Character Defects and Self-Will – Big Book Workshop – Part 8 of 10 – Bob D. and Chris S. – Bob Darrell and Chris Schroeder

We're passing around this ASCII basket, this Corona Extra ASCI basket. And we just want everybody to know that Bob and I are actually going to be channeling Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson for the answers. So, Bob, no, go on. All right. I get it. I'm selfish. I'm full of self-centered fear. Because of that, I'll lie. I'll lust. I'll steal. I'm greedy. I'm envious. I get resentful at you if you have more than I do. I get all this. I get it all. I get everything. But I've been that way a long time. I have defended myself against a world that is pretty scary with some of these things. I have offended myself against the world that seems very lonely and vacant. I've defended myself against my own sense of incompleteness and it hasn't worked out very well but yet I've been entrenched in this stuff for a long time so what do I do I finished the fifth step, I'm supposed to go somewhere where I can be at home preferably where I could be alone for an hour I'm going to look over what I did. I'm gonna say two prayers. I'm gonna thank God trusting that I know him better because I've just trusting that I've Just cleared some stuff out of the way between me and him and I'm Gonna thank him for that but I know it better. I'm gonna look over. What I did look at the first five steps and I'M gonna say another prayer. I'M GONNA ASK IF I'VE ADMITTED ANYTHING And then at the top of page 76, it says we can answer to our satisfaction. We then look at step six, which we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. And this is a good question. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we Have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all, every one? I made a mistake that a lot of people in AMA I finished my I was a little over four years sober I finished my fifth step and I said a prayer and then I went about the business of now that I have the information and now I know what basically what some of these defects I swore I'm just not going to be like that anymore. And I tried to overcome these things with willpower. And there is a principle in the universe that for every action, there's an opposite-equal reaction. And what I discovered is often with these defects of character, when I willfully tried to overcame them, I gave them torque. and there's a later place in the book where he talks about drinking and we try to overcome that with self-will it says we usually will have a bigger explosion than ever and that's what would happen the problem with me is when I'm willfully trying to conquer these things that are vested in me is I don't have the power to do it and I can push against them for a period of time, and then what happens is it springs back almost like a bungee cord effect. And you'll be really – I can be really, really good with some of this stuff for a while, and then I just seem to out-good myself. I'm just too good at being bad and too bad at being good, and when I have a bigger explosion than ever, I come out. Or sometimes some of these defects, when you apply willpower to them, If you've ever been to an arcade, there's this game in the arcade where you take a mallet and you hit moles with it. And you hit one mole there and it pops up over there. You hit it over there and then it pops over there And it's kind of like that. These defects which are manifestations of self and self-protection and self grandizement and self validation, they pop up other ways in different forms. One of the things that became very apparent to me, as it does to a lot of us, is after you take an honest look at your resented list, you go, oh my God, I'm such a judgmental guy. Oh my God. It's just so petty and judgmental. I'll never. That's terrible. I'm just not going to be that way again. And I'm determined. And what happened in short order is I started noticing the judgmental people in AA. And I started judging the judgmential people. I became so intolerant of the intolerant, which makes me exactly like them, right? In the Tao it says something interesting. It says, the chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken. In other words, I am just as hostage to the defect I am becoming the reformed whatever with than I was when I was participating. It's almost like the guy who's willfully not going to smoke and is so intolerant of other smokers or the guy who's not drinking on self-will and has all this just judgments and intolerance of people who still drink or the lust guy or the womanizer almost like a monk but judges everybody's sex conduct in AA then you're just as much a hostage to the defect when you're overcoming it like that through self-willed as you were when you were in the grip of it. Because I have to have God's help. And there was, I didn't know that there's a prayer, I Didn't Know That There's A Prayer Here That Step Six Involves A Degree Of Honesty And Genuineness Chuck Chamberlain Used To Say That This Was A Process Of Uncovering Discovering and then discarding. It's almost, it's very, with my defensive character, it's a very similar deal that what happened to me with alcohol. With alcohol, I really couldn't come here and bring my alcoholism to you until I saw that there was no value left in drinking. As long as I was a victim of the illusion that someday, someway, I'll control and enjoy my drinking, As long as I secretly believe or fantasize that there's a party there, I can't give you this deal yet. Because I've also got some value in it, right? It wasn't until I got to a place where I had exhausted all hope of getting back to the good old days that I was able to come here and bring my drinking here. And then in abstinence, I did a lot of the same stuff with my defects of character. In Bill's story, he goes through his experience first time through the steps with Evian. And he says that he talks about step six and seven differently than anywhere else that I've found in AA literature. What he says is he asks God to remove these things root and branch. Root and branch, as if they have two parts. And I think that makes perfect sense in my life. I have the consequences, but then somewhere within the defect is an inherent illusion of value or security or validation or something that's, an illusion that it serves me in some way. and so what happens is I've asked God at times to remove something but I don't really want him to remove it I want himto remove the consequences of it it's like saying to God please God take away the hangovers but let me still drink but the problem is you can't disconnect them they're a package root and branch it's the same plant it'sthe same organism it'sthesame deal and so I had to uncover and then discover the truth. And what's the truth? It's that these defense mechanisms that I've used for years to desperately try to manage my own life, to wrest happiness and satisfaction out of this world, to defend me against a life that I'm afraid is going to be very lonely and boring and threatening the truth is that they haven't really worked very well the big question and Chris mentioned it and my dear friend Clint used to say this all the time, the big questions so how's that working for you and when I wake up to the truth about the defect of character it's easy to move on to ask God sincerely to remove it. And there's a willingness prayer, and I didn't see this the first time through, so I didn' t say it, but it says if we find something we will not let go, we ask God to help us to be willing. There's a... This is kind of... I don't know if I... It's sort of like a partnership. There's an old adage that without Him, I can't. But without me, He won't. And I have to somehow align my willingness or my will with His. In other words, I haveと want what He wants. And that's been a problem all my life. I don't know about you guys, but I've always wanted. Now, sometimes I don't know what I want, but I want. Sometimes it's just more or different, but I want and I have never found, I've looked, I have never found the off switch of my wanter. I've never found it and there's always been a mild restless discontent within me, a vague feeling that but I could use a little more of something. I'm not sure what, I can use a little, no, I can feel it. I can say sisters, I need a little more of something. I don't know what. Maybe sex, money, I don' t know. But I needa little more o' something. And I've never found the off switch to go want her. So what do you do if you can't turn it off? The book says we align it with God. I can't stop wanting so I want what he wants. I start to align it with God. There's an old story that's made pretty good about this guy who goes into the psychiatrist's office and he's just a nervous wreck and he says, Doc, my God, you've got to help me. I can't take it anymore. And the doc says, What's wrong? He says, Well, Doc, my brother-in-law is living with me. He's insane, Doc. He thinks he's a chicken. Every morning when the sun comes up He runs up and down the block naked, blabbing his arms, clucking like a bird. The cops are at my house on a daily basis. The neighbors now will not talk to me. He's ruining my life. Please do something. And the psychiatrist says, well, that's not a problem. Here, sign these criminal papers. I'll put your brother-in-law in the state mental hospital. Your problems are over. He goes, oh, Doc, I don't know if I can live without the eggs. There's eggs? We don't hang on to stuff because we're self-destructive. There's an illusion of value. What's the value in anger? Well, if God took away my anger, then who's going to stand up for me the next time I'm threatened? Would people roll over me? Who would take care of me? Oh my God, maybe I'd really have to rely on God. what if I ask God to remove my lust and what if he did completely I mean would that be something Viagra could overcome? I don't know because what is lust isn't it really a defense mechanism against the life that I'm afraid is going to have no intimacy and be very very lonely and unexciting and uneventful. So I settle for lust because I don't know how to connect. I use lust because I'm bored and vacant and need stimulus. I use lust because sometimes I just don't like being alone with me. And it's a defense mechanism. The problem is, it's effective. I try to use lust to ward off a life of loneliness and how often coming out the back side of an encounter that was based on self and self-gratification how pathetically lonely I really feel coming out the backside of that. That's the problem with self- gratification, self-grandizement and self-seeking, it's almost, especially in the area of sex, it's Almost the opposite or the mirror image of going to Disneyland on the 4th of July. Now, if you've ever gone to Disneyland in California on the 5th of May, on the fourth of July, my God, it sits 98 degrees. It's 98% humidity. you'll stand in line for four or five hours to go on one ride with 7,000 kids that have overdosed on sugar. And you'll stay in that line and that seat and that humidity and you'll sweat and be miserable and you will feel like you are in hell and you do it for 30 seconds of excitement. self-gratification sex, you get the 30 seconds of excitement up front and then you feel like you're in hell for about 6 or 8 months afterwards. And it deteriorates your whole sense of yourself and how you feel about yourself and life itself. And then you get the emotional hangover. So can I wake up to the truth about this stuff. Can I see that there's no value here? I mean, AA doesn't... The thing that... I guess one of the things I was afraid of is that AA wanted to take away from me or wanted me to give up the stuff that's fun. We're not asking you to do that. We're talking about anything that's funny or works. If this worked, it wouldn't be defective. We're asking you to consider opening your mind to stuff that has really hurt you over the years. I saw a TV show when I was a little kid, and it really talked. I thought of it years, many, many years later, and I thought this is step six. There was a TV Show when I Was a Little Kid called Rescue Aid. I don't know if they had that where you guys grew up. It was on every week, and it was about these two paramedics that worked out of a firehouse. And they would go out on – they'd get calls and go out onto stress calls of people who were in trouble. In this one particular episode, they're called out, and they get to the scene, and there's this little girl, cute little girl. And she's got her arm waved into a vending machine, and I can't get it out. It's stuck up in there, and she's crying, and She's scared. And her parents are there, and they're hysterical. Please get my daughter out of there. And they try to pull on her and pull her out, and she's really wedged in there. Well, in a minute or so, the fire trucks show up. Now the firemen are pulling like saws and torches and stuff off the trucks because they're talking about cutting the door off the vending machine, which has got the little girl even more terrified. The parents are more hysterical, And the one paramedic is just kind of standing there watching the whole thing. And he kneels down to this little girl, and he says very quietly, he says, Sweetheart, you've got something in your hand. She goes, Uh-huh? What do you got in your hands? A candy bar? Would you let go of it? It's my candy bar! It's MY candy bar. It's My candy bar!! But if we can't get you out, lay into my candy bar. She won't budge, man. She's just out of the way to my candy bars. So he backs off, stands there for a minute, and he kneels down again. He says, sweetheart, I will make you a promise. I promise you that if you'll let go of that candy bar, I'll get you two candy bars She looks at him a little skeptical, and she says, really? He says. I promise, sweetheart. I'll give you two handy bars. And because she trusts him, she lets go of the candy bar and her arm slides out of the vending machine. What's your candy bar? You've got one, don't you? You don't hang on to stuff because you're self-destructive. I know it looks that way to your friends and family. They think you're in that case. There's a candy bar in every bit of it. I'm telling you there's a handy bar. And I guess the big question that the kindergarteners often fear, do you trust God? Do you trust Gott if you stop defending yourself and He'll take care of you? Do you really trust Gott? It's easy to say. What's harder to do is to take out on the streets and walk it every day. To actually live your life like you're in God's hands. That means I don't defend myself. I don' t stand up for myself. That means I don''t have to create nothing, I don ''t have manipulate, I don.''t have worry about nothing, I am in God's hands. I simply respond to whatever He puts in my path according to the spiritual principles you have been giving me. But what does the ego cry when you just hear that? Hear me saying it. I bet your ego is going, Yeah, but But what about me? What about me. It's going to happen to me. Let's see. I'll tell you something that's happened over the years. And this doesn't happen easily. But I've been forced into positions where there's no alternative. It's like it talks about on page 53. Where my whole life comes down. I'm crushed by some kind of results of some kind of self-real binge I've been on or some decisions I've made based on self. Sober. And I'm facing a self-imposed crisis. I cannot postpone or evade. I can't fix it. I can wiggle out of it. It's coming at me. Consequences are coming down the pipe. I see them coming and I don't know, I don' have a shot. I don''t have a game plan here. And i have to They fearlessly face the proposition that God's either everything or he's nothing. See, they're going to cut my arm off if I don't get it out of that vending machine. And I have to trust. And I've got to trust it. And what happens to guys like me is sometimes we're forced to this thing out of circumstances and not by virtue to actually trust God, to give something up, to actually hope. Hope that you guys haven't been blowing smoke up my butt about God for all these years. Hope that he really does love me. Hope that He's really going to take care of me. And what happens is He does. And He does, and He does And over the years, I don't know how many years it takes, I can't tell you when I started to trust God a little more easily than I did in the beginning when I don't have to be forced into it with a lack of alternatives where I just start conducting my life as if He's really got my back. But I tell you, somewhere along the line you do. It's odd. Spiritual growth is a funny thing because you change and yet I don' t know that any of us can pinpoint the moment of the change. It's just all of a sudden one day you realize that something's different. That something happened to you. That you're now, you're trusting God. Now when did that happen? I can't really tell you. But it sort of just happens. And then the next time the fear comes up, it's like you're, you sit on your hands and you try to act like one of God's guys, even though you're scared. I love the seven step prayer. In a sense, it's kind of a reiteration. in a sense of the basic principle of the third step. You know, we say, My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me for you to build with me and do with me as you will that you Should Have All of Me. And then it's... I love this. It says, I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character and that it qualifies which stand in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. I would not have said that. I think I would have said, well, okay, I'm ready for you to take away every single defective character that stands in the way of everyone realizing what a magnificent guy Bob is. Or I might have said it stands in a way of my being rich and famous or at the very least I think I said happy. Don't you get happy? No, you get useful. I'll tell you something. I've known happiness. It's fleeting. And usefulness, I'll take it any day. Usefulness, when I have been carrying out the purpose I've been divinely crafted to do, which is to help God's kids out of my own experience, what I've been useful. Usefulness will let you put your head on the pillow at night and feel that there's a rightness with yourself and the rest of the world, a sense of unity, a sense that you're not alone. A sense of peace that everything is in divine order and you can lay your head on that pillow and sleep well. Happiness to shine seems to wear off pretty quickly. I'll take usefulness any day. The ego doesn't like usefulness. The ego likes excitement and stimulation. But those of us that have had excitement, stimulation, and different degrees of happiness and have tried usefulness, we all seem to end up in the same place. It's an odd thing. You know, often guys like me, we go through life and we're takers. I have this sense that I'm going to fill my vacancies through acquisition. You know, if I have the right amount of property, the right amounts of... If I have enough $10,000 watches, if I Have enough $5,000 guitars, if I enough $80,000 cars, if I Enough sex, if I people liking me, if I love, if I if I can fill my vacancies to acquisition. But that's a dog you can't feed full. And isn't it odd that some of us find something that is just so sweet here? You're pushed by an unreasonable sponsor into helping others. When you really know in your heart you should be helping yourself. but if you go along with it and you forget yourself temporarily and you go out and help some pathetic person they probably won't even stay sober a year and give you some kind of credit and then you have those moments as I've had where you spend a couple hours with a guy and you fall in love with him and you have these moments that you never had before Or this stranger who can't do anything for you. He can't help you. He can introduce you to somebody that's going to help you, he can't get you a better job, he can' t do nothing for you, but all of a sudden you want him to be okay more than you want you to be okay. All of a suddenly you have those moments where you care about him that you would do just about anything to help him. And if you've had those moments, you'll drive home that night and everything in the universe lines up and it's perfect. It's perfect, it's perfectly perfect. And what happens is the way that feels is what I always fantasized it would feel like if I could fill my vacancies with enough of the stuff I think I need. And I could never fill my vocancies up through acquisition, it was always by giving. They always had it backwards. it always comes the vacancies are filled by pushing the stuff out to you and giving to you rather than pulling into me and that doesn't make sense to a taker and I could have never bought that idea except you pushed me into the actions and I had the experience and I tell you I understand why it is our primary purpose, I understand why Bill says in here that our real purpose is to grow in understanding and effectiveness, to be of maximum service to God, the people without us. Because in that, everything that we try to fill up is full. In that, we complete ourselves. I never could complete myself through acquisition. And not from a lack of trying. Drunk and sober. Not from a whack of trying and so we head towards usefulness we claim this purpose if you've ever seen movies or detectives of surrender this is really where the surrender occurs in steps 6 and 7 in a movie, a war movie what happens when someone has to surrender well what happens is they throw down their total everything they got that they could use to defend themselves with. If they've got hand grenades, they've gotta give them up. They've got a knife, they've Gotta Give It Up. They've Got A Gun, They've GottaGiveItUp. Anything that they can possibly use to defend themself and they have to render themselves defenseless and what happens is they sit down and what do we do? They wait for somebody to tell them what to do and just do whatever they're told to do. See, you can't be defended and surrendered at the same time. Imagine what would happen in a war situation if some guy said, I surrender, and he has a gun under his shirt. He could get killed doing that. You have to give up your ability to defend yourself. And self-centered fear will make you crazy just thinking about that. Just thinking about it. And yet, some of us come here because we get to this place and well into our sobriety where I just want to be God's guy. I don't want to fix me no more. I don' t want to do this no more." Some of the great moments of spiritual growth often in sobriete, sometimes 10, 15, 20, 25 years sober will often come from ending up in a place where you just can't stand you. And that is when the ego has been broken temporarily. I wish it would be broken permanently. But it's been subjugated. It's been pushed down. And then great changes can occur. Great changes. Chris, take me up a little bit. Following up this step, I think we're in the best, we have the best possible attitude for the removal of our character defects. I mean, we've just inventoried the causes and conditions and their manifestations of our failure at life. We've just shared that with a sponsor or a spiritual advisor or a fifth-step victim. And we've unloaded all of this stuff. Now, this puts us in the best possible attitude, I think, for the removal of these character defects because we've just seen and talked about their great destructiveness. But Steps 6 and 7 really are like a lifetime process. Yes, we move through them as we initially go through the steps, but the more you look at these steps, the more it really is a lifetime process. One of the best stories I've heard told that relate to Steps6 and 7 is this little kid named Joey. He's about seven years old, and he starts to get a toothache, a really bad toothache. And he knows that if he goes and he tells his mother that he's got a tooth ache, she'll give him, she'll crush, shove some aspirin, put him to bed, the toothache will go away. He knows that. Why doesn't he go to his mother and say, Mom, I've got a toothpache? The reason is, is that he knowsthat if he comes to her, he'll get that aspirin and the tooth ache will go away, but tomorrow morning a phone call will go out to Dr. Mengele, the dentist, and he's on his way into the dentist's office the next day, and there's going to be drills and blood and suction devices and, you know, pliers prying his mouth open, and, you know—he knows that after that there's gonna be a lot of pain, but he will end up walking away with fixed teeth. Now, when he's got that toothache, He doesn't want fixed teeth. He just wants the pain to go away. And a lot of times that's the way we approach our character defects. We see them selfishly. We see Them in a self-interested way. We just want to be out of the jackpot. We don't want to feel bad anymore. We don' t want to think perfect people. We don''t want everything removed. If everything is removed, what am I going to look like? All my special, unique personality characteristics could be gone, you know? It says in the 12 and 12, I might be the hole in the donut. You know, I don't want that. So a lot of times there is hesitancy. On the surface, we're willing to have these character defects removed. But there's a lifetime process for this willingness and humbly asking God to remove these character defections. When you look in the 12 and 12, it talks a lot about humility. Humility is a really, really important characteristic because humility comes from that surrender that Bob was talking about. So it's a process. The best possible atmosphere to be in for the removal of your character defects is to become willing to make amends where those defects have caused harm to others and to actually go out and make amends for where those defects of character have harmed others. You know, so we look, we then move directly from step six and seven into step eight, which is we make a list of people that we have harmed. It says in this book that we kind of made that list when we did the fourth step. And I would say most of, probably 90% of the people in the institutions that we need to make amends for comes off of that four-step list. I like to ask the people that I work with to do a separate list, to pull it off of the four-stepped list and do a different list. And I've found, again, I am not a slave to mechanics. If there's a way that you do your list that works for you, then that's the way you should do it. What I've done to use index cards are very different. They help me out. And what I'll do is I'll put index cards together for the people and the institutions that I've harmed. And on the front of the card, I'll putting the person or institution. I'll how to contact them. And if I don't know where they are, I'll basically put fine. And if, if I'm, if I'm willing right then and right there to go make the amends, I will put a plus on the top right hand side, which means I'm ready to go. And you know, I get in the car, I'll do it right now, I've got the willingness and I'm read to do it. Here however, like a lot of us, you know we have a lot of times trepidation or resistance, it's usually based on self-centered fear to make an amends. I'll put a minus, or I'll ask the guys that I work with to put a bonus up there, which means you understand that this amends needs to be made. You just don't think you have the spiritual fortitude to make it right now. Now one of the things that happens with us with approaching these amends, well, there's a couple of things. One of them is sometimes we're guilty of editing. In other words, if we're just never ever going to make amends to that bastard, and we know this step process, we won't even put him in the fourth step. Sometimes we won'T even put them in the first step, but we won'T even list them on our eighth step because we're never going to makes amends for those bastards. Keep step eight and step nine as two separate spiritual exercises Do not edit. Because what I've found through this process is sometimes you don't have the power to go make that amount. You may not be ready for one reason or another. That doesn't mean you omit it from this process. What will happen a lot of times moving through your list or moving through the cards is as you start to tackle the ones that have the pluses, you start to take the minuses and turn them into the plusses. In other words, there's a momentum that happens. There's a moment that happens as you start to make amends. You start to get stronger. It adds power, that lack of power that we understand is our dilemma. We start to getting more and more power. And I have seen many, many minuses turned into pluses. I'll share, I don't know how much time do we have? About 20 minutes. About 20 months. I want to share this one story from one of my sponsors. He doesn't mind that I share this. He came to me, he had about 70 cards. Alright? This is from a lifetime of a Raven-Robin intelligence. He had about 75 cards. And he goes, before we get started, I want to explain something to you. This card here, I don't even know why it's in the pile because I am not going to make amends to this guy. This is the guy who sexually assaulted my underage daughter and I know I've got a resentment, I know that I've done some stuff but I am NOT going to make amens to this person. Now what the story was was this was a family member you know, on the in-law side, who got his daughter, who was 14 or 15, high and then took advantage of her. And when my guy found out about it, he took some action. He went over to the guy's house. He beat him bloody in front of his family. He got a hold of a prosecutor, and he had him prosecuted. And it split the family in half. And he was still so attached to this event that even for him to talk about it, he got red in the face, as a lot of us, I guess, could understand. Now, he's got about 70 of these cards, and he starts to move through them. And he gets 69 of these cards done. And a week goes by, another week goesby, he calls me up. He goes, Chris, I can't believe it. I am so pissed off. This one card is burning a hole in my head. I've got to do something about this. You need to help me with this. So he comes over to my house, and we talk about the approach. Bob said it earlier, good sponsorship is essential. It's vital when we're looking at these steps because if we go the wrong way with these events, we can shoot ourselves in the foot like you have no idea. It's a really, really good idea to get someone who's very experienced with amends and then cover this stuff. Cover your approach. Now, your approach is basically how you are going to contact this individual and then talk about what you see the amend looking like. That may not end up being like what you look like, but you need to be a little bit prepared with this and you need make sure that your motives are right. You need to make sure that you're not going to be causing any more harm. And there's a delicacy to this. Now, he sat down with me and we started to talk about it. And he shared basically what he did. And I go, well, what's the problem? He goes, the problem is I'm burning up with resentment. And I Go, okay, let's look at the fourth column in the Resentment Inventory. And he was very, very thorough with this. Basically, what we pulled out of the fourth column was he acted. Yes, he went over and beat this guy bloody. Yes, He had this guy prosecuted. He did it out of a vengeful, hateful feeling. He did It out of just sheer anger that He had for this person. He acted from that center of rage that we had. And we looked at that, and that's basically what his part was. So we talked about how to do the approach and how to do the amends. He calls a guy up, says let's meet at a neutral location. They met at a diner somewhere. And the guy brought all this paperwork. He wanted to go through all the court case and how he really wasn't guilty and all this stuff. And my guy basically says, look, I'm not really here to discuss that. I'm not here to discuss the case. I'm Not Here To Discuss Any Of That. I'm Here To Basically Share With You The Harm I Believe I'm Guilty Of Here. And He Basically Said To The Individual That He Operated From A Position Of Extreme Anger And Resentment And Vengeance When He Went After This Individual. He Did Not Make Amends For Having Him Prosecuted. That was probably appropriate. He certainly made amends for beating the guy bloody in front of his family, because that came from a place of rage. Now, did he want this guy coming to Thanksgiving dinner the next year? Absolutely not. But what he needed to do is he needed to get free. After this amends, this individual changed like, he is an unbelievable example of an AA member in good standing today. He's one of the go-to guys in North Jersey to get, if you want a really good sponsor, somebody that's really going to get you moving in the right direction spiritually. And he came alive after this particular event. So becoming willing to make these amends sometimes is a process. Don't short circuit yourself because you're absolutely sure you're never are going to make the amends because you don't know. The great thing about the steps is each step gives you the power to do the next step when you do it. You know, this is about a growth process. So don't edit. And, you know, if you're a sponsor, be very, very careful about giving somebody a pass on certain amends. Certain amends, you need to do that because you're going to see the motivation that the individual has. There might be ulterior motives to going and making the amends and you needと be guiding as a sponsor with these processes. But I've seen too many sponsors basically say things like, well, you don't really need... I didn't really go around and make calls. You don't realy need to dо that. You could be shortchanging somebody from the true depth of their spiritual experience if you rob them of their ability to get right with the universe. This whole process is about getting the roadblocks out of the way, the roadblock that we threw up through living a life of selfishness and self-centeredness. We put roadblocks up that block us off from God, they block us off from our fellow man, they lock us off from a true useful and peaceful life. And a lot of this process is taking those roadbloacks and moving them out of the way. And I don't see any step as more powerful to putting muscle into your recovery, then steps eight and following step eight up was step nine. Now, there's a number of different kinds of amends. You know, as we move into step nine, they're broken out into categories. They're broken down into the people we resent, the man we hated. They're broke it out into money that we're owed. It's broken out in two crimes that we've caused. It's broken out into stepping out on the missus. You know, if you can imagine that some of us have ever done that. All of these need to be listed out on the cards. And we need to start the prayer process for willingness. We need to become willing. This is about how free do you want to be is the question you need to ask yourself when you're approaching these steps. because truly what we want to escape from is the burden, the burden of self. It says now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past. This is about repairing the damage where we can. It's not about mumbling and I'm sorry. In North Jersey AA, during my early years, I would go to 9th Step or even 8th Step meetings. And the most you would hear is somebody raising their hand and sharing something like this. Oh yeah, I did my 9th step with my wife and family and they didn't really take it very well. And that's not all the personal experience that we would hear shared. Most of the time, it was some muttonhead would raise their hand and say something like this. I haven't done this stuff formally, but I'm going to take this meeting hostage for the next 10 minutes and talk about my opinion on what I think this stuff is all about. Has anybody ever been in a meeting like that? Oh boy, yeah. That should be illegal. Opinions can be killing things in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's through experience. It's true experience that we really learn. And I'll tell you, that was so accepted. That kind of thing was so accept in North Jersey in the early 90s, that type of approach to sharing in the step meetings. And then somebody would come in and raise their hand and say, you know, I'm so-and-so. I'm just back from California. I had six amends that I needed to take care of. They're my last six. I'd like to share a little bit of my experience on those amends. And people would, like, put their head down. Like, oh, here's a know-it-all. Here's somebody that's making us all feel small. You know, here is somebody that is Mr. Dudley Do-Right here. And I'll tell you, it was backwards. It was backwards back in my day. If you're new, you know, if you're just coming back, if you haven't gone through these steps, Listen for people's experience with this stuff. My experience is I've gone through about four series of cards. There's been some times I've going through the steps and I did not finish my amends. And what I did was I went, you know, things happened and I went back and I started over. But there's been four distinct times when I've go through the step and I have finished my amend to the ability that you can finish them. I've done the approaches and everything I could possibly do with all of my cards. Now, the difference between someone who has unfinished amends and the difference Between Them and Someone Who Has Finished All of Their Amends to the Ability That You Can Finish Them is the difference entre night and day. It's an experience that you don't want to miss. How about being right with every single person in the world? I was doing a talk one time at Rutgers University. They have classes there where they train alcoholism counselors. They train people to go out and counsel us, okay? And this was like a graduate class, and they asked me to come in, And the nature of the talk was basically the efficacy of the 12-step process in alcoholism recovery. And that's basically what I did. And I talked about the result of freedom from this process. And one of these counselors for me followed me out into the hall after I was done and started asking me, What about shame? What about fame? Don't you have to come to terms with shame? And I'm like, whoa, whoa. This is bizarre to me. And I said, well, you know, I don't know if I had to handle that separately. And he goes, well what are you talking about? I go, well let me ask you a few questions. I go have you ever inventoried your resentments, your fears and your harms to others in the way the big book lays out? And he says no. I go well then you've probably never shared that with God and yourself and another person then. He goes no. And I go, then you've probably never become willing to have God remove those defects of character. And he goes, no. I go over and you've never, you never asked God to remove those effects of character? He goes, No. And I guess when you never, you never made a list of the people and institutions that you've harmed. And he says, No And I goes, so you never went out and made amends for the harms that you caused in the past? And he said, No And I said, Then how the hell do you know? that you have to deal with shame for the rest of your life. Now, why don't you try that experience and then maybe you don't have to read shame books every night. You know? I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. But it's my personal experience that by doing the absolute best I could to set right the past and repair the damage, I didn't suffer anymore because of it. Does that make any sense? See you back here at 15 hours, 22 minutes.