Self-Abandonment and Service – D. and Scott L. – AA Speakers – Amazing Big Book Step Study – Part 1 of 2 – Bob

Start like, like now. I'm Bob Darrell, I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bob. Welcome back. Now, since there's not everybody here, I can unleash the secret. Yes. I'm such a wise guy. Before we move on to Step 8 and 9, which I think are the really big deals in AA, I wanted to comment on the seven-step prayer in the middle of page 76. 6. And it is a reminder when we say to God, I am now willing for you to have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. We've then completed step 7. I'm not asking him for anything that will serve me. That Alcoholics Anonymous is not a selfish program. It's not a self-help program. It's Not a Program of Self-Approvement. It's a Program Of Self-Abandonment And Service. I'm Asking God To Take The Things Away That Stand In The Way Of My Usefulness Period. And I Don't Even Get An Opinion Of What Those Are. i am advocating along with my will my judgment and perception and opinion of everything and now it's in his hands and i just trust that he will remove the things that stand in the way of me helping his kids and i think alcoholics anonymous is a process whereby which i am divinely crafted by my sickness and defects to be uniquely and divinely useful to other people that are exactly like me. And when, that's why in Alcoholics Anonymous it says later on that our real purpose is to fit and sometimes I think and refit and refIT ourselves to be a maximum service to God and the people about us because we have a primary number one purpose in Alcoholic synonymous, and that is to help other alcoholics, people like us. And in the carrying out of that primary purpose, I get free from the bondage of self, and I get freed from me and mine. God's able to move in my absence and start doing amazing things in my life, amazing things um no one in alcoholics anonymous is rendered white as snow uh not even bill wilson i have a term i have tremendous letter here written to it was a response written from bill wilson to a group in chicago that really raked bill over the coals and took his inventory very harshly and bill was not perfect but in his imperfection he had a degree of humility that is just amazing and here's his response to being raked over the coals and listen to what he says to this group in chicago in 1960 he says that you seem disillusioned with me personally may be a new and painful experience for you but many members have had that experience with me most of their pain has been caused not only by my several shortcomings but by their own insistence on placing me, a drunk, trying to get along with other folks upon a completely illusionary pedestal, a station which no fallible person could possibly occupy. I'm sure you'll understand that I've never held myself out to anyone as either a saint or a superman. I have repeatedly and truthfully said that AA is full of people who have made more spiritual progress than I ever or can make. That in some areas of living, I have made some decided gains and in others, I seem to have stood still. And in still in others I may have even gone backwards. I am sorry you're disillusioned, but I am happy that even I have found a life here. bill wilson 1960 he never defended himself once when you're surrendered you don't have to be defended that's where the real humility is not in humility isnot in perfection it's in an honest recognition of god's grace in your life and who you are and what a tremendous tremendous thing and bill like anyone who if you and i know that there's people in this room that do a lot of service and if you do a Lotta service consistently somewhere along the line you realize you've got a target on your back and that's just the way it is and people will fire at you and they'll accuse you of doing it for wrong reasons and they'll kill all kinds of stuff my sponsor is Clancy. I go travel around the world and I mention his name, and people just will go out of their way to tell me they've never met him, but they got all kinds of judgments against him. I said, have you ever had coffee with him? Well, no, but he's a blah blah blah. I said really, is he? What's your source of information? Oh, I just know. Really? Wow. Psychic members of AA. I worked on the docks in Maine and on lobster boats for a while. And it was years ago when I was drinking. Good job for a drinker. And on all the lobster boats, they have a basket that's about this high and about this big around. And what happens is when we pull the traps, crabs get in the traps. And the lobster fishermen don't want the crabs. So they just throw them in this bucket. And it will fill up in a day. it will fill, it'll have like 150, 200 crabs and they don't put a lid on it. And they're scrambling to get out and they're climbing up the sides and I'm watching it and these crabs are getting right up to the edge. And I'm telling this guy, they're going to get Out. And he says, I said, you need to put a cover on there. I'm Telling You They're Because They're Climbing Over Each Other. They're Going To Get Out. He Says That I Said Look, They're Almost Out Now. I'm Told You He Says Watch. I started watching Every time a crab would get right to the point Where it's just about to get out The other crabs couldn't stand it And they'd pull him back down I think this is one of the biggest crab pots In the world Right here So when it says Are you willing to go to any lengths To serve God and help his kids Sometimes you have to be like Bill Wilson You have to get people to take shots at you We never defend ourselves We just look to the next person we can help. Now I get to talk a little bit about step eight. I think this is the hardest thing we ever do. I mean, objectively, up until this point in the process, there's nothing I've really had to do that puts me at very high risk. I mean I've had a littlebit of risk in the fifth step, but you know, we check these people out. We're pretty sure. We're not taking our fifth step with a gossip. You know, we've checked it out there's we've we've minimized our exposure here pretty good but step eight and nine man going out and seeking out all the people i've ripped off the guys i've dimed out the people I've really hurt and stolen from the I got situations that were going to put me in prison and people are talking about me facing all this stuff and it i would hear people talk about amends i just want to bolt out of aa when i was new i it was just too big it was too much i can't first of all i'm not going to live long enough to ever make enough money to pay back what i owed i'm like it's more money and i will make in a lifetime i mean for god's sakes if i knew i was gonna have to pay this stuff back i wouldn't have stolen so much i mean that's really and my experience with looking at step eight nine as a newcomer was very similar i would imagine that this experience of a kid say in the fourth or fifth grade that were to sit down and look at the exams he must pass in order to graduate from high school a kid in the 4th or 5th grade looking at those exams is going to feel like he might as just quit school i'm never going to understand those questions but a funny thing happens if he shows up every day and does his next assignment and his next homework by the time he gets to the end of the 12th grade he has everything in place within him to pass those tests and alcoholics anonymous is a synchronistic place we talk in aa about the realm of the spirit In the realm of the spirit The impossible just takes a little longer We have a principle called synchronicity That Carl Jung was the first person to ever talk about it And a synchronistic universe is a universe That is ultimately accommodating It's a view of a universe Let's say you're at point A And you need to get to point B And you can't There's an abyss between A and B That makes it impossible throw your hands up it's hopeless i can't get there and yet i need to get there from the moment of desire and the word desire comes from two greek words that have passed into the old english that means of the father from the movement of desire the universe starts rearranging itself slowly until the impossible becomes possible you don't have to sit in a meetings very long to hear synchronistic stories of god's grace of people that could never had restraining orders never see their kids and now did you see them in the meeting they had their kids with them and you hear that was impossible we hear story i we we take it for granted the miracles in a how many times we hear people say you know you go to coffee with a bunch of people say hey remember joe the guy who's living in the bushes behind the aa club yeah do you know he bought a house Yeah, yeah, what's for dinner? I mean, you know, it's almost blasé after a while. But God's grace works. And Alcoholics Anonymous, that fear that I had of facing the amends but I had nowhere to go has been with us ever since the beginning. As a matter of fact, I believe that AlcoholicsAnonymous was actually formed on one man's eighth step. in mother's day weekend 1935 a desperate stockbroker who was sober less than half less than six months just i think five months probably i just had his his whole world fall apart his one chance to get back on his feet he had no sponsor no a meetings no nothing he's in a strange town he's just about out of money as enough for maybe to get drunk if he wanted to but not even really enough to pay his hotel bill and get back to New York. And he believed something. He believed that maybe if he could find someone to help, he would be okay. And he started calling people, and he found this woman who knew a doctor who really was in bad shape, and he couldn't see that doctor at the moment. He was taking a nap under the dining room table, but he said, tomorrow come by. I'll get him over. Well, you come over to the Cyberling Gatehouse where I'm living now. And she's a little estranged from her husband living in the gatehouse. And I'll have him here. And they came over there and met. He didn't want to go. His son, Smitty Jr., was a really good friend of mine. He'd spent time at my house on a couple of occasions. And I used to love to hear him talk about the stories. He drove the car with his dad in the back seat and his mom sitting up front. His dad didn't wanna go. He was guilty. He just drunk up Mother's Day. I mean, he really screwed the pooch on this one. I mean he was really in a lot of trouble. And Ann was a strong woman, so he don't want to go, but he's going. You know, he's gonna go listen to this Yankee talk to him about his drinking. He don't wanna go. He said, don't, 15 minutes, please don't leave me in there more than 15 minutes with that guy talking to me about my drinking. Don't,15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They went into the library, this little tiny room in the Cyberland Gatehouse And it's almost four hours later, I think, that they came out and Bob came out with his arm around Bill Wilson and he was lit up. He was litup. And he said to Ann and his son were still sitting there. He said, I've never heard anybody talk like this. He said this guy knows his business. He went in there and never heard anything like it because Bill Wilson never once talked to Bob about Bob's drink. And Bill Wilson talked to Bill to Bob About Bill Wilson's drinking. and for the first time something miraculous happened an alcoholic that was all alone indifferent and unique and hopeless connected with another alcoholic and it was it lit him up and he bill started outlining this this newly formed program he was kind of putting together he's gleaning from some things silkworth had told him and things he had found in the oxford group but he was putting this deal together and and bob liked it all he liked the the spirit the prayer meditation he liked a confession of shortcomings he liked to help in others but he refused to do the immense thing he dug his heels in he said you know i i'm a proctologist and doctor in this town just about ruined my reputation i'm just gonna leave that stuff alone and consequently dr bob smith drank again and on he went to a convention in atlantic city uh he was so drunk coming back that the he was comatose the conductor didn't want to know what to do with him so they just laid him on the ground of the platforms the plate him on the platform of akron station his office manager came down to the rescue again as she had many times before and got him up got him uh back to this eventually back to the house on ardmore street and he was out of it he came to on what most historians know some of them don't agree on this date they've i know some guys did research sure it's a it must be a different date but the accepted date was he came too early in the morning on june 10 1935 came to like like i come two after a long drinking around the clock you know shaking jumping out of your skin kind of deal bad shape he says what day is it and they say june 10th and he says oh my god it can't be june10th i have a surgery to perform the morning in june tenth dr bob was a proctologist you can use your imagination about what kind of surgery it might have been and he's like this and bill wilson doesn't know what to do with him so bill gets him a couple sedatives gives him a sedative and a couple bottles of beer just to, because he could thread a needle in a sewing machine he was shaking so bad. You can't send a guy like that. Imagine the patient laying there watching your doctor come in like that So they gave him just enough to calm his nerves down. It was a frightening thing and sent him into the surgery and that surgery was over fairly quickly. Nobody knows what happened to the patient. Now it says somewhere in AA literature he lived. I don't know. I'd like to know, did he whistle when he walked or what? We don't know. But he came out of that surgery still fairly early in the morning on June 10th, and he disappeared. And he didn't come back all that morning, all that afternoon, allthat evening. And it was close to midnight when Dr. Bob Smith came back to the house on Ardmore Street, and his son said he came back and he looked different. Something was different. And everybody had been afraid all day that he went out drinking. Sure, they gave him a cup of beers and said, you know, he probably set him off. But he wasn't drinking. He hadn't drank at all, not a drop. He was out spending the whole day searching out every one that he owed amends to and walking through the fear and facing them. And consequently, Dr. Bob Smith never took another drink again the rest of his natural life. And in the mere decade and a half that he lived before his death, He, low estimates is he helped over 5,000 people personally. And then they helped people who helped people who helped the people. And I would venture to guess that we are in this room indirectly as a result of one man finally becoming willing to go to any lengths. And when it says in the book on page 76 at the bottom of the second to last paragraph in italics it says remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol they're talking about step eight and nine now treatment centers over the years and well-intentioned people have turned that into being willing to go to anything lengths means being willing not to drink and go to meetings but that's not really what they're talking about they're taking about really the most difficult part i think of this process is willing to go out and face people that you don't know if they're going to hit you with a baseball bat. You're going have to start paying them money, and I don't know. It's a funny dynamic. They don't wait until you're flushed to pay people back. Oh, you've got to pay them back when you're really struggling the most, right? And everybody wants to say, well, maybe one day if I hit the lottery. Well, you probably won't stay sober long enough to do that if you don't start chipping away at this stuff. We, most of us sell our integrity a nickel and a dime at a time. We buy it back a nickel in a dime and a time, and it's a struggle in early sobriety. And I think sometimes it's supposed to be, I think this is in step eight, nine is when I really start to exercise my trust muscle with God. It's where I really learn that some there's something here that's got my back when I push myself aside and face people that I'm terrified of facing and pay money that I afraid to pay because I need it it seems so desperately because I got so much financial insecurity but those of us that are able to do this great great great things come to pass. Great things. I could tell you a bunch of stories. I've got to pick one real quick. We're going to let this bleed over. Oh, we are? Okay. Never mind. it was we were willing to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol page 79 is a paragraph that if i think if they were ever to make a sales pamphlet in order to sell people on the idea of making amends this would be the anti-sales pamphelet uh for for some people it says the top of 79 says although these reparations take innumerable forms there are some general principles we find guiding reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths there it is again to find a spiritual experience we ask that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing and here's here's the part that's a little frightening no matter what the personal consequences may be does that mean i'm not part of others Yeah, that's right. Somebody years ago saw a loophole and the loophole says, well, aren't I another? Except when to do so would harm them or others. Aren't I an other? No, other is other than you. Right. We may lose our position or reputation or face jail, but we are willing. We have to be. We must not shrink in anything. tough step i think this is really where you find out if your trust in god and your willingness and a is talk or not it's really this is Really, you know, I know Father Ed Dowling says step six separates the men from the boys. You know, i think where the rubber meets the road. It's really step eight. This is where you get in the wheelbarrow. This Is really where to get in the wheelbarrow yeah are you willing to are you willing to act as if that if you do the right thing that you're going to be safe and protected even though your head's exploding on you about how awful it's going to be and i'll tell you something i've discovered over the years the more fear that i have to walk through in order to make the amends the greater reward and i've seen that consistently and myself and also in the people I've sponsored and other people I know around AA. There's a, uh, I don't know why it's like that. Uh, there's not a great reward to making amends to people. I know we're already going to take it well, and it's not big deal where the great things happen is where the ones I'm afraid to face. And then I finally trust God enough to face them. And I get to be wrong what a miraculous thing i get to be wrong again because my head told me they're going to beat me up i had told me i'm going to go to prison my head taught me i can't survive these payments my head my head has never been right and i getと be wrong again and i and what's the great call what's the great cry of every alcoholic when faced with these propositions. Well, yeah, that's all fine, but what about me? When's somebody going to make amends to me? Once I'm going to pay me some money, right? That's a self-centered in the extreme. That's, I think that's our default position is me. And Alcoholics Anonymous is asking me a self-centered guy to do something very hard is to set myself aside you can serve yourself and get what you always get when you serve yourself or you can serve a power and a set of principles and an ethic and a purpose greater than yourself but if you're an alcoholic of my type i'm telling you you're gonna serve something and if you don't serve something greater than yourself whether it's a set of principles and a purpose and a power then you're going to serve yourself but i don't think we have a choice i think we must serve something and most of us have served ourselves for most of our lives and and the the great question if you've been doing that to ask yourself is simply how's that been working how's that been working it's been going real well for you happy joys free great relationships with people life keeps soaring how's that working for you and if you're an alcoholic of my type and you have the spiritual malady I got and you reap in what you reap the same thing I reap when I'm running my life on self-will the answer is Oh, it's not working very well. It's working so good that I was standing on a bridge not too long ago trying to get enough courage to kill myself. That's how well it was working. That's How Well It Was Working. Scott, go ahead. Yeah, thanks, Bob. I was reminded of a great truth in my own case. I heard someone else say one time, when I first got here what I wanted to do is to work the promises and hope the steps came true. that my history is to find out who I think you want me to be and then go be that. So I hear him reading the Nine-Step Promises, so I'm going to go be the guy that's that way. See, because I don't have any idea what I'm doing. Twice in this chapter it references this idea of going to any lengths. I've been to a lot of meetings that talk about going to many lengths And it misses, I think, what's a relatively important piece of that same sentence on page 58. It says, if you've decided you want what we have and are willing to go into it to get it, then they tell us what that link is. It says then you are ready to take certain steps. I wonder what steps they could possibly be referring to. Is there any chance at all that it's these 12? That that is the N.A. link that we're talking about. i find five prayers um in the reading the uh the text sort of blends steps eight and nine together i find Five Prayers the first one's on page 76 immediately before that it used to be there oh yeah yeah if we haven't the will to do this we ask until it comes that's of prayer there's another one on page 79 that he that he just covered um we asked that we'd be given the strength and direction to do the right thing because i want the top of page 80 in the second line am i going fast enough okay good thank you good if we have obtained permission consulted with others ask god to help and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink This is where somebody else could be involved. There's another one on page 82, about eight lines down. This one is one of my favorites. What a perspective. Let's have the perspective in this thing. Each might pray about it. They're referencing where somebody has been unfaithful, and now we're trying to come back together. Each might prayer about it with this perspective, having the other one's happiness uppermost in mind. What a Perspective for Prayer. Wow. And then on the facing page, the same distance down, it says, So we clean house of the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love. So there are five prayers that I found. I'm not saying there aren't more. Those are just what I've found so far. This is part of how I work with a new guy on this thing. I remind him once he's got his eight-step list, and we're going to go down and we'RE going to do that. We're going over that list one at a time. And I want to know what the harm was you did to this person because that's what you have to amend is the harm that you did. A lot of times there are people on this list they didn't hurt. I've had people come up to me and make amends to me because they said I thought I was a jerk in the past. I didn't get much out of that. And so I don't need you to go do that to somebody. What was the harm? And then let's talk about what that amend would look like. What does that look like? This is red flags, this is me. I think if you take the fourth breath when you're making amends, you've already said too much. Amends is not a lecture course. Do not mess this amend up with an excuse. And if you talk long enough, you're going to give them an excuse and it's going to take all the power away. I restrict the men I sponsor from using the word sorry. They don't believe you anymore. You wore that out decades before I met you. You will say I was wrong or I believe I harmed you or both of those together is a nice combination. And I say your mother doesn't need to hear your fifth step. I made some mistakes. I believe I've done some damage to you. I'd like to make it right. Would you tell me how? Simple enough. We are not asking you to turn your will and life over to the care of someone who may roundly hate you. That person is not final authority on what this amend is. I, as your sponsor, am final authority. If you'd gone to Big Ken Sweeney to make amends to him before he got sober he would have bashed you for the rest of your life right so we're not asking you to do that um and if he tells you what it needs to be and it makes sense to you i empower you go get it if not you say i'll talk to my sponsor get back to you and we'll talk about it doesn't happen often but it does happen um i like to start guys sponsoring when i get them to step nine That's where I start them sponsoring. If I haven't started them before, and sometimes I do, and I trust the guidance. I believe God blesses sponsorship. And by this time, he's really got a message. He can coach somebody into this part that he's done. He's got a Message to Carry. And there's an American philosopher named William Glasser who said that the human being has these needs, to give love, to receive love, to do something that matters, and to get some kind of credit for having done something that matter. And I believe sometimes that credit can just come from God when I keep it quiet myself, when I really do anonymity, which is keeping it quiet. So he's ready to give at this point. And he says, well, I don't think I'm ready. I say, good, I hope you don't ever think you're ready. I hope You don't never think You're ready to sponsor. I hope I don' t think I am. I better get God's help on every one of these. This is important stuff. Now we're going to go, and I'm not going to have any trouble at all finding a new guy for him. They're not hard. Stand at the door at your home group and shake hands. Ask questions. Oh, you don't have a sponsor? Come let me introduce you to your temporary sponsor. He doesn't know he can say no to that. Come here. I got a friend that's been another guy's temporary sponsor for 22 years. They're both still sober. I don't think I have any problem with that temporary sponsor thing at all. It doesn't bother me a bit. I think it's a wonderful concept. Yeah, because that guy can't make a commitment. He doesn'T need a commitment, he needs a sponsor. Temporary sponsor. Change if you need to. It's not a problem with me. Here's your first assignment. Yeah, yeah, I'll be your temporary sponsor. I'll Be Glad To. And then I say to him, okay, I mean, the reason I started him as sponsoring is one of the problems I have is keeping him moving through step nine. By this, by the time we get to step nine, here we are six months into this thing, ballpark. His life has changed, right? He's been promoted at work. He's got money in the bank. He can explain every dental in his car. He knows where they all came from. His key fits in the front door. When he walks in, they don't scatter. He throws the switch. The lights come on. The phone rings. That's a miracle by itself. He answers and says it's him. There's another miracle. He's sleeping in the big bed again. His motivation is gone. And I asked Don not too long before he died what changes he'd seen in AA. And he said, when I got here, the focus was on recovery. Today the focus is on sobriety. The difference is sobrietry is simply not drinking today. Recovery is this whole, and it doesn't necessarily contain recovery. Recovery is This Whole Spiritual Thing That We Do That Always Contains Sobriety And that my job as a sponsor is the integrity of the message and to not let this guy settle for relief. I've got to get him all the way to recovery. By the time I get him to nine, he's got relief. So how do I keep him moving? I've Got Two Things That I Do. One, I get Him Sponsoring. He sees this rookie catching up with him, and he doesn't want the rookie to get through nine before he does. I'll tell you that. And the other one is I apply the one-day-at-a-time concept. This is just what I do. I say, okay, which one of these amends do you want to make first? And whatever he says suits me fine. I don't care. I care at all where he starts. Great. Good choice. when can you call him and schedule an appointment why can't you call him right now good good schedule it for today or tomorrow ring ring ring tomorrow at two great call me at 230 230 yeah ring ring hey yeah how'd it go oh great he didn't remember who you were yeah well that'll probably happen again so the amend went okay yeah it did well great who's next on the list oh yeah that's a good choice when can you call him and make an appointment why can't you call him right now call me right back i want to know what it is i want within 24 hours oh two o'clock tomorrow good i'll be looking for a call at 2 30. it's a one day at a time concept applied to making amends he looks at his list he says to himself i can't make 160 amends i agree with him he can't make one today we're only 159 days away from finishing this it's worked for me um share a couple things that are a little bit controversial. I would prefer not to be controversial, but I have to lay it out and this is how it is for me. I walked out of a meeting that I was in one time. I told you earlier that if I say something you disagree with that I want you to tell me because I may get a chance to learn something. I'm always on a search for that constant search. Please, if you disagree, come talk to me and I walked Out of a Meeting One Time and a guy that I sponsor his sponsor said I disagree with what you said in the meeting and what I had said was that my amends to my children will never be complete. And he said, that's not right. He said, let me ask you questions. Did you go to your children and tell them what you thought you had done wrong? Did you ask them what you could do to repair the damage? Did you do it? Did you ask for their forgiveness? Did they give it? I said, well, yes, to all of that. He said, you're trying to be, he said, if you can't come off that cross right now, you can accept their forgiveness or God's or your own. You have work to do. And that continuing to be the best father you can be is not ninth step work, it's twelfth. It's the principles in all your affairs. And he was right about that. I don't find, I tell you if your sponsor has got you doing it, I'm in. I don't fine living amends in this book. My amends to my children are complete. I'm trying to be best father I can be to them today. It is not nine step work. I came down off the cross that day. And I have seen an awful lot of teenage and older children manipulating us into some very sick behaviors under the banner of, you were a lousy parent in the past. And that takes that right out of the equation. I believe this is one of the great truths. Anything that's right for one person involved is also right for everyone that's involved. They may or may not like it, but it is right for them. I quit funding the party for my daughter about 15 years ago she didn't like it it was right for both of us she'll tell you that today so i'm trying to be the best dad that i can and that there was a great freedom that came to me with that and uh that's why i wanted to share it with you and i'm gonna i'm going to get into something else too and that's um i told you the story last night of my white light experience that my soul hit bottom i thought about the worst thing i'd ever done if you've done this, it's okay with you. It's okay with me. I'm not here to talk about that. What I had done as a young man is I paid for an abortion and that festered my soul. As far as I was concerned, I'd killed one of my own children. And however you are, where that suits me, I'mnot here totalk about that this how it is for me.I'm sharing this only in hopes that somebody else who needs to get free will be able to.And um, I used to drink that away the what ifs that come behind that and I used to drink them away and I'm laying there in the treatment center and I can't make it stop And that's when my soul screamed for forgiveness and got it. And I get to step eight, and I owe amends to an unborn child, and I don't think it can be done. And I have been in the hands of big book people since my early days. Thank God. This is page 83. Some people cannot be seen. We send them an honest letter. And I was with people that knew that. And I sat down and shown how to write that letter. I have captured it I have written it down I've got handouts if you want one As we discovered earlier today Although there's writing involved in step four The writing isn't the significant piece It's the observations and prayers that are life changing And my experience this letter Whether it's an unborn child A grandparent Sibling Anybody that's gone This letter is not about writing It is about tears I got to you unable to cry and there was a very masculine man in my home group and he was crying in almost every meeting. He's a drummer and you'd know the name of the band if I gave it to you. And I went to him one day and I said, tell me about the tears. And he said, man, somebody says something beautiful in the meeting and it touches my heart and I weep and it feels so good. And I said、Man, I can't cry. He said、I will teach you. And he did. And it took me a year to get the first tear out and now I can just let it run and I wouldn't take anything for that. because you see, I'm convinced that my emotions are how my spirit communicates with my mind and my body. And I can't afford to block that channel because I've had the experience of the mind and the body run on the show. That's how I qualified to sit with you nice people. I need to have the spirit involved and that's where the emotions are. And he taught me to cry and I can cry and I need it to cry. I need two and it's good for me. When I've Had a Good Cry, I feel like my soul's had a warm shower and dried off in the sunlight. I was talking to another guy here, and I don't remember who it was. Just a wonderful thing, how good it is for me. And I typed that up. It's on the same piece of paper. And if you'd like to learn to cry, I can teach you. It works for everybody. I need to warn the guys, however. If you start crying at appropriate times and places, you will attract a lot of very healthy women. Do not call me and complain about this. I told you on the front end. I toldyou up front, do not callme with that one. and if you're married don't worry about it healthy women are not a threat to a marriage all right ladies i'd like a simple answer yes or no are you sick of the john wayne acts and many of the guys are doing they see right through it fellas sorry okay and when they see a guy that's in touch with their his emotions it lights them up like pinball machines i'm gonna leave that alone for right now but i'm going to tell you that's that's the deal because they're into genuine They really are into genuine. It's amazing. And I was shown how to write that letter, and I wrote it, and I got free. I got absolute... Can you see it? Can you say it? Can you hear it on me? I can talk about that? And this is not pain you're seeing on me. I'm free. I got absolutely free. Page 124. this painful past may be of infinite value to other families still struggling with their problem we think each family which has been relieved owes something to those who have not and when the occasion requires each member of it should be only too willing to bring former mistakes no matter how grievous out of their hiding places that's what that was about that's why i did that fourth column in the sexual misconduct inventory for you i become two things as i do these steps i become a caddy and i become an apprenticed messenger i'm an apprentice messenger in step 12 where it says we tried to carry this message i figure if i was a messenger i'd be carrying it says i'm trying i'm going to apprentice messenger and i'm a caddie and i still carry all that poison from my past but it no longer has stent your weight and the thing that keeps it light and area is my willing for god to use it as a tool to help you that's what happens and what happened with me in step five the first time i told it all it was became possible for me to tell it a second time and when i told him the second time it became possible to tell him the third time and eventually got to where i tell it to a few thousand every year and it just became okay with it i do not have the power to make a mistake so ugly that god can't turn it into something magnificent you got somebody that's gone and don't hear that political thing please i'm not into that i hope you see that if you got something that's going on and you need to get free i can show you how it's been my experience that people who write those letters and can't cry get sinus infections and they don't get well they don t get free that the tears were the critical piece for me and for i've had the privilege of working with a lot of people i just just did one a couple of of days ago and i watched him cry and really really pump that stuff out and i haven't talked to him since i'm his grand sponsor but i bet he's a different man today you can absolutely get free absolutely get three don't discount this thing i serve a powerful god who gave me a powerful program don't doubt it don't tout it one of the difficult ones for guys and i'm doing this the best i can and i'll appreciate coaching if somebody has some is if he has availed himself lightly of some lady's charms how do you go back and make amends for that without making her feel cheap this is the best I can do with it the first thing is you make sure that you're not going to do any harm on the way in if she's married then you find some woman to make the approach kind of thing and sometimes the best thing you can do is leave it alone but but i believe the thing that i say what i have said is i wasn't as good a friend to you as i could have been and i'm ashamed of that i think i've done some damage i'd like to repair it can you tell me how that's enough that's enough this is not a lecture course um this is a gift from miss linda she had been in allen on a number of years she had bent completed her ninth step was sure she had and just she got to nine again and couldn't get past it and prayed was given a gift that she calls good amends and she and i've talked she's going to tell her story tonight at seven she asked me to do this piece because i always do it when bob and i do this and that is you know i think of all the sins of commission the things i did that hurt people the thing i miss is the things I should have done that I didn't do, and that is typically to say thank you. She went back and thanked a high school teacher that got her off the back row, got her in school affairs and probably prevented a teenage suicide, and I went back and thanked my major professor in college, and went back, and thanked the guy that taught me to fly that set up my Air Force career. He set it up. I'm a distinguished graduate of Air Force pilot training. That's top 10%. He taught me. He was hard on me and saved me. I went back and thanked him. I thank my mother for being the best mother she could be. I want Beckett said, Thank you. I never told you how important you were to me. And how much mean to me? What a positive influence you were on my life. Thank you, thank you. Thank you run into previous sponsors. I've had several and I always thank him when i see him every time i get the chance uh miss linda calls it good amends boy if you haven't tried that i recommend it highly um i had an experience there was a there's a guy in my life who was um he was a special forces guy all right he was on the ground in laos when the president was swearing we weren't there and he took the hill tribesmen from crossbows to m16s and let him in combat for two years this guy doesn't know how many times he's killed with his hands and he was doing some things that i knew about that i shouldn't have known about but i did and i was drunk one night said something about it and he he confronted me and i lied my way out of it and then i get sober and now i gotta go make amends to this guy and he comes to nashville for a trade show you know we're old buddies and i call him say i gotta talk to you he said come on down and i can remember standing outside his motel door knowing that there's a chance i'll be dead in the next 10 minutes because if this guy decides to kill me i can't do anything about it there's no way in the world i can stop that and i asked god to go with me on this thing and i just walked in and told him what had happened a month later my wife and i were guests in his home for a week don't discount the power of this thing if you want to strengthen a muscle what do they tell you to do use it you want to strengthen your faith welcome to steps eight and nine we'll uh one of the things we've been asked here we are we are not being good guests and um we are the only big book some of these people are going to see our failure to show up on time for meals is creating problems for the other retreats I've been asked to make this announcement. We need to go down there. Our meal is scheduled at 530. We needto go there. We don't need to straggle because we're hurting them. And so I think we need to do that. We're not finished with step nine. We're going to get into the heavy stuff after some. We're we're not finisht with it. We got some other things we want to talk about, but in the interest of doing what we've been asked to do, we're goingto go ahead and leave. I would ask if y'all would stay seated. We like this whisper of the Lord's Prayer. We hope you do, but if you don't, we're going to do it anyway because there are no adults here to stop us. If you would, we'll have a few moments of silence. We'll whisper the Lord'S Prayer in a fairly slow cadence. Amen is the last word. We'll have another moment of silence after. Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, power, and the glory forever and ever. God bless us all. I'll have those handouts I told you about after supper so we can head on down. Let's go eat. Why don't you go for it right now? Is your mic on? I'm Bob Darrell, I'm an alcoholic Hi Bob I want to talk about a couple of men that some of you may identify with When I first got sober I had done so much damage with my mother and father that we hadn't talked in quite a while and they would not take my calls anymore. And I know I called from a county jail, and when the operator asked them to take the calls, they hung up. They wouldn't help me anymore. I was not welcome in their house. And it wasn't that my parents didn't love me. I had just broke their heart repeatedly over and over and over and again. And they were able to physically cut me out of their life, but they could never emotionally cut me out of Their heart. So consequently my mother saw a therapist and took medication and my father slept 15 hours, 16 hours a day. And I did that to them and I had really hurt their life. I almost destroyed their marriage. I stole so much before my parents cut me out of their life i stole so much from my father that he became eventually became friends with the guy who owned the pawn shop in our town from buying his own stuff back then when he became friends with a guy the guy wouldn't tell you wouldn't buy nothing from me no more and uh and i did that to them and when i get sober people in aa are telling me that i need to make amends to my parents and i i understand i'm not dumb i understand what they're trying to say but see they don't understand that it's too late for that and i am very grateful that the people in alcoholics on this never gave much credence to my opinion of things and they just gave me actions to take that i didn't believe in or believed would work and uh first thing first action they gave me they told me to start calling my mother and don't call collect i remember the first time i called my mom i called and she answers the phone i say mom how you doing and she says she says are you in pennsylvania i said no i'm i'm in nevada well the operator didn't come on and asked me to pay for the call i saidno mom i paid for the call and her voice shot up an octave she went you paid forthecall she couldn't believe it I had always called collect. It was like I had some kind of sick sense of entitlement, right, with my parents. I used them. I had all that stuff going on. And she did not receive my call well. It was kind of like, what do you want? And I was told to start sending my mom and dad cards. Call every week. Pay for the call. don't ever miss a anniversary a birthday a mother's day a father's day at christmas take i wasn't making much money i had a little job making minimum wage and i would buy cards and i did that for a year regularly and i didn't warm up to me and when you think of it objectively after all i put my parents to through for them to warm up to me easily there'd be something wrong with their mental health after all I did to them and when I was about a year sober they decided to come out to Las Vegas and eyeball me and they came out to las vegas with this attitude you know he's probably still a bum trying to con us but you know we've never been to vegas it won't be a total loss if we go out there and he's a bum right so they came out to las vegas with that attitude really and i met him at the airport and i took him out to dinner with my sponsor and his wife and took him to my home group and they got to see me uh with uh with you and i've never been better and they couldn't have seen me any more better than at my home group and uh they got to see me with around the old timers used to pick on us and make fun of us and then uh the guys i was trying to help the newer people i pick on them because it's alcoholics honest works in the first rule of plumbing crap runs downhill um and they got to see meet the guys I run around with and I was taking meetings into a detox in a halfway house and the guys I run around with to do that. And they saw the laughter, and they saw the emotion and the sincerity and the genuineness of Alcoholics Anonymous. They didn't understand it, but they liked what they saw. And I took them, they went to a meeting with me just about every night, I think, that they were there. And they loved AA. And right before they were to go back to Pennsylvania, I met them in the coffee shop at the Stardust where they were staying. And I had my thing all fixed out. I owed my dad a lot of money, I mean a lot of money. I mean this was years of having fines and if I don't pay him I'm going to go to jail and he'd loan me the money. Years of not having the rent and if I don't, I'm gonna be thrown in the street so give me enough money. Years of transmissions going out in cars and I can't, you know, I need the car fixed to go work and he loaned me the money and I never paid him back a dime and I sat down and I figured it up to the best of my ability. And it was going to take 12 and a half years of payments to make it right. It's a lot of money. And I sat down in the coffee shop with him with my game plan, I was goingto start making payments. And he looked at my mom. And then he said to me, he said kind of smiled each other. And my dad said to him, he says, Look, Rob, we don't want you to pay the money. We are delighted that you're sober. This is the first time in years that we had any hope you're going to be okay. We don't understand this or anything, but just keep going to it. It's done something good for you. Keep hanging around with those people and just stay sober and forget about the money. Well, I just got out of 12 and a half years of payments. I mean, Ijust hit the recovery lottery. And man i'm delighted and i i'm i'm leaving there to go over to my sponsor's office to tell him the good news man and i'm just excited i'm thinking about other people i owe money to how i could convince them to see the light like my parents did we over there and i get to my sponsors office i tell them the good news my dad said i didn't have to pay him and my sponsor said to me it doesn't matter it's your debt you have it's Your Integrity It's Your Debt You Have To Make This right and i thought what are you talking to my dad there's no way to do it there's no way if i send my father a little check every month he's not gonna he's probably not gonna cash it won't he doesn't need the money really i didn't know what to do and my sponsor just said i believe if you're willing god will show you a way and the universe started moving around and i was working as a cashier in a store and uh i got an inspiration one day and it was just a thought sometimes inspiration is really from god is silly little thoughts you don't give much credence to until you start acting on them and you realize they're life-changing and the little thought was well you know i run this cash register and this is in the late 70s Every single day, we would get silver coins, wheat pennies, war nickels, silver certificates, gold certificates. There was still a lot of that stuff. Silver half dollars, a lot OF that stuff was still in circulation. And every day, some of that would come through those registers. And I thought my dad has one hobby that he's it's almost an obsessive hobby. He's really into it. He collects those kind of coins, all that stuff he sit for hours at the kitchen table with that stuff. Almost, it was like his deal. And I thought, you know, maybe if I would talk to my boss and maybe I could start buying this stuff and putting it aside, never imagining that I could cure the whole debt. I mean, that would be too much. But maybe I Could one day give a bunch like, you Know, some of it $1,000 worth of coins and stuff to my dad or something like that, And I talked to my boss, and he said fine, and I started moving along that line. It's a funny thing. When you start moving towards God's will for you, the universe becomes a very accommodating place. And some synchronistic things started happening. One is I started getting raises and bonuses. There was a guy in AA that had a moving business. He used to pay me $100 cash just for a couple hours' work moving furniture. And it was amazing, but in about four years or so, I saved up at face value the entire debt in silver coins and gold certificates, silver certificates. There was a couple times $100 bills would come through the old gold certificates and I'd have to stick it away and it might take me almost a month to get the money to actually buy it for my boss's safe. and at four years i took all that stuff and i was able to give it to my father he came out to vegas and i gave it all to him and he had a hard time getting it back on the plane actually it was a bags of stuff and um i think it cost him about 100 probably i don't know it cost him a bunch to get it back and uh when i gave him that something changed now i've been communicating with my father and mother by this time, weekly or bi-weekly for several years. There was no doubt in my mind prior to paying my dad that, giving my dad that money, there was no doubt my mind that my dad forgave me and there was no doubt of my mind my dad loved me. When I gave him that money for the first time in my life, my dad started to respect me. I think I became a man in his eyes. I think prior to that, he loved me, but I was Bob. You know Bob. Got to make allowances for Bob. Right? I was that guy. I was the guy that, yeah, we love Bob, but you know he's bob and when i gave my dad that money i i think i i earned his respect there's an old saying around a that you you sell out your own integrity and self-respect a nickel and a dime at a time and you buy back a nickel in a dime of the time and amends are not made in a like amends don't work sometimes like four shots of tequila sometimes you pay and you pay and you just chip away at this stuff and you chip away and you ship away. My dad died that next year and I was able to fly back to Pennsylvania and be there for my mother and sister and something started happening that was just crazy. I was the black sheep of the family and I became the pillar and my whole family eventually moved to Las Vegas to be around me. right amazing i was the outcast the power of god is strong and i didn't do any of that i just did what people in a told me to do i'll tell you one more imagine it was probably one of the most difficult ones i ever had to make and the reason it was difficult it was for something i did sober and you know for the stuff you do when you're drinking there's a little self-exoneration the fact that well i was drunk i mean you know i was messed up i wasn't sober yet you know you kind of get yourself a little bit of relief by hanging it on that hook but what do you do about this stuff that's that's kind of slimy that you did as a sober member of alcoholic synonymous when i was about uh when i Was early in sobriety i was working as i said i was working as a cashier in this store and uh i i smoked i had a heavy heavy nicotine addiction i was i was better than three packs a day i would light cigarettes off cigarettes i was that guy and i i went through a lot of cigarettes and i was struggling trying to make some amends and i was struggling to get by just to pay rent i was not making very much money at the time when i first started doing that and one thursday i ran out of cigarettes in the middle of my shift and i'm broke until the next day friday when i get my paycheck and so uh one of the things we sold in the store was cigarettes so i thought to myself that's usually the way i do it i thought to myself well i'll take a pack of cigarettes and then tomorrow when i Get My Paycheck i'll cash it like we usually do it the work there in out of the register and then i'll ring it up it seemed like a reasonable proposition, not stealing. I'm just going to borrow this pack of cigarettes. I'll pay for it tomorrow when I get my paycheck. Well, tomorrow came and I got my paycheck and I cashed it out of the register. And the thought goes through my mind, you know, you need to ring up those cigarettes. And immediately I thought to myself, you know, I come early. I wait. I stay late. I work harder than anybody else here. I mean for God's sakes, it's only a pack of cigarettes. Everybody does some of this stuff. It's probably factored into the cost of operation. And I never rang those cigarettes up in it from that moment on. I don't think I bought another pack of cigarets and I started stealing all my cigarettes out of there. And then what, you know, you Know how that is, man. Once you roll down that road and you got that door open, next thing I know I'm, I'm taking a six pack of Diet Coke, right? In the realm of the spirit When you get sick You don't initially Get the connection to your Actions and how you're starting to feel And your experience in life Sometimes in the realm Of the spirit you do something over here And you start you don't Initially get sick over there Sometimes you get Sick over here And then over there And then eventually it shows up Here too And I started getting real sick And I don't know what's wrong with me But I start going to meetings And it seemed like people were just irritating me in AA. It seemed like everybody was phony. Everybody was just trying to be something they weren't. You know what I mean? Everybody was a liar in AA now. I don't understand that. I'm projecting sort of this judgment of myself on these people because I'm the guy that's doing that really. But I started judging my way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was dating a girl at the time and I started to pick her apart. i started to get depressed at times i started to get anxious about stuff you know that those nameless fears that you just ever like wake up with just a feeling of apprehension and you can't you can'T say what you don't can'T really put your finger on what you're afraid of but i'm afraid a lot i'm anxious a lot free-floating anxiety and i was starting to get some of that again and then eventually i started picking my boss apart and the guy i worked for was a good guy i mean he never mistreated me he was really a good man and i started but i started picking him apart the way we can do you know you get that mindset you could pick apart mother theresa with the right mind alcoholic mindset and i started doing that to him and i'm getting sicker and sicker and more and more into my head and emotions are more and more wacky and one night i get down on my knees to to thank god for that day of sobriety as i've been structured and taught to do and on my knees in this little apartment i yelled out something and i just yelled out god what the hell's going on the minute the moment i asked the question in my pit of my stomach i knew the answer i knew what was happening i just it was like it was just like that clarity the reason i'm getting so sick here and I'm on my way to drinking again is because I'm stealing from my boss. I'm a liar, I'm an cheat, and I am a thief. And I'm trying to pretend and misrepresent myself as some kind of honest member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've become the guy it talks about in the beginning of the chapter into action who leads the double life that I want to have a certain reputation, I want people to think I am secretly inside myself, I know what I am. And I am on my again. And I, it's in all of us, it just became so clear to me and it scared me. And I, I started figuring out what it was, how much, and I'd been stealing for a long time by now. And it just overwhelmed me. It was a lot of money and I don't have the money and I'm going to have to go to my boss and I've got to tell him what happened. And he has zero tolerance for employee theft. I mean, and in retail, that's the way it is. He has zero. I'm gonna lose my job. He's going to throw me out of the store. I watched him do that i watched him really get angry at a guy and throw him out um hope he doesn't prosecute me i'm gonna i don't have the money to pay him i'm gonna have to try to get another job now i get another another void on my resume and i had a bunch of voids that are kind of hard to explain where i didn't work for long periods of time and i got another one i can't talk about or i'm afraid to tell people that he's going to check with him because they're going to say don't hire him he's thief and the worst part of all I think was it was the guy that I had to go face it heard me ramble on about my rigorous program of honesty in AA I couldn't stand myself sometimes great things come from a place you get to where you get to that point you can't stand yourself and i went and talked to him and i told him what had happened and he did not take it well he started yelling at me and i just stood there and took it because i knew i owed i deserved it and he didn't fire me surprised me he did not fire me and so i made up my mind i told him i will pay back every cent of this and i figured out to the best of my ability the amount. Then I added on another 10% and then I added on another $50. And the reason I did that is I know how I am. If I'm going to misjudge the amount, it's probably not going to be in his favor. Right? You know, and I was at a point where I wanted to be free of this so desperately, I would rather over I would chance overpaying it and getting clean in here than to screw around here and might miss it the other way and i started making payments on this on this guy and within no time at all man i liked working there again within no Time at all i'm doing good the book says in the night step promise will be amazed before halfway through and i Started paying this back and uh oddly enough within 30 days of my making the last payment about 30 days after that i was not looking for another job i was very happy there a guy came to me and offered me a job with an opportunity for management in another in a related business and it was more much more considerably more money and i i said yeah absolutely and i put my notice in and i went to work for this new guy and i never stole a dime from him never even took home a ballpoint pen and i did what chuck chamberlain had taught me i went to work for one reason and one reason only and that was to help god's kids i went into work trying to forget about myself and think about the customers and the other employees to be of service and in no time at all i was running that joint i was getting bonuses i was making a lot more money which was helping me facilitate other amends after a while i i'm at the i'm in a restaurant danny's restaurant one night and i run into the guy i'd stolen from and paid back the guy my old boss and he's there with his wife and i started talking to him he said yeah how you doing he said well he said i'm not doing that he says i'm all right i guess but i kind of a little disappointed i you may have heard i was going to sell sell my store i said yeah i'd heard something about that he said wow it fell through because because of the slot machines and everything the guy couldn't get a pass the licensing investigation he said I thought I was going be able to retire and get free and I got it back in my lap again. And he said, I guess it's just not the cards for right now. Maybe I'll find something that something else will happen. And I had an out of body experience. I stood there and I heard myself say to him, it was embarrassing. I heard my self say to him, Oh man, I'd like to buy your store. The minute I heard the words come out of my mouth, I started backbiting when I was, I was embarrassed. I went, Oh, I don't know why I said that. I don't have any money. I'm just kidding, and I couldn't believe I said it. And he asked me some questions, and one of them was, what's your day off? And I told him. He said, meet me here. And I remember walking into the Denny's, and he's sitting in a booth, and he has got these papers laid out on the booth next to him, and I sit down across from him, and then he makes me a proposition. He says, if you put your notice in and come back and work for me and run my business, he said, it's not doing very well right now. or the guy's kind of running into the ground that i thought i was selling it to because he took it over for a while and he's not doing very well but if you can get it back towards rocking and rolling again up get the numbers up and it's profitable out of those profits you will get 10 percent of business every year at the end of five years he says i'm out of here let the business makes a few payments after that we're done now i'm a guy with no education i'ma guy whose resume includes telemarketing selling blood selling drugs digging ditches and washing dishes and running a cash register I mean this is beyond anything I could have imagined and I said absolutely and I went I started running that joint and I started doing everything AA told me to do and when I took that business over it was doing about 600,000 a year and i started opening other stores and expanding the business out in other areas and i think at one point we're doing almost 10 million and i bought and ended up owning all the real estate that came with the company and the commercial properties and i sold that company about five or six years ago and i was able to retire very well and with a financial freedom that gave me the ability to do things i've always wanted to do i'm singing and playing with a blues band and i writing music and i'm producing tv shows and i am i'm doing and i m doing this for fun and it may turn out to be very profitable it may not it doesn't matter i'm just doing it because it lights me up and i like the way i feel when i do it and i think i stood at a turning point and it's in a cheap little 200 and some dollar a month apartment in las vegas where i could have went right or left right maybe i would have drank i don't know but i went left and i i bit the bullet and i walked through the fear and i made the amends and it changed my life and i didn't i didn' t expect that all i did want to do was i just didn't I wanted to get this thing off of me. And it was on me, and it was on me bad, and I wanted to get free of it. And sometimes the hardest amends to make are the ones where the fear is the greatest. I have guys come to me a lot who are sober 15, 20 years, 25 years, even longer sometimes, and there are financial disaster areas. And some of them have really good jobs, and the more money they make the more in debt they become right and they just burn their life to the ground financially and they don't know what's wrong and they come to me for for weird motives because they see the the 12-cylinder mercedes in the house and all that stuff right and i think i'm gonna teach them some kind of financial trick or something you know like some kind voodoo thing And to this day, every single case we always find there's unmade financial amends that keep them stuck. Maybe there are amends where they got away with it because the person didn't want to – wanted to be a nice guy and say, oh, just forget about it. You don't have to pay me, but it never changed the thing in here. Or people they'd hurt and ripped off and they never knew that they ripped them off. They think they got way with it. The problem is you know how it is. we never get away with anything because the one person, the worst person that could ever know you did it knows you did it. And that's you. That's the problem. That is the worst person that can ever know that you did is you. And you can't escape you and that is the problem you can not escape you. And the God within me always knows what I am because he is more of me than I am. And so we start to do this, clean this stuff up and I have watched guys lives just turn right around page this and i'll turn it back over to scott page 127 is a is a statement of spiritual cause and effect it's it's almost a promise and i think it has a lot of relevance for those of us who have lived in a lot financial insecurity and fear and anxiety about material stuff and money right dead in the center of the page it says although financial recovery is on the way for many of us we found we could not place money first we must place spiritual principles first for us material well-being always followed spiritual progress it never preceded it now i know a guy i i know i know several people actually that have been sober a fair amount of years and have made millions and millions of dollars. And I got to tell you something, they have no material well-being. They're driven, anxious, uptight people about money. And they have more than they'd ever need. And it's never enough. And they can never have enough. And they're just the most miserable people when it comes to that. They never enjoy one dime of it. I know other guys that make very little bit of money, but they've sacrificed and they've paid back all their debt and they have an amazing level of material and financial well-being because they know that they're free now and they know that there's nothing inhibiting them from receiving God's grace. There's a promise in the third step, and it says we have a new employer and being all powerful. Remember, there is one who has all power, and if there's one who is all power that means you don't got any because there ain't none left. There's one who has all power. And being all powerful, He will provide what we needed if we can do two things. If I can keep close to Him and perform His work well. And keeping close to him means I have to clear away the stuff between me and God. I have make the amends. I have jettison the defects and the judgments and the aspects of self that are between me and God and i have to help his kids because if you read this book over and over again the the spirit the the the absolute default position in the realm of the spirit is always the same thing we turn our attention to to who we can help we turn our thoughts to who he can help i mean you don't have to read this booking be a rocket scientist before you get from just the repetitiveness of it that that's the point is to help god's kids so if i can try to stay close to him and turn my consciousness towards him on a regular basis and try to help his kids i will never ever ever need for anything and god knows more about what i need than i do i'm telling you i would never have designed the life i have i would have shortchanged myself god knows More about what's good what's going to light me up and make me good in here than i would ever imagine scott thanks bob i love those stories isn't that fabulous stuff man uh two things that we remind you again we're going to start at 8 30 in the morning the schedule says nine uh and the second one is the meditation workshop following what bob and i are going to do tomorrow morning my wife and i're goingto split that as those of you who are here today know she has a tremendous gift for guided imagery she's going to talk a lot about meditation she's going to read some al-anon literature i'm going to read from the 12 and 12 and we're going to do another guided imagery and it's the it's one that the only way i know how to tell you is it showed up at our first men's retreat it's not like we wrote it but it appeared and it'S ONE OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR THINGS THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME AND I USE IT DAILY NOW SO ANYWAY A LITTLE PLUG FOR THAT I GO BACK TO TALKING ABOUT STEP NINE FOR A MINUTE ON THIS LETTER THING MY EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN THAT IT'S ABOUT CRYING WHEN YOU'RE making amends to somebody that's dead if you can't cry you probably won't get free and if you're right in cry you compress the process and you don't get it done those of you picked up these handouts know what if you've read them you know what I'm talking about if you don if you want one you sure welcome to it maybe come up and get them after this session but it can take more than one letter and that information is down there my email address is at the end of it I'm more than happy to talk to you this is a gift from my home group we say you take your problems to your sponsor and you bring your solutions to your meeting um that and that has really improved the quality of the meetings in my home group is we don't you know i've been on the one did anybody get a problem the newest newcomer dumps his bucket the next eight newcomers tell him how to fix his life i don't want to listen to that anymore and so that's that's why we evolved into what we did in ninth step it says a new freedom a new kingdom the old freedom was bob talks about four shots of tequila was a false thing. And the new freedom, and I heard him do this either the last time we did this or the time before and you didn't do it this time. The new freedom is a freedom from the only thing I've ever need to be free from. And that's the bondage of self. And when I actually do this ninth step thing, that's what happens. And it says we will suddenly realize that God's doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. It doesn't say God will suddenly begin to do for us. He will have been doing for me for a long time. My realization will be sudden. I've had a couple of people approach me with a question. It's been the same question, so I want to talk about it for a minute. I sincerely believe that the numbers in front of the steps are important and that it's important to take them in order. I think it's importante to have a sponsor involved in amends. I've tried to make amends before I got a sponsor when I was new, and I devastated some people. That is a horrendous mistake. They're in order for a reason. The forgiveness process in step four is necessary before I go to make amends to people I have harmed if I currently hate them. If I still hate them and go to making amends to them, it can really be a mess. It can really being a mess so I think it's so critically important to get through that forgiveness process that we talked about in step 4 before I get to step 9 and then at step 9 that I'd be doing it under the tutelage of a sponsor who has already done this himself. on page 84 i'll move on and talk a little bit about step 10 and it's not that we don't have a lot more we can talk about the other steps this is just we're going to catch what we can it says this thought that brings us to step 10 page 84 which suggests we continue bill tried hard not to use the same word over and over again he uses the word continue four times in this paragraph. We continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. For me, that differentiates step 10 from what I call the evening portion of step 11. Step 10 is about me being present in my own life moment by moment. If I wait until 11 o'clock at night to take inventory to notice that I screwed up at 7 15 in the morning, it takes promptly right out of it so to me step 10 is about being present in my own life uh and being present all the time and for me there's a slogan that applies to that and it's easy does it when i run mock two with my hair on fire i don't even know when i mess up so i need to put the the two hardest things i've two hardest assignments i've ever gotten are one day at a time and easy does it to back it all the way down to that i got a friend that says he spends too much time in his head trying to clear away the wreckage of his future. That hit, yeah. So the short form of step 10, continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, probably admitted it. No, I'm sorry. Wait, promptly, promptly admitted it, so I have to be present in my own life, so for me, step 10 is about being here with you as I go along, and it says we vigorously commence this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We've entered the world of the Spirit. Want to know where you enter the world of the spirit? You completed step nine. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. I don't think, now don't be wrong, I'd love to be corrected on this. I don'T think that they've asked me to understand a thing up until now. It hasn't been about understanding because I had to take out the trash first. I had dig the poison out of my soul first. And I'd like to thank the lady. I don' t know where she is. Somebody came and disagreed with something I said and I've learned something. It wasn't actually a disagreement, it was a suggestion. And I appreciate that very much. I'm looking for people to disagree. I learned. Now it's time for me to begin to understand and to become effective. I can't do either of those until I get the poison dug out of my soul and find out who I really am. This is not an overnight battery. It should continue for a lifetime. Continue, it says, to watch for. Here's that list again. Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. We talked about what those are. They're all functions of self. if these crop up no when this is not an if question this is a when question when these crop up what do we do ask god to remove them discuss them with someone immediately that would be spiritual advisor sponsor you know somebody who's walking the path make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone and then sit down and beat myself up because i'm not perfect oh wait excuse me that's not what that says i can't find permission to beat myself up and i think beating me up is never the next right thing because it blocks my learning process making mistakes doesn't do a thing for me realizing i've made a mistake always brings energy to me and i used to use it beating me i mean really get angry with me and thrash around and kick things and all that and that and that what that does it blocks My learning process because i should use that energy to get focused on where did this mistake come from what underlies it what can i learn here how can i be a better guy far far better way to use that and then says we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help there it is again same old prescription love and tolerance of others is our code i want to tell a story when i was sober about a year and a half my home group started to form and there if there were not if there was one non-smoking meeting in the city of Nashville in 1985. I don't know where it was. It was, smoking was so prevalent in the fellowship that in my home group, when you got a year, they gave you a Zippo lighter with your sobriety date on it instead of a one-year chip. I've still got mine. A guy that I sponsored who has never smoked has still got his. But it was just highly unusual. So we started a non-smoking meeting in the back room of a clubhouse and we would open with everybody else. They said anybody who wants have a non-smoking meeting go in the back and however many four or five six or eight of us to go back there and this one guy's name was edward and and edward would say i'll chair i thought i'm gonna strangle him i just know i'm just the world will be a better place when edward is gone there's just not any question about it and this guy just he just frazzled me all the time and i kept hearing people say if you spot it you got it and so one time i heard that you know you know what a revelation is a revelation is when i figure out for myself something you've been trying to tell me for six months or longer that's a revelation you write that down if you want to and uh and i realized that and so i thought okay the next time edward does something that bends me up i'm going to search myself for it holy mackerel i found it and so the next Time he did something that made me mad i looked and i found It again and i started following edward around like a puppy and I don't know if I was bending him up but he was twisting me and every time he did something that made me mad I searched and found it I don' t know how much I learned from him but it was a lot I miss him because I learned so much he had all my character defects he had them much worse than I did that's not what he said love and tolerance of others is our code I tell you sometimes if I have to tolerate somebody maybe I better be somebody told me if everybody you meet stinks you might want to shake your mustache you know it just might be on me yeah okay and we've ceased fighting anything or anyone even alcohol the concept is so important they tell us the same thing again at the bottom of page 103 no 113 103 in italics after all our problems were of our own making there's the good news again bottles were only assembled besides we have stopped fighting anybody or anything we have to all right just quit fighting them that's part of the it takes two to fight back on the bottom 84 we've ceased fighting thing anything and anyone even alcohol for by this time sanity will have returned where you get sanity do the first nine steps do the first nine stops we promise you sanity for me there are two kinds of sanity there's sanity of action, which is the important one. And then there's sanity of mind, which I have most of the time. My sponsor told me that in the history of this planet no human has ever been put in an insane asylum for being insane. It has never happened. They put us in there for acting insane. And nobody's ever been let out for being sane. They let us out for acting sane. Right. So on those days when we developed this vital, again necessary to life vital sixth sense i hope i can always have new ears i hope i can almost hear the new people i had ten years when this guy had six months and he and i were talking about this that i was bringing him through the work one time and he said this vital sixth since he said i guess if i'm still using my other five senses to try to have my own will i won't develop this vital six cents yeah wow One of the most powerful I wonder sometimes Am I still on the path I've had several of those big spiritual experiences I just told you about one of them I guess I've said three I think the thing that tells me Most that I'm on the Path Isn't those It's the fact that I find things about me that need work Not things that are wrong with me Discovering something else about me That needs work never feels good Identifying the problem though was the first step toward fixing it and and the reason that this is evidence to me that i'm on the path is the day before i got to recovery there was nothing wrong with me thank you very much and if you guppies would just shape up this place would be just fine and the fact that i am finding things about me now that need work is not a cause for me to be sad or unhappy with myself it is the clearest of all indications that iam on the path that was an important lesson for me my sponsor said prayer is not an opportunity to change god's mind it's not a sales presentation this is a chance for god to change your mind i think he was right about that i'm gonna tell a story uh i have permission i sponsor a young man we call hippie james hippie James was he's a hippie that got born three generations too late and um today is his 24th birthday and he's six or seven years sober i'd have to look yeah and he said he's in college he's having a long not terribly distinguished but a long college career and um just a character of the first order i guarantee you when he when hippie james starts talking my home group freezes because he is really carrying a message and He told this story. He claims that there's an outfit that makes music, and their name is Phish, but they spell it funny. I'm 65 years old. I'm willing to take his word for it. I don't really need to know. And they were going to have their last concert, is what he said. I told him it was their first last concert because I've been watching these music guys for a long time. And it was going to be up this way somewhere, Vermont, New Hampshire. Did I get that right? New Hampshire? Was it Vermont? Okay. And so he's going to go. Nobody would go with him. So in Nashville, Tennessee, Hippie James gets into the hippiemobile and he drives 32 hours nonstop to wherever this place is in Vermont to discover that the car line to get into the campground is another 10 hours. Yeah, and he's a whooped pup and he goes to sleep behind the wheel, which is not a serious problem in a parked car. The problem is that people are passing him and his 10 hours of stretching. so he gets out of the hippie mobile he pops the trunk he pulls out the coldman stove he sets it up on the trunk of the hippy mobile if you saw the hippy mobile you wouldn't think much of that either he fires it up and he's making coffee and he is making soup and he has eaten it drinking the coffee and sharing it with the people in the vehicles around him and talking to him he said because what I realized was that if I were going to stay physically awake I was going to have to stay physically active and then he said if I am going to remain spiritually awake. I'm going to have to remain spiritually active. Powerful. Page 156. Phenomenal amount of information in this one paragraph could go in many of the steps. I am going to stick it in here. Paragraph in the middle of page 156, this is Bill and Bob and they are only two sober. But life was not easy for the two friends. Plenty of difficulties presented of themselves both saw that they must keep spiritually active so hippie james said one day they called up a head nurse of a hospital they explained their need did you hear that their need was to go and try to give this away they had a need to go into that i think it's a powerful powerful piece of information um for uh for those who um are hiding behind the fact that the steps are only suggested. We have good news and bad news. The good news is you're right. They're only suggested the bad news they're the only suggestions we got. Yeah, we're I'm going to get controversial again. We're committing murder with the phrase. The phrase is don't drink and go to meetings. You'll die from that. That'll kill you. My sponsor asked it this way. He said if sitting around with a bunch of other alcoholics talking about our problems is going to get people sober wouldn't the boys under the woodland street bridge in nashville tennessee be sober tonight because that's who they are and that's what they're doing and it doesn't work for them and it didn't work here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery that's where it happens i think the meetings are terribly important my sponsor says quite sincerely he believes the program works better for people who do not drink between meetings i i think it's a very good point i think they're not drinking parts important too but the fact is that what i need is this spiritual awakening and the way i get that is by actually doing these steps not learning them or believing they're interpreting but actually doing them that's the piece that changed my life and that's what we're here to talk about we'll go on for 10 yep thanks scott i'm bob still an alcoholic this line has always struck me in the beginning of step 10 where it says we have entered the world of the spirit so somewhere in the first nine steps something has happened to us i i noticed something all my life and it used to aggravate me and i never understood it but there were guys and gals that i was in school with that i later worked on jobs with that I was involved in different areas with that for some reason these people everything they touch turned to gold Their relationships were wonderful Everybody loved them If they entered into any kind of art thing It just took off If they entering into business They did very well It's like they had the magic touch And their life was very Their lives were very very successful And rich and full and happy And I'm miserable And I've lost everything And I am smarter than all those guys and it seemed really unfair to me it was almost as if they had something like maybe the day that they told everybody the secret i was sick that day at school you know or something but they had some i didn't have and what i think they had and i've observed this in people since i've been sober that aren't in aa is that they were in the realm of the spirit i employed a lot of employees and i had certain employees that weren't in a 12-step program they weren't even involved in church but yet they intuitively knew how to go with the flow and stay in the flow of life and to take care of people and love people and it was just that was just natural to them they never they never considered putting themselves first and their life worked and it worked really really well my daughter i think is intuitively like that i don't know what she just amazes me there was a famous basketball game where michael jordan at the very end of the game it was tied and he made a half court shot right in swish the crowd went wild and he's running there's a famous shot of him running down the court and everybody's on their feet screaming and yelling and cheering he just won the game at the last second and he just goes and he was interviewed later and they said how did you do that under all that pressure at the last moment you made a half court shot that's impossible how did you do that and he said he said sometimes you get in the zone and when you're in the Zone you can't miss I think that's the realm of the spirit I think also there was a time when alcohol got me in there there was a time and some of you remember this if you're a salesman there was a time when alcohol made you the best really this is not an illusion you were really the best salesman there was. There was a time if you were a musician that you played better than you ever played when you had just enough alcohol. It freed your spirit and you could go with a flow where everything just clicked. And then like a boomerang it turned on us. Bill Wilson was really into the boomerangs. If you ever go up to Stepping Stones, he has them all over the place hanging in there. He loved the concept of something that could take the flight and then come back and turn on you, right? And he used to compare it to alcohol and he uses the analogy. It was like a boomerang that came back and turned on you. And when it turns on us, we lose that magic. And Alcoholics Anonymous is restoring it. It is putting us into the realm of the spirit where everything if we can stay out of the way and let the power flow through us everything just clicks just clicks it works this line in the middle of page 85 one point before going into this why do we have to continue to do this is it because god's not going to love us if we don't continue to clean house Never. There's nothing I can do that would make God not love me. God never, ever, I don't know where this idea came into Christianity that's insane, that God punishes us for our sins. We're not punished for our sin. We're punished by them. We are never punished for them. And we all know that. We all know what we, we've always reaped what we sowed. We always reaped what we sowed. You can't escape that truth. I had a long list of people I hurt in my eight-step list, and I tell you something, I never got away with anything. Every time I hurt somebody, whether conscious or unconscious, or even most of the time I didn't even know I was hurting you, I always paid a price for it in here, and I paid a prize in my life. And if you would have seen my life at the end and the accumulation of all the people I've hurt, you would Have Seen a Guy Who Was Punished by His Sins. Severely. Severelly. How bad does it have to be to stand on a bridge and sobbing trying to get up enough courage to kill yourself? On page 85, Scott touched on this a little bit, but I want to take a minute and talk about it. I think it's very important. We lose a lot of people here, and when it says it's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels, they're not kidding. It's easy. The problem with recovery from alcoholism through the 12 steps is it has within it good news and bad news. The good news is that over time, And with the practice of this way of life, you become very comfortable and very happy and very successful to whatever level is right for you as a result of that. The bad news is you start to become comfortable and happy and successful. And when the monkey, it's like there's that old saying goes around AA, the monkey may be off your back but the circus is still in town. It's never changed. But it's so easy to make that incremental change of consciousness. When you're brand new and you don't know if you have a place to live, you don'T know if the people you care about are going to talk to you anymore, you DON'T even know if YOU'VE GOT A JOB, you'RE so full of remorse and fear and depression and hopelessness, man, you feel like you've got a bad case of alcoholism. How bad of a case of alcoholicism do you feel like you got when you're five years sober and you got some money in your bank and all the amends are made and everything's going very well? Now you got pretty much everything you ever wanted. It's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action. It's so easy to get to a point where you feel like there's i know intellectually yeah yeah there's a problem i got alcoholism yeah sure i got alkalism but i don't feel like i have alcoholism anymore and then what happens is often as we start to gradually slowly incrementally compromise a little action here a little action there now i'm not going to eight meetings a week anymore i'm going to three now i'm not calling my sponsor unless i get through something just telling what i did in case he ever needs that information i don't really have time for service and 12-step work let the let the newer people do that me and god are good i don'T have to ask it's we're fine i'm NOT a seeker anymore because i think i've arrived i never tell myself that consciously but If you watch the feet, and you want to know how you're doing, don't judge it by what you think or what you feel. Watch your feet. How do you act? Do I act like someone who is as committed to my recovery today as I was when I was new? I hope if you were to come to Las Vegas and follow me around for a week, you would come away with that. And if for nothing else, you would come away with a sense that, boy, that Bob's got a bad case of alcoholism. You see all the crap he's got to do every week? I hope I look like somebody who's just as serious about this program as I was 29 and a half years ago. Dr. Silkworth wrote an article on relapse that's stellar. If you ever get a chance to read it, it was in one of the first grapevines. And he compared relapse from alcoholism to different other diseases. And the one I liked the most, he compared it to heart disease. Certain types of heart disease are chronic, exactly like alcoholism. And one of these guys that gets, he'll have a heart attack. And all of a sudden, if he lives, they'll put him in the cardiac care unit and they'll stabilize him. And before they release him to go back home, they give him a program of action. And the program reaction might be no salt, no fried foods, cut down on your meat, your dairy products, exercise, maybe take some medication if it's appropriate. And what happens is he gets out of the hospital and he starts following this because he's scared because he almost died. And what happened in no time at all because of the exercise and the diet, He starts feeling better than he's ever felt before in his whole life. And maybe a year and a half down the road, now maybe he's running five miles. He's out bowling one night with a bunch of guys that are younger than him. And he's looking at these guys and he's out bowling them. He's thinking, you know, I'm in better shape than these guys are. And this place is noted for their cheeseburgers. And he loves cheeseburgies. He's watching him eat those cheeseburgers, and they're juicy, and they look really good. And he's thinking, I'm in better shape than all these guys. How come I can't have a cheeseburger? How come i need to go to so many meetings? How come my new sponsor? How come? I need to help others. And all of a sudden he says, give me a cheese burger and eats a cheese burger. And the worst thing that could ever happen happens nothing. And a little key turns in his head. Right. a little key turns in his head when they say alcoholism cunning baffling powerful it's also patient and then all of a sudden gradually he starts compromising his actions and then one day out of nowhere out of no where a thousand pound weight slams him in the chest if he's lucky enough to survive it he ends up in a cardiac care unit they're showing him father martin movies and stuff and they're all that crazy stuff. And they give him another program of recovery, and he's back to square one. We lose a lot of people like this. It's tied into a delusion that it talks about in Chapter 3 that is why we lose people that are sober 10, 15, 20 years. It says the delusion that we are like other people. And the chapter is more about alcoholism, That must mean people don't have alcoholism. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently maybe like after 10 years, has to be smashed. Alcoholism is not something you can ever get over. If you have this chronic, permanent disease of alcoholism, you always live in the shadow of it. You can live a tremendous life provided you keep in fit spiritual condition and you do certain things every day. Just like the diabetic can live a great life, watches his blood sugar, his diet, exercise, medication, does everything he's supposed to do. There's a... In the next paragraph there's something that I find interesting. It says, Scott touched on this a little bit, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. To some extent we've become God conscious. I've, after I came to believe in God, I've been God unconscious. I think most of my relationship with God has been theoretical. It's like when you're driving in your car, you have an unconscious sense and you know, you have faith that there are cops out there. You know, there's cops out here. When you've got one in your rear view mirror with his lights on, you have a conscious contact. This is no longer theoretical. It's a conscious contract. And a lot of my relationship with God is like, I know he's there. But it's not a conscious content. And then every once in a while, I get moments. And you know when the moments come? They're not usually through prayer and meditation. They're usually when I'm helping another drunk. Bill, in his story, says something. He says if the alcoholic fails to enlarge his spiritual life through two things, and it's not prayer or meditation. It's self-sacrifice and constant work with others. If the alcoholic does not, fails to enlarge his spirit, through those two things. It says he'll never survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. we are doing all of this i believe so we can serve our primary purpose and stop serving ourselves i think that's the point the problem with i i tell you one quick little story not sure there i had this friend who ran a casino in vegas i sponsored him for a while and he told me about all the employees they caught stealing from him and he said something and this helped me in my business a little bit he said you'd be surprised the most honest other centered caring principled people in the world will will steal from you if they can tell themselves it's not for them it's for my kids it's from my wife it's my family and they will justify it they wouldn't steal if it was just for them. But they'll do it to justify. The problem with my wife, my kids, my friends, my family is the word my. It's the word my. It's just an extension of self. That's why in Alcoholics Anonymous we're so big on helping strangers. You probably run into guys that say well can't I just do 12 step work in my house. The problem is it's your family. It's self-serving. The magic only happens when I am giving of myself unconditionally and there's no chance of profit, motive or self-grandizement. There's no self-promotion here. There's nothing I can get out of it. I'm really doing as Chuck Chamberlain said, for fun and for free. Period. Alcoholics Anonymous is at its best when it's lived for fun. And for free, I'm not an advocate of profiting from AA. I think I know people that do it. I don't know how they survive it. I don t think you can take where you're supposed to give. I must always be in a giver s position an alcoholic son. I try to keep all the aspects of self out of it. It's a full, if you've got the ego that I got, that's a whole time job because it's just clamors to me all the time. Do you ever see, if You've ever seen the movie two towers, the second Lord of the rings, there's a scene in there where King Theoden is sitting on his throne and there's this character called worm tongue and worm tongue sits right next to him. Just clamors in his ear. clamors just say well well sire don't listen to them they just it just clamors and my ego's like that uh it never goes away clamors to me all the time and it's always about me it's always about me my stuff a couple of things we call it a ball game gift from my sponsor don't let the things that aa brings you take you away from aa that's a pearl right there don't let the things that aa brings to you take you away from aa someone asked miss linda one time what she thought about all the time i spend doing meetings in jails i'm rather involved in that she said i love it because i love who he is when he comes out of there and the ones where where they work the most the ones that that i get the most out of are the ones were i don't want to go my team is playing on tv tonight and i got the jail commitment. And I don't want to go. I walk around the house telling her I don' t want to go, she never even responds because she knows I'm going. Because that's the night that I come out of there a foot off the ground with tears running down my face. Because I know that I've been a tool in the Master's hand in somebody's life. I share an experience that I had a number of years ago. I've had it more than once but this is the first one. I'm sitting in a little restaurant in Nashville having lunch, minding my own business and this guy walks up to my table and he says you don't remember me do do you? And I said, Mr., I apologize if I should. I don't know you. He says, you came into a prison I was in a few years ago and you spoke and I heard you and I believed you. And I'm doing what you said and I'm never going to be incarcerated again in my whole life. AndI would like to thank you for my freedom. Andi'm overpaid for the rest of my life. I'm over paid for the rest of m y life.I thought for the longest time that I owed this tremendous debt gratitude to the men that carried this message to me my my sponsors and some other people page 124 says that's not right this is powerful powerful stuff this painful past may be of infinite value to other families still struggling with their problem we think each family which has been relieved of something to those who have not i don't owe it to them i got here with dead eyes Did you ever meet a newcomer with dead eyes? And you start working with them and you get them into this thing and all of a sudden one day the lights are on. I didn't turn them on, but I was involved and I knew I was a tool in God's hand. And there's nothing that touches that. And those guys that carried this message to me, they got to see the light come on in my eyes. They're overpaid. They were a tool In God's Hand and they know it. And they're overpayed. I owe them nothing. The reason this debt can't be repaid is I owe it to the next newcomer that shows up to my home group. That's where the debt's owed. I owe It to the guys that are in prisons and jails in my city. That's Where I owe The Debt. And That's Why I Can Never Be Repaid. Anything Else? No. If Y'all Don't Mind, Remain Seated. We're Going To Have A Few Moments Of Silence. And We're Gonna Whisper The Lord's Prayer. Don't Miss Tomorrow Morning. Kind Of Gently. Yeah, We, The Sessions That I Enjoy The Most Of What Bob And I Do Are The Next Two. We saved the best stuff for last. I'm not kidding. We'll have a few moments of silence. We'll whisper the Lord's Prayer. We'llhave a few minutes of silence after that. Lord's prayer, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless us all we'll see you in the morning