The Fourth Step Moral Inventory – 16th Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our 16th installment of the Big Book is Alive workshop. I'm a recovered alcoholic, and my name is Mike Chase. And I'm also a recovered alcoholics, and I'm Mike Chase, and we're going to be talking about how to put newcomers' hands in God's hands as quickly as possible. We have found this to be most effective by doing our part to make the Big Books come alive. As a disclaimer, we're not experts We're just a couple of recovered alcoholics that love the Big Book However, we have made it our utmost spiritual errand To become as familiar with the facts and the history as possible In other words, if we are reading from the Big Books It means that we are studying what we know to be a divine solution to alcoholism At other times, we may share an experience, an observation or an opinion And we certainly encourage you to investigate the history And do your own research as you grow spiritually Basically, we aim to reproduce what we do with our students in a one-on-one session, only here with a much larger audience. This, however, should not replace your own personal one-to-one work with your own teacher. Absolutely. That's right. This is workshop-style study. Our aim is to invigorate your current experience with God. This is an opportunity for you to learn more about the book with your sponsors if you like. So when you're bringing the book to live, when you are reading this, it's an interesting road read for the guys. and gals. Tonight, we aim to continue in the chapter how it works and look a little bit about the fourth step, but we always appreciate spiritual consent to allow God to lead us. As we study tonight's material, please enjoy the pages which have been uploaded to mikechase.org. You'll find underneath the podcast there you'll be you'll find reference to the specific highlighting structure that we are referencing as we study. This will give you a completed teacher's edition toolbox. But before we begin our study of the big book, we'd like to invite you to join us in a brief two-minute meditation we do this for a definite spiritual reason and that is to allow god to remove all forms of self which might block us from the sunlight of the spirit so that we may have a clear connection with god as we study so what we're going to do is we're gonna invite the monks and as soon as we're done with these bells that are ringing they always bring us into study i love how that works we've uh invited the harpist back i don't know she's gonna show up did you stitchy show up today there's a good possibility good good let's Hope she's here. We're going to invite the monks in right now as we start moving into this. What we're going do is we're turn off our lights. We're gonna get meditative state. We're gunna concentrate on our breathing and our posture. And for two minutes, we're guna get reconnected to a higher level with God. You know, we never disconnected, but we always have an opportunity to get more connected with God and as we like to say, you never get enough God around here. So let's get some God. Joe, I'm going to sit back and relax. You want to invite the monks in, and we shall see you on the other side. © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon Satsang with Mooji Bye, guys. Please join me in the lay-aside prayer. Dear God, please set aside anything I think I know about myself, about my disease about the big book the 12 steps the program the fellowship and all spiritual terms especially you God so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things please help me see the truth Amen Thank you Joe Joe you want to tee us up from where we left off Absolutely absolutely we're in this exciting chapter called how it works uh we typically hear a set portion of that chapter at the beginning of lots of meetings that we go to um and what's lost in the process of reciting that is the fact that that is actually um a page in a book that has context where in other words it's it's in page 58 59 for a reason that everything you've read up to that point has prepared you for that information rather than getting thrown with the information before you have a context of what it's about and that is very um important for us especially when we reach the abcs at the end of how it works it goes through um and we talked a little bit about the differences between the original how it worked and the the final edition um there were a lot of you musts that were taken out uh it's most most notably you must find him now in reference to god um it got changed to may you find him and we also go over that whole concept of the things that are blocking us from god you know we're not adding anything this is a process subtraction taking away the things that have currently blocking us form that pure connection to god so we see a bunch of character defects shortcomings wrongs another way to call them is our six and seven stuff scattered all over that place that's leading up to the third step which is that opportunity to turn your will which is your thought and my actions or my life which is my actions over to the care of god as you understand him not the stuff that the oxford group was selling on people remember this is your own conception of god so we get to the abcs of how it works and you know all we need to be at this stage that we are in the process is convinced It's based on the investigation and the research that we've done and the time that we spent one-on-one with our sponsor going through this material, highlighting, underlining, talking about one alcoholic relating to another and praying and meditating. Are we convinced of the ABCs? Joe, we went through this. I brought you through the book this way. When we reached this point, did you feel like you were rushed, hurried, or was it just happening at the right time, do you feel? You know, because we followed the book, something was clicking into place. It came at exactly the right moment, and it had the desired effect that it should have had at that time because of where it was placed. Yeah, I love that. That's so cool how this works. The first requirement is to be convinced that any life-running self-will can hardly be a success. We went over the different ways character defects. We went through some analogies, and I gave you some examples of how it shows up in our day-to-days, and we saw that the stuff that was blocking us was self-induced, stuff that We wanted that God trying to manipulate life and God to do the things that we want rather than just appreciating what we have and making the best of what God's given us. And the real sort of spirituality of the book, as we're starting to see, is we're getting a lot of references to things that are going to be very pertinent in the fourth step and in the sixth and seventh step much later on. Root of our troubles. The root of our trouble. What are they? Selfishness, self-centeredness. That, not alcohol We think is the root of our troubles This is the how and why But first of all we had to quit playing God It didn't work Next we decided that hereafter In this drama of life God was going to be the director He is the principal We are his agents He isthe father And we are his children Most good ideas are simple And this is the concept Of the keystone Of the new and triumphant arch Through which we pass to freedom And then it goes on When we sincerely took such a position all sorts of remarkable things happened. We had a new employer being all-powerful. He provided what we needed if we kept close to him and performed his work well. Established on such a footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more, we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn. Now this is not a prophecy. This is the actual promises experienced by that first group of recovered alcoholics as a result of having made this vital spiritual decision. We are now at step three. Many of us said to our maker as we now understood it. Do you want to give us a third step prayer? God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help. Of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life, may I do thy Will always. We thought well before taking this step, making sure we were ready, that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him. And we discussed how we handle this in our family, how we read through this part up to this point. We discussed what the prayer is actually going to encompass so we can go into it with full knowledge, not some peer pressure, not really understanding what we're getting ourselves into, but going in wise-eyed open, spirit ready and willing. We found it very desirable to take this spiritual step with an understanding person. Sort of interesting, the directions and suggestions on who to do it with are given actually after the prayer is written in the book. So I assume that we're supposed to get an idea of what the prayer ist and then we decide who we're supposed to do it with. And then a little bit later on, as you say, now's the time to go pray perhaps. And those suggestions come in the form such as our wife, best friend, or spiritual advisor. How about your drinking buddies? Probably not a good selection. But it's better to meet God alone than with one who might understand. The wording was of course quite optional as long as we expressed the idea of voicing it without reservation. You know, you can rewrite it, you can change the words to your own. We like to do het three times the first time out of the book second time in our own words and our own belief structure and then one time just sort of loud announcing to the world there's this change of concept and this whole i like to call it a new covenant with god this was only a beginning what this was Only A Beginning you mean i got more to do absolutely though if honestly and humbly made an effect sometimes a very great one was felt at once so what this third step is is it's really a spiritual decision an affirmation to seek this vital spiritual experience that we've been um studying and reading about and hearing about this spiritual awakening is sufficient to recover from alcoholism to have the obsession of the mind lifted we've got the personality mind open for some new thoughts new directions we've had let's see 16 hours one-on-one with your sponsors and your students talking get them ready ripe for this thing by the way if we uh sneak ahead to page 89 at the bottom of the page where you guys are getting ready to do this third step part it says first make sure you have all the ingredients i.e have your four-step packet prepared ready off to the side so we're going to be presenting that pretty darn soon so we don't by theway the way this is broken up we we do this an hour Each podcast is an hour. When we do the, how it works, actually when we do any chapter, we do The Entire Chapter with our students. We don't do half chapters unless something, you know, emergency comes up. But this is all a flow. So for us to do, you now, how It Works, this is usually like two and a half, three and a halve hours sit down reading and we do THE THIRD STEP PRAYER. We get connected to God. They get a moment, you Know, to get some chills and some goosebumps and we get this moment together just like we've got God with us. And then what do we do, Joe? Next. When's next? Right now. How about tomorrow? No, that doesn't cut it. How about next week? No. Joe, I want you to sit and enjoy the new relationship you have with God. Okay. That sounds like taking God's grace for granted. Yeah, like I said, I used to do the one, two, three steps in the morning and by lunchtime I pretty much got it all back in control And by 4 o'clock, I've decided that's going to be different. I'm going to the bistro for a couple of knob creaks. And by 6 o' clock, Phenomenon of Cravings kicked in. I'm on the phone with Mr. You-Know-Who. And at 4 o´clock in the morning, am I... No, see, next. See, the stuff that's blocking us from God. We're living on the grace of God up to this point. Now it's time for us to kick in with some action. We need to go in and discover how those character defects are showing up in my life, in your sponsee's life. And this is the program of action. After the third step, we jump right into the fourth step. We're going to hear words like launch, next, at once. You know, I love this. A countdown. A rocket, when it launches, you can't have a slow launch. No. You can have a very slow countdown. Ten, nine, eight, seven. But as soon as you hit zero, whoosh! An explosion. It's launching. And we're using words like lunch and next. And next is now. Okay, you got the point? Good. Absolutely. Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action. And there's not much napping around here, is there? The next step of the first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, though this third step that we just took was vital and crucial, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which have been blocking us. So if we go back down to the bottom of page 63 where it says, Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action. I have that highlighted in green and underlined. The rest of it's in yellow. And then once again, it's green on page 64 from, Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it would have little permanent effect unless at once by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things on ourselves which had been blocking us. I've got some sparkles on either side of that because we're going to be referring back to that in a few pages, that part that we don't launch right now. It's like, dude, yeah. And, you know, as Mike Chase was saying, we are seeing words like launched vigorous action instead of just action, strenuous effort to face and be rid of. The language is getting very flowery, so it's really trying to emphasize the absolute necessity of doing this immediately. I can see Lois with her fingers shaking. Get in your first station! Our liquor was but a symptom, so we had to get down to the causes and conditions. Yellow underline. Therefore, we started on a personal inventory. This was step four. Now, Bill at the time had been working with a lot of business people. So he's going to look at this in a business-like way, which in itself worked out to be fantastic because this is a fact-finding. The inventory that we're going on to, we don't want to get it caught up with emotions and feelings and stuff like that. This is facts. We've got to find the stuff, our character defects that are blocking us from God. So the fact that he did it in a business thing, the fact that he was in business may not have anything to do with it. It's, it's the best way to handle it. And what we're really looking at here is we're trying to find these things within ourselves, which are keeping us blocked from the sunlight of the spirit, from enough grace to have this obsession removed. And this is the one part that, you know, that written by the hand of God and stuff that he claims, this is stuff that directly just came out and you can't wiggle around this you know this inventory is a specific laid out columns with stuff it's not a life story don't start writing your life story from page one to it because that absolutely there's a lot of writing that's probably fun and that's what you're writing it goes but it doesn't get the information that this particular well what the book is asking you to do so let's start reading here a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke taking a commercial inventory is an investment a fact-finding and a fact facing process. Green, underline fact finding and fact facing process It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock in trade. Underline that word truth. Boy, that's a word we're not too good at before we get through 439 Is it? Green, one object is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods. To get rid of them promptly without regret. Yellow If the owner of a business is to be successful and we have this yellow underline he cannot fool himself about his values up to this point in my recovery i was nothing but a fool when it comes to my values i thought he meant this i thought i was living by this my intentions were great my actions were completely different i thought that my intentions Were true and and good i was a good person but no the actions didn't meet up to the intentions i was my actions so bill's giving us this example of a business here and the wording of the fourth step says made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves in that sentence that we did a lot of green underlining and stuff in it we're going to parallel the fact finding term with searching because that's what fact finding is fact facing as fearless because it takes courage to face that fear and then truth is like a parallel to moral he doesn't say air amoral or immoral it's moral which is truth so many people think they got to write down all these horrible, immoral, amoral things we've done. That's part of it, but it's the truth is what we're going after. Absolutely. That's why the book is laid out, and Bill's going to do a really good job in this first page and a half laying out how to do a resentment inventory, column by column, line by line, so when we jump into the fears and sex and harms, we've got it down. Bill's assuming we're business people and we know how to do an inventory. We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly, so we're gonna find and face the facts to discover the truth of self from the wording of the previous paragraph. First, we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Yellow. First we searched out the flaw in our make-up which caused our failure Being convinced that Self manifested itself in various ways. I have that green underline because this is the 6 and 7 stuff popping up, right? Self manifested in various ways. Was what had defeated us. Yellow and underlined We considered its common manifestations, going back to the analogy of the bar stools or what are you good at? Which ones do you use the most? Which ones pop up without you even knowing it? You know, we start lying without even, well, let's see, what can I do to lie about? Just blah, falls out. We start lying to people and then we get halfway through the conversation like, Oy vey, I've been lying and now how do I get out of this one? Well, I'll just have to let this lie and I hope they don't meet those people because if the lines get together, it's like ba-boom. Resentment is the number one offender. See, what we're looking for is the stuff that has started to block us from the connection of God. When we do the God moment where we sit in silence and just try to live in the moment, when we're in the momento, that's the closest connection we can get to the power of God, it's calm and it's peace, the past will distract me from the moment the future will distract my from the moments, fears, shame, guilt, remorse will keep my mind going So I can't take that moment of just silence. Wow. I was told to, when I listen to my sponsors and talk, listen to the silence between the words. It makes me a much better listener. But it's that connection to God that we need to get back. And this is the stuff we're going to look at that's been blocking us from that. So this resentment is the number one offender. Why? because we keep living it over and over resentment comes from some greek word that says resent is to live over and meant is to refill we keep refilling and keep feeling you know something happens on the way to school you know i get pushed down somebody's you know by the time i get home that afternoon i was attacked by 15 gang members and uh you know they they tied me down and pulled me down there's lies and there's resentments that come up it's like but in actuality you know it's like it wasn't a big deal but boy our brains can take it somewhere can't it which is very very key because for us alcoholics walking around with a spiritual malady these resentments these things that we're refeeling can be real or imagined matter of fact green from its stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have not only been mentally and physically ill we have been spiritually sick you know i was listening to the gals talk the other night and they were talking about you know how we come into these rooms spiritually and emotionally damaged and for alcoholics that is so true you know the rest of society has it too but for some reason we just take that to heart so much more because we don't have that relief we don'T have that solution that other people have you know we go out and we try to medicate it with drugs and alcohol and stuff like that and it doesn't cut it it doesn'T it doesn' t it just makes it worse actually yellow underline joe when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically now notice the order that is given to us in that sentence when the spiritual malady is overcome first then we straighten out mentally and physically so let's not wait till we get the job or the car or the girlfriend or the apartment you know everything lined up like a duck before we stop into that step stuff or before we start a relationship with god because if we do we're never going to reach that point to get really connected to god this is why it's so important to get these guys in the steps as soon as possible. Once they're able to comprehend and have conversations, get them connected to God. Because let's face it, it's the grace of God that's keeping them sober to get them to the rooms. We've got them in the rooms, let's get them into the steps, let'S get them connected to God. Let's get this stuff cleared away so they can start enjoying what life with God is like. You know, nothing worse than going to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting and not having any solution, not having, you know, being in AA jail where, take my booze away from me. I was more uncomfortable than when I was drinking, you know absolutely give me a connection to god and i'm home others feel the mess of our disease when we're in it but when we sober up that's when we feel it you know i'd come to the meetings and i would be fine for that 45 minutes i was in the meeting and then i'd leave the meeting and then I would get crazy again and i would start falling through the cracks and i wouldn't go relapse you know most meetings are an hour by the way you probably came late and left early right no there was just you know all that the 15 minutes of blah blah right you know no solution yeah okay 20 minutes when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically in dealing with resentments we set them on paper i was referring to like therapeutic meetings not yeah okay good you know like drop your drop your problems so you don't drink during the hour then i go home and drank that was crazy so in dealing with resentments we have to set them on paper inventory paper i used to work in a gas station we did inventory i knew it was there we wrote it's like what good is inventory by the time i count something to get back and i get back i forget what the numbers this is all down on paper now he's going to give us really specific directions on how to do this and uh for you uh for you guys who are actually following on with us from the pages uploaded to the website um you'll notice how we've uh spliced this up into the directions that we're receiving we've got little red hashtags to separate our directions that we're working with here so matter of fact joe you know in dealing with resentments these are the number one offenders you know imagine that well first of all we listed the people institutions or principles from whom we were angry everyone that had wronged us in our mind that would be our first column the second we asked ourselves why we were angry what is it that they affected what is that they prevented us from getting i like to go through this analogy the story of you know joe's been wanting to meet this gal and she he's just discovered that this is going to be this the soulmate the one who's going to fix his life and oh and he finally meets somebody he said oh i know her i'll introduce you to her you know so joe got this date planned out you know he's gonna go to this little french restaurant stuff like that joe it's a little short of cash you know and heaven forbid joe is going show up without some procurement you know a little buzz to get him going through the desk so he stops off to pick up some of the stuff that he needs to feel more comfortable at this one-time date he's also a little short of cash you know so he goes and visits his friend who's going to get a couple shots of whatever he's doing and um while his friend was in the back room getting the shots ready whatever he was getting for him joe notices some cash into the drawer so he puts the money in his drawer and the guy comes in he catches him joel stealing the money and joe grabs the bottle and runs out the door and the guys like joe you and he's gone So Joe's managed to break away from this guy, right? Now he's in this restaurant. He's sitting across. It's a little French restaurant, you know, little booths and some curtains and stuff. And he's sitting there. He's talking to this girl, and he's doing fine. He's having this great conversation. All of a sudden, the door opens, and there's Mike Chase standing there in his plaid. And he walks over and says, Joe, you knows something? You are a oak tree. I look over at the girl like, hi. That's right, Joe, you are an oak tree, and he says, well, I thank you, and I walk out the door. Joe sort of looks at the girl, and the girl sort of looks at Joe, and I don't know this guy. I keep seeing him. Two minutes later, the door flies open, and it's his buddy showing up he had stolen the money from and got the bottle of stuff from. He comes over, and he starts screaming at Joe. You stole my money! I can't believe it! You're drinking my blah, blah, bla! Joe looks over,and the girl's gone. Joe's like, How dare you ruin my date? They're screaming back and forth. Joe's just thinking, How dares this guy ruin my date you know well so okay never mind let's go back so we are spiritual maladies overcome we straighten out mentally and physically in dealing with resentments we set them on paper we listed people institutions or principles with whom we were angry that is our first direction that's our first column and mike chase did mention uh the word column when we were kind of teeing this up this is to be done top to bottom not across so we make a list of everyone we're mad at and then we asked ourselves why we were angry that's our second column what did they do to make me angry in most cases it was found that our get your highlighters and underliners out self-esteem pocketbooks our ambitions our personal relationships including sex were hurt or threatened so those things actually have to be heard or threatened for them to have a problem with us huh absolutely so on our grudge list we said opposite each name the injuries was it our self-esteem security ambitions our personal sex relations which had been interfere with so going back to my analogy we just had um i showed up at your restaurant you're having this date mike chase shows up and he walks up to the table and he calls you an oak tree joe did that interfere with any of that affect your self-esteem your pocketbooks your ambitions or your personal relations no it didn't absolutely not do you have resentment against mike chase not at all you think he's a kind of oddball but but other than that he's cool oh you left me puzzled but i always leave people puzzled i wasn't experiencing a resentment so that's sort of cool how that but how about your buddy who finally tracked you down shows up yells at you embarrasses you in front of oh matter of fact she's gone so you gotta you got a little resentment against him huh yeah i can't i can'T stand him how dare he have the audacity to publicly humiliate me and he's your friend me of all of these things ruin my date and then ruin your date this was the dream girl this was The Life this is the girl who's gonna make your life perfect and this guy had the audacity don't do that or if they so this guy so Mike Chase probably is gonna show up on this inventory list i would reckon so so we're going to call your friend we'll just call him ralph okay so ralp's name is in column one isn't he that's right what's the cause now you could this is the little part here says we're usually as definite as this right the cause is you could have said oh my god you know i was on this date with this beautiful girl it was beautiful in the french restaurant they were playing music i was dressed immaculately she was hot it was gorgeous everything's going great and then he showed and it's like no it's a he ruined my date right he ruined my life we keep that very definite as the example is and then what did it affect it affected my sex relations your self-esteem your pocketbook all that money wasted um pride because i was embarrassed in front of everybody at the restaurant and that's about as far as you get so if if we're just so you can see how that works and how we can figure out how that works but uh let's take a look at page 65 if you guys go to the download you'll notice that in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, at the time that the book was made, they didn't have Adobe Illustrator and I guess they were sort of on the cheap so they didn' t do a bunch of lines. When you have columns, if you look at a spreadsheet on Excel, it's broken and the resentment is one column, the cause would be another column and my effects mine is in a column. Well we had this great idea like what if we drew the lines? Absolutely. So if you go there you'll see what this actually looks like. So it actually looks like a spreadsheet. So the first column is The first is the who am I resentful at? The second column is why? And the third column affects my what? And if we relate those back to the page on 64 at the bottom, first column is we listed the people, institutions, or principles from whom we were angry. Second column is we asked ourselves why we were angered. And the 3rd, in most cases, we found that our self-esteem, pocketbooks, ambitions, or personal relations, including sex, were hurt or threatened so this highlighted up and put some lines in the columns made look like certainly made a lot more sense to me and when i'm working with my guys and we add lines inthe columns they look and go like oh yeah i can relate to that but without the lines it's like that was like confused me and we've got some words in red above the i'm resentful at it's our first column it's it's the who column uh the second column top to bottom is the why column and then the third column is uh affects what what does it affect in me now when we're going through these columns when you're presented this little later on you know that we can only do one column at a time so when you work on who you're mad at it's like just just go to town like my grudge list my madness and just concentrate on who screwed you over who has done me wrong and because you can't be going you'll go straight up and down and then we've exhausted everybody who's done us wrong and then we go back at the top and say what did he do what did mike chase it well his name he's not out there because i'm didn't do anything but we've got you know ralph ruined my date and we just stay in the cause until we get down to the bottom this this is very important and it's definite uh for this way for a reason and kind of what you just said so that our mind can flow with everybody that we're resentful at Then we can go back to the top and our mind can flow with why these people, one thought kind of leads into the next. And if you work with some prayer and meditation around doing this writing. Work with some or do some. You must. You do prayer. Before you start any column, God please tell me to be thorough and honest. Pray. Second column, god help me be thorough. Help me. This is you and God. There's prayer and medication between every column, between every action we're doing. This is not you. This is asking God to come in and help you. So when you're putting stuff down in the papers, I wish I put him down. Did it come to your head? Yeah. Well, then I guess you better put it down. God will provide you everything you will need for this process. And this is one I really do recommend you go to MikeChase.org and click on it to see how this is laid out. It really does make this whole inventory process a lot more understandable. And then the third column would affect my sex relations, and we just go through that. So that's basically Bill giving us a little idea of how to start off an inventory column style. And he's going to spend a little bit more time because we've got a couple other columns. That's right. If Bill had spent as much time on the inventory as we do talking to our guys and explaining it to them, you know, we'd be at page 217 by the time we actually get through the work of this. So he's giving us an idea, and then it's just like, okay, you guys got the idea, just carry on. because he's assuming that we know how to do spreadsheets and columns and stuff like that. So let's move to the – well, we're going to have you guys look at that and then we're just going to move on a little bit. I'll put it aside, by the way. I've got this just written there. I'm going to expose the facts. You know, for so long I've been living in delusion, misunderstanding, and now I'm writing this stuff down on paper and it's like, wow, truth. Ooh, ouch. So this is what happens. We went back through our lives. yellow underlined nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty when we were finished we considered it carefully the first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got you know the usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves this is the part of the book where i like to go blame game and victim And this is where we can go bring out the violins and go, you know, just go for it. This is where We Let It Flow. Green underlined, but the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. The manipulation mounts, the stealing mounts, everything mounts, and it just builds up and it's going to blow up in our faces. As a matter of fact, as in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived. this is a malady of fatality we're dealing with you know there's certain things we have to do in life as a recovered alcoholic as someone who's walking shoulder to shoulder hand in hand with God we got to take the high road you know we can't play games anymore we have to just live in the power of God and grace and live by the four absolutes and this is process that's going to get us there so we get to this part it's yellow and underlined it is plain that a life which includes deep resentments leads to fertility and unhappiness to the precise extent that we permit these do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile you know we only have a certain number of breaths we only have a sudden number of heartbeats we don't have certain number minutes and hours on this earth we want to waste them now let's get on and move on but with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience this business of resentment is infinitely grave yellow underlined we found that it is fatal for when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit green and the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again and for us joe to drink is to die if we were to live and this is yellow and underlined we had to be free of anger new current and old we have to process this and this is the whole purpose of this resentment inventory, this relationship building with God. The cool thing about this whole process as we're going through this that we start processing these inventories in resentments and situations and as soon as we start to look at them on paper and get a little bit of guidance they start to lose their importance and validity and as that space that we've been wasting on those dissipates God's love starts to flow in. As we go through this four-step process, God is slowly and sometimes majestically flooding us. But as those things are taken care of, so by the time we're done with our fourth step, we have a lot more relationship with God than when we started. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal people, but for the alcoholic, these things are poison. Now at this stage, you know, I always imagine Bill sitting down opposite this sort of three column list and you can feel God feeding him with the need for two more columns, the actual application of everything that we've uncovered and discovered. And this is why it's going to start to explain from this point forward the final columns, those fourth and fifth columns of the resentment inventory. Green, we turn back to the list for it held the key to the future we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle instead of us being the victims of this being blaming people it's like it's time to say what was my role in this yellow and underline we began to see that the world and its people really dominated us in that state the wrongdoing of others fancy to real had the power to actually kill how could we escape we saw that these must read these resentments must be But how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. We cannot wish them way, we cannot pontificate them way We cannot talk them away We have to process them with the aid of God through the step process And we can move on We can offer forgiveness God forgives us Why can't we forgive everyone else? This was our course Yellow underline We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us they like ourselves in green were sick too as is god's kind enough to forgive us we probably need to forgive other people you know this is going for those times we have resentments and stuff where we played a part in but there's also these other things that come upon us horrible things that happen to children horrible things like that happen as through adolescence that are brought on by just people who are basically sick sicker than us how do we deal with that you know it's like um do i continue hating this person for the rest of my life which is causing me to be blocked from god or do i have to process that hate into a forgiveness state and move on with my life because that happened years ago it's time to like let it go and move it should be clear-cut how much of our thinking is dominated by people that we don't like so to speak for stuff that happened a long time ago they've gone out of their lives they're moving on you know yeah what they did to us was wrong and horrible in a lot of cases but the fact that we're still hanging on to it that's the problem here we ask god to help us show the same tolerance pity and patience that we cheerfully grant a sick friend when a person offended we said to ourselves and this is the prayer joe this is a sick man how can i be helpful to him God, save me from being angry Thy will be done And obviously earlier on A little bit up there it said We ask God Obviously that's teeing us up For the fact that we're going to be praying This is a prayer to the people who've wronged us Don't have to be their best friends Don't need to sit at the dining room table But wouldn't it be cool to be able to See them on the streets and not have the hate And anger and the bile come up And it's like The guy was sick the gal was sick matter of fact the bells wow that's amazing we avoid retaliation or argument we wouldn't treat sick people that way if we do we destroy our chance of being helpful now remember this whole process is to get connected to god to help god come into our life so we can be beneficial and useful to his sick children we cannot be helpful to all people But at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. And here are our fourth and fifth columns, referring to our list again. So he's saying, go back to the piece of paper. Let's get ready to add another list. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done. For the first time, what an amazing opportunity. By the way, you're connected with God. This is all a work in progress. As we're doing this, you've got relationship with God growing. We resolutely looked for our own mistakes, made a resolution to honestly, factually say, what did I do to get the ball rolling? Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Let's see. Stealing money from that guy, Joe. That was dishonest. Lying to the girl about yourself. Well, that sort of frightened. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in that analogy we had about you and your buddy. Absolutely. Though the situation is not entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved. Where were we to blame? Green, where were we to blame The inventory was ours, not the other man's. This is where we get into our fifth column. we saw our faults and listed them we placed them before us in black and white I went to my buddy's house I stole his money I beat him up for his bottle of drink stuff you know I lied to a girl you stole the money to try and entertain her right yeah wow we admitted we were wrong honestly we were willing to set these matters straight I don't care what kind of relationship you had with your buddy this was like an ongoing we did this to each other over time or it just boiled up to this thing we have to be honest with this stuff and the cool thing about this writing this out on paper by the time you've reached this part you put down that last harms to others and the thing you've i don't know if you've ever we live in florida and we got this thing off to the east it's called the ocean and we get the beach and if you get close to the water but not at the start digging in the sand you dig down deep enough and water just starts to flow in you know so we start taking away the resentments the fears the angers all the stuff that's we're holding against people it's like digging a hole in the sand of our heart and our soul as we take the sand of shame out god's love flows in just like the water it's a fabulous analogy because the stuff this is the stuff that processes this is where we start getting closer to god as a matter of fact we have resentments as the first inventory for a purpose it's really easy to point your finger at other people it'S REALLY GREAT TO SAY HOW THEY DID THEM WRONG WHICH IMMEDIATELY GETS US IN THE PROCESS OF SOME GROWTH AND THEN WHAT ARE WRONG AND IT'S LIKE WE'RE A LITTLE BIT CLOSER of God so we can honestly say that, you know? And that was my part and it's like there is so much growth at the end of this. We've got different powers in the amount of God that's flowing through us at this point. So when we do come to this next section which is the fears section we have a much better relationship with God going on so we could honestly write down our fears. You know if we had fears or sex first it's not like I'm great, I'm good. But this is everything in this book is written in concise order to build and grow upon the previous thing so now we're coming out of the resentments closer connected to god and now we can honestly look at our fears and we can write those down on paper read this joe notice that the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with mr brown mrs jones the employer and the wife they're referring to turning back to page 65 you look at the effects column off to the right it says fear fear fear fair fear it's all over the place We'll get back to page 67. This short word, this is yellow and underlined, somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. Wow, the bells. It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we feel we didn't deserve. But did we not ourselves get the ball rolling? you know everything that we have in life is a purpose we have fears i remember i was doing my fist up and we're going through it and i've got you know fear fear fear and um pete said you know maybe you should just have concern instead of being fearful but it's okay to have some concern for stuff and not see fear is a natural instinct you know it's like we were supposed to have fear why are we afraid of the dark well because if we aren't cautious we may step on a poisonous snake or walk off a cliff you know we have these natural fears of things that we don't know how to swim cliffs it's it's a safety but the problem with us is we have this imagined fears and these these phobias that can block us fears of people fears of not trusting out all these fears are just making our life harder to deal with so and imagine that sentence the fabric of our existence was shot through it the thing that uh makes up our existence the thing that's continuous throughout our being this fabric is shot through with fear and any decision based on fear imagined or real tend to have some extraordinary consequences so we want to make sure that they're real and and we're handling them properly but i don't know about you but fear was just all over my life yeah absolutely and i can make a situation worse or better by how i respond so if i'm being fear driven it's probably going in that direction of worse what's the opposite of fear driven god driven faith faith i like that joe's so smart he's the smart one but we did not ourselves set the ball rolling sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing it seems to cause more trouble on the top of this page they've got losing or not getting and we're usually fearful of not getting something we need want or should have or fear of losing something we already have green i like this part we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper first column even though we had no resentment in connection with them second column we asked ourselves why we had them wasn't it because self-reliance failed us self-reliance is good as far as it went but it didn't go far enough third column some of us even had great self-confidence but it Didn't solve the fear problem or of any other green it made as cocky it was worse yeah i can handle this i'll take care of this self oh boy self-confidence is the opposite of god confidence selfless it's just it's ripped up i was thrown over i did so many things inappropriate because of some silly and unreal fear and we've got our god box here this is a god box this is box highlighted yellow joke perhaps there is a better way we think so for we are now on a different basis the basis of trusting and relying upon god remember we made this decision in the third step to give this a try then through trying and believing we will soon have faith we trust infinite god rather than our finite selves what does that mean joe we trust a power that is beyond measure rather than something within ourselves that can be limited that has in the past has continually unequivocally failed us time and time you know we talk about that that pile of history that big pile of doo-doo joe likes to call it you know of facts and figures of the past that we don't bother to look at you know that if we looked at it like we wouldn't be doing the stuff we're doing we'd be a totally different you know person but yeah the fears that we have these false fears we are in the world to play the role he assigns just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him does he enable to us to match calamity with serenity so when the stuff hits the fan we've got god holding us walking hand in hand shoulder to shoulder you know i know it doesn't sound like it but i'm actually like 54 or something like that and there were these moments in my life these end of life moments that you know and situations jobs that i i just thought my life was over and i would freak and i'd panic you know well here i am some 54 years later living pretty good happy joyous and free i think of the times that i put myself through so much anguish for nothing and listen to the sort of the tangible explanation of that sentence there's a proportion here just to the proportion that we trust god and rely upon god does he enable us to match calamity with serenity if we put limitations on how much we trust God we're only going to get little if nothing relief. If we limitlessly trust God and rely on him, he will limitlessly enable us to match calamity with serenity. When problems see my God are coming, they run because my God is big and powerful and amazing, I tell you. And the funny, the great thing is, with all this opportunity that God's given me to get to help people, to work with people and stuff like that, a little coming up on seven years of big book sponsorship, reading a book one-on-one with people. There's been some stuff that's happened that I just was so busy working with God and newcomers and doing what I'm doing and I didn't stick my fingers in the gears to get it all messed up. It just works out which is the great thing about this big book sponsorship. I'm out there working God's work. It's not my life it's God's life and what does He want me to do? There's people dying and there's a certain commitment one needs to take in big book sponsorship because we have been given an opportunity to save lives by introducing them to god through the book and if we don't take that seriously and toss it aside and become selfish self-centered in my needs again a people die people get sick lives get damaged and we get miserable too because we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing you know i i can actually attest to that i i've seen um that working you know in your life and it's a phenomenal role for me because i know it works and uh because you're trying to go about it the same i you know after finishing uh working with others responses i've often said to them look you know just you know i'm not telling you for any specific reason but i was going through some really trough tying times when we were working together and working with you is how i got through it working working god's work with you is what got me through it our purpose as soon as we forget what our purpose is why we're here then we tend to get a little crazy and start getting frayed at the seams i was talking to conversation with somebody just the other day they're like talking about stuff going on in their life and i said so how many guys you work with oh i need to get to it like it's like yeah what how's the premier line it's Like guess what hopefully they're back as a matter of fact one of the guys who's gotten back into that he's back on track you know it's We can learn from our laziness and our self-centeredness pops up you know it's like well i gotta you know i gotta get more buff at the gym so i'm gonna stop working with so many guys i heard this just the other night somebody was talking about it's Like well you know can't you get a little uh off balance helping too many people what did you say helping too Many people you can never really false logic it's false logic because it was the selfish self-centredness that i was living in when i I was in sobriety recovery for 15 years, being a selfish self-centered, you know, going to meetings, but taking my life the way I want it. Now I have this life where I have an opportunity to help people. This is by far the best way to go through life. As a matter of fact, Green underlined, we never apologize to anyone for depending on our power and our creator. My God gives me my strength and my energy and my reason. We can laugh at those who think spirituality is a way of weakness. Big word. paradoxically it is the way of strength the verdict green the verdict of the age is that faith means courage see we come into this believing we got an idea we see we have but it's actually this working and worth others and having a life that belief becomes faith and then with faith we can do anything because god may not necessarily remove the thing that's making you fearful what it's really getting us uh to look at here is the relationship between uh fear and courage. Here we're going to ask for the courage to walk through the fear with God. All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead, we let him demonstrate through us what he can do. Yellow underline, wrap this up for us. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear. We look at the fears. We see the rational, irrational. We deal with them. We turn it over to God. God starts filling us up even more with his love and abundance, and we start to grow stronger. As a matter of fact, we're going to wrap up here. We've got six and seven written all over the side here, all these behaviors that we're just trying to control. We've Got the God Box. As a manner of fact. We're goingto wrap this up next week. We'regoing to jump into the sex and harms to others part of the inventory. We look forward to that, and I hope you guys join us. At this time, we'RE going to, from The Doctor's Nightmare, Joe. Yes. but just before i read that actually something to meditate on that uh you know i liked working with when when i do this and what i direct my guys to and we kind of touched on it actually the best definition of fear that i've heard is negative imagination so from the doctor's nightmare if you think you are an atheist an agnostic a skeptic or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book i feel sorry for you if you still think you are strong enough to beat the game alone that is your affair but if you really and truly want to quit drinking liquor for good and all and sincerely feel that you must have some help we know that we have an answer for you it never fails if you go about it with one half the zeal you've been in the habit of showing when you are getting another drink your heavenly father will never let you down thank you joe you guys please join us next week as we continue to study the big book and remember to download the highlighted pages from tonight's session found under the podcast link we always enjoy hearing feedback from you guys so don't be shy about dropping us a line as the privilege to meet other alcoholics who are also on fire about god and on fire about this big book. And also thank you to the folks who who are uh communicating with us and visiting with us and uh hi guys appreciate it thanks a lot um we're gonna close out in our traditional way with our family's fog light prayer. So let's take another moment to get reconnected and we'll lead into that. God, let your love shine through me like a fog light for those who are lost, sick, and dying can find your love through me amen amen thanks joe this was a hoot tonight i look forward to seeing you next week we're going to jump into some sex and some harms to others they go hand in hand it's amazing if we had put the sex first i don't think there'd be much written on those things were they um godspeed you guys we'll see you all next week thank you for joining us peace peace