Big Book Study Review – Part 8 – Joe Hawk and Triva – 1992 — Joe H.

And that was to write down some notes to myself so I would be reminded of anything I never thought I'd tell anybody, the stuff I thought I would take to my grave. And when that first fifth step was done, I really felt like I'd gone through my entire life, that I hadn't left anything out, that I had been thorough. I think a fifth step is one of the most incredible experiences in this program. I have done several myself of my own inventories. The last two years I've taken my fifth step with more than one person because of a group of people in Denver that talked about doing that, multiple fifth steps. And the book talks about persons with whom to take this confidential step. Last year I fifth stepped with five different people in two days, getting a different perspective. I took a fifth step from each one of them and had an amazing experience, where up to that point I had only fifth stepped with one man. And what moved me past that was I woke up one day, not this last time through the work, but the time before with an inventory in my head said, this is the only man I can read inventory to. And the next thought was, if you believe that, you're a dead man. And I needed to let some people that know me get to know me on that level. And I fifth stepped with a woman, an addict, an alcoholic, and a woman who was my best friend the next day. It was absolutely incredible. My sponsor's sponsor, who has 32 years, was 27 years sober. And he was doing some stuff he wasn't happy about. And he flew to Chicago to a man named Paul Martin, who's 43 or 44 years sober, and went through the first three steps with Paul, and then flew home to Indianapolis and wrote inventory. And then came back to Paul's group with his inventory done, and they put you up in a motel. And one after another, they send people by from 30 days sober to 42 years sober, one after another. He fifth stepped with nine people in a weekend, went home, sat down with his wife, saw some stuff he'd never seen in 27 years that he owed as far as amends, and decided he and his wife to sell the house, move into a trailer, pay off those financial amends. And I saw the guy who was more free than I ever knew him in nine years. This is a part of the program, I think, where you really start to decide, do you just want to settle for relief, or do you really want to go for freedom? I have heard a lot of fifth steps. I'm sure that JPs will be one of the more momentous inventories of all time that I'll ever have to hear. I mean, that was just one. I think I've got one little fourth column. Can you imagine what I'm going to have to listen to? It talks about going to a closed-mouthed understanding friend. It talks about him being honored that you would come to him with some kind of a confidence. It also talks about when it's done. And there are some great promises, and here are some more promises before halfway through the ninth step. After the fifth step is done and you've withheld nothing, you will be delighted. You can look the world in the eye. You can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Your fears will begin to fall from you. You'll fear the nearness of your Creator. You may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now you begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. You will feel you're on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. And then you return home. And here's the stuff I told you. If we hadn't been thorough and somebody sent you home to read this paragraph after a fifth step, and you hadn't been thorough, you wouldn't understand what they mean in this paragraph on page 75. Returning home, find a place where you can be quiet. Carefully review what you've done. Thank God from the bottom of your heart that you know him better. Now there's a good question. How do I know God better from just spending five or six hours or however many hours it took looking at self? Well, what I realized is from writing inventory the way it is in the book, I know a lot about what God isn't. Therefore, I know a lot more about what God is. It's just like the 11th step. The more you find out about what God's will isn't, the closer you get to what God's will is. And I knew God better because I knew a lot about myself, truth, and what God isn't. I found out a lot about truth. I found out a lot about God. God is truth. Take the book down and review the first five proposals. Have I admitted anything? For I am building an arch to which I'll walk a free man at last. Is my work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? The cornerstone at page 47? The keystone on page 62? They'll give you another stone on page 97. The stones that make up this arch. How about the cement? Have I skimped on the cement? Am I trying to do recovery without fellowship or am I trying to do fellowship without recovery? and have I tried to make this cement without sand? And if somebody hadn't shared with you the recipe for the cement on page 17 and the cornerstone and the keystone and all the stones that we've put in place, you wouldn't know what the heck they meant at that review after returning home after the fifth step. But we've covered that, and I go through that. And when ready, now if you're really aware of what this book does, on page 76, you'll notice a major shift in what the book starts to talk about between everything up to page 76 and now that you're on 76. And the shift here is you should start to trust the power. From a book that was telling me I can't trust my own mind, self-will doesn't work, they now start to say when you're ready, when you've answered these questions to your own satisfaction, trust the power. Major shift between 75 and 76. You may have had spiritual beliefs, but now you begin to have a spirit experience. You begin to trust power. When you've answered these questions to your own satisfaction, look at step 6. Are you now ready to let God remove from you all the things you've admitted are objectionable? Can he now take them all, each and every one? We add one from the 12 by 12 and from the ABCs. ABCs. Not only can he, but will he for me as I am with all this mud on my face. Remove from me all the things I have admitted are objectionable. If you still cling to something you're not willing to let go of, ask God to help you be willing. And then they ask you to trust the power again. When ready, do the seven-step prayer. And there's an amen to that prayer I started when I took the third step. And I moved through that. And I moved through that. And I moved through that. Six and seven are not a place to stop. It's not a place to list your defects and what order you're going to work on them and assume that you can work on any of them. Six and seven is where God starts to work. And you know you've done six and seven when you're making an eight-step list. I love when I hear somebody working six and seven. They're not working six and seven. They're doing everything they can to keep from doing eight and nine. And that'll be the day anyone in this room, anyone in this room ever removes any of their defects or shortcomings. You know, when I've tried to do that, it turns into one of those carnival acts where you pop this one down and this one pops up, and you pop that one down and this one jumps up. When you've sincerely done six and seven, you will know it because you'll be making a list of amends. And I move into the eight-step, and I go back to my inventory, and I use the resentment inventory, I use the fear inventory, and I use the sex inventory, to get a list of people and institutions that I've harmed. I make that list. I add some that didn't make my inventory that God reveals to me. And then I go through an exercise about seeing which ones I feel diffident about or I'm not willing to approach, and I mark my list of amends, plus or minus, willing or not, and I don't try to change it. My sponsor got free on that exercise in the Colorado State Penitentiary while he was locked up. Going through, looking through the list, seeing which ones you feel that you're not willing to do yet. Then I put each of those names on a card, and I put plus or minus. I'm either willing to do it or I'm not. And I fill the rest of the card out with their phone number, address, or the word find. And then I fill the rest of the card up with the harm that I'm clear on. And that's how important the fourth column is. Everything you need to make amends should be in your fourth column. So you can go to the person, and this is the format that I find, and I follow. I follow a five point format that's spread out between the next several pages. And it's hard stuff to find, and it came from people that have been doing this for a long time. I follow a five point thing whenever making amends. My rule is, if I can possibly see them face to face, I do them face to face. The exception to the rule is, a phone call, or if they can't be seen, or there are people that can't be found, I send out an honest letter. If you don't know where they are, get it out of you. Send it to the last known address. Pray about where to send it. But you can finish every single amends. Don't let people in this program tell you, you'll never finish amends. You can do your part with every single amends on that thing, whether they're dead or not. I went to my father's grave. I went back for crimes. I went back to people that I could find. I sent letters to people I couldn't find. I went around the country. I had to go different places. I had to do what I wanted to do. I had to do what was necessary, because I wanted some real freedom. The first time through the work, I didn't finish amends. And I ended back up in step one, to keep from finishing amends. And the second time through the steps, I finished amends. The third time through the work, I finished amends. The fourth time through the work, I didn't. And the fifth time through, I was using one through nine to keep from finishing. I'm talking about a yearly inventory that shows me yearly amends. So I've been through the work nine times. I have finished amends six. Three times, I used going back through the work to keep from finishing those amends I didn't want to finish, and they ate me up. You will find very few people, and I hate saying this, but it's something I heard from somebody, and I started looking around to see if it was true. You will find very little alcoholic synonymous beyond the ninth step. I'm not talking about twelve. I'm talking about ten and eleven. You'll find a lot of people doing stuff with twelve, but you'll find very few that have ever finished amends. You can finish amends. I know a little kid named G.W., ex-gang member. Went through this work when he was three years sober. Got to amends, he had 350. Two hundred of them were breaking and entering. This kid spent three years going around south central Los Angeles. Thank God he had it. He hadn't been out of the state very much. He spent three years going around south central Los Angeles finishing 350 amends and finished every single one of them. And the guy's been on fire ever since. He's free. I could tell you stories about amends that would give you shivers. I was telling Treva one or someone one the other day about a man that was like a father to me. And he had five of us all put a little tattoo on our hand when we were young. We were 17. He was like 34. I was closer to him than my father. I wrote about him. And I made amends to his parents. And I made amends to his brother. And I wrote him a letter. And I never could go to his grave. And I was in Vegas two or three times a year since I've been sober. And last year on my birthday, I went to Las Vegas. I'd been there two times already that year and two times every other year. I went to Vegas for my birthday. And it wasn't like I decided today's the day. It was like I woke up and today was the day. I got a driver. I took them and my friends that were with me. Drove right to the graveyard that I hadn't been at in a long time. Way out in the suburb. Went right to it. Walked right up to the grave. Sat down in his grave. Made my amends. Looked down and it was 15 years to the day of his funeral. It was the day of his funeral I was there. I spoke here. I couldn't find. And I had three amends in California without ever even living here. I had three amends in California. Three of them I found and one of them I couldn't. The day I said a prayer and asked God to show me where this person was, I spoke at a meeting of Cocaine Anonymous that I would never go to. At some weird Dem Bones barbecue joint at 1130 on a... I would never go there. And I spoke there and a girl came up to me and said, did you get sober in Denver? I said, yeah. She said, do you know so and so? I said, as a matter of fact, I'm looking for so and so. And she said, she lives three blocks from you in Santa Monica. And that was the day I said a prayer about how to find that person. I know people that have wondered about where they were going to find somebody and pulled up to a stop sign after 10 or 12 years and there was that person at a stop light that they hadn't seen in all those years. You'll start finding stuff happening with amends that is absolutely unbelievable. Wow. So... Now, I was identifying because I've had some pretty amazing things happen to me as far as amends. You know, going to a pharmacist and turning and there's someone you've been looking for, you know, to make an amends. And not only that, but having the power to go up and do that. I don't know, just, I know we've got to wind this down and I was just sort of thinking as I was listening to Joe talk about the process and I was remembering, you know, really the way that I came in and I was sharing with you, like, going through the inventory process and being introduced to Triva, the real Triva, for the first time and how, you know, what I believed and my thinking and how it had blocked me and having to face for the first time that, okay, maybe I wasn't this wonderful person. You know, maybe every person that I'd ever had, in my life, you know, it was about me and it was about what I could get and I guess as I was listening to us go through this, it dawned on me, even with the sex inventory, you know, I was one of those people who when I finished my sex inventory I looked at it and most of it, when they asked what it should I have done, I should not have ever gotten involved in the first place. And practically every instance, you know. And what has happened to that, it's not like that. I mean, you know, it's like they say, I mean, I'm not well, but I'm sure I'm better than I've ever been. And I think that's what I want to share. That's the kind of hope. And that's probably why I continue because I don't want to drink and I have to remember that it is about alcohol. But it's also, for me, it's about the gift that I've been given. Because I wasn't someone who came here with this, you know, with a whole lot. I came here, I had material things, but there was nothing inside. There was nothing going on. You know, and I think about the kind of person that God is making me today. It's beyond anything that I could have really imagined, you know. And, I don't know, it's just such a gift. I lost my trend of thought too. I was going to say something else. Oh, I was thinking about the fifth step. That's what I was thinking about. You know, I... You did a band. I did a band with this man. And that was like just the most amazing thing. See, they told me that also I'm an egomaniac. My ego had to be smashed. And who wants to go and let, you know, a man, you know, see for who you are. I mean, not... I mean, because I was really the kind of person they talked about. I had these two characters going on. It was this one person that I would present to you, but then it was this real person, this other person, you know. And I had to share all of this with another human being, with myself first, and God, and then this person. And I thought about the freedom for the first time to be able to look the world in the eye. You know, and to realize that I was not a bad person. I'm an alcoholic who... I'm not a terrible... I'm not the worst person in the world, but I'm not what my head told me I was either. You know, and the freedom and all the promises that comes from doing that fifth step, you know, has allowed me to look with my head up high, you know, and to be able to listen to other fifth steps and give it up. It's like I came to Alcoholics Anonymous praying that no one would ever see me or know who I really was. It's like, God forbid they knew. And today, I'm able to share my experience, strength, and hope. And I really do not regret totally the past because that has become my greatest asset, you know. And I know that I don't take the credit that I have tapped into a power that can solve my problem and has solved my problem. You know, so again, I want to thank Al for asking me to come out. I wish my dad was here. You know, my dad's been sober a long time, but I don't know that he has what we have. You know, I wish he could have just been here. Maybe next time. And I want to say to Joe that I love you and I really appreciate you, you know, allowing me to share this with you. And I hope we all just can do what's necessary to have what they offer here. I'd like to spend another four hours just talking about 10, 11, and 12, but we can't do that because now is the real important stuff. If the paradox of step one is in the admission of no power, you receive more power than you've ever had. And the paradox of step two that I've experienced so far is in seeing where I don't believe. And I begin to come to believe that I think, and this is only as far as I've gotten, the paradox of step three is in deciding to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him and making a commitment in 4-9 to do that and making that commitment and being given the power to do that, you are given a new life and a will that you can start to use. You're not deciding to give something up. You're deciding to give something back. To be given another power and a new life and to be given a will that you can begin to properly use which is what the tenth step is all about. Proper use of the will with some instructions there of what to do when stuff crops up and start to really see that you're interested in improving a contact that you've been given and start to look at some other things and really go for it in the eleventh step and start to go for some stuff and be the kind of guy who is only concerned about himself and really be concerned about other people and seeing how he can help once in a while. It's an amazing thing for a guy like me because the only one I ever thought about was me and what I could get and living on that basis didn't get me what I want but living on a basis where I've decided to start to give and how can I help others I've been given more than I've ever wanted and that's a paradox too. I would hope that one person in this room that wasn't real excited about doing the steps when they came today or was somewhere in one of the steps early on or doing it the first time or had been around for a while to become excited about going for more than you've been given to go for a new experience to go on from where you're at or to get involved in this process at the beginning I would hope that that maybe happened for somebody and I would like to see if that happens and I would like to thank Al for inviting us and thank Treva and tell her how much I love her too I mean it's amazing that even after hearing her fist step I still want what she has and I'm willing to go to any length to get it Give hope for as long Thanks so much