Humility and Making Amends – 12 Steps by Sandy B – Part 3 of 3 – Local AA Speakers

My name is Sandy, and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? It's good to see you, everybody. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. does not wish to engage in any controversy neither endorses nor opposes any causes our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety and I know we have some new people here this morning on behalf of the group we want to welcome you to here and to Alcoholics Anonymous what I just went through is a brief description of this organization for your information there's about 125 groups of AA meeting in the Washington area every day and so there's a lot of people that are doing what we're doing here, and I like to think of it that we're able to accomplish something together that none of us was able to do on our own and we're the kind of people who if we could have done it on ourown, we would be doing it on their own today It's not our natural inclination to ask for help and to go into a group that is accomplishing something, but that's what AA And so the reason that the gut level that you should try Alcoholics Anonymous, in my judgment, is because your way stinks. This is the basic premise that I heard. And if you got here and everything is perfect, we'd love to hear your story. This would be a first in somebody arriving in AA and their life is just perfect. We think you have another problem. I don't know what it is probably a bad memory for within the period of four weeks of doing three each week so today will be seven, eight, and nine for the benefit of anybody new this meeting is available to help you get a perspective on the steps it's important when you come to something like this or any AA meeting that you realize that the person who is leading the meeting or sharing is just another drunk doing their best shot at trying to share what these 12 steps might be, but there isn't anybody in AA who has the answers. We just have our own experience and we try, and I know that anybody who is reading this meeting tries very, very hard to follow the AA literature to the best of their ability, but if you're new and you hear something this morning and you just go, oh my gosh, that's totally unacceptable. Come up and talk after the meeting. Maybe it got all screwed up. There isn't anything in the program of AA that draws such hard and fast lines that it wouldn't be acceptable to anybody. I mean, this program was put together by drunks, for drunks and they knew that if they had a bunch of musts in here and all kinds of absolutes that you had to believe in or any sort of that kind of stuff that would all take a hike the first week, and there wouldn't be anybody to make the coffee. So this just doesn't exist. If there's anything where we draw a hard and fast line, is we just have found that drinking at meetings doesn't work too well. Fortunately, that's about it. Other than that, the program is a plan that has been done by the people who came before you, and you get to look at the results and to evaluate and compare this product with you. And if you find something that you would like to change and you find the program is attractive and you'd like to get the results that you see here, then this is how you get there. That's what AA says. If you are interested, then these 12 steps is how your life is going to be. How you get where those people are that you have met here. In other words, that's the thing that holds all of us together. The one thing we all have in common are the 12 steps. That's what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is. When you talk about practicing the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous, we're talking about the 12 Steps. This is the basic spiritual principles that guide the members of this program. And just to set the record straight, if you're new and you think that one of the things that everybody in this room had in common, and that's why we're all here was our undying interest in spiritual principles that's not it what we all had in common was we were almost going to die from drinking that's what we always said that's all we all have in common and we were fortunate enough to get here one way or another and once we got here we found out that we had two choices we could go ahead and die an alcoholic death or we could try and learn what these spiritual principles were and do the best shot that we could at following them. Some of us debated this question for a number of years before making a decision as to which one we would do, and the survivors are here. And the survivors and the undecided, I would say that's what this room basically consists of, is those of us that have decided and those that are evaluating whether we're going to go ahead and do steps. but at some point in time we find that we do make a decision and sometimes that's the most important part of life is finally making a decision and we see that in our third step when we really decide to go on with the rest of the program we learn about inventories we learn the importance of sharing with other human beings in our fifth step and we learned in the writings about our sixth step that we were talking about last week we learn the difference between the goals that we may have set for ourselves and what's possible and there's a line that I've always liked in the 12 and 12 that says we tend to settle, meaning human beings we tendto settle for as much perfection as will get us by and I really relate to that and I remember the first time I got serious about these steps I remember reading them and I had only been reading them about 15 minutes and I felt superior to the people in my neighborhood. You know what I mean? Nobody else is into this. Boy, wait till I get through. And then I started thinking about my neighborhood and how much pressure it would put on the rest of the regular people there if I became what this book was making me. You know What I Mean? So there was a time when I thought for their sake I ought to stay an asshole you know what I mean such is the such is the power of some of our rationalization and instincts to find a way to not do this and I remember thinking that yeah these people they wouldn't know how to handle someone who was honest and nice and all that I've since come to believe that they were way ahead of me on all counts and probably still are and that's always been embarrassing to find earth people that have been practicing a principle since they were in grammar school very big setback when you come rushing in at age 50 telling somebody you learned about meditation and they go I picked that up in grammar school it's been very useful all my life you know but when you find something for the first time it's very exciting and very often we do that in AA show up at work 11 days in a row you remember that Billy you feel like telling people in the office you know I've been here 11 days in a row i've been here 71 years in a row you don't really see what you're excited about well for us we're doing a lot of this stuff for the first time and it is very exciting and uh i think the progress that we make in um the 12 steps and this spiritual growth is for many of us the first time and therefore it is quite an adventure and quite a journey and that sixth step just uh gives us a view of what is possible and points out that it's a never-ending process, that we will always be able to find something else that needs to be done. And so there's a sense of frustration that'll probably always be around us as we work on whatever character defects we may be aware of today. it's almost like as soon as you do some progress on that it enables you to see others that those were hiding and you go God when does this stop kind of like cleaning a house did you ever notice that you get it all done and it just gets dirty by itself I never figured that process out you're over here and the table is just collecting dust all by itself back there eight or nine months there's a bunch on there it's amazing how quickly it collects and you have to go back and go through the whole process again. And so it is in this program. In getting to the steps that we're talking about today, 7, 8, 9, humbly asking to remove our shortcomings is the shortest step that we have, so seven words long, very simple concept, no need to spend much time explaining what we're taking about here. We're talking abut the fact that each one of us has come to some understanding of a higher power, whatever that may be. There's 300 people in this room. There's probably 300 definitions of a higher power. We've done some work on a list of character defects. We're taking an inventory. We shared it with another human being and we spent some time in the sixth step trying to get absolutely willing to clean this list to the best of our ability. So we're coming now to a step that says we're going to ask whatever this higher power is to remove these character defects and that certainly doesn't need much explanation you just in your own way go about the process of asking this higher power to remove these the problem is they've added the word humbly to the sentence and so you just have to go that one little extra step um of humbly asking this higher power to remove the defect and for most of us that was a dead end in other words what is the difference between asking and humbly asking and it stretches the imagination you know at least i feel humiliated already that i'm in the process it's bad enough i gotta ask now i gotta figure out how to humbly ask and the Bill in writing in the 12 and 12 he obviously was aware of this particular dilemma and he writes that humility has not had a good time of it in our world and he's right you don't sell beer by promoting that it'll make you humble you know what I mean you don'T have some sort of humble guy just standing there just going hope did this to me And there you are, humble. There are references every so often that this man accomplished all of these great accomplishments or this woman accomplished all these great achievements and was humble. You know, it's almost like in spite of this character flaw, they were able to succeed in life. It is... And so humility needs a good press agent. That's all I can say is that it just has never been... And on the other side, we find that we're subjected to the great forces that pride can do. Because we're talking about a non-spiritual concept versus a spiritual concept. And if you want to leave a higher power out of it, if you wanna leave all of the spiritual side of the program out of this, you're right, you can get a lot done with pride. That's how you would get something done on just your own resources. In other words, if you want to get 110% out of yourself, then you could use pride. And that's what I remember in the Marine Corps. They'd just go, what about your pride? Your pride? You know, I'm just going, I know, but I'm sleeping in a goddamn hole and it's 50 below zero and you're suggesting it's fun to pack snow around your face. And I'm going, this is awful. You know? And they're going, where's your pride?" And I said, I don't know. I don't like being in here. And they're going, well, you could learn to like it. Think about your pride. And I'd think about it and stay there. I mean, you know, it would get you to... There was no doubt about the tremendous power of pride. And then we come in here, and they're doing humility, the dictionary definition, absence of pride! So I'm going, oh, I see. So all of a sudden, pride went from the top of the list that had a motivating driving force to something that ought to be totally gotten rid of it seems like a paradox how could that be true and I've even seen sometimes you go and you'll see I remember years ago they would have the list of character defects at some of the meetings that were hand painted by some of them some of their early members then you'd see all the character defects up there you know dishonesty lust greed envy rationalization false pride even pride had a PR man walk in there and cut it some slack you know what I mean you didn't see false lust false rationalization false false false but somehow that's why Bill Wright does not by accident that pride leads the list pride snuck onto the list the character defect and cut itself some slack. You know, it says some pride is probably good. And guess what that pride is? Mine. It's that last little part of me that says there are certain areas in my life that I will continue to handle alone and won't involve a sponsor, a program, the steps, or a higher power in. and it's just that that is the condition and this is what humility has to do with it has to deal with the great struggle that has to take place to get out of the driver's seat if we get out of the driving seat in terms of alcohol that we're willing to do right off the bat yeah I'm out of the drive seat drinking problems you got it what about the other 7,000 areas of your life you know, well I'll manage those myself, I'll keep this thing and the process of sobriety is during your lifetime how many other areas of your life can you turn over and this is the process of actually accomplishing the third step where we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to care of a higher power here we're coming close to it right now we're at this stage of humbly asking to remove our shortcomings it is a question of perspective, of putting first things first. Very often when we think of this particular concept of getting rid of pride, of not having a way if you will, it sounds like you'll go nowhere in life. It's like if I put my spiritual progress first, then while I'm working on my spiritual program my business competitor will ace ahead of me anybody ever have those kind of feelings I don't know maybe I'm the only weird one but I always have this I just don't want to let go of this situation out here you know what I mean and they're going just leave that whole stuff over there and take a break and go to a noon meeting and I'm going yeah but during the noon meeting the phones could be ringing like oh the guy comes in he gets the contract and then where am I I'm with a noon meeting a lot of good that's going to do me take a break at 10 o'clock in the morning go over to some place and meditate for 10 minutes that'll be the very 10 minutes that they call and I don't end up rich and so this is the reluctance of doing that, and yet what happens during these times? This is the most amazing thing think about what happens when we're willing to risk to this and let go and let God as the saying goes. We go to the noon meeting and then we come back and we're sitting and we meet some people and we talk and we sort of just get our batteries recharged a little bit. We sort of get a different look at life and we comeback and we are sitting there and all of a sudden we have a clear answer to about three problems that have been bothering us for a month. You know what I mean? You just go, you know what am I going to do? Just getting these little creative ideas like man of course we take credit for them and uh you know we claim they would have occurred anywhere but if you'll conduct these experiments uh and go to these meetings take these 10 minute break here in the morning in the afternoon we find that our efficiency improves we find that our creative channels get unblocked we find we're able to do in an hour what it was taking us four hours to do because we were fighting the world. We were a victim. It was a very competitive situation and our pride was at stake. And we went to a meeting and somebody talked about that and they said, hey, live and let live, just be part of the process, live in harmony, try to be useful. That isn't the way I would see in life at all. And when we come back with this new perspective on our situation, we have different answers And we find that those work better. And what happens is, if you ever read Chuck Chamberlain's book, A New Pair of Glasses, he talks about, and this is a man who was a millionaire and a businessman, he's in air conditioning of supermarkets, to be more specific. And he had been in the cutthroat business, et cetera, et cetera, and he just started practicing the principles of his program in that business. And it was incredible. I mean, just total honesty, never cutting any corners and just, you know, if I have to go back and do this all over, that's fine. Whatever it takes, I will always do the right thing. And on paper, his company got real nervous with this policy because if you projected it out, it was just not going to work. And he ended up not being able to handle the business. I mean it just kept piling in because he was trying to do something that was correct. He was trying to do the right thing and because of that all kinds of other things happened but that wasn't the point of doing it and so it becomes sort of a paradoxical thing. This is what the goal of this step is is to get all of the things that are blocking out a free and unlimited supply of power into our lives um on a daily basis and once that power is is in there and you we get glimpses of this we get glimpeses of peace of mind bill talks about prior to under to see peace of mine we thought life was either excitement anxiety or depression it was there was one of those three and you just went from one to the other and you said god i can't stand anxiety i think i'll go back to excitement you know that's why we had to have a party going all the time if we could keep the excitement level going at least that was better than depression and keep people around action stick something in your arm and something up your nose pour a bottle down there and just keep it moving because when that stops it's awful you know what i mean we have no idea what peace of mine was and then we get in this program we're stopping a lot of that stuff and we get real anxious and there's a great period of anxiety in those first months in AA you're sitting there with like this at a discussion meeting and the topic is peace of mind you know what I mean and you're afraid to grab your coffee cup because your hands are like this and so there are some fun little situations but those are just the price of admission and as time goes by why we do much better at that So the process that goes on in this seventh step, not to belabor the point, but this is, I think, the most interesting step we have as far as I'm concerned, to understand it. There's a word that is written about in this step that we try to hide, try to disguise, but it has to be dealt with. and Bill deals with it on about two full pages in the 12 and 12 and it's called pain and that's where we get there's no gain without pain and so what are we talking about pain what is the pain well in the simplest terms that I've been able to think about it it goes something like this in order to do the third step if you think about the third set made a decision to turn my long life over to the care of a higher power sounds great right this is going to have somebody manage my life It's just going to be a wonderful concept. In order to do that, I have to go through the pain of not getting my way. You see, I don't know what to do. I have what I call inside of me my way about things. I don' t know what the hell that is. I get up in the morning and like something turns on. And I go, oh, I'm just waking my eyes like this. And I hope it's not raining. I haven't even opened my eyes yet and have decided that if it's raining, it's unacceptable. See what I'm saying? I haven't even moved yet. I haven' t even got to the bathroom yet. And I'm making a pronouncement about the day. Well, there's no traffic out there. There's traffic today. Boy, I'm going to... Now I've made a big pronouncement on traffic. I haven''t even brushed my teeth yet. Whatever that is, it's firing up and it's just getting up ahead of steam and it'll start going on. Well, I hope that South America situation is straightened out. They'll have a good time, man. They better get that goddamn thing straightened out in a hurry. I'm getting close to the edge. I'm, you know, some other thing and, you know, Redskins and this and that. And I've just got an official pronouncement on about 80 zillion things. And what this step is trying to have us do is don't do that. That's all. That's what peace of mind is. That's the whole AA program is right there. You remember that old joke where you walk in the doctor and he says, Doctor, it hurts when I go like this. He says, don't do that. So we're down to a rather outrageous statement out of this seventh step. Don't have a way. Wow, that's absolutely mind-boggling. What it's saying is the alternative to that kind of self-centeredness on every little issue that there is, it sounds like, well, if I don't do that, I won't go anywhere. If you ever have that, I won' t be anybody. That's wrong. You've got to try this other side. So what I want to do is get out of bed and get to the 24-hour day book before that system fires off and needs something in there and go, no, today I'm going to try and function on let's go out and be useful. well, what are these directions that the 12 steps have? You know, you have to break years of habit pattern and this whole thing has this self-centeredness and defects have a force and a life of their own and one is going to be in charge that day. Either your instincts and character defects are going to me in charge or you are. And on a daily basis we get a shot at it and every day is a whole different ballgame and some days you get up and you're late and you don't get to read the 25-day rule, you don' t even get started and you just start listening to all these things and nothing goes right that day. Everything is wrong and the only thing, there's no such thing as something happening right or wrong. Things just happen. We make judgments about them. You know what I mean? When you go out not self-centered, big traffic jam, you go, oh, this is one of those big traffic jams that doesn't bother you. You know, you know what that means? Uh-oh, here's one that does. You know? Like there's two kinds of traffic jamb. There's just traffic jams and they're always there. It's what we bring into the middle of that mess. We can bring in somebody who is working these principles or we can bring in someone who is being controlled by pride. Obviously pride would not want to be in a traffic jam. That is what humility has to do with is a recognition of what a struggle it's going to be to get out of that driver's seat and that it's going to painful, that it just hurts to have generated your way and then have to eat those words and back off and go this is his eye will you know what I mean hope it turns out this way this is your will I'm almost cutting a little bit of slack there and so there's pain involved and that's enough on that because I'm going to not have enough time to get through eight and nine what happens in that step It further defines what we're going to try and accomplish out of the AA program. It shows that we have a never-ending growth job and that peace of mind is the ability to be happy with constant change and to actively go out and seek to go through some more change. And when that's adopted as a way of life, then I think what happens is you change the word pain into effort And you just go out and put a little effort in today. You don't even classify it. Stop our spiritual program and go pulsing along on self-centeredness for six months, and then try and get back in spiritual shape. It hurts. It's like getting out of physical shape. Getting back in is painful. Maintaining it is an effort. And there's a great deal of difference. It's just a nice day, daily routine. The next two steps have to do with personal relationships. Made a list of all the people we had harmed became willing to make amends for them all and made direct amends to such people whenever possible except when to do so would injure them or others and since this has to do with people, since it has to deal with all the folks we've sort of run into in our past the very folks we're run into in our past the very beginning process is liable to be a resentment the instincts go on the defensive we've got a list of the people and our mind projects ahead to the fact that we're going to have to actually go visit them and we can already see the discomfort in doing that and now we resent the fact that they exist that we even have to deal with this mess and so we start coming up with an explanation of what the problem is and we finally come out with it it's mostly their fault that we misbehaved in the first place. And so he's shifted all of the blame back out where it belongs, not on us. And it's just the basic power of the instincts to try and get us to not have to do anything. Because the more we do, the less they're in charge. And they really don't like that. There's a self-centeredness that wants to remain that way. And so it's suggested in the 12 and 12 that the best way to start out with a list of all these people is to forgive everybody. start right off with this entire list that we're going to go about and whatever they've done is over and this will get rid of things that some of us have carried for 10, 15, 20 years I mean I remember hearing this forgiveness idea thought it was a wonderful concept and I let everybody off the hook except three people just like that I felt it was such a great concept I just didn't think we wanted to carry it to an extreme where you would be forgiving the unforgivable you know what I mean and who decides what's unforgivable? Me. I mean, I'm a perfectly good judge and in other words it was absolutely outrageous unforgivable terrible thing that this person did when he borrowed my car without telling me and it's just amazing that they would do something like that whatever it might be that we decided to hold on to that can be one of the greatest threats to our sobriety that we have is to carry that kind of judgment on an incident and never what we said is I am never going to set myself free from this. I'm going to carry this one all the way and so this step has a wonderful beginning of suggesting that the first thing we do is just forgive everybody on that list The second thing is to suggest that the goal of doing this is to learn a new way of life which is living in harmony and harmony and usefulness get to be buzzwords in this spiritual program We substitute pride and accomplishments with harmony and usefulness. That this is the real purpose of our life. The other one was our self-imposed purpose. We decided that what my goal in life should be to become the president of this company. My goal in Life should be, to be this. We're driven, and we know we ought to be accomplishing something because something inside of us tells us that. what the program is suggesting is we misdiagnosed it that what the real force inside of us is to become a spiritual person and that that is what will bring us peace of mind and not to being the president of the company that we have misdiagonized our own situation and I remember when I first heard that I went wrong you don't know me I know myself better than that and what really is required here is $94,000. That's a good deal. Then we'll get spiritual. Put the two together you've got peace of mind. But you can't get one without the other. You know and so I had a lot of other conditions which is to underestimate the power of your higher power. What you're saying to your higher powers is you know I really believe higher power that you and 94,000 could give me peace of mine. And I'm going I can just hear the higher power why don't you try it without the $94,000. I think I can handle it, you know, and we're just going, no. And so it is that we're underestimating what we have available here in order to stay in the driver's seat. Anyway, the second thing that we're liable to encounter is the fact that we say harm people? Oh, I forgot to tell you. I wasn't a violent drunk. As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the only one I hurt when I was drinking was myself. Anybody ever heard that sentence? The only one I ever heard when I was drinking, myself. I don't know any of these guys who drank at home. Feed their kids up. I've heard those stories. I drank alone. I went away. Didn't even have booze in the house. Then we talked to the family. Is that true? Yes, he'd be gone months at a time. So the harm that was inflicted there was a hundred times more than getting punched out. Now we're inflicting uncertainty. No money. Is the guy dead? Is she missing in action? What is wrong? The unpredictability. And then when we come in, the things we inflict, the harm we're talking about in the ninth or the eighth step are such things as resentment, self-pity. Take self-pitty down to the office and dump it on everybody. Hey, when I feel bad, nobody should be laughing. What are you doing over there laughing? Hey, hey, hey. Come on, boy. If I don't have any money, nobody should be enjoying money. If I Don't Have a Girlfriend, Nobody Should Have a Girlfriend. You know that whole thing? Let's go inflict that. Let's inflict prejudice on people. Let's make slurs about this and race and religion. Let's Make Ourselves Feel Better by putting down the next guy. Hey, how about let's debate the points all the way to the end. Why don't we just be a power driver and just run every little situation? Be like Hitler in your own home. Nobody gets to make a move unless you say something. Or don't say a word. I'm not even involved in this house. I just get my mail here. Go ask your mother. Whatever it is, it's not pleasant to look at because it's the kind of harm that we just didn't think about. But when we looked at it, it was there and we had a special talent and that talent was we were able to bring out the worst in people. We were able to bring out the very worst in everyone that we met. Therefore, we didn't think the world was too great. But we had no idea we were causing the world to be that bad. And that's why so often people come into AA and they go, you know, I came to AA my family straightened out. We stopped doing things that brought out the worst in them. We stopped pushing their anxiety to the limit. We stopped bringing their anger to the limits. And so it is in this step that we get a handle on how out of harmony we were, how out-of-step we were. Why we got these reactions wherever we went. And we got a new goal which is to live in harmony and usefulness with the people around us. What this is teaching us to do is to listen and to try and understand other people rather than demanding that we be understood. And the end of the step that Bill writes about is it ends our isolation and leads us into the step that brings us to promises which I've only saved a few minutes on but I think I can get through it. The ninth step may direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. This again is a fairly self-explanatory step that we're going to go if we owe people money we're gonna make arrangements to pay it back. In the big book it talks about the importance of doing that or we'll probably get drunk. When you sit around and worry about the money you owe and you're going to run into somebody, a letter's coming, the phone is ringing. You just can't take that. It just is a terribly building problem and we're running, running, running from these things and what it's saying here is in order to stay sober on some of these things, we're going have to do something about it. We're finally going to have to pick the phone up. Hello, Acme Credit Company? My real address and name is... And the best I can do is a dollar and a half a week. And we find out, they go, oh, good, well, I'm glad to know where you are. That's not the best, but we're going to have to take that. And I mean, all of a sudden, geez, I am making progress on these problems. We are doing something about them. The list of people is as much as we can remember. It's back even before we were drinking, after we came in AA. It's an all-inclusive list. the only advice on going to see these people we're talking about making an apology sharing that we're in the program and it's not a complicated thing we're going there I just feel bad about that time I tore up your house let me tell you about it I'm just getting in the programme I'm trying to come over here basically it's like you're on my list and I'm supposed to visit you you can keep it that simple you don't have to go into some off-the-wall explanation why we're doing this in the first place but there's a couple of suggestions One of them is that this is a spiritual program and that these steps are power tools. And we mention this almost every one of these sessions, that we want to stay plugged in to a higher power in order to get these done. And I think no step is this more true than in the ninth step. In a way that I heard years ago that I'll pass on to anybody who is new, if you're walking, you have to go see someone else and you feel threatened by the entire situation as some boss you used to work for and now he's up in some corporation and you call and you're going up there and the secretary, yes. And you're like, oh jeez, I can't believe I'm going in there. And you just sort of sweat on the forehead and all that. Hold the phone. Start all over again. You know, go back out to the elevator. Get a little card out of your wallet with a serenity prayer and the steps and so on now. Look the thing over. Talk it over with your higher power and take your higherpower in with you. And walk up to the secretary and say, tell Mr. Brown, we're here to see him. And then both of you go in and discuss this matter because we're not there groveling and scraping around. We're there doing the right thing. It may go across well or it may not. We could get thrown out of the office. Doesn't matter. our deal is over with we have followed the suggestions of this step and we're up against the more than any point in our program, we'reup against something that I think teaches us some valuable lessons. What is being suggested in this step is we're going to do the right thing. In other words, this step has been put in there as saying making amends is the right thing to do in these situations and I'll tell you it doesn't come natural there's just a lot of these people we don't like and we got a lot of anger in there, we got all the resentment in there we're going to go in there and go hi I haven't seen you in 10 years I'd like to come here to and it goes against our better judgment it goes against our way if you will and yet there it sits and we are torn between the pains of running away from this thing and doing the right thing and after we do this this is where the promises are and I brought him along to read here today, we'll take the last three minutes or so reading out of the big book I wanted to start with something over here that says sometimes we hear, this is just a quote out of big books not the promises yet, sometimes we're hearing an alcoholic say the only thing he needs to do is keep sober certainly he must keep sober for there's no home if he doesn't but he's a long way from making good on a lot of things the alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others hearts are broken relationships are dead selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in the turmoil we feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough he's like the farmer who came up out of the cyclone cellar to find the home ruined to his wife he remarked don't see anything the matter here isn't it great the wind stopped blowing it's not enough it is for a while but eventually we've got to move on into these steps and make the changes. Now, let me get to these steps. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we'll be amazed before we're halfway through. We're going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. And this freedom is the freedom from self-centeredness. And that's what the happiness is. It's the happiness of not being self-centred. If there's anything that the spiritual program, the entire reward is not being self-centered. That is where the joy and the great freedom. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, which is a great way to balance that past out. Once we've gone back and seen these people and have made the amends, that's it. We've taken the best shot that can be taken on the past and it sets us up for the very next step, which is where we live a day at a time. It is very difficult to live a Day at a Time and drag 1957 with you. As you plod along, plus one month in 62, plus all of 72, 3, and 4, and just go on a day at a time and people are watching you drag all these things that haven't been fixed yet and this is the last step prior to being able to live a day or two at a point in time. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. And it's just one of the most wonderful things that happens in AA. All of those things you feel terrible about yourself, just being an alcoholic that we were so ashamed of, we suddenly find being an alcoholic is what enables us to save human lives. So the worst part of us becomes extremely useful in the context of this program. Our rotten, nut-worn jail experiences are what the next person listens to. oh you were in that word I'll follow you oh you used to be like this well good I'll listen to you so this horrible part of ourselves that we used to think was just so rotten and everything is our gift of life to the next person and we see ourselves in a whole new perspective and that feeling of uselessness and self-pity disappears and we see how our experience can benefit others So there's value to all of that rotten pain that we went through after all. In this context, nowhere else is it valuable. Only in this context. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. that was what I thought about earlier in the business world or in the relationship world we just give up on trying to figure it out take a break work on our higher power spiritual side a little bit we come back and we suddenly have some answers to things that we never had those kind of answers before and we start to rely on intuition as a way of living as opposed to our old ways of relying on pride we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us, we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. The bottom line is pride may be able to take us 110% of our capability, but a higher power can take us a million miles above that. It's like how high can I fly just with my arms or in a plane? You know what I mean? Maybe somehow with my pride, I can actually get this far off the ground. And we go, hey, that's fabulous. Look at that guy down there. We're at 50,000 in the 747, and we go that's amazing what he did, but it's still going to take him a long time to get to California. That's a wonderful point he just proved that he could do that, but you know, maybe someday he'll take advantage of the power of a jet engine, but you see what I'm saying. It's a wonderful point what pride can do, but it's nothing compared to what a higher power can do. Nothing. No, it's not even the same ballgame. We're at the end of the time. There's another meeting in 15 minutes, a wonderful discussion meeting, and we'll go. Thanks for listening.