Why Material Well-Being Always Follows Spiritual Progress – Scott L.

One of the worst, you know, one of the guys I sponsor, Sheldon has a great saying. He says that if the story with Scott's, if we agree with the story Scott talked about, about the frogs on the log and two of them decide to jump in the water, how many are still there? And the answer is still three because they only decided. Sheldons says if you really take step seven, you'll hear the splash, right? That's where you hit the water. That's when you really throw the towel. This is no longer a decision. You're entirely ready. You're there. And it's really about surrender. One of the hardest surrenders of any one I've ever heard about occurred in the mid-1940s. In the mid-'40s, the Japanese Empire was faced with extinction. Two atomic weapons had been set out on two of their major cities. They had no atomic bombs. They had no defense against this. They were facing absolute annihilation. Sound familiar? Right. And I can't imagine a more fear-wrought surrender because they had to surrender in the face of the knowledge of what they did at Pearl Harbor, what they Did at the prisoner of war camps, the thousands and thousands of Americans they'd killed, some of them they'd tortured. And they had To surrender knowing that we knew all that. can you imagine a more frightening surrender and in the pacific fleet they signed their third step they did their formal terms formal terms of surrender but they were required to do some things signing that was not enough they had to give they had they hadto submit an inventory of all their defenses and dismantle those defenses their guns their cannons their navy their air force their army and dismantle those defenses and render them over to this power greater than themselves who at that point could have annihilated them because they would have been defense less and like all surrendered people or peoples in a surrendered position they took a stance of service and the Japanese had developed a service ethic and if you ever read the story of what has what happened in their businesses and their service and their business ethic since World War II, they developed an other-centered ethic that was amazing. They were such team players. They went to work for one reason and one reason only, to serve, to be a part of the family, to be an integrated part. There was no self there. There wasno unions. There was nobody saying, What about me? It was all serving a whole greater than themselves. And as a result of that surrender and service, within 40 years the Japanese owned more of the United States than they could have ever conquered or held by military means. And I was over in Japan for an Alcoholics Anonymous conference about 15 years ago and I saw the beginning of the end for them. I saw all their young kids with the boom boxes now. They were not bowing to each other. All the respect was gone. They were all wearing American clothes, listening to rock and roll music. They all had no respect for their elders, and they were serving themselves. And the thing that really got me, there was incredible restaurants in Tokyo, incredible. Some of the best food I ever ate in the world. There was one restaurant you couldn't get into. It had a line two blocks long. It was McDonald's. I saw that, and I thought, it's the beginning of the end. the beginning of the end for and what has happened to their economy it became very self-oriented over the last few years and that's not the only factor that caused its from being almost the top of the food chain in a world economy down to like they're not doing too good today but that was one i am i believe in my heart that was One of the factors as the spirit gets sick and isolated Everything else follows. In our book, it says when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. And I think this thing, this realm of the spirit is good for everybody. I think it permeates this planet. It permeates our relationships, our business. When my business got sick of spirit, the financial stuff followed. When it got healthy of spirit. The financial stuff. Scott. I've got a friend at home who says if he could get every newcomer one thing, he'd give them 500 cc's of desperation right in the butt. Well, we do good with desperate ones, don't we? And something I missed earlier when we were talking about the sex inventory, a friend of mine says dating before you've actually done the 12 steps is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects. Mm-hmm. Yeah. One of the things that I found interesting when I got here, I got her as a taker. Many of us do. And I thought I was going to have to transition to being a giver. I was incorrect about that. The first transition was from taker to receiver. The difference is that a takER can't take anything worth having. And the receiver says thank you and asks for some more and it contains humility. Having been a receiver for a while, it then becomes possible for me to give. But I can't go from takER to giVER because I don't have anything. And I thought for a long time that it was my willingness to give that would keep the channel open between me and God. I don't believe it anymore. I believe it's my willingness to receive because that contains humility. It's been my experience that when you're hurting and I get the chance to love on you and do these things you've taught me, I get this wonderful closeness to God from that experience. When it's My turn to receive, if I don' t let you know, I block your chance to get close to God by giving. I think it's the second most selfish act there is. I think suicide's first. Yeah. So I have to remember that it's important for me. I know a lot about this stuff, and I've been with some of the greats, and I haven't been around for a while. I have a lot of experience, and the most important things I take to my home group are my mistakes and my pain because it makes it okay for anybody else who respects my program to be real. I think we lose a lot old-timers because they think, you know, I've bene here so long, I shouldn't be feeling this, and new people don't need to see this, and they die, and i disagree. That's exactly what the new people need to say. And then you see it's okay to be real. I have to continue to be real here and that's important for me. And I think part of the beginning of that is in step 8. The big book runs steps 8 and 9 together kind of, and I don't have a complaint about that. But the reading on those steps kind of runs together. But I would observe a couple of things. In step 8 what I need is a list of the people I've harmed. If you follow the four-step Bob and I talked about today, it's really easy. It's the fourth column of the resentment inventory and the last column in the sexual misconduct category. And that gets most of them. A little prayer energy and you'll find the rest if there are any. Now you've got a list of people that you owe amends to. And then it asks about the willingness. Here we go again. I count five prayers in steps eight and nine here in the text. The first one is on page 76. About a little past halfway down the page, it says, We subjected ourselves to drastic self-appraisal. Now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves. Here it comes. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes." We don't ask once. We ask until It comes. That's the first of those prayers. The next one, and I'm not saying there aren't more. I've found five. Page 79. My sponsor, the book uses the word sorry. My sponsor refused for me to use the word sorry when I was making amends. He said you've told them you were sorry long enough. They don't believe you anymore. That word has no power for you anymore. You will not use it. Yes sir. Alright page 79 first full paragraph. Although these reparations that's not an apology it means to repair the damage take innumerable forms. There are some general principles we find guiding. Reminding ourselves we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience we ask, I wonder what that is, I think it's a prayer we ask that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be that's pretty clear when the ninth step in the short form refers to this idea about, well here let's take a look at it on page 59 made direct amends to such people wherever not whenever but wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others, I clearly do not fall into the category of others. I clearly do not. Right? From what I just read here back on page 79 asking that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be. Top of page 80. Before taking drastic action which might implicate other people, we secure their consent. If we have obtained permission have consulted with others asked god to help looks like a prayer to me and the drastic step is indicated we must not shrink page 82 perhaps in some toward the top of the page perhaps in Some cases where the utmost frankness is demanded no outsider can appraise such an intimate situation it may be that both will decide that the way of good sense and loving kindness is to let bygones be bygomes. Each might pray about it, and listen to the attitude in the prayer. I love this. Having the other one's happiness uppermost in mind. Well, that's not terribly self-centered, is it? Page 83. Yes, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead. Now, there are people that disagree with this, and I'm comfortable with it. I want to talk about my own personal experience i walked out of a meeting one time and a fellow whose sponsor i sponsored stopped me and said that i uh he said i disagree with something you said in the meeting what i had said was that my amends to my children would never be complete he said that's not right did you go to your children tell him what you had done wrong did you ask for their forgiveness did you ask what you could do to make it right did they tell you and did you do it to the best of your ability i said yeah i did all that's correct he said you're trying to be the best father you can be is not ninth step work, it's twelfth. It's the principles in all your affairs. If you think it's ninth step work, you have not accepted their forgiveness or God's or your own and you have work to do. My book does not use the phrase continuing amends or living amends. And if you're making them, your sponsor says so, I think that's great. But I got free that day. And I sure am watching a lot of kids manipulate us into doing some really sick stuff under the banner of you were a bad parent in the past my amends to my children are complete i'm trying to be a good dad today it's not nine-step work it's 12th it's the principles on all my affairs yeah for me red flags this is me again one of the great truths if there isn't anything that's right for me that's wrong for anybody else they may or may not like it isn't wrong for them when i told my daughter the party was over and i wasn't financing it anymore it was right for me and If she didn't like it, she'll tell you today it wasn't wrong for her. Yeah, it needs to be that way. So this thing about a period of reconstruction, yeah, I've got to build again, but I think that's the principles in all my affairs, that rebuilding for me is not part of amends. Now, those who disagree, I thinkthat's great. Moving right along, we must take to lead a remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won't fill the bill. We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past so that we see it being careful not to criticize them. Their defects may be glaring to me. but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible. So we clean house with the family. Here's a prayer, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love. So that's five prayers. And those, I think that's really important. I want to talk about, I mentioned earlier, and I'm going to say again, if you've been involved in abortion and you're good with it, I'm good with It. I have no opinion on that. I really don't. But that was a hard one for me, and it's a hard one for some other people. I'm here only helping them try to get free. I'm not talking about political stuff here. I'm really not. And a number of you have come to me already. I'm looking forward to talking to the others. I got a handout on this, by the way. But I needed, I had a big spiritual experience. I haven't got time to talk about it right now. But I was in treatment. I was laying there thinking about that. And I reached bottom, which for me of course was of the spirit. and I screamed out to God for forgiveness and I got it and I had this huge white light beautiful experience and when I got to step nine it looked to me like I owed amends to an unborn child and I didn't think it could be none from my earliest days I've been in the hands of people who knew this book this is page 83 toward the bottom some people cannot be seen we send them an honest letter pretty clear it has been my experience that as we demonstrated earlier the fourth step isn't much about writing it's about observations and prayers it is my experience that this letter is not about writing it is about tears and I say I put that on it's on the same sheet as learn how to cry if you're interested in one I got them stacked over here I'd love for you to have one and I got free I absolutely got free nothing happens in here when I talk about that I've been through the forgiveness process I was abused as a child nothing in here happens because I've done that because I went through the forgiveness proces in step four and I think step nine really completes the forgiveness process, and I can't explain that, but I can report it. One of the interesting things is by the time I get a fellow to step nine, his life has changed, right? He's been promoted at work, he's bringing the paycheck home, he flips the switch, the lights come on. The phone rings, and he's not afraid to answer it. He's sleeping in the big bed, all right? So his motivation's a little bit gone. And he looks and he says, you know, I can't make 140 amends. And I agree, he can't. He'd make one today, make one tomorrow. 140 days from now we'd be done at that rate. And so I applied the day at a time thing to sponsoring someone through step nine. What amend are you going to make next? Because I don't care which one he makes next. Now sometimes I do. Sometimes fresh from a divorce, he doesn't need to go try to make that one. Let's let that cool a little bit. All right. And, and, and I think God bless his sponsorship. You'll know those answers. But let's talk about which one's next. Okay, yeah, right. You need to call that person on the phone and schedule an appointment. When can you call them? Why can't you call them right now? Good. Call me right back. I want to know when the appointment is. Okay, good. Tomorrow at 2 o'clock? Great. Call me at 2.30. I wonder how it went. 140 times later, we're done. The other thing I like to do is to start people sponsoring when they get into Step 9 because one of the things that really keeps them moving is look over their shoulder and see this rookie gaining on them. They do not want to be passed by someone they're sponsoring. It really, really is a wonderful sponsorship tool in my opinion. I was told that amends are short. My mother didn't need to hear the litany of all the things I had done. That was not going to help her. Most people don't. And I was taught that it's very brief. You say things like I was wrong. I believe I've hurt you. I'd like to make that right. What can I do? Do you need to talk to me about other things? And I don't have to take abuse. I have a decision to make. And also, I think it's kind of interesting that we're not asking you to turn your well and life over to the care of someone that you owe amends to. I sponsored a guy, Big Ken Sweeney. He's gone now. Big Ken said that the day before he got to recovery, he hated everybody and he wished there was more of them. if you'd gone to make amends to Big Ken you would still be bleeding my sponsor's final authority on what this amend is I need to hear what they think it is and if it's reasonable I can go for it but my sponsor has finally authority on what that amend is this person isn't and that was important to me the amends are short one of the trickiest ones and I share this again it's just my experience about making amends is um i'm phrasing this the best it can is for a guy to go to a lady whose charms he's availed himself of lightly and to make amends to her without making her feel cheap there's no reason for that and what i like to say is to suggest that a guy says is that i wasn't as good a friend you as i could have been i believe i've harmed you i'd like to make it right that's enough that's enough making somebody feel cheap is not part of making amends that's no good I also recommend do not mess up an amend with an excuse you'll take all the power out of it takes all the power away there's a wonderful line here on page 84 says we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves it doesn't say God will suddenly begin to do for us what we couldn't do for our selves it says my realization will be sudden That's kind of interesting And that does happen at about that time My wife came up with something on her own That really helped me a lot And she calls it good amends It's where you go back and thank people I have sins of commission Things I did And sins of omission Things I should have done And one of the things I didn't do Was thank people who deserve to be thanked in my life And I heard her talk about that And this I'll tell you what's great fun Is making what she calls good aments I went back to the man that was my major professor in college, and I thanked him. And I went black, and thank the man who taught me to fly. And I don't know if it did anything for them. I can tell you it did for me. And one of the way... I'm under assignment by the way by my sponsor. I have a sponsor and I am sponsored. Those are separate concepts like going to work and working. Not necessarily the same thing, right? You got that? And one, one of my assignments is to spread the joy. joy. And I'll talk about that for just a little bit, because it has to do with the men's. And there was a Christmas day and we ran out of milk. So at halftime, I raced down to the convenience store, grabbed the gallon of milk, I race over to the counter, and I got a gift. I didn't do this, I received a gift, and the gift was this part of me saw a human being standing behind a counter probably making minimum wage on Christmas Day. And the gift was that this part of me saw him and said to him, thank you for working on Christmas Day. Man, I bet there's some place you'd rather be. But you see, my family ran out of milk. If you hadn't come to work today, I couldn't have gotten in. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you. He and I both cried. It touches me now. What a gift. So I try to really, really say thank you as much as I can. Anybody here ever been over-thanked? Yeah, especially on the weekend. When I fly home tomorrow on Sunday, I'll thank all the airline employees that I see for working on the weekend. Thank you for working on the weekend. Yeah. It's a really neat way. We raise the level of love in this world by doing loving things. Yeah, it's really a lot of fun. I talked just a little bit about, and again, this is me, but I look at why do I do ninth step is to cleanse my own side and hopefully as a side effect we'll have a positive impact on these other folks page 66 and it's okay if they don't accept the amend it's also okay if they don' t remember me yeah others have had that experience man and this didn't touch their reality about the middle of the page it says for when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit what i believe is that one of these days my soul will stand naked before my creator and we will review this movie i've made called scott's life and there are some places in there some really ugly stuff there's some places in there where I've done some things that have damaged some people that have every right to their resentments. And if the book's right and those resentments block me off from the sunlight of the spirit, then maybe they're blocking them from the spotlight of the Spirit. And I'm going to want to be able to point at another frame in that movie where I tried to remove that blockage. I'm not responsible for the result, but I am sure responsible forthe action. This thing I was talking about freedom is embracing the results of my own actions. I have to try. It doesn't have to work, but I have to try, and I think it's just critically, critically important. I was talking earlier about that amends letter to someone. That's to anybody that's gone. Grandparent, someone you can't find. It's a spectacular event, and it doesn't work if you can'T cry. That's why I put it on the back of that thing about learning to cry, because I've watched people who can't cry to do that, and all they get is a sinus infection, because that stuff blocks up in there, and they just simply don't get free. They just don't get free. I'm about out of gas, and I think I'm going to call it off right there. I am, I want you to know, slightly offended that the speaker tonight is a special speaker, and we're just Bob and Scott. Good job. Where's Rick? Rick, you've got some announcements to make and then I'll close us with the Lord's Prayer. Rick, you've got some announcements to make and then I'll close us with the Lord's Prayer. ...fellows, and a much-needed new experience in my own recovery. Amen. Amen. If they change their mind, they're going to let you do it again. We're going to try to kind of recap a little bit on a couple things on step eight and nine before we move into the living, the maintenance. They're not really maintenance steps, they're growing steps. Yeah, growth steps. People call them the maintenance steps. you know Alcoholics Anonymous in a weird kind of way was founded on step 8 some of you know the story of Bill and Bob they met in the Cyberling Gate house Mother's Day May 12 1935 Bill needed to talk to Bob Bob didn't want to talk to Bill matter of fact Bob's son had become pretty good friends over the years and I used to love to listen to him tell this story about being in the car with his dad his mother was a strong woman pre-Alanon, strong woman bringing him to talk to this yankee about his drinking and you know i mean bob had had people talking to him about his drinking for years you know when you're an alcoholic people show up to talk to you about your drinking i mean that's just the way it is and so he's digging his feet in but his but he's guilty you know how it is you've been on a run you just came off a run and yes dear you know so he doesn't want to go and he says 15 minutes just please promise me i can't take night of this yankees preaching 15 minutes i'll put up with that then you got to get me out here and they agreed i'll get 15 minutes and he went in there and to his surprise and delight and amazement bill wilson didn't talk to dr bob about dr bob's drinking talked to dr Bob about Bill's drinking and he had never heard anybody do that and he was enthralled and he stayed in there for hours. And he was so, and Bill had outlined a program of action that he had sort of put together from elements out of the Oxford group and some things that he got from Silkworth and some other places, and he presented it to Dr. Bob, and Dr. Robb was enthralled with it. He thought it was great he loved every aspect of it except for the amends and he said you know i bill you don't understand i've really jacked my reputation off in this community as it is let's just leave that alone i like everything else i like the talk of spiritual matters the prayer meditation i like the confession of shortcomings I like the camaraderie I like helping others I like it all but not the immense and he dug his feet in and he wouldn't do step eight nine which later wasn't called that eight nine then but it will later became known as that and consequently Dr. Bob drank again and he didn't stay sober he went to a medical convention in Atlantic City He was so drunk coming back that the conductor didn't know it. He was unconscious. The conductor laid him on the platform in the Akron station, called his office manager, this gal who was one of the first untreated Al-Anons who came down again to rescue him and take care of him. And she didn't Know What To Do With Him. and she eventually called Ann, his wife. And Bill Wilson was living there and they came down to get him, took him home to the house on Ardmore Street and put him to bed because he was such a mess. And he came to early in the morning on what most historians, except for one who's not sure if it's right, most historians believe was June 10th, 1935, early inthe morning. And he's, you know, he comes to like we all come to vibrate, you know, shaken, full of remorse and guilt and jumpy kind of with the whips and jingles and all that other stuff. He comes to and he's oh my God, and Bill and Ann are there. What day is it? And they said, it's June 10th. Oh, it can't be June 10, not June 10. He says, look at me. I have a surgery to perform this morning. And Dr. Bob was a proctologist. So you can imagine whatever kind of surgery this must have been. And, God, imagine being that patient, watching your surgeon come in like that. Oh, man. So he was so shaky that Bill didn't know what to do. So Bill gave him a couple drinks of sedative and they sent him into the surgery. And we don't knowwhat happened. I know a couple historians that have researched the Akron Hospital archives trying to find out what happened to this patient, and they can't find out. All we know from AA literature is that he lived. I understand why these archivists are trying to fine out. I mean, I'd like to know, did he whistle when he walked or what? But they know he lived, and well, you know. They know he lived. And the surgery was over that morning, and Dr. Bob disappeared. And nobody knew where he was. And Bill was afraid, as I would have been afraid, that, you know, he's on a run. He's got to be on a running game. I shouldn't have gave him those two beers this morning, those two drinks this morning. He's probably on a runner, which would be a logical conclusion with what we know about the phenomenon of craving. But he wasn't on a ride. but he stayed disappeared all that morning all that afternoon into the evening and he came home and there was something different about him and they found out that he had been out searching every person he could find that he owed amends to and walking through that fear and facing those people and consequently Dr. Bob never drank again and I don't and consequently that was the day that Alcoholics Anonymous looks to as its founding and i don't know what would have become of us if dr bob would have dug his heels in one more time and said no bill i'm not going to do that part of the program so in a weird kind of sense aa was really founded on step eight on finally dr bob's willingness to go to any lengths and when it talks in the big book and you hear people one of the most misconceived notions in Alcoholics Anonymous is that willing to go to lengths means willing to not drink and go to meetings. That's not it if you look at where it talks about willing to going to lengths in the Big Book they're talking about amends, they're talking about step 8 and 9 which is really the hardest thing I think that we do here. Now I know Father Ed Dowling is quoted in the 12 by 12, saying that step six is the one that separates the men from the boys. But I'll tell you something. In my view, in my experience, step eight and nine is the hardest thing we ever do here. You know, everything, when you think about it, everything up until this point in this process is relatively low risk, relatively low exposure. I mean, you have to – the highest risk thing you have to do is your fifth step prior to step eight and nine. Your fifth step, you know, but it's, you know, we check those guys out. We're not – we don't take our fifth step with anybody. We're checking that guy out. We're hedging our bet. We're pretty sure this guy's not a gossip. He's not going to blab what we're telling him around. So we've minimized the risk on that. But now we're about to go out into the world and face everyone we're afraid to face and pay back money that we really need more than they do. I mean, that's always true. I always need it more than you do. More than they did. So I have exposure and I have risk financially, I have emotionally, physically some amends. I had some amends where, in my mind, they're going to beat me up. They're goingto hit me with a baseball bat. I had other amendswhere I was relatively, I was convinced I was going to go to prison for a couple years. But I faced them because I didn't have a choice. The book reminds us, remember, it says, remember that we agreed to goto any length for victory over alcohol. remember and it really comes down to a matter of life and death one of the there's a a line in working with others that talks about our how the frame of mind and the perception and perspective that we approach people are trying to help and i use this line also in step eight and nine with the guys i sponsor and the line says is that we approach the new man the way we would like to be approached if the tables were turned and i think that is also a solid spiritual approach and a perception approach to step eight and nine i got to get others centered enough to put myself in their shoes and experience and know what it must have felt like to have done to me what i had done to them and when i get that then i will intuitively know how to approach that person because i'm really approaching the the me that is in them and if i do that and i i say the things and do the things that i would like to have said and done to me if i'd been hurt like they'd been heard by somebody it will turn out good uh it'll turn out good uh you know this this line that scott talked about at the top of page 83 it says there is a long period of reconstruction ahead there that's really you know there's scott was talking about about he doesn't believe in a living amends and i and i understand i know exactly what he's saying But at the same time, from my experience, before the relationship and the separation with people sometimes is mended, it really does take a long period of reconstruction. A simple saying I was sorry and paying them a little money after I battered them emotionally for years often isn't really enough to make it okay yet. and chuck chamberlain used to talk he used to stand at the podium and rub his hands together and he'd cackle in this funny voice and talk about rubbing away the wreckage by good works and good deeds and sometimes we act our way into different relationships and mended mended relationships by good work i know with my parents uh i had given them such a emotional battering for decades one of the worst things i did to my mom and dad is i kept getting up on my feet again and then they would get their hopes up and they'd think i'm going to be all right and then i would slam them again and i didn't do that once or twice i did that that was an ongoing process with me and all the times i'd lied to them and disappointed them so my my first approach to them in making the amends did not mend the separation, but it was a beginning. And it took a long period of reconstruction ahead. You know, I can't you know, the countless, I remember the first time, people in AA told me to do things with my parents that didn't make any sense to me. I was willing to accept that I would never have them in my life. And I knew that I was the guy that did it. And I knew that they loved me and I destroyed that and I knew it was irreparable. But people in Alcoholics Anonymous didn't care what I thought. They said, you're going to start sending your mom and dad cards and little notes and you're going to call your mom on a regular basis and you'RE NOT GOING TO CALL COLLECT. I remember the first time I called her I said, Mom, it's Rob. How are you doing? And she says, Are you in Pennsylvania? No, I'm in Nevada. Well, the operator didn't come in and ask me to pay for the call. I said, I paid for the called. I never even forget this. Her voice went up an octave. She went, you paid for The Call? She couldn't believe it. I don't, I, you know, I am a taker. My parents are, they're the welfare state. You know, they owe me or something. I have some kind of sick, distorted sense of entitlement i don't know you know and i started doing things like that and i started to rub away this wreckage very slowly and it was very slowly one of my favorite stories there was a gal named and she told me i could share this and i love sharing her a part of her story because it's i was there for the whole thing i watched this gal get sober name was Chelsea. Chelsea was a neat gal. She's still, I see her on a regular basis. And Chelsea came from a family, a father, a family who had a father. Her father was very racist. He was very bigoted. He Was very almost like off the charts, Ku Klux Klan-ish kind of guy. I mean, he was that kind of a guy, right? And Chelsea fell in love with this black guy and they got married and had a couple just gorgeous kids and and when they when he when she married him her father went ballistic and cussed her out and called her names and just wouldn't have anything to do with her and rejected her and she gets sober and she's got this big time resentment towards her father a resentment that almost anyone that would hear about it would agree with her yeah he's an idiot He's an asshole, right? Everybody would agree with that. Except her sponsor. And her sponsor really believed in the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. This ethic that we put ahead of our own judgments and our own prejudices. And she said that we're not going to pay any attention to what an idiot your dad is. We're going to disregard the other person involved entirely. What kind of a daughter have you been? and in that light you know she used all the indiscretions and the wrongs of her father to justify being a lousy daughter really and so her sponsor's direction was and she didn't like it i remember she used to bitch about it in meetings she had to send her father cards and letters and pictures of the kids and nice little notes and presents and sometimes and often she'd call him I mean, he'd cuss her out and hang up on her, you know. And she never got a response. She never got her gift back. She never get anything. And our sponsor kept pushing her to do it, and she did it month after month, year after year, in the face of rejection and adversity. Four and a half years later, she comes to my home group with a letter, and she starts to read this letter from her father. And in the letter, her father talks about how ashamed of himself he's been for how he's treated her and those kids. And he opened and confided in her about some things that had happened to him as a child and how he grew up. And he said, I'm so sorry I've been this way. And he says, there's no words to tell you about my shame. and he said i know this is the part when he when she read this part of the letter i started weeping because in the letter he said he said I know I have no right to have you and those kids in my life but if you would ever give me a chance I would spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you and I sat in that meeting she's reading us and I'm weeping and everybody in the rooms we think because we'd been there with her we've heard we sat in the meetings and listened to her rant and rave about this idiot and i sat there and i was overwhelmed with the power that was that it had i saw witnessed in this thing that had interchanged between her and her father and i realized that there's a there's spiritual principle in the universe that you cannot continue to fight and be adversarial with someone who is continually on your side. You can't do it. You can do it for a while. The hate and prejudice and fear can... But eventually, you feel like an idiot doing that. And the power of love is as guaranteed and as sure as the winds that erode the mountains. The problem is it takes a while. And most of us, myself included especially, are very event-oriented people. I want to make the amends. I want the parade and the fireworks. Okay? Right. Look what I did. And sometimes, when it says in the book there's a long period of reconstruction, I tell you, I'm so proud of Chelsea and the other members of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've witnessed that would continue to take loving action in the face of adversity. And eventually, if you persist, the love will overcome the fear and resentment and hate, eventually. But if you have a short attention span, it's hard. It's hard because we want the payoff right now. That's why we drank. i could i could drink you know most people to be a big shot and really could be a success in life they go to school and they'd be go to law school or med school become a doctor a lawyer i could just go into a bar have seven or eight drinks and i was a brain surgeon i don't have to go to the school i could add instantaneous there right i could be anything i wanted to be And so that's kind of my experience with my family. I also had the same experience that Scott had with the letter. I had my grandfather had died before I got sober, and I had to write him a letter. And I did exactly what it says in the book. It says, write them an honest letter. and in that letter i told my grandfather i thanked my grandfather for being so kind to me and how he was so wonderful to me as a little kid and i told him how sorry i was that on the morning of the funeral of his wife of 60 some years that the night before i'd found the drug she'd been on before she died and he had to find me in a pool of blood laying on the floor of his house with a needle in my arm on the morning he was burying his wife of 60 years and I told him how sorry I was to have done that to him and hit him with that on the worst day of his life. And I told him everything I would have liked to have told him if I could have sat across a kitchen table with him. And, I took that letter and I took it up into the desert and I read it and weeped and I burnt it and i'll tell you i felt uh that my grandfather's spirit got that letter and something that was a ghost that haunted me uh was put to rest and there was there was a resolve within my spirit about my grandfather and his memories today in my life are very sweet they're wonderful i'm not haunted by him anymore he is within rest within my spirit and i think that the or a lot of the oriental philosophies and religions have believed that we are tied to our ancestors our family members and i Think there's a part of my grandfather and my father and my mother that live within my heart and i must be right with that or i will not be right With myself and i was able to do that through that letter with the people and also some other people that had died um the two hardest amends i ever had to make uh i'll tell you just briefly about the hardest amens i ever Had to make it was for a something i did sober and you know there's when you make amends for things you've did while you're drinking you know you kind of you can hide behind that well i was drunk i mean you You know, it wasn't just before AA. You can kind of hang it all on that and it's not so bad. What's really hard is something you've done as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous when you're sober. You can't hide behind the drinking anymore. And when I was about a year sober, I went to work in this store as a cashier. And it was for minimum wage. And I was struggling and I'm trying to pay some people back some things I had to pay. And I'm living paycheck to paycheck and barely making it every week. And after I'd been working there a little while, it was a Thursday and I got paid Friday and I ran out of cigarettes. And I had a heavy cigarette addiction, tobacco addiction in those days, like three packs a day. And I am out of cigarets. And one of the things we sold in that store were cigarettes. So I thought to myself, as I usually do, I'll take a pack of cigarettes and then tomorrow When I get my paycheck, I'll cash it through the register and I'll ring it up and it'll be fine. And it seemed a reasonable rationalization to me. I took the cigarettes. I started smoking them. The next day I get My Paycheck. I'm cashing out of the register. The thought goes through my mind, oh, I've got to bring up those cigarettes. And the thought was easily supplanted with the idea, you know, I really work harder than anybody else here. I come early. I stay late. You know, I'm not making very much money. You know everybody does this kind of thing to some degree. I bet you it's factored into the cost of operation. And I never rang those cigarettes up and I opened the door and I started supporting my cigarette habit from stealing cigarettes and then I threw in a six-pack of Diet Coke after a while every time I'd have a couple days off to take home with me And I started to get sick, and I didn't know what was going on. It's funny, in the realm of the spirit, I do something over here, and sometimes I get sick over there. And I starting getting sick in a lot of areas in my life. I started going to meetings. I started judging my way right out of AA. I started Going to Meetings, and really just I became so aware of how all the hypocrites in AA. oh man the phony people here you know and oh boy were they full of a lot of crap there was a lot of people here lying here it's just doing you know real i just became so clear to me i was dating a gal at the time i started picking her apart and the the guy i was working for who was really a great boss one of the best bosses i'd had my probably my whole life who very treated me very well i started picking him apart too and you can pick anybody apart when you get that perception i mean you could do that to mother theresa you could find fault with her if you have that kind of headset and i started doing that and i'm getting weirder and weirter and more and more locked up inside myself and moreandmore alone and i am not doing very well here and i get down on my knees one night after this has been going on for a long time and I say my nightly prayers as I've been trained to do and I'm thanking God for the day of sobriety and I just yelled out, I just said, God, what the hell's going on here? And the minute I asked the question, intuitively I got the answer. I knew it. It was just a clear thing. I knew that I am whacked here because I've bee stealing from my work for all these months and it's just an intuitive thing and i knew the truth and i didn't want to know the truth because i started work my head started working like a computer figuring it out and it was you think three packs a day is cigarettes is not a big deal you do that for seven or eight or nine months it's it adds up and all it was a lot of money money i don't have to pay back and so i'm terrorized because i first of all i've seen my even though my boss is a nice guy he has zero tolerance for theft because in which is natural in retail i watched him scream at and throw a guy out of his store that worked there because he caught him stealing and i knew what i was facing i was going to have to go to him and i know he's going to fire me and throw me out of there and it was not going to be good and i don't even have the money to pay him if i would have had the money it wouldn't have been been so bad you know i could have went to him and with a check or something and made the grandiose gesture of the of the prodigal son who's learned his lesson you know it would have been great but i don't even have the money to pay him i'm going to lose my job i'm gonna have to go somewhere else get another job without a recommendation amount of a void in my resume right of where i can't even talk about this thing and then i'm to pay back and i think the worst thing of all was that the guy I worked for had heard me on many occasions prattle on about my rigorous program of honesty and alcoholics. Oh, man, it was brutal. Oh, I'm telling you, I went to this guy, and about halfway through it, I was so ashamed of myself, I started crying, and then I felt really pathetic. I don't know if I've ever felt worse in my life. It was awful. And he didn't fire me. He yelled at me, but he didn'T fire me, and he let me stay working there, and I paid him back. I added 10% onto my estimate and added another 50 bucks on top of that because I know how I am. I'm a minimizer, right? If there's a mistake in my calculations, it ain't in your favor. You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. I know how I am. I've been that way all my life, right? So I added another 10% and another 50 bucks just to be sure, and I paid that guy back. And it took a long time. I mean, it took along time. And I'll tell you a funny thing. I didn't get this for a long term. Within 30 days of making that last payment, a guy came to me. Now, I wasn't looking for this. He came to out of nowhere and offered me a job with a management position and a chance to really advance to it, like running a whole company, a whole business. And I went and took that job. And I'll tell you something, I never took a dime from him. I never take a ballpoint pen home out of that place. And I gave him a dime for his nickel. And within no time at all, I was running that place and I was doing very well. And I was making him a lot of money and he was taking good care of me. and I'm in a Denny's restaurant one night, and the guy that I used to work for and stole from and paid back was sitting in there with his wife, and I started talking to him. I said, how you doing? And he was a little down in the dumps. I said what's going on? He said, well, he says I've been wanting to retire. He says I'm burnt out, and I tried to sell the store, and the deal fell through because it had a gambling license and a liquor license were part of the store and the man who was buying it couldn't get the approval and he got it back in his lap and I don't know why I said this, I don' t know these words were not of me but I said to him God I'd love to buy your store if I only had the money and he looked at me and he said what's your day off and I told him, he said let's have lunch and we had lunch and I met him at the same restaurant as Denny's and he's got this paperwork all there and he showed me on paper some stuff and he made me a proposition if you come back to work for me and run my business and you can get the they said it's not doing very good right now because it's nobody's really been at the helm but if you can run it you get the profit up to a certain level out of that additional profit you will earn a piece of the business if you keep it to this level you'll get 10 percent a year at the end of five years will be equal and i want you to buy me out and you Can Buy Me Out out of the profits of the small cost you die and i said i said yeah you bet and i went to work there and that company was doing about $600,000 a year. And at one point I started opening other stores and we were up to about $10 million a year at one point. I sold the last pieces of that corporation except for the real estate which I still own and the business had paid for over the years last year. And I'm retired. I'm a retired younger than anybody I know. Retired well. and as a result of that amends I wouldn't have had that business if it wouldn't been for that amaze and not only am I grateful for Alcoholics Anonymous my daughter who is 17 is grateful because she will be in good shape for the rest of her life as a resolve of that immense and her children's children's children will be alright as a resolved of that because of the real estate that's involved and i i don't know i i was on my knees in a little beat-up apartment at a you know several years sober and i stood at a turning point and maybe maybe i could have swept it under the rug and not drank i don' t know i suspect i might have drank over it or i might have just gotten so weird in aa that i i'd have been i've been a fringer on the edge just suffering acutely from alcoholism, waiting for the Prozac generation to evolve so I could have something for my alcoholism. I might have been that guy. But I wouldn't have the life I have today, I know that. And I'll tell you what I've discovered over the years. And I get a lot of guys that are sober a long time and they're financial disasters. And some of these guys have made really good money over the years, and it's a weird thing. They'll tell you things like, I make more money than I've ever made, and the more money I make, the broker and more debt I get. And they'll say things like that to me. And they will have their credit cards maxed out in their financial disaster areas. And I will start to work with them, and without exception, we will always find that there's unmade financial amends. And it's usually ones that they could get away with and nobody could ever touch them for. And they kind of slide with it. But you never get away with anything here, really. And I got a guy right now who he's almost 20 years sober and he's been in a disaster area for a long time. And he's chipping away. He's almost done. And he is more than halfway through but he's not done yet and his life is turning around financially already. And I think it's some kind of karmactic thing that happens. You know what, if you've ever seen, anybody here seen the movie Flatliners? I think that's a ninth step amends movie. It's about these doctors that find out that are haunted by these things that come back into their life as a result of these experiences, these laboratory controlled experiences with death and they're haunted by these ghosts that they think are killing them and it's not the ghosts. There's a scene where this one doctor, he thinks there's this little boy trying to stab him with a knife and then for a brief second it shows what's really going on. He's the guy with the knife, right? And I'm the guy who destroys my own life because I ain't even. And yet when you're in the middle of that, you never get that Because it doesn't look like, it looks like a lot of bad luck. It looks like they're doing this. It looks Like I can't get a break. But I am the guy behind, I'm the guy Behind the curtain pulling the strings. I just don't know it. And one of the things that happens when you make, there's a, my friend Clint says something I love. He says there's A tremendous difference between doing all your amends and all of them but One. tremendous difference and uh i uh i really i've i've loved to watch people clear up the wreckage of their past and what happens it seems like we get lucky when we do that we get lucky. There's a promise on page 127 of the book, and this was pointed out to me in early sobriety, and I think that this is one of the greatest and truest principles. The middle of the the middle of the page in that paragraph the fourth line down it says although financial recovery is on the way for many of us we found we could not place money first for us and here's the promise the cause and effect it says for us material well-being always followed spiritual progress, it never preceded it. And you can look around your home group and you can see the guys that put money first and they come in and they build these tremendous lives and within seven or eight years it all falls down on them. And they do the same thing. I got one guy, he calls me his sponsor. I'm not his sponsor, he called me once every three years whether he needs to or not. I mean, I'm no sponsor. But he has made and lost millions and he's always broke. Right? He starts these big companies and they go like this. And then he goes, starts, he's down to sleeping on somebody's couch again, 15 years sober. And then He goes up, builds another company. And I think that it's impossible for me to progress materially until I progress spiritually first. Because what happens, I will create a life of abundance I secretly know I don't deserve. and I will find a way to make my outsides match my insides eventually one way or another. I think I am compelled to make my outsiders match my insights and if I have a life that I secretly in the back of my head know I don't deserve because I ain't even and I know what I did to those people I never made it right, I know these people over here I never paid back and I think i get away with something i don't get away with something because i'll turn it on myself i will eventually get even with i am destined to get even one way or another one way another i can't avoid that spiritual truth and i will either get even by making it right to you and paying back the money and making the amends, or I will get even with me and continue to get even with me. And I will continue to sabotage my own life. And the problem is when I do that, I never get it. I don't know that I'm doing that. It never occurs to me that I'm doing that someone would step back and look at my life if they're going to come to either one conclusion, either one of two conclusions, either you're doing this to you, or you're the greatest bad luck magnet on the planet. Anyway, I'm real big on amends. I think sometimes it's the last frontier. Scott? Morning, I're Scott Lee. I'm an alcoholic. I ran out of these little handouts. I had some more printed if you need one. They're right up here. I was reminded as Bob was talking around my part of the world we do the nine step promises as part ofthe opening of the meeting somebody one time made the mistake of handing the promises to a girl that was still in treatment and she did the greatest misread of all time I think and here it is fear of people and of economic insecurity will level us another one I heard in a meeting one time that I just loved And this girl wasn't trying to be profound or make anybody laugh, like I am. But what she said was, I'm having trouble getting a grip on letting go. Don't you love that? And something else they say in my home group is that you take your problems to your sponsor. You take your solutions to your meeting. We're having better meetings since we got to that. Talk a little bit about step 10. We're on page 84. middle of the page this thought brings us to step 10 suggest we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes i think as we go along is the active phrase here i personally separate steps 10 11 this way for me the morning half of step 11 is checking in with god and the evening half ofstep 11 is checking out i have a new employer I clock in, I clock out. Step 10 is as we go along. It has to do with staying present in my own life moment by moment through the day. That's the difference. I don't do a 10-step inventory at night. I do an 11-step embroidery at night I do a ten-step invertory during the day and I think there's a slogan that applies to that and that's easy does it because when I'm running Mach 2 with my hair on fire I don' t notice it as I make the mistakes and also it talks about on page 59, the short form of the step. It says continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admit it. If I wait until 1115 tonight to take the inventory, I can't very well promptly admit now, can I? So it's about being present in my own life moment by moment. That's what this is about and I have to slow down if that's going to happen for me. And I thought Bob made a great point about the when. It's when we are wrong not if. We are not saints. Further down the page our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. I believe this is the first time they've asked me to understand anything. A friend of mine tells a story of calling his sponsor one day and he says, he says sponsor, he says I've been thinking and then click, zzzz. He says oh gee we got cut off. So he dialed the number again and he said sponsor, he says yeah. He says I'm going to call and he goes I've bee thinking and then I click, zzzzz. Called back the third time and started to response and says wait a minute I don't remember telling you to think. That wasn't your assignment. This hadn't been about understanding yet. And now it's telling me at this point I can begin to grow in understanding and effectiveness. I think it's because I've taken the trash out by now. I've dug the poison out of my soul, the hatred in step four. I've drugged the old anger out, the resentments. I'm in the process of outgrowing the fears. I have a new sexual ideal that I'm living up to. I'm prepared to make the amends. I've invited God to take all of me, good and bad. I have an amends list of people I've harmed. I've done everything I can to make those amends, So I've taken the trash out. And we're going to offer this thing to God. Let's clean it up first. The book doesn't say anything at all about God doing for me what I could have done for myself. So I have to do my part. And now, at this point, with the trash taken out, I can begin to grow in understanding and effectiveness. It's not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. We chased that one through the book earlier, but I find that on about eight or nine different pages. and then it says when these crop up that's not if all right that's when i want to talk to another a lot of people here are under a year i was i'm really thrilled that you're here one of the things i was taught in early recovery is what i was going to say when someone offered me a drink because it's not an if question now if you take that as an if-question it can leave you kind of shaky and i came up with an answer and the answer that i give is no thanks i've had enough now there's a danger with that one that happened in a business situation one time and some people who didn't know me were with me myself and my business partners and we were in a bar waiting for our table in a restaurant and everybody ordered a drink and i ordered an orange juice and this other guy said well wouldn't you rather have a drink i said no thanks i've had enough and my partners came apart laughing and we had to tell them why and and it didn't hurt us I have never have found a place where being in recovery has harmed my business. Nowhere has it ever harmed my business. So when these crop up, what's the series of events I'm supposed to take when these drop up? Item one, pray. We ask God. This is the first of two prayers in step 10. We ask God to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately. I would think a sponsor, a spiritual advisor, somebody else that feels to you like they're solidly on the path. Make amends quickly. Can't do that if I wait till 11 o'clock tonight if we've harmed them and then sit and beat myself up no it says then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help the prescription for helping me is to help you and i'm not going to read them all i bet there's a hundred references to this in the book just a couple of them uh forward to the second edition roman numeral 15 x or 16 xvi forward to the second edition last paragraph at the bottom of the page begins with this physician count up four lines from that says he suddenly realized that in order to save himself he must carry his message to another alcoholic newcomers we need to sponsor you can I see a show of hands to the people in this room who are not willing to sponsor but eager to sponsor a newcomer we mean that If you're new and don't have one, please, please do someone a favor. Allow them to sponsor you. Next page at the top XVII. It also indicated that strenuous work that's not occasionally when it's really convenient and there's nothing on TV I want to watch strenious work, one alcoholic with another was vital, you know, once he has a death threat this is only if you want to live, vital to permanent recovery. Page 14 Last paragraph at the bottom of the page. My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity I wonder how important that is the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. And then the one I quoted earlier, the last line for if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others. He could not survive, that's another death threat the certain trials and low spots ahead. We promise you trials and lowest spots And I love this next paragraph. Here's my life encapsulated in a paragraph. My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm, this is Bill's story, to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution to their problems. It was fortunate for my old business associates to remain skeptical for a year and a half. Okay, don't think the people around you are going to be impressed by a 60-day chip. It may take them a while. Don't let that bother you. Stay on the path. It says, during which I found little work. I was not too well at the time. I was plagued. how do you like that word? Plagued by waves of self pity and resentment this sometimes nearly drove me back to drink but I soon found that when all other measures failed work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I've gone to my old hospital in despair how do You love that? Despair. This is the prescription for when you have depression despair go to a hospital, take a meeting into a jail, get into a treatment center I'm talking to a man there I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going. Page 20. I'm just going to get a few of these, but I think it's important to hammer this one home. Top of page 20, first line. Our very lives as ex-problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs. On page 62, it had said above everything we had to be rid of this selfishness. They're saying it in different words here. page 70 we covered this one in step 4 last night but I hit it again in the middle of the page if sex is very troublesome we throw ourselves the harder into helping others we think of their needs and work for them this takes us out of ourselves quiets the imperious urge when to yield would mean heartache I'll do one more page 89 very top practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics back to page 84 so what it says the series of events when these crop up is ask god at once to remove them let's pray discuss them with someone immediately probably a sponsor make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help that's the prescription now we know what to do with our mistakes we have a very very clear set of directions what to doing we make mistakes says we have ceased finding anything or anyone even alcohol Page 113. I'm sorry, 103. Italics at the bottom of 103. After all our problems were of our own making, bottles were only assembled besides we have stopped fighting anybody or anything. We have to. I've got to get out of the fight. Got to get back to the bottom 84 for by this time sanity will have returned. Boy, there's a promise. we will seldom be interested in liquor if tempted we recoil from it as from a hot flame if your history with booze is like mine that is a sane reaction I'm told there are two kinds of sanity there's sanity of mind and there's sanity of action and I think sanity of actions is the important one 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's never happened they put us in there for acting insane and nobody's ever been let out of one of those places for being sane. They let us out for acting sane. Yeah. So on the days when the squirrel cage is spinning up here and you get all of these wonderful ideas, if you don't act on them they won't know. And you can walk around on the street like everybody else. Sanity of action. We'll find that this has happened automatically. We'll see that our new attitude to liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part I think that's easily misunderstood if you've done everything we've talked about to this point you will have put in tremendous effort but the observation is the effort hasn't been involved in booze it hasn't been involved in changing your attitude we haven't been focused on the problem of booze because we've