in the letter this letter does not require nor seek a reply this is my expression to you of the wrongs the ways that I have wronged you my sponsor helped me to see that in some instances where I thought I should go rushing out to an old flame or to another individual that when to do so would be to resurrect pain for that person that they don't need to relive again it would bring about hurt for them wounds that have healed and need to be left alone but my sponsor led me in that decision not my magic magnifying mind saying I don't want to do it therefore I'm going to sweep it under that rock that says when to do so would injure them or others and then came the question of what do you do about loved ones that you've hurt that are no longer here well I've heard a lot of people that have a lot different answers to that and I say whatever works for you more power to you what I found worked for me is to sit down and do some serious letter writing I wrote a letter to my late father it was quite a lengthy letter it covered a lot of ground the next opportunity I had I went to his grave and I sat down beside the grave and I read that letter. And I spent a little time there. And then I destroyed the letter with the destruction of the letter. I let go of the pain, I let ago of the resentment, I let ego of what separated us from Him. See, that was a very strange amendment for me to make because I had carried around an anger for 35 years against my father. And what was my resentment? My resentment was that he died when I was five years old and left me. Did that resentment make any logical sense? No, he didn't choose to die. He wanted to have everything in the world to live for. But you see, in the mind of a child and then i carried that in my immature emotions into adulthood in my mind he had abandoned me left me and i carried a resentment and i cared anger for years and years and ears about that it affected my relationships with other people it affected our relationships with my own family children my wife and and uh that was freeing to write that letter to go to his grave to to set him free and to set myself free. And I've heard other people express other ways of handling those amends, and I encourage you, whatever it takes, do it. I also encourage people, again, to follow the numbers. Don't go out in the middle of the second or third step and start making amends. you do and you're going to screw it up again my sponsor said they put little numbers by those steps for smart college boys like me so we could follow along and i believe that you know from time to time we have to jerk a knot in some of these people's heads and remind them that the steps have numbers for a purpose that we make amends when we are prepared spiritually, when we aren't prepared emotionally, and when we're prepared with getting rid of our own garbage to go into making amends to somebody else. Now I hear it often debated, do I put myself on the amends list or not? I'm one of those that said, yes, I do. I do put myself off the list. Some people say that's an ego trip. Well, probably so. but I'll tell you why I put myself on an amends list of how can I expect to ask someone else to accept my amends if I'm not willing to forgive myself if I am not willing to let go of that which I have inflicted upon myself for all those years how can i expect anyone else to grant me forgiveness or to accept my amends. That's a personal philosophy, you won't find it in the book. And amends should not take forever. I've seen people say that they took care of their amends list over a period of 10 or 12 years, and that shook my head. If you question some of those, you will find that there are instances where it took that long to find a person. It took that long to make a particular amends where you didn't know where somebody was in your past by God's grace or that great wonderful thing called coincidence, which is a miracle at which God chooses to remain anonymous. Put the two people together again so that you can make an amends. But my book and my sponsor told me you get about the business of making the amends. You make them as quickly as you can, as efficiently as you can. You don't make them when it's convenient for you, put it that way. It should be inconvenient. We inconvenienced a lot of people with the things that we did. So we're expected to go out of our way. We're expected to put out some effort to make these amends to people. And I was expected by my sponsor to have my amends pretty well made within three or four months at the absolute outside. And he even helped me devise a plan of what order I was going to do it in and which ones I was not going to be put on a back burner for an opportune time at a later date. And I can tell you, today I don't have any amends left to be made that I am aware of. Others may surface. We are told in making amends that, as we said, the spiritual life is a theory. It's not a theory, it is now a theory—it is not a theory. We have to live it. We should be sensible, tactful, considerate, humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people, we stand on our feet. We don't crawl before anyone. That's on page 83 in the big book. Step nine is not about bowing and scraping and crawling and saying I'm a low-life piece of garbage and I'm here to bow before you. Chastise me as you will. That's not what the step is about. Not at all. We're there to make amends, and we're there to set right the record. And what comes right after we make these amends? The ninth step promises, the ones that we read at the meetings now. At the meetings that I go to in my home group, we refer to these as the promises following the ninth step. Sometimes people come in when they first arrive at the doors of AA and they hear the promises read and they decide to work the promises instead of the steps you don't work the premises and get the steps it's the other way around so we learn that this is not a theory it is a way of life that we have to live and that we don't crawl before anybody We also, in making our amends, we don't go in ranting and raving. We don't say, I'm sorry you made me do that. That's not what this step is about. What we do is we say, please accept my sincere amends. No strings, no expectations. how many of us have tried to make amends and we go in and say, I am so sorry for how I wronged you. And then we saw them swallow and say but I do have to say if you hadn't done so and so then I probably and your amends just went right out the window. That's no longer an amends. I make amens for my part of a situation. It doesn't even matter if the other person's part was 99% and mine was 1%. I'm not there about their 99%. I'm there about my 1%, and that's all that I can do anything about. We read those promises that come after step nine, but to me, the greatest promise of all, although it's kind of capsulized in those 11 or 12 promises that we read after Step 9, it's sort of captured in there. In truth, I think that the greatest promise that follows Step 9 that leads us into the last three maintenance steps is one word, sanity. We have cleared away this garbage. which we have made restitution and amends where we can. And I hear some people say that sanity has been restored. Very personally, I don't think it was restored. I think I had it for the first time. I'm not sure I ever had any to begin with. But I think at that point, and you know those problems do tell me I will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me. Like which shirt and which socks go together Do I tie my shoes or do I just leave them dangling Because to bend over would give me a horrible headache You know, I think the greatest gift of sobriety is sanity And the sanity to be able to go ahead To move forward into those three most beautiful steps of all, steps 10, 11, and 12. And those are my favorite steps and the ones that we're going to cover in our last session which will begin in ten minutes.