Fourth Step Inventory – Workshop – Wilson House – VT – Part 3 of 7 – Raymer W.

We missed you, and we were talking about some stuff, and she said, I just, my husband relapsed, and I so wanted, he's sober again, but I just really wanted him to hear you when you were up there. And I wrote her back and said, thanks for your kindness, and then we talked for a little bit, and then she called me on the telephone, and we Were talking back and forth, and I said, so tell me about your husband. What's going on? And she goes, well, he is better now. I said how long has he been sober? She said, he has been sober about 25 days yet. And I said okay, is he plugged into some good strong sponsorship and stuff? What's going on? And she goes, oh, he's not back in AA yet. And I said, excuse me? What did you just say? And she says, oh they told him he couldn't go back to AA until he'd been sober for 30 days. What? I mean, I know I'm just looking at the phone but guys, if you could hear the telephone conversations that I have with intergroup offices all over the country about some of this crazy stuff that goes on and some of the intergroup offices are the worst in these big metropolitan areas. Some of the things that they have taken upon themselves to decide what is AA and what isn't AA and if they don't like the way your meeting runs, you are not AA. Wow! If it's a book study in San Francisco, there were some guys out there trying to start a book study for two years, couldn't get one started like this, finally found out at the crux of the matter was the intergroup office in San Francisco. Guy's name is John. I hate his gut. Hope he dies and he's on my inventory. We'll deal with it. As a matter of fact, this afternoon we'll do some inventory and I'll write about Johnny again. But here's his deal, guys. His view is that AA is sharing and if it's anything else, it's not AA. And so in a meeting that's a book study that's studying the text and they're not sharing, then there's no... we don't have any business for that and so they just took them off the meeting schedule. They just erased it. You see what I'm saying? Crazy? Of course it's crazy. and yet there are thousands and thousands and thousands of members of AA in San Francisco that tolerate it that just let it happen so anyway we'll get on some other stuff yes sir and sometimes all that Johnny gets the power or the option to be able to do that is because he comes to AA and they're saying get active and what we're really trying to say get active and get into this body of work what happens to Johnny, he gets active and he chairs a meeting, he's on the committee now he gets to make coffee he starts working his way up and now he's answering phones and heaven forbid what Johnny's going to say when the phone rings but he works up that tier and he gets us to be the director of that interview hasn't taken a step or whatever so I ask myself how do people get in those positions whether it's to approve a piece of literature Oh, we could talk for an hour about that. I'm afraid to kick that door open. But off this, we can talk about it. I've got some ideas about it, but you have to understand, guys, the more you know about our program and the life-saving steps, the easier it is for you to begin to understand what's important and what's not important. And when you see things that aren't important, you just kind of get past it. You kind of move the men and women that you shepherd, you kind of moved them past it. We began to take a bit of a more strong-arm effect rather than just letting guys free float through this thing. So let's talk about this inventory for a second. If there's any area in our program that got weird over the years, really weird, it's this area of a fourth step and inventory in general. We've seen this huge, huge convolution of this. We see areas where it's been discounted into something kind of like a non-event. Most, they don't even do them at all. We've had other areas where there's all kinds of deals. Let me just go, before we even talk about this, I want to make sure that we're real clear about something. I am... My problem is not with inventory format. My problem is whether you do the inventory at all I'm just frustrated with the number of men and women that I see that don't do any inventory. It's not necessarily the format that causes the problem. And everybody gets all up in their head about it and gets all goofy with, no, it has to be done this way. Well, I don't know. I don' t want to get into a bunch of that. What's clear to understand... Let's look at a couple of things here real quick. On page 64, if you don't have your book, please don't worry about it. I can just read a little piece of this. It said, Therefore we started on a personal inventory. This was step four. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and fact-facing process. Now, just hold your finger on that for just a second. Let's look at this thing for what it is. Bill was, we took it to a place where it became, sometimes it's a life story. Any of you guys on your inventory write a life story? You just wrote it out longhand like that? There's a lot of that goes on in treatment down in Texas and down in Florida. You see a lot of those inventories that that's what they were. There were no columns involved with it and this kind of stuff. Not knocking any of it. I'm just saying, if you let me, this skinny kid from Texas, just write my inventory longhand, like my life story. I'm going to paint you a picture that's so amazingly sad that you will look at it and go, no wonder you drank, buddy. I'd be drunk too if I lived your life. You see? Which is not what we wanted. They likened it to a commercial inventory. And we're going to talk a little bit about that stuff. So I'll swing back around and talk about it and I will come back to that place. I want to ask you this question. Men or women, if you found yourself in a situation where when you were younger, when you Were In The Middle Of Your Addiction, where you began to play this sort of games with your own persona of who you are. Let me make it simple. Did you ever tell a story so long that you knew it was a story when you told it? It was a lie. But you told It So Many Times that It Became Your Reality. You ever do that kind of stuff? Yeah, me. Me. And so we begin to do this. Men, you'll see a lot of this in your dating stuff and this kind of stuff. You'll paint these pictures of who you want to be viewed as that don't necessarily line up with who you really are. And then there's this whole game and stressful situation of trying to maintain this persona. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you about it. When I was courting my first wife, We were only married for a couple of years. It was kind of a disaster from A to Z, but I wanted her to think that I was this big mountain man, this big Mountain guy. So I bought a 77 Toyota Land Cruiser and I bought me some climbing ropes, you know, I mean real nice expensive climbing ropes and hung them in the back of the windows like this so they'd swing back and forth when I drove down the road and I brought me a pair of Vast climbing boots. Now listen, Vast still makes boots But these boots cost me $130 in 1978. That's the equivalent. They're about $800 in today's dollars, okay? I mean, it was like... My whole paycheck was $160. So, I mean you can get a bead on how... Shit. Guys, they're made to wear with crampons. They've got hard soles on them, really stiff. They're like boards. You can't even walk in them. And I bought this pair of... They're made for crampon's on for ice climbing and I'm wearing them around town. I've got blisters as big as a mayonnaise jar on the bottom of my feet because the shoes don't fit, but it's the size that they had. And I wanted them so desperately because it was going to make me look like this badass mountain climber. Listen, guys, mountains scare me to death. I don't want to be anywhere off. That's the reason I live out in flat Texas. I don'T like mountains. They freak me out. I like seeing them from a distance, but I do not want to beat in them. and I don't want to climb one. You see? But my image was what it was and I propped up that image forever, ever. I'd read mountain climbing books and then I'd tell mountain climbing stories to girls that I would meet about experiences that I never had. I finally had to come clean with my current wife. I finally Had to come clear and tell her that all the stories that I told her about mountain climbing and stuff were all lies. And she said, you know, I kind of thought they were when you were telling me like that. You don't strike me as the type that would go up on a mountain and I went, man... I mean, I'm the guy that climbs the stairs and has to hold on with two hands going up the stairs. It's just crazy. So the question is this. I know I'm a fruitcake, but guess what? As I sponsor more and more men over the years, I find out that there's a whole lot of us that are fruitcakes. There's a whole not of us that played those games and did... Listen, I didn't... This is how bad it gets. I did a fifth step with a guy one time that I had met and he was a killer guy. But we did... It was the longest inventory after that time that I'd ever done in my whole life. We spent eight hours talking about stuff. Six hours was talking about his post-traumatic stress syndrome stuff based on his experience in Vietnam. This guy would stay sober about two years. His M.O. was he'd stay sober a couple of years and then he'd twist off. He'd stay sober and he'd twisted off. and I lost track of him at some point in time. He'd moved out to California, he'd married some movie star out there, it was a weird deal and when he turned up about two years ago and his now current wife called me and said would you talk to him and I said yeah and we talked and I says let's do a little bit of step stuff and see if we can get this thing gathered back up. So we get him all gathered up and I say let's look at this inventory and he sets it down and we go through his inventory and I'm looking at it And I'm going, hey, what about the Vietnam stuff? The post-traumatic stress syndrome stuff and all that. He goes, I never was in Vietnam. No shit. I'm looking at this thing like there's nothing on there. He said, no, I was a consciousness objector. That's why they charge for the fist up. I was going to charge him right then. You put me through hell on that first inventory like that. It was just, you understand what I'm saying? But, I mean, this kind of stuff comes up. And so something happens. Let's say I'm sitting at a meeting and my buddy and I are sitting there like this and she says something that I think disrespects me. I think that she took a cheap shot at me. So what's the very first thing that I do? on my way to the car on the way to my truck I'll have my cell phone in my hand calling other people that were in that meeting did you hear what she said to me did you see the way she disrespected me and they go no I didn't hear it what did she say well she said and then I minimize or maximize the story to whatever I want so if I can get Chris to agree with me then we can hate her together you see and if I get somebody else to do it like this and then we build this whole kind of crazy case together like this. It's absurd, the games that we play in sobriety around some of this stuff. So I'm telling you all these stories and we're talking about this because I want you to understand that these personas that we build up, who we've built up, there's a cost involved. Some of you guys got real tired. Do you remember how tired you were when you sobered up finally like this? Some of the weariness is about the addiction, But a whole lot of the weariness is about trying to maintain and juggle all of these personas that we've built up over the years of characters, stage characters, that we're not. You see? And it'll wear your ass out. When you get to a place in your life where you can simply stop lying and then stop having to remember the lies that you told and the lies... Wow. You get clear of that and stop and think about how unbelievably comfortable you get in your own skin. but in order to do that you have to be able to see who you really are and for some of us we dug that ditch for so many years that I don't really know who I am I'm not really clear who I is and so the inventory was such a perfect way I mean if you ask me a simple question are you selfish or not no I'm NOT selfish well we just spent three pages kind of blowing that whole thing up that's the reason that they're put there to get us to look at the idea that maybe indeed we are selfish and then the inventory will help us see this and help us identify in those areas where we were selfish. And so there's amazing, amazing freedom around that. The thing that baffles me, guys, is that worldwide in talking to people, I'm amazed at how many people love to talk about inventory but have never actually taken an inventory. I mean, that's like talking about sex and never having sex. I mean that's crazy. I mean it's just like, yeah, I might be able to come up with some obvious details, But what about all the good stuff? I don't know until you've had that experience. I was in Boston last year doing a deal, and it was a book study, and we read this stuff that we're reading right now, and I was amazed. The very first guy that shared did a little piece of a share, and the next guy that share it after him, there's like 70 people in the room, and the very next guy to share it for him goes, you know, I have never worked that step, but I want to share something, and he talks for 15 minutes. he gets done the very next person in line is a gal and she goes you know I didn't work that step either but you know I've heard this and she starts talking like she goes like for 15 or 20 minutes long enough that I knew that I wasn't going to get a chance to share and so we and I'm just baffled nobody's saying anything the chairperson is totally oblivious to what's going on in his meeting and it goes around they have a break I didn'T realize the meetings were an hour and a half long and they did a little break thing and we went out when we came back after break somebody was sitting in my chair and I went okay, don't worry about it I'll sit over there and I sat over on the other side of the room guess who was next in line to share? Me. I've done it and I had an experience I shared a little piece of the experience the whole thing took two minutes I'm looking at my watch I'm ferociously connected to my watch and I looked at the watch like that I shared the day like this and after I got done these guys are looking at me people have their mouths open people are just kind of looking and I'm the guy that my host at this conference, he's sitting next to me and I go, what did I do? I'm embarrassed because now I thought maybe I stepped in it some way or another like this and this guy goes, oh no, no, I'm sorry. We're just trying to figure out how what you did was different than what everybody else was doing. Guys, I come from a history of big book studies and that's all I do. I don't go to discussion meetings anymore. I haven't for 18 years. I'll go to book studies. And so literature is what I love. And so all I did was do what I would have done in a book study. I got real succinct and got right down to the nuts and bolts of it, and the guy goes, holy cow. And the funny part about it was is that the next person that shared, she goes, hmm, I haven't worked the steps, I passed. And the next one passed, and the next ones passed. And then there was a guy who goes, well, let me... And then he kind of did what I did. And then in the rest of the meeting and afterwards, these guys are standing up and looking at each other and everybody's smiling and it's like, holy cal, wow, what a great time we just had because we stopped playing these games trying to share about experiences we haven't had. This is the reason why this stuff is so important for us, so amazingly important. If you haven't done inventory and a lot of us that are older have not. I run across this all the time. We put it off and put it on until we've been in the rooms for three or four years and now we're too embarrassed to tell people that we didn't do the inventory. I'm not judging it. I lived it. And I'm just saying We want to go back and look at this thing. So in a commercial inventory, what's the biggest thing that we hate about inventories and listening to inventories? Would it be the time that it takes to do it? Any of you guys ever been stuck in five, six, eight, ten hour inventories I mean, it's really painful. There's no evidence anywhere in the historical data of Alcoholics Anonymous that inventories were ever that long. They never took that long there were some long talks now with guys a two hour talk is a long talk You see? But this idea that we would spend eight hours while somebody reads all this inventory stuff, let me tell you what my experience bore out early on and most people didn't want to admit, but it's the absolute truth. If you're sitting listening to inventory and a guy is going on and on like this and the inventory gets really long, usually what's happening is you're letting him spend too much time trying to justify his bad behavior. Seriously. Because he's trying to give you all these ideas. The inventory looks like this. I hate the Garland Police Department. Great. That's column one. Column two. And then he wants to give me all this detail on himself. Well, see, I had this fight with my girlfriend and you know, it was just a mess. So I left. Well, I can't remember whether I was going to get breakfast or whether I Was going to Get... You see how mind-numbing that is? And yet all of us have sat right there listening to this kind of stuff go on. Well, we've got to let them share. No, we don't. It's not important. Why do you hate the Garland Police Department? Well, they pull me over. And then He wants to tell me all This other stuff about getting pulled up. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop, stop, stop. Hoss, just tell me this. You got a speeding ticket, right? Yes. Were you speeding? Yes. Sounds to me like he did what he was supposed to do. Yes. Next. You see what I'm saying? In a commercial inventory, the milk's bad and you're counting milk in a retail outlet. You're counting milking the deal and some of it's sour. Do we care why it's soured? No, we don't. Well, usually we get milk on Tuesdays, but this time we got milk on Thursdays and then we think maybe the coolers weren't. Stop! You're killing me! Stop! I don't care why the milk was bad. Milk, sour, next. Get on. Get on! We're just trying to go. I want to get over to the fourth column where the cool stuff is, where your truth is, you selfish jerk. And so we can help get the deal worked out. and what you'll find is in these deals when you go through there's amazing things to be seen from just owning the truth most of us don't want to do it because sometimes we see that we're not loving and giving I was convinced that sober I was just a gift to my wife and all my employees all my employers love me and what I found was is that I've become a bully that there were all kinds of things that were going on that I needed to get clear of and so so deal one more thing And I want to let Chris talk for just a second. His call hasn't come in yet, so he can do this. I don't care what form you use. Joe and Charlie use the checklist format on their deals. If you look at them, they're pretty good. If you're working with indigent guys that are having trouble formulating sentences and some of the guys I work with are writing off the street, for years I was doing, at Homeward Bound, I was listening to the three-fifths steps a week for five years. And the checklist saved my life. they can see plenty of insight without having to get and then later it got to where I was working with mostly older guys men my age and I wanted them to write that stuff out there are some forms on the internet called aabythebook.org that have some great sheets that are word for word right out of the big book but they'll help them get it organized and keep it organized when they're going through aabyhebook.com there's any number of hand them a notebook and some sheets on it what I want you to understand and remember though guys is that I will in these situations I will always tell you when we're going to do it and I'm going to give you a notebook or I'll give you some forms or whatever we're gonna do I'm gonna hand it to you and I'll say Hoss you got your date book yep I said okay take a look at it you got 10 days to work on this and then we're gunna come back not 10 weeks, not 20, not a year 10 days I travel, you travel we're gona work this thing out and when you come back we're guana get this thing done If I give you a year to do inventory, if I say, okay, in January of next year we're going to get together and do this inventory. You know when you'll start writing your inventory? December 31st or something. You're goingto pick up a piece of paper and start writing it. How many times have you walked upon a guy that's supposed to be dumping an inventory with you and he's in his car writing like a banshee over there like this trying to make it look like he's been working on this thing. They're not going to do it, guys. They're no such thing as a perfect inventory. Just get the damn thing done. if it's six items groovy I had a counselor one time at a big treatment center thing talking about if you don't have 600 names on that inventory you did a piss poor job I wanted to get up and bitch slap them I'm just going like this I don't even know 600 people you understand what I'm saying how can I resent that many people it's crazy just do what you can do to get on you may have to do some more inventory down the road not a problem just do what you can do here save me there is a wonderful economy to the inventory process in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. We complicate it. I mean, I've done exactly what Myers is saying. I've sat through these monstrously long inventories. I think the longest one I did, it was over a two-day period of time and it was about 14 hours. And it was back when I really didn't have a whole lot of experience going through it. And the person had written down everything he could possibly be resentful at and went through the whole song and dance, every fear you could possibly have every harm to others you could possible have I'm not really sure what experience the person had reading all this stuff to me but what we need to do is understand why are we here what are we doing this for? We're doing this to understand some of the causes and conditions of our failure at life And we're also trying to identify some of the stock in trade that needs to be removed. You know, it talks about in this process that it needs to Be Removed. And again, you know, Bill Wilson was kind of a failed businessman and he would always be using business analogies. And, you Know, the shoe store analogy is a beautiful one. If you have damaged goods on your shelves or if you have last year's styles on your shelves, if you're not paying attention to your stock and trade, what you have in inventory, you're nicht going to be very successful as a store. Well, the same thing as people. If we're looking at our resentments, our harms to others, our conduct, really there's a conduct inventory. That's really the whole thing. Who are we mad at? What kind of resistance do we have, and what is our conduct? And if we're not painstaking about this, if we'RE not really looking at this critically, we'RE going to continue to make the mistakes that we've been making. We'RE not going to really grow in the understanding and effectiveness that this book really is pointing us toward. You know, so in a resentment inventory, there's a lot of good information. Bill was very, very detailed about resentments. You know what? What are they? Why are they bad? I'll tell you what. The more time you spend in your head hating someone or resenting someone, it's those exact amount of seconds, minutes or hours or days or months or years that you're. the quality of your life is impacted I don't know about anybody else but it talks about resentment how can our lives be good when they're filled with this type of resentment personally I think these deep resentments are alcoholic in their nature I know people my daughter broke up with somebody and I'll tell you what it was basically a failed marriage and within several weeks she was fine with this whole thing you know what happened with my failed marriage my first failed marriage I held on to that for years I had bartenders handing me free drinks about this divorce and how she left me when I needed her most I hung on to this there's something about alcoholics that don't want to let go and you know the last six or eight years of my drinking this is I would pass out and I would come to in the morning and when I would comes to in morning this is literally what would go on in my head, my first thoughts coming to in a morning starting a brand new day was this those bastards that's the first thing I was thinking so way to set the day you know what I mean like I look back on the last 10 years of my drinking or something as a lost decade a lost Decade there was very little positive things that were happening in that Decade you know, I was going down I wasn't going up and if that's your first thoughts about, you know, what people have done to you, what institutions have done to you. You know, what's wrong in America. I mean, if that's what you're going to concentrate on, that's going to impact your quality of life in a very, very large way. As far as fear, how does fear impact us? It talks about fear in this book as fear is an evil and corroding threat. The fabric of our life is shot through with it. It creates chains of circumstances which causes us to shoot ourselves on our foot every five minutes. It's a direct quote from the book. Here's how dangerous resentments are for us, and here's how serious they are for you. Here's what dangerous fear is for us. I'm brand new in AA. I know my only hope for survival is Alcoholics Anonymous because I am fast drinking myself to death and I start going to AA. And I started to go to a meeting that they dragged me to from treatment. It was a meeting in Morristown, New Jersey and I just started going there and then I got a sponsor on day two and my sponsor was going there so I'm going to this meeting. And you know what? They snubbed me, these people. They didn't talk to me. I felt like an outcast. There was a young group of people who were always laughing and always talking and then there was an older group of people and they were very steady and they knew each other and they had the deal down pretty much and I'm in the middle, you know, and no one is paying any attention to me. Nobody's saying hi. Nobody's shaking my hand. So I start, I resent that meeting and I leave. Okay, the hell with this home group. Now, leaving a home group is incredibly dangerous unless you get another one. You know, this process before I was doing any steps, okay? The only smart thing I did was I joined another home group And what happened in that home group was one of those slow, painful, root canal-esque business meeting marathons. Has anybody ever been in those? Like they can't get it settled one night so the business meeting is going to happen again next week. I hadn't any protection from this stuff because I hadn'T done any step work. So obviously I'm taking sides and I'm getting mad. And you know what? The hell with this home group. I'm leaving. Now, it's incredibly dangerous for somebody who hasn't gone through the steps to leave a home group unless they join another one. And luckily I joined another one and in that third home group I went through the stairs and I've never had to leave a home with a resentment since. But that's how resentment nearly killed me. It was pushing me out of the place I needed to be to find a recovery system. Now, how did fear almost kill me? Fear almost killed me with anxiety. I was very uncomfortable walking down into the church basements. For my first six months or so, I had to force myself into these meetings. I would sit in these meetings and I was so uncomfortable because people were looking at me. If I hadto go to the bathroom, I would wait until the meeting over because I just wouldn't get up in the middle of the meeting and go to the bathroom because people would be like where the hell is he going what's he doing I was so uncomfortable so uncomfortable I had such self centered fear I was self absorbed and self involved and I hated going to AA I hated it and there was people that were telling me to share and I was afraid to share because if I shared and somebody shared right after me saying you know what Chris said was pretty stupid and I used to think that way myself but I've learned you know if somebody was going to shame me with a share like that I would have to kill them after the meeting and if I killed them after the meeting I probably wouldn't be allowed back in the home group you know so all this stuff is going on in my head and the fear is somehow it wasn't powerful enough to drive me out of AA but I see it driving I see resentments and fears driving people out of AA every day. Every day. That's how dangerous these things are. You know, so should we inventory them? I understand the sense of urgency today about inventorying fear and resentment. I didn't before I did this work. I thought, yeah, you know, okay, that's a pretty good spiritual exercise. But, you Know, I don't really hate anybody. and, you know, I'm not a coward, you know, so I don't have any fear. I completely misunderstood the impact of what Bill is having us inventory. And as far as the sex inventory or the conduct inventory... Oh, stop. Let's do sex when we come back from lunch. We'll do sex When We Come Back From Lunch. Okay. We got something to look forward to at least. Can I just ask a quick question? Sure. It says we list people, institutions, and principles. I miss that word, principles. So could you explain just really fast what principles are? Well, you know, principles are belief systems or mores that we're not really in touch with. If you want an example of a principle that you could be resentful of, how about the spiritual axiom? When there's anything wrong with you, it's your problem. That's one that I was a little bit resentful of in the beginning. Every single time my problems are of my own making, all of them, maybe that's a principle. Monogamy, giving an honest day's work for an honest dollar. I mean, there's a number of them. It could be real subtle. It could mean things like all rich people suck. I mean from a poor guy from Texas I mean I carried that one for a long time. I mean these are but these are old ideas that have a tendency to create great deals of animosity and problems on down the road. To me the greatest example of all is honesty itself. Why do I have to be honest now? Yeah. Honesty is a principle. Honesty can be inconvenient. so we should probably inventory that I was just going to add the principles the most damaging are the ones we believe by ourselves that we actually don't know our belief systems no doubt so maybe your first inventory you're not getting a lot of those but we continue to do this we continue personally I do at least one full-blown inventory a year and you know the later inventories i'm getting uh i'm getting a lot more principles than than i used to uh i think in the beginning we're coming out of the trenches with shell shock you know we we see what we can see at that period of time and a lot of times it's the direct resentments that are really killing us the direct fears and it's appropriate to inventory those. As time goes by in AA and we continue to practice these principles, our inventories continue to change. What happens is they liken it to peeling back the layers of an onion. I'll liken it like some of the things are below the horizon in year one. Some of our problems are below the horizon. There's some stuff that's sticking way out. But as we address that stuff, we start to address things that are more subtle. Maybe they're not as overt. Maybe they'RE not as recognizable by other people, but they'RE internal and they'RE things that continue to plague us. And because this is a journey and not necessarily a destination, we have plenty of time to address this stuff in our lives. Okay, we're going to have lunch. We're going be back here at 1 o'clock. We're go from 1 to 2.15 and then it's a caravan to the quarry. When do you begin with the question? After lunch? Yeah. We'll give them some inventory exercises. Landed France. I'm going to set that up right there. I guess we got pretty much everybody. I mean it's always surprising this time of day that we do anything I mean this is the perfect time of the day to be like sleeping like whatever I'm good until tomorrow at 9 o'clock ok we're starting, go ahead alright we promised everybody that we were going to be covering sex in this session I guess that will do You know, again, I really like to look at this inventory as a little bit larger than just a sex inventory. I think that there are a lot of people in our lives that we have intimate relationships with. They can be our family. They can being very close friends. And I think we can use a lot these principles and procedures and expand on them a little bit. And I'm starting to look at this inventory more as a conduct inventory. And the questions that it asks, it asks me to answer. It's basically, it says review the relationship and then there's nine questions that you're supposed to answer and then they're putting together a sex ideal. I've gained a lot of perspective using this particular inventory on relationships past And Bill Wilson was very, very correct when he basically said that many of us need an overhauling. It starts on page 68. Many of us needs an overhauling. And why do many of use need an overalling with our intimate relationships? Well, the more we've looked at with step four, the most we've look at in step three especially, The actor wanting to run the whole show. Selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of our troubles. The more I believe they're basically saying that the foundation we've built our lives on is built on selfishness and soft-centered. That's how we see the world. Looking back at my earliest memories, I felt like separate from everything and everybody. I just did. I was separate. We were talking earlier about Chuck Chamberlain. Chuck Chamberlin was one of these great AAs. He got sober in the 40s, and he became beloved, especially in California. This guy was speaking four or five times a week somewhere. And he really flipped the script on a lot of pitches that were getting done. He was the first person that I can find in our history who would give a flat spiritual talk. It had a little bit of drunk log in it, but it had a lot of spirituality and a lot of solution. And one of the things that Chuck would say that I didn't understand for years, but I totally get now is he would say there is only one problem, and within that problem are all other problems. And there is только одна решения, и в этой решении все решения. and he said the number one problem is our separation from God that's the number 1 problem and within that problem are all of our other problems Carl Jung even said this so I'm really starting to see the truth in this and there's one solution and that solution is connection to God a conscious contact with God more appropriately and within that solution is all the other solutions. So I've been separate. I've been viewing everything through the lens of selfishness and self-centeredness and now I'm getting involved in intimate relationships with people. What do you think is going to happen? You want to talk about the actor wanting to run the whole show. You want you want to walk about being demanding or gracious wanting to get what I want. There was no area where that was more operative than in my intimate relationships. You know, I would find somebody who was delusional enough to think that there was something worth having with me and we would start this crazy dance of death and basically my modus operandi was, you know, okay, if we're going to be going out, I'm going to run things, I'm gonna tell you what you need to do, You're going to have to act appropriately. These are my expectations. And, oh, you need to be able to read my mind. You know, and really, and things would blow up like incredibly. And, you know, it was only, you Know, Really unhealthy attachment that kept me or the other people in these relationships. But I did a huge amount of damage. And it wasn't that I didn't care about these people. Almost always, I really cared about the people that I was intimate with. It was that my behavior skill set was really defective and my belief systems were really messed up. So Bill is basically asking us to review these relationships and to ask ourselves certain questions. You know, some of the questions are where had we been selfish, dishonest and considerate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? You know those are the questions that we're asked to answer in each of these relationships. So we need to put that down on a piece of paper and we need we need to answer those things. And looking at our mistakes, what happens is patterns start to develop. They did with me. And I really started to get a handle on, you know, what I was doing wrong. And when I saw what I Was doing wrong, that got me a little bit closer to the causes and conditions of why I was acting inappropriately. And then it asks us to put together an ideal. You know, with all this information we try to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. You know so we do that and then we ask God to mold and direct us into that ideal. This is an unbelievably powerful spiritual exercise. You know what you want to do is you attract basically you attract what you are. This particular inventory allows us to shed a lot of our character defects where it revolves around relationships and we become better at being close to people and, you know, we're going to attract better people. And the prayer for this particular ideal I've been doing for about 20 years now. And I can tell you, I went from horrifically dysfunctional relationships to an absolutely wonderful relationship I have today. You know, I married a childhood friend who, you know, we were very close. We were separated for 30 years because of circumstances or whatever. We reconnected on Facebook, of all things, and we went out for coffee and were living together in two months and married in eight, typical alcoholic fashion. However, through doing all this work, I was prepared for this. And believe it or not, I think about her welfare before I think of my own, which is unbelievable considering I'm an alcoholic whose default setting is, what about me? You know, that's our default setting. So I'm in a really healthy relationship now. And it has everything to do with what has been gained through the practice of these spiritual principles, what has been gained through over the course of time praying for God to mold me into the ideals that I believe are necessary for a really, really good intimate relationship. So that sacks really quick moving into step five because we want to make some time in this hour. We want to get through a couple more steps. Step five, there's some instructions in the book about step five. there's instructions about who to find to listen to our inventory and it says a closed mouth understanding person who will not try to change you from your purpose somebody that's going to understand that this is a life and death matter they're going to keep a confidence and when this book was written there were two groups of drunks there wasn't even AA meetings yet there were 2 groups of drunk so they're giving you instructions in finding somebody who can listen to this who's probably not even alcoholic. Today, in this day and age, you can't shake a stick really without finding somebody experienced in these steps, informed in what we're trying to do with this particular step who can hear this inventory and play a role in the uncovering and discovering of the causes and conditions of our failure at life through this process. I think, you know, I've got a lot of experience listening to fifth steps. I've listened to hundreds. I've done, I don't know, at least 15 fifth steps myself over the course of the years. I've gotten some experience in it. Myers and I were talking before this session that there's more of a role than just listening. You know, this isn't a confession. This is a fifth step. And in the fifth step we must play a participating role while we're hearing a fifth stop. We need to help the person maybe pull apart some patterns that they don't see maybe get a little bit deeper into the truth. Sometimes we tend to gloss over the surface of a specific piece of inventory and maybe we're not ready, willing, or able to see deeper into it. So our sponsors, spiritual advisors, the people that are listening to The Fifth Step, sometimes they need to play an active role in helping us to see a little bit deeper. Listen, truth is necessary in the spiritual life. We need to know the truth about what's going on in our lives. If we have any hope of moving away from it, We need to know what the problem is. If you're working on the wrong problem, you've probably got the wrong solution. So again, in the fifth step we do that. There are at least six warnings in the language in the sixth step about holding something back, not being completely thorough. And it basically says many of us have tried to hold on to a few of these things that we didn't want to see the light of day. And invariably, they caused the deterioration of our spiritual condition to the point where if we didn't relapse, we were in a very, very spiritually unsound position. So it's basically saying when we go into this, we need to go into it 100%. We need to going into it willing to share everything. everything. Again, we were talking about some of these long painful inventories in the early days there was an economy to this Dr. Bob, if you do the math Dr. Robb lived 15 years after he met up with Bill Wilson and he was said to have taken 5,000 people through the steps if you did the math on that that's what, 2 or 3 people a day or something he was taking through the stairs Do you think he would listen to 12-hour inventories? No, he would get you to the point. He would get it to the end of the day. And he played a very, very strong role in this process. He would be writing down character defects as you were sharing your fifth step. He played a really valuable role in it. What he wanted to do was he wanted this exercise to show you that you have failed at life. You've failed at Life because of a lot of the stuff that's being shared on the inventory. And, you know, and to understand and to get you ready for step six, which is to become willing to have God remove all these defects of character. You know, Dr. Bob knew that these character defects were going to be bigger than you. That you were not going to able to overcome these defects of character because you recognized them. You were going need outside help and a power greater than yourself. And his exercise of the fifth step was preparing you for the sixth step. And the sixth step prepares you for the seventh, and the seventh prepares you for the eighth. There was a process, there was a momentum that was being created with these steps in the early days when they were going through them. They wanted you to remain committed, and they wanted you to keep up the momentum as you moved through these steps. One of the great mistakes I made after I did my first fifth step, one of the great mistakes I made was to take some time off to work on my character defects oh my god anybody in here ever play the game whack-a-mole you know what I'm talking about where the moles will pop up and you got the mallet and you try to hit the mole on the top of the head with the mallets well me trying to work on my characteristic defects in the morning I would say today I'm working on selfishness I'm not going to be selfish at all from now on. Give me that! You know, it would last about four seconds. It was like playing whack-a-mole. I would be working on a character defect and another one would pop up. I'd work on that one and this one would hop up and then the other one that I was worked on that I thought I had would be popping up. You know? Just an absolute crazy, crazy experience. So I spent months doing that until I got a hold of some recovery tapes that said, look, dummy, you know. Initially, steps six and seven are to be done quickly. Yes, it's a lifetime job recognizing our character defects. What it says in the 12 and 12 is true. This is a step that separates the men from the boys. I'm all about that. But initially, as we're going through the steps with a sponsor, we're supposed to recognize in the fourth and the fifth step The stuff that we need to overcome, and in step six and step seven, we need the understanding that we needs God's help in asking for it in a very, very humble way. Awesome. Let me ask you a real quick question. How many of you guys feel some pushback when we're talking about step stuff? I want to just talk about this for a second because I've always found this interesting because I lived it with some painful times. we have a tendency to teach what we're taught right? We could agree with that so if I got a sponsor that says meeting makers make it and we'll work one step a month for a year and then you'll get through the steps. Right or wrong that's just the way you were taught there is some allegiance to those thought processes and so anytime somebody says something about those principles those things that we talk about, there's some immediate pushback and I completely get that I always want to make sure that you guys are clear on when we're talking about this. There was not a situation here where we were ever trying to say that what you did was wrong. Your experience in the steps may have been profound doing it like, you know, I sat there and there was a gopher that came by and he became my guide. Listen, I'm not knocking anything. I'm just saying your experience is your experience. You see? It's one of those kind of things where you just kind of... The trick... I want to flip it back over again. We talked about it little bit this morning. Here's the reason why we spend any time with this. If you're not careful, what you will find yourself in is a teaching cul-de-sac. You will find yourself because you can't duplicate your bizarre experience that worked. I'm not saying it didn't work, but you can't replicate it with the men that you sponsor. And so you're always trying to sit down and say, well there ought to be a gopher by here any minute. You know what I'm saying? We just find ourselves and so if we focus more on the text, that's the reason I'm such a fan of our basic text is that the text gave us these clear-cut directions, and the closer we move to that, the simpler it becomes to transmit this when it comes time to teach somebody else. You get that. There's this idea of solitary self-appraisal that we always kind of laugh about, and I see it more in older people than in younger people. Young guys usually will come in, and they know going in that a solitary self appraisal is not going to be enough. They know they're messed up, and they need some help. My heart bleeds for men and women my age who've been around for a little while and who believe that they can sit on the edge of their bed and solitarily with nobody else around make a determination of where they are on a spiritual path and where they aren't. They are in the big picture of a deal. Let me ask you something. If your ego begins to rekindle itself, it's like you're fighting a battle with the worst enemy you got already behind the lines. He's standing right behind you and your ego is already telling you, I don't need to run this past a sponsor. I don' t need to do 10th step with this. I don''t need to so this. I don ''t need it. And sometimes it's egregious. Sometimes it's like, I don'T need to dO that prayer stuff anymore. I'm fine. I've been fine for years. You'll see that. These are the things I'm just trying to raise a flag and kind of shine a light on it so that we can begin to see it. And one of the most freeing things that I see today in AA are older members of our fellowship who are going back through the work and becoming re-energized, re-excited, if you will, about the work that they're doing and a life that still lays ahead of them in profound ways. It's just pretty cool. We see less and less older people in the rooms because of that one reason. There are some other reasons, but that one particular reason, we began to very gently sell ourselves the idea that we don't need to be here anymore. It's time somebody else took up the slack there. I get that understanding. I get that. The problem is it's wrong. The problem is what you're doing is without seeing it, you're cutting your own throat and you'll drift into some weird areas and God knows what. Anyway, just a little heads up. You all get that, right? We are tonight, I want to do a little six and seven stuff and then we are tonight going to talk a little bit more about this inventory thing because it's so important. I asked a couple of people, and if you've got a piece of inventory that you'd like to share with us a little bit, Chris is going to talk about it before we're done with the hour. Chris is gonna talk about It a little Bit, and we're not gonna do a big old long drawn-out thing. What we would really like to do is just go through some semantics just so that you will feel a little more comfortable about what that looks like. Remember now, I'm dealing with a lot of people who did an inventory 20 years ago and they haven't done inventory since then. I don't know about you, but there's a lot of things I've forgotten in 20 years. And so sometimes it's kind of fun to go back through and do that. So most of us, you know, you go through this inventory and then you're faced at the bottom of page 75. There's a place there that starts returning home. We can find a place where we can be quiet for an hour. This hour of solitude is pretty cool. Most of us lead amazingly busy lives, and you're going 100 miles an hour and trying to find or encourage somebody to take that hour, I think what is happening is you just have your nose rubbed in the ugliness of who you really are authentically. And sometimes it's overwhelming to see that. And to be able to sit for a couple of minutes and just sort of sit with the idea of who I really am so that we can begin to piece together what we're going to take to God in steps six and seven. These things are amazingly, they give you some real clear things there. There's a, we're going to take a mental note there of the difference between omitting and forgetting. I mean, there's some things you're just going to forget, but there's something that you just chose not to say anything. That night with the pygmies that you weren't ever going to tell anybody about. At some point in time, you might have to say something about that, you see? You might have come clean. And in Texas, we've got lots of crazy things like that. And so this stuff at the top of page 76 is fascinating. We're introduced to step six, and then we've emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all things which we have admitted are objectionable? Now, this is the stuff that I want to pause on for just a minute and look and see. What I find objectionable and what you find objectionible may not be the same thing. Y'all got any buddies in Europe? Things like porn that's widely accepted in Europe that might be objectionable here. But it's amazing when you're talking about that kind of stuff at workshops in Europe, like they go, problem? What's the problem? You see? And so you begin to kind of look at this thing. If you just look at your own life and you try to see what's objectionable, have you ever stopped to think about how many things about your life you accept just because it's easier to accept it than to face that. I mean, nobody gets up in the morning and goes, I am a liar. I mean that's my affirmation in front of the mirror. No, you don't do that, do you? I mean most of us will just deep down in the darkest part of the night looking at the ceiling all by yourself you might go, you know, I'm a liar you might do this but until you get to a place that you've admitted that it's objectionable you're not going to do anything to fix it you'll live with it you'll just live it this is what pains