Faith and Doubt – Big Book Awakening Workshop – Part 3 of 3 – Dan S.

again i i didn't come to this program wanting god i figured i was going to work my way around what really is working for you guys and uh yeah you know my this relationship this belief system these ideas these all got developed through this process and through living the process. But the big thing here is what does it take for me to be ready to turn to something that I have so much doubt about? Because just because you're at six and seven doesn't mean you know how to believe in God. It doesn't necessarily mean you know what that means. It doesn'T necessarily mean that you know that you don't know how to do it. all i know right now at this point is what happens if there is no god but see that's enough to keep moving me forward through the process right because that fire is right behind me and i'm i'm gonna have to either jump or die in case you didn't hear i talked about a burning building with fire coming up behind me and firemen at the bottom saying, jump, jump, we'll catch you. And yeah, whatever, the truth about what came behind me is what's pushing me forward still. And the importance of step seven here is that this is about starting to develop a new relationship with a power that will work in your life. Again, I don't know what that means. I don' t know how to believe. I still have so much doubt. What really helped me a lot was a friend gave me her definition of faith and referring to faith in God. She said, Faith is belief with doubt. Belief with doubt and hearing that it just kind of like it just made the whole thing seem a lot easier because it's like okay it's okay that I question it and it's good to question it it is good to question it even at this point question it because isn't that isn'tthat what you've always wanted is proof proof without a doubt I mean if God is so wonderful there should be proof right we'll get to that when I'm completely ready looking at all of these things from my past we're not going to be working on past behavior now making a list of all these defects of character that I'm going to work on now, that's stuff I've already done, there's nothing to work on what we're looking at now is staying out of that stuff in the future not working on past behavior I'm working on living on a new basis of life a basis of live including a reliance on a power greater than myself and that makes sense a lot of people think this is more about 10 and 11 when you start talking about this stuff with God if that was true why didn't they put 8 and 9 after 10 and 11 because 8 and 9 you're going to need God to make amends to them all but they put 6 and 7 before 8 and nine because there are some things that we have to see and it starts with this simple commitment to this relationship and what does a commitment to a relationship mean right well what I heard in the program was when you get out of bed roll off on your knees and thank God for your life and go about your day come back at home and just lay down in bed and thank god for keeping you sober and go to sleep try that with your spouse what kind of relationship would you have with a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband and wife where you got up in the morning kissed her good morning and said hello dear love you going about your day completely not thinking about her until you got home at night and went into bed and kissed her goodnight would you feel like it was hard to have a relationship with that person even though it was you getting up and leaving you wouldn't feel like you had a relationship that's the way most people pray get up in the morning, they do what their sponsor tells them to do, they go to bed at night doing what their sponsor tells them to do and says why don't i feel this thing right it's because you're ignoring this relationship when you need it most i don't need god when i'm sleeping i don' t need well you know i needed i need to access this power all through the day when i you know when these when these situations come up in my life you know I'm going to need a lot of power just to do what it says here in the ninth step, in eight and nine. So, I don't say that morning and evening prayer is bad. No prayer is back. I like to look at my prayer as an 18-hour prayer. I'm sorry, 16-hour pray. My math was wrong there for a minute. 16 hour prayer, the other 8 hours I'm sleeping now I'm not saying that I do this perfectly and that I don't do it all day but that's my practice and I try to be faithful to my practice and practice my practice and that practice is practicing turning to God in all of my activities in all OF my situations in life but that commitment starts with this prayer where it says my creator I'm now willing that you should have all of me the good and the bad not just the bad but I turn to God even for the good stuff God what do I need to help this person that's taking through the steps or what do I need to so not only I don't only need to pray for when things are bad happening in my life but also for good things I pray that you now remove from me all every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows it doesn't say that God's going to remove all your character defects I mean it could happen but maybe after I've done it a couple more years they'll all be gone, I don't know but it hasn't happened for me yet and besides if a religious man like a priest or something came walking through the door someone that you don't think ever has had a real relationship, doesn't cuss doesn't drink you'd assume at least who would you feel more comfortable talking to? someone like that or another drunk and we see how our character defects become of use in our life my imperfections and my experiences falling short all of these things become the things that make me attractive to somebody else that's still suffering because I can be identified as someone that probably understands because I've had the same difficulties but I've also found a solution so god uses most of my defects of character would you say your alcoholism could be a defect of character right maybe right does god remove it no if god removed my alcoholism then i wouldn't have to be here and it's probably one of the biggest things in my life that becomes of real use in my live in the life of others just grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding Amen in order for me to do God's bidding I have to contemplate and ask what that would be what would God have me be here and I say that prayer a lot in my interactions with the people around me what would god have me to this person in this situation and it's through that it's through that practice of trying to bring that into my day and into all my interactions that I have the opportunity to start to see it actually work. I'm not going to... I need proof in order to really believe and in order to grow spiritually. The book says, it doesn't only say that we're supposed to maintain a spiritual way of life. It says somewhere around this fourth step, it talks about that what we're trying to get here is to It talks about having the growth and maintenance of a spiritual life. I forgot the exact words in context, I'd have to find it, but it talks about the growth and maintenance of a spirit and a spiritual life. What does growth look like? What does spiritual growth look like? Once you've been around here for a while and one of the things that I noticed about myself thinking that I was doing everything I'm supposed to be doing I was noticing that really I was just maintaining what I had and it wasn't because I wasn't doing the things that were causing growth it was because I wasn' t identifying where I was getting growth spiritually turning to God sometimes is just about you being comfortable but how do I turn to God in a manner that shows me growth? That's a question to bring into your practice. What would spiritual growth look like in this interaction? Because when I start looking for spiritual growth, I start getting it. It's so easy to come in and go to meetings and work the steps until the sponsor is satisfied and says you've graduated. And hang around Alcoholics Anonymous is so long that you think, okay, this is AA. This is everything there is to get. I've got it all. I've been here long enough. And you put the ceiling on this spiritual life, saying this is all there is for me. This is all There Is Here. There's nothing more. And that's why I continue to go through the process on a regular basis, sometimes alone and sometimes with a group. And sometimes when I do a workshop, I use a lot of my own examples and I contemplate a lot of the stuff on my own and take myself back remembering why am I here when they write inventory I write inventory one of the things that are fun and not all groups will some get too terrified but what I like to propose is a group fifth step where everybody in the group listens to your fifth step and you listen to theirs and everybody listens to theirs that gets fun and it gets really scary right and especially for me because I don't want them to think I'm just like them I want them to think I'm better because I'm leading the workshop right but what it shows them is I think is a great example that the highest form we ever take here is human and we still mess up you still mess up but the difference now is now when I mess up I turn to God and before it just turned to more self which didn't accomplish anything more than what I'd already gotten usually made it worse how can I grow from here spiritually how can i grow closer to God and start watching for those opportunities And that's really, for me, part of what we're going to talk about next for 8 and 9 is you hear people throw out the term accessing the power of God. You've heard that? Directing and using that power. We're goingto talk a little bit about that in the next session along when we're talking about 8 and 9. Accessing the power of God directing and using that power. Alright, so let's take a break till 2.45 Okay, thank you Alright, thankyou Welcome back All right, so I talked a little bit just before the last session about the idea that just because we've done six and seven doesn't necessarily mean we know really how to have this relationship with God or how to do this thing. We've made this commitment to a relationship and I talked a little bit about how that about how relationships are supposed to look right but now they're put six and seven in a place set up just before something that's going to be pretty scary to do because you've got steps eight and nine And 8 and 9, made a list of the persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. All, not some? All. I just thought I'd ask. Some people say, well, some amends you can't make. all right that should never be an excuse fear should never be an excused to not make them it says and it says we became willing to make amends to them all and we made we made direct amends such people wherever possible except when to do so would enter them or others I am not others just because it's going to hurt me, it's not an excuse to not do an amends. So you've heard all of that stuff about the night step. You'll hear people say you can't finish your night step, you can'T make amends to everybody. Plenty of people will say you can never finish amends, right? You know what that tells me? they didn't that they didn't because if you do then you know you can and you get the results of finishing and can't in good conscious not be excited about that and spread that to others and say you got to finish right you know a lot of the lot of the amends were fairly easy I was told to just go through the through the inventory and make a list of all the harms that I saw and consider anything that wasn't in my inventory that I needed to write and I was told to put it on an index card like a three by five card that's right of getting further and further away from people using index cards, aren't we? But there was a reason for that because we put one name on each card and so that you could flip through the stack as opposed to just going down the list and crossing them out. And I'll talk about that in a minute. In 76 it says now we need more action without which we find that faith without works is dead. Let's look at steps eight and nine. We have a list of persons we have harmed and whom we are willing to make amends. We made it when we took inventory, right? So that's why I included discussion on harms in the fifth step. We subjected ourself to a drastic self-appraisal. now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past we attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our efforts to live on self-will and run the show ourselves if we haven't the will to do this we ask until it comes remember it was agreed in the beginning that we would go to any length for victory over alcohol if you get to the ninth step and you're not willing to make amends to them all, then the problem is probably not the ninth step. Maybe the problems in the eighth step never really became willing to making amends to that person. If that's true, then the problems probably isn't even in the eight step. Maybe the problem's in the seventh step where we never really committed to turn to God for help with everything. That there were still things we're not willing to turn to God and pray for help with. If that's true, then maybe the problem isn't even the seventh step. Maybe the problem is the sixth step. We never saw the objectionable nature or behavior and how all of that was a result of no reliance on God. Failure of self-reliance. And maybe there was things that I'm still clinging to and ideas that I had that I still could run the show myself if that's true then maybe what I got out of the four step wasn't quite enough for me to see those, that I couldn't do that and if the inventory wasn't honestly and humbly made then maybe the reason is because the third step prayer wasn't I'm sorry, maybe the third step prayer wasn't honestly and humbly made and that's why I couldn't write an inventory sufficient enough for me to have the right attitude towards the inventory that I did write. And I never really committed to turn to God for help with my self-will. Right? Again, the problem is probably not the third step and it always goes back to step one right if if i didn't see in step one that i could drink again then none of this matters all right but that's why i said in the beginning that experience of step one has to be that there's nothing stopping me from drinking again that's what being an alcoholic is so we spend a lot more time in 8 than we do in 9 and 8 8 in fact I tell the people I work with that they're not in 9 they should say that they are in 8 and it's an ego thing because they want to say they are in 9 they actually want to say they're in 10 and 11 because I give them stuff to do in 10 or 11 but if they're in front of me they have to say they're on step 8 I'm sure they don't everywhere another manipulation it works manipulation can work sometimes because I know that their egos are driving them because now they want to finish because they want be able to say they're in 10 and 11 so God still uses my character defects and it's 8 and then you understand and look at what is 8 aid is becoming willing and and becoming willing to make amends to them all um can be really scary certainly there was some that that i could do right away again i have these cards i've made this list of of on these i made a stack of index cards with all my amends one on each card put the name of the person the cause of the resentment and contact information if I have it or the word find typically what I do with that is I sit with the people I'm working with and we go through the cards and discuss it again hopefully we've discussed enough in the four steps so that they've already some of the cards that don't have to be there aren't there and other cards that we've already decided that they should definitely make it's already written down there that they're supposed to make these but we go through each card again just to look at what that would look like and if there's any ones that look I call them goofy amends the ones that you go would make amends to someone and they're just thinking that alcoholics anonymous thing is really weird you know if you've harmed somebody they're not thinking you're weird by coming to them necessarily you know they're impressed sometimes or just sometimes pissed off right but it's those goofy amends the ones that are just kind of silly and and we let's like talk about it i don't necessarily tell them which one's not to make we have a stack called pray about it right and that puts the responsibility back on them because it's they know they know as we're going through this um what's what is important and and they get the they get the idea of it they get feel of it and you know and then there's the ones that they should be able to make but to go to that person would cause way more pain in their life than leaving them alone right except when to do some so would harm them or others right some things that people have done to others you just got to leave them alone all right just stay they probably forgot about you by now you know again we discuss it you know we talk about it see if if if they have resistance to and I look for what is the resistance to it because fear isn't a reason to not do it just because you're afraid isn't yeah And fear makes it more important to do it. And I'll get into that in a minute. So we go through this, and hopefully we have a stack of cards that are definite amends that need to be made. And what I have them do is sit with the cards and pray and ask God to show them what the first amends that they need to make would be. and they go through the cards and read every card and the next amends will just stand out you'll see the first indicated amends when you're going through these cards this is the one I'm willing to do start with the one you're willing to do, don't worry about the ones you're not willing to use, start with what you're willing to give if you got it on a list and you hit the one you're unwilling to do you don't go farther down the list I'm sure some people do I'm just saying this is what was shown to me and it worked really well and having it in such a way that it doesn't hold a particular sequence you start with the ones that you're willing to do and you build this spiritual muscle the first ones that you do, you might not need to pray into I suggest they do it But there might not be a lot of need for it because they're just kind of like busy amends. Just do it. But generally happens. They start to slow down as they go through the list because as you're going through the cards and you've gone through all the easy ones and now they're getting a little harder. It's kind of Like going to the gym and you start over here at the light dumbbells and you're looking at all the guys over here wishing that you could get over there already but you start over here and you build up to that and this kind of works the same way, I do the ones I can and that I'm willing to do and get them out of the way and you get further and further down this list until you've got the ones that start to get a little painful that start to getting a little scary and by this time if you're in a group that says you don't have to finish amends, then you'll probably stop about this point. My experience was, as I said, you couldn't even share at my group until you finished amends. And there was a lot of people there that finished aments and they were... They had something. There was something about them that I wanted. and i trusted that that uh but they said that i need to do this and i had no reason to doubt what they were telling me and what i found is is that as i got down that list i started to have to pray into them into the amends right again not such a big deal you know you pray you do the thing and you ask God to remove the fear and direct your attention to who he would have you be and you just keep knocking away at those at that stack I had 50 harms I had a stack of 50 cards that I had to make amends for and I get down to the last I'd say six or seven and it really stalled at that point because I get down to those the ones that are so scary some of them I didn't even tell my sponsor about because I didn' t want him to know that I wasn' t planning to make them the fact is the Dan that started the ninth step isn' t the Dan that got to the other end of this ninth step, right? And the idea of understanding that place, that kind of limbo of the eighth step where you... You know, I've heard people talk about praying for the willingness to be willing, to be willy, to be wily. Right? And it's like, I don't necessarily like it when I hear people say that they're praying for the willingness to do it. I prefer to stress the option is, what if you don't finish? What is the experience you're not going to get? What are you going to lose from not completing this? Because the fact is that is that some of them for me were pretty were personally scary and for various reasons you know i mean for example my first wife i mean 105 pounds you know how it's you think how scary could she be right but that's that was the one that had me with my head on the steering wheel like talking to myself saying I'm taking this AA thing way too far but uh I'm still not actually in the ninth step yet you know it took a lot to just get me there I mean, I had to sit and pray. I went through the stack. Her name was the card that came up. And I hadと pray into making the appointment, setting the appointment. Now, again, I said I don't like just stopping with saying I'm praying for the willingness to be willing, right? There's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do that. Yes, it says to pray for the willingness to do it. But you know, when you go to different spiritual paths, they have different ways of approaching a posture, how you pray. You know, some paths will have you hold your thumb to your first finger or the second finger or together or... Different spiritual paths have different methods of prayer right different postures for prayer well there's a eight step prayer posture okay sitting on a chair in front of a desk or table feet flat on the floor right stack of cards in front you the indicated next indicated card on top you get ready to pray but before you start you pick up the phone and you dial then you pray praying for willingness a week before or the morning before is not going to help you right God will not give me the power to do something when I don't need it it will not be any less scary thinking a lot about it. In fact, it makes it worse. I know from experience that you can sit in fear over making these amends for months and years. You're actually better off to not think so much about it, you've already decided you want to make the amends, you pick up the phone, you dial the number, then you pray your behind off. because you're only going to set an appointment you're not going to really talk about anything yet you're just going to let them know what you're going to do here and that you want to meet with them so I set that appointment and I'm sitting in my car still praying thinking I've still got time to drive away but I know she's already expecting me so I'm kind of like committed and I'm walking up to the door and there's a point where the 8th step turns into the 9th step and there is a sound that it makes when that happens it sounds like this ok now you're in the 9st step because now the door opens and it's like you know, as scary as some of these events could be, it's like the experience of seeing that you hit a wall with your own abilities, where you look at something that you absolutely are terrified of doing and you would rather not be there. And if you could think of any good reasons to not be There, you would have took it. But the fact is that there's better reasons to be There than to not Be There. and uh and to go to somebody not with an apology right they've heard all enough apologies apology is is just something this something you utter that clears the air for some reason and it doesn't admit any responsibility right it just kind of makes you feel more comfortable like you've done something, a gesture, right? But it doesn't mend anything. It hasn't mended anything, right. An amend is a sincere desire to set right the wrongs that we've done in the past in the hopes to fix something, right, to fix some things that we don't want to do. To fix something that we have done, right and there's different ways that things get fixed right emotionally, spiritually, physically I mean I put my ex-wife through a lot she had her set of dreams and aspirations of what marriage would be like and I guess you know she saw all the fairy tales you know the funny thing about fairy tales they don't go on usually after the person initially, after the two initially get together, you don't hear what happens afterwards have you ever noticed that about fairy tales? I mean what happened to Cinderella after they rode back to the palace I don't know anyway I got off track didn't I anyway no not really because I mean she had her ideas her fairy tales right she didn't plan for me and I approach all my amends along certain lines if they don't know I'm in the program do they need to know not always because sometimes to say I'm here to save myself does not sound very sincere. I mean, now you've caused all this problem and you've hurt them. They might be still sore from what you've done and now you're saying, I'm an alcoholic and I'm here to fix myself. So you have to be sensitive and pray into each situation and be mindful of the other person's reactions to what you're going to do. and I approach them either I start off with I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes they know it sometimes they don't sometimes they don't need to but what I follow that with is that I've currently been looking at my behavior in the past right and I saw some stuff in my behavior that I saw has hurt you and I ask permission if it's okay to talk about that with them so this is why I'm here if they say it's ok, I tell them why I am here and I lay out exactly what I'm aware of the things that I felt hurt that hurt her Lori in this case and then there's the next question right, because I'm not just there to fix myself, I'm here to repair the situation and not just to get back with her it wasn't about that but I have to give her an opportunity to say something so the next thing I say is is after I've told her everything that I'm aware of, I ask, did I miss anything? Is there something that you need to tell me that I're not aware of? How I've hurt you or your family. And then I have to sit back and shut up. Let her say what she needs to say to me. Right? And sit, and sit, and sit. She had a lot to say to me but then she started repeating herself and that's a good sign when they start repeating themselves because it means they can't think of anything else and it's a better sign when they notice that they can think of anything else but what I saw was is that at the moment that she realized that she had told me everything she needed to say there was a lightness about her and I saw that she got free of some things that she'd been sitting on for a long time, right? But I don't stop there. I say, is there anything else? All right. Because the idea here is to give her the opportunity to say the things that she needs to say, to let me know how I affected her from her perspective and I follow that up when she's done with is that is there any way that I could possibly make amends for the harm that I've caused you and I sit quiet and I listen to see if there's anything she wants from me I've heard people respond with things that have nothing to do with the situation and sometimes you have to decide whether it's really appropriate is it really going to mend the situation the situation is not about putting yourself in a situation where someone's going to be abusive to you right at the same time I just have to be careful how I respond and try to get in and out with as least extra damage as possible and hopefully so sometimes that means keeping your mouth shut I'm not going to argue with her with her perspective she might have saw things that didn't happen but her feelings are her feelings and I can't argue those feelings that's what she felt again it has to be a constant time of prayer when you're listening to someone tell you how you behaved what they don't like about you or what they didn't like about the relate what had happened and and it's and as I said the result of all this I think in this situation was that she got free of some stuff that and it made this the whole thing worth it for me it wasn't about me here this was about her right this was about um you know so i asked is there's anything i can do to set this right in this particular she had nothing that she wanted me to do she just wanted to be able to say these things to me and for me to know how it affected her and uh we actually still talk once every year or so we don't have a she's off doing her things and i ended up going a different direction and uh um you know so we dont have a relationship but we're on speaking terms she doesn't think bad of me now and i'm sure she's i'm sur there's a part of that that i can never really fix though because, sure, we talked about her having her dreams and ideas of what she was going to get out of it. She actually never ended up getting married again. I don't know if that was the impact I had on her or just circumstances, but it was the way it was. And there was other situations that I had to see. as you're going through with 8 and 9 here look through the pages, you'll see that they're giving you a lot of examples of people's ninth step and they might not all necessarily match up with what you're going to have to address I talked about this in the last session about learning how to access the power of God and how to direct and use that power what a great place to do that here in 8 and 9 situation after situation where I need to access more power than what I have and I didn't necessarily feel that from the first ones I'd done but when I got down to the last ones the ones that I knew that I absolutely could not do on my own the onesthat I had to pray into to do them those became opportunities to turn to God for help and over and over again I saw that there was things here that I absolutely was too afraid to do and God carried me through them anyway and what a great example to have in your life especially for someone that all along just said If there's really a God that will work in my life, why doesn't he prove it? And the fact is I never gave God the opportunity to show me. Now, I'm getting situation after situation where I'm seeing that I'm putting these amends that I'M terrified to confront. she was one that wasn't that might not be the one that seemed us too scary but it's more emotionally scary there was the little incident about me collecting rents for a while all right I talked about that briefly where I'm living in this apartment building not being able to afford rent managing the apartment building collecting rents and deposit him into this constantly regenerating bank account nobody because I was managing it nobody knew that I was not paying rent and my job got so important started giving myself a little paycheck wasn't greedy but it still wasn't mine and it was just basically survival mode I didn't buy the big things I just basically surviving because the way I was drinking and work especially near the end there got pretty thin right practically not pretty much non-existent although I did a lot of plumbing I fixed people's plumbing whether they needed it or not right and it all had to do with how I was paying myself so you know it sounds not meaning that sound like I was doing work it's just if I fix some plumbing then I could I was painting somebody else to do it cashing the check and keeping the money right so people the people's plumbing was probably in better condition than it needed to be right and uh but my delusion i validated and all that like it was okay to to do it because i was doing something the fact is the deeper i got into it the less i had to validate it the more i was just cutting checks right well it's a long story it was caught up in a probate it was supposed to be my mother's but because my mother was supposed to get everything my grandmother was supposed to get but my mother passed away first so everything reverted to my grandmother so my grandmother owned everything and so it was my grandmother technically that i was stealing from at the time but by the time i got into the ninth step she passed away and the whole thing was tied up in probate um and as i got down to the card that was for my grandmother, what came to me was that I needed to go to a gravesite of men's. And what that looked like was interesting. I thought, oh, this is going to be easy. What could possibly happen here? What I tell people I work with is do it exactly how you would if they were there. Get your card. Some people like Writing letters, but I didn't necessarily find that necessary, but you can if you like to write letters. Again, you pray about it and you see what feels like the right way to do that. I sat at the gravesite quietly for a few minutes in meditation. Forgot if it was five minutes or ten minutes. And then I prayed and I asked God to guide the experience. sitting at the foot of the grave there was actually three graves there my grandmother, my mother and my grandfather again I started with the easiest one first and that was my grandfather because not too much was going on there it was more like what I did to my grandmother that stuff and then the next was my mother and then my grandmother but I sat at the foot of the graves and I'm just going to talk about my grandma, the experience with my grandmother right now sat quietly in meditation prayed, asked God to guide the experience and then I just started talking just like I would if she was there I'm in a program called Alcoholics Anonymous I went through a process and one of the steps in that process was where I had to reflect on my past behavior that I find objectionable and see where I caused harm. And this is the harm that came up and what I have done. And I listed everything that I had marked down in my card out loud which just had the grave site. and and I sat quietly and I asked this is there anything that I'm not seeing here anything that i need to see that i'm not seeing here and I just got quiet but nothing came so I thought no big deal this is going to be easy and then I asked that question what could I possibly do to set right the wrongs that I've caused. And then I got quiet and just listened. And what came back was that there's nothing that I could possibly do that could straighten it out with her at this point, and that who was really harmed at this time was my brothers who were the beneficiary of the estate who lost out because of my actions and that and my financial activity the stealing okay and that maybe I should go to them about this stuff not her believe me that didn't come from me it didn't come for me because I certainly didn't want to hear that so it just so happened that I hadn't gone to my brothers yet and one of those was particularly hard because this was a case where years ago people in my home group, they weren't sitting with people they were working with and going through the cards and pulling out the things that will cause more harm. And this was one of those cases that I wished I never brought up again because it turned out that it did involve somebody else and it did cause some harm by bringing it up. And that was when we were teenagers, I was doing drugs with his girlfriend and we ended up getting intimate. And she told my cousin and my cousin told him and it turned into this big thing and I denied it. but I never believed that he believed me and there was always this distance that I felt with him and I thought that maybe that was him not letting go of the situation and that was what I went to him with and he acted shocked and I was like, ouch you know and i see looking over the situation that if that i'd wished i had someone that i bounced that off of that would have been would have questioned the value of going to this person and bringing this back up um because i'm sure it caused pain i mean he had gotten married to somebody else and he had like half a dozen kids all women all girls um he kept trying to get a boy finally his wife said enough and uh anyway but still it it caused harm and uh and i talked i talked about the financial stuff And, you know, I laid it all out, how I'd been living. You know, but the thing was that with that, what had happened with the probate was it turned out there was a will contest, not between my brothers but between uncles that decided that they should have a piece of this even though they all knew that it was my mother's building and their mother only acquired it because everything was supposed to go to my mother, but it went backwards when my mother passed away first. Anyway, I learned that money is thicker than blood, which is sad, but that's another amends I can talk about. But what had happened was the will contest flipped everything around where we got nothing. That's how greedy my uncles were. And I became like the figurehead of this fight. Everybody was, I was like good cop, bad cop thing. Well, Dan was the bad guy here and the one keeping everything going. And I flipped it all around where they were the ones that ended up with very little and we ended up avec the bulk of it. And then whereas they had flipped it around the other way. Anyway, I turned the whole thing around and uh there wasn't that much money it the building was purchased in 72 so it was property was a lot cheaper than so it's not an impressive amount of money but it was in a decent area anyway the point was is by the time that i had put up by the term i made amends for this that's how i went to him to make these amends i had done so much for the family in this probate thing and flip the whole thing around he said look at all this stuff that you've done I think we're even again this was something I was terrified with this was one of the last amends that I made confronting him with this thing I figured I'd be paying this thing to him forever paying him back money forever and so it caused a lot of fear and you know these things never seem to be as scary as I anticipate going in right and then there was that all the people that we had this will contest with we used to have a close family my grandmother everybody would come over to my grandmother's house for holidays and everybody it would be like a whole bunch of us and that all just kind of when my grandmother passed away and my mother passed away it just all kind of ended but we had somewhat of a close family until this probate thing came about and it got kind of ugly and I really believe that we were a victim of their greed they didn't really have any of this coming there's a part of the book in 7 page 77 where it says it's harder to go to an enemy than to a friend but we find it much more beneficial to us we go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit confessing our former ill feelings and expressing our regret right these people were definitely my enemies at this point i looked i looked at them as people that didn't cared more about money and greed than what was right and I didn't want I couldn't see how I did anything but protect myself by going through the legal channels to do the things that one would do to stand up for themselves instead of just saying oh they want my money I'll roll over and let them take it right and that's not what happened you know sometimes a spiritual more spiritual thing to do is ask for enough power to get done what has to get done it's not always about accepting everything some things are not acceptable and I need enough power to get through them and do what hasと be done so how do you go to somebody make amends when you really believe they did more to you than you did to them right so reading through the book here actually with somebody I was working with we got to this point and I'm reading it and it's funny how sometimes when you're helping somebody else with it how the things that you need just kind of pop out just are there and I really related to it being harder to go to these people than to a friend it says we go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit now this is a guy that I told him I was going to dig him up after he dies after I pissed on his grave for a few months and just leave him out on the ground I might have been overreacting a little bit how do I go to him in an helpful and forgiving spirit right well it doesn't say that i have to be helpful and forgiving it says i go to him in that spirit right there's a difference between forgiving him right and going to him with a forgiving spirit ultimately what i saw happen is when i went to him within that helpful and forgiving spirit and we discussed what we needed to discuss I walked away free of that situation and there was some forgiveness attached to that it just took a little bit more time it says we go to them in a helpful and forgiving spirit confessing or former ill feelings and expressing or regret right so I was able to go to him, actually a few of my relatives, express or past ill feelings. And I could honestly say that I regret that that happened to our family because we had such a close family at one time and that the fact that this whole thing would get in the way of it, I regretted that this thing got in the way of what we had as a family. And I could honestly say that. It wasn't that I liked it, it wasn't that I'm not taking responsibility here, but I expressed my regret for what happened to our family. And today I'm actually in real estate. I just sold one of my cousin's condos. So she trusts me with that. My other cousin is my bookkeeper she takes care of my paperwork right these are the same people that i that i hated right um you know so relationships were mended didn't happen overnight but it started with me taking the first step and going to them with this stuff in this way my other brother was easy though because I've done so much for him over the years it was almost like nothing he was, yeah don't worry about all that just stay sober I know that some people will want to say no, I can't just forget it I have to do something if you go to someone and ask them what they want from you and they tell you just go with it as long as it's not unreasonable I went to somebody with something else and they were in some other kind of spiritual cult program whatever you want to call it and they have their own terminology when i asked him what can i do to set right the wrongs that i've caused his response was you can kill my enemies this is okay i didn't know You know, I didn't, and said a couple other things that I thought was a little out of line. And, you know, naturally there's going to be some things that you just can't do. This is not about putting yourself in a position to be abused or used, right? so trying to think about it oh the big one wasn't really a big one it was the last one though now my home group was my home group is they're big on as I said finishing amends and we used to have to park about a block away and walk to the meeting and with my sponsor would for some reason he always ended up behind me walking to the meeting and indeed they say well hey Dan what about that last amends right I could hear that over and over and over again and there's only so many excuses you can come up with and it was It was actually to the IRS, because I kind of forgot about them for about five years. Maybe a little longer. Oh, about five ears. I was terrified, because i thought, you know, I'm new in recovery, just a couple years sober. How could I possibly come up with, I couldn't see how I could possibly come up with the money that I was going to need to get them off my back. um he kept saying just make the approach just make the approach right you can always you know make the best deal possible right you're not going to be able to squeeze any more out of you than you have right and it's like i had this weird feeling that i just i didn't want them to take my money until he said keep something in mind it's not your money, you're holding theirs and finally it was the last one and it hung on for a while and I really wanted to be able to stand up and say I finished and it's weird because I was pretty comfortable at that point and uh you know and it just didn't feel as important right and i think that that's where the where for me the importance of having a home group that made this stuff important became important because because because i couldn't just get by in this group by saying well that's the one i'm not like i'm never going to really be able to make Besides, they're not going to completely forget about me anyway. So it was destined to eventually catch up to me, I thought. So I went out and I finally got someone to help. It was suggested that I don't have to do this alone. Get a professional to look over my stuff. So I found an accountant, gave him all my stuff See, what I failed to realize is that I wasn't working for five years. I was doing very little. And I was afraid that I was going to owe all this money, and when they started looking at all my stuff, it was like, you know, I just didn't have an income, right? I mean, I don't know if they could tax you with the money you steal from your grandmother, but I don' t think that happens, not even in the United States. Yet. Although there was a death tax. Yeah, that's not true. I guess they do have a way to do that. But still, I didn't have a job, so I wasn't earning a living. So all that fear that went on for more than a year was for nothing. I spent more time in aid than I needed to be, living in the fear, thinking that I absolutely can't do this. And when I just trusted God and moved forward and did what I really knew that I needed to do. It all worked out fine, right? So then I was able to finish that off and I thought, okay, now I'm done. But that wasn't the end of his instructions because now that I went to my sponsor, Joe, and said, Joe I finished all of the amends that I'm aware of. He says, okay now sit with that for a while and pray and ask if there's any amends that came up that you forgot about or since you started making amends, any new harms. And I thought, sheesh, I thought I was finished. And I prayed about it. Nothing came. And I sat with it for like three weeks, maybe four weeks. and there was just absolutely no other amends no other harms that I'd caused that I needed to address I had finished everything and you know I kind of felt flat I couldn't really explain it but the best way that I can explain it is you know how just before you get the flu you kind of get like an emptiness in your head like a light feeling and it wasn't going away and it had been three months by the time I realized something because I'd already been thinking maybe I should go to a doctor or I don't know what's going on and I realized what was going on and that is it wasn t that I was sick, it was that I was quiet and I was so not used to being in that space right and it talks about it even talks about that promise of being in a place of perfect peace and ease right and I experienced it from being in that place of and I believe it was directly in relation to the fact that I had finished all of those amends and that I'd gone through that process practicing accessing the power of God and directing and using that power to complete those amends. And you know, I just started talking about my experiences with amends with the last few of them. Right? Those last ones were the ones I would have completely missed. Those last once were the one's that I had to turn to God harder for help with. The last ones were the once that I completely hit a wall and knew that self-will was not going to be enough to accomplish this. And I saw one right after another that turning to God for more power worked. And I got the proof that I always wanted, I got it. I got to prove that I always needed to believe that when I hit a wall with self-willed there was a power that I could tap into that will move me beyond myself. Right? And it was an experience that a lot of people in the program don't see, don't get. Because a lot of people don't finish the ninth step. And that's not my message. My message is that what will happen if you do. Right? and I don't believe that I don' t believe some people will say you can't ever really finish amends because you always create new ones but to be in this place this window where you see there is just nothing left to do it's hard to explain it really is But it's, you know, but it's like there's this vast inner landscape that sometimes we can just touch. Sometimes in meditation, sometimes just in the right setting, right? But to be able to live from that place, right, you Know, it's just hard to describe. so I feel like I'm done with 8 and 9 now so I'm going to start the break now oh questions you know what I'd rather do questions than start the break usually with the 9th step there tends to be a lot of questions that should pretty much fill the time so go ahead Dan My question is, you talked about a man's glory and you talked about reviewing the harm that he understood and the harm that he had done to her through the relationship. Later on, you used the word regret. You regretted the things that happened in terms of how And on page 81, it talks, he says, regarding the relationship with a woman, an ex-wife, or whatever. We are sorry for what we have done. And God will not forgive you. I had difficulty with words to use in terms of, you're taking responsibility for the harm that you've done. Did you? use the word like i regret or uh i am sorry are those words that you include in making a mess to whom you brought harm in relationship would i use the term sorry or regret in in harms that that i have caused in a relationship you know i take responsibility or I recognize that I did you hard, I brought harm to you, and I regret that. And I'm sorry about that. Would those be the kinds of words you would use in making amends to an ex-wife? Each situation... Okay, would I use the word regret or that I'm Sorry when making amens to an ex-wife? I'm just repeating it for the microphone. Each situation will be different, which is why we have to practice praying in and i believe that the practice of praying in is a big part of the experience and learning how to start to trust that what we need to do will come and sometimes you might use one or the other or both but at the same time i don't believe that uh just saying i'm sorry is an amen is necessarily an amends because it doesn't necessarily mend anything it's just as i talked about a little bit before it's just the word sorry is just to clear the air for some reason and it doesn't necessarily admit any responsibility or guilt or or remorse sometimes uh sometimes you could be just sorry you got caught you know but um so i think that it just depends on the specifics around the situation and that if you pray and it feels like the right thing to do to say you're sorry certainly I would go with that but I wouldn't just I wouldn' t go to somebody I wouldn''t, if I was just going to say I'm sorry I wouldn'T call it an amends right but what you do find is when you're going through a list of people that some of them you didn't really harm but it requires an I'm sorry just clear the air so sometimes we'll make another pile for those if there's a lot of those and just say you just need to call this person and catch up or do whatever and say you're sorry you didn't do this right but he didn't necessarily harm them all right so i i think that an apology going to them to say i'm sorry is not necessarily what it's talking about here in the ninth step but it could be a part of rebuilding relationships or eliminating guilt or things that are blocking you from God is the part where the amend actually happens is when you're listening to what they have to say or ask them what I can do to make it right. You said the same story, just men, anything. What part of the process is it where you feel where you actually can mend?