Earl H – Steps 03 – 05 – Earl H.

Any questions so far?\nHow could there be?\nSure.\nI don't know.\nAsk it, basket.\nThat's what we need.\nWe have one.\nOkay.\nNo one has any questions so far?\nYes, ma'am.\nHi, Amanda.\nThe question is,\nwho gives a hoot\nwhat kind of alcoholic we are?\nWhy should we have to fit into any particular category?\nExcellent question.\nSeconded by this woman over here.\nAnd I agree with you.\nAll that stuff is in the beginning, I think,\nis people can say,\noh, well, I identify with that\nor identify with that a little bit\nor identify with that.\nAnd it just allows you to move on.\nYou'll hear people in meetings say,\noh, hi, my name is Bob.\nI'm a real alcoholic.\nOr, you know,\nI mean, as opposed to the rest of us, you know,\nwho thought AA sounded like fun.\nWe'd just come.\nYou know?\nAlcoholic.\nYou know?\nI agree with you.\nWe never, well, we can't point to anybody else and say,\nyou know, I'm an alcoholic.\nWell, actually, in a meeting I did here one time,\nit was one of the greatest things I ever saw in an AA meeting.\nI was at my home group on a Monday night\nand they asked for anybody that's new\nto stand and give us your name and the nature of your disease\nso we can get to know you better at the break, right?\nAnd at my meeting, we actually do that, right?\nAnd this guy gets, anybody new in this camp,\nyou know, he's a good guy.\nHe's a good guy.\nHe comes up and this guy stands up.\nMy name is Claude and I'm an alcoholic.\nAnd he goes,\nand so's that guy over there.\nAnd sits back down, right?\nI thought that was the greatest thing I ever said.\nYou know, he's right.\nThat guy is.\nI've heard him say it before.\nI love that stuff, right?\nYeah.\nIt's just, it's just,\nit's just stuff that you can go,\nyeah, well, that's me.\nCarry on.\nYou know, I'm an alcoholic.\nWho identifies me as an alcoholic is me.\nNobody else.\nYou, nobody else.\nYou know, what we identify with,\nhow we come to that, you know,\nis how we come to that.\nA lot of us knew it before we got here.\nIt's amazing for me,\nbecause I'm a low-bottom,\ndamn near dead drunk\nwhen I got here.\nI mean, there was, I got here and went,\nyep, that's me, yep, that's me,\nyep, that's me, yep, that's,\nyou know what I mean?\nThere was no question.\nWhat I, it was amazing to me,\nbecause it's outside my own experience,\nbut I see it happen,\nare the ones that come to A\nthat aren't convinced,\nhave somehow gotten here,\nnot yet convinced\nthat this is where they need to be.\nIt must have something to do\nwith the amount of education\nthat's gone on in our communities\nover the last 25 years\nthat they find their way in here.\nYou know, they got the nudge from the judge,\nyou know what I mean,\nor a family member's forced them in,\nor, you know, they're here under threat\nof some terrible event, you know.\nAnd they go through this process\nand discover that they are.\nYou know, I,\nit's just, it's just amazing to me\nto watch that happen.\nI love watching that happen.\nIt happened to a guy\nI'm sponsoring right now.\nLet's see, he's got to have\nabout 57 days now.\nYeah, 57 days.\nHe's very funny, too.\nWe were at a meeting.\nHe had, the last meeting\nI was at with him,\nhe had 51 days,\nand there was a guy who'd shared\nright before him who had 41 days.\nSo he had 10 days more than this guy.\nSo the guy's sharing about, you know,\nhis plight as a recovering alcoholic\nat 41 days, right?\nAnd the guy's going through a lot.\nAnd my guy raises his hand,\nyou know, Dave, alcoholic,\nand he looks at the other guy\nand he goes,\nand I got 51 days.\nAnd brother, I got to tell you,\nI've been there.\nYeah, last week, you were there.\nOh, God, we're classic, aren't we?\nSo, did I help with the question?\nThank you.\nWe all right over here?\nAll right, good.\nAny more questions?\nWe've covered so much.\nAll right.\nAll right.\nStep three.\nMade a decision, right?\nTurn my will and my life over to the care of God.\nI mean, to keep this one simple,\nfor me, some people have,\napparently have no problem with this step.\nThey come in with a significant\nspiritual life in place.\nIt's odd that the normie thinks,\nhow can you be an alcoholic\nand have a spiritual life at the same time?\nEasy.\nYou have a profound faith in God\nand you drink uncontrollably.\nThat's how you do that.\nThat's how that happened.\nBut the third step for me was very scary.\nThis was a very scary step\nbecause I knew going into this process\nthat my life was on the line.\nI knew that I was in the last house on the block.\nI knew that if this didn't work for me,\nI was a dead man.\nI knew that there wasn't another,\nthere wasn't another game\nthat I was going to get in\nthat was going to help me with this.\nThis was going to have to work\nor I was screwed.\nBecause I was so angry at God when I got here,\nwhat the third step meant to me was,\nwas I going to become willing\nto turn my will and my life\nover to the care of a God\nI was incredibly angry at?\nWas I willing to turn my will and my life\nover to the care of a God\nI saw as an unjust and unforgiving God?\nWas I willing to turn my will and my life\nover to the care of a God\nI may or may not understand?\nI may or may not believe in?\nThat this is all up for grabs.\nThis unseen, unknown, untouchable presence.\nThis experience where I had yet to meet the individual\nwho could tell me about the face of God.\nI didn't, this was really an alarming leap\ninto the abyss, if you will,\nfor somebody like me.\nThe beauty of this thing though is,\nis that on the one side I had my experience\nof 16 years of chronic alcoholism and drug abuse.\nAnd on this end,\nI had a bad relationship.\nI jumped.\nI pulled the trigger.\nI got down on my knees\nand to the best of my ability\nturned my will and my life\nover to the care of a God\nI did not understand.\nThat was the best I could do.\nThe best I could do is,\nI don't understand.\nIf this God thing,\nif this is what I must seek\nto relieve me of these problems,\nI don't understand.\nI don't understand.\nI don't understand.\nI don't understand.\nI don't understand.\nHow can this be the same God\nthat I've had these other, right?\nThere was so much self.\nThere was so much self\ninflicted upon this relationship.\nThere was so much willful behavior\ninflicted upon this relationship.\nThere was so much dogma\nthat was in my head\nthat I was inflicting this relationship with\nthat I couldn't see it for what it was.\nIt was so befuddled and enmeshed.\nI couldn't just let it be what it was.\nSo, I did this.\nI turned my will and my life over to the care of,\nby getting on my knees\nand saying the third step prayer\nand getting to the third step prayer.\nAnd getting back up.\nAnd how that felt was,\nand I felt it was spooky.\nRight?\nI mean, what I basically felt was\nis that my life is on the line.\nI just took a pair of dice\nand I don't even know what the game is we're playing.\nAnd I threw them out on the board.\nHaving no idea what to expect.\nThat was the leap of faith.\nRight?\nIn spite of my own experiences,\nI must go this way.\nIn spite of my own crippled belief system,\nI must go this way.\nThose who have what I want\nare saying go this way.\nSee, that's the amazing thing about Alcoholics Anonymous\nis I'm sitting around in meetings\nand there's guys like the late Fred Ellis.\nRight?\nIn these meetings.\nAnd this man would talk\nand I believed everything that man said.\nIf I stood next to him,\nif I felt like I'd taken 20 milligrams of Valium,\nI'd just...\nNice.\nFred makes me feel good.\nNow, I was too afraid to talk to Fred.\nRight?\nSo, at the Thursday Night Beginners Workshop\nin Brentwood, California,\nFred was always there.\nAt the end of the meeting,\nFred would stand up,\nlike right over here by the podium,\nand guys would come up and talk to Fred.\nGuys he sponsored would check in with him\nand ask questions\nand Fred would share his experience,\nstrength, and hope with him.\nAnd I would stand behind Fred\nand burglarize their conversation.\nRight?\nJust...\nJust...\nI did this for many, many weeks.\nAnd then one day,\nFred was talking to these guys\nand all of a sudden,\nFred turned around and went,\nHi, Earl.\nHow are you?\nStuck out his hand.\nAnd I went...\nParalyzed.\nMy God.\nHe knows my name.\nYou know?\nWhich was entirely too close\nto a relationship for me\nin early sobriety.\nRight?\nAnd there he was.\nHi.\nHi.\nHi.\nHi.\nGot to go now.\nYou know, run home.\nPace.\nJesus Christ.\nFred knows my name.\nAh.\nSo I did this step.\nIt felt like...\nYou know when you get on the roller coaster\nand you're going up the thing\nand it's going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.\nThe third step is where you feel the...\nYou hear the click and stop.\nIt's like,\nwell,\nbuckle your seatbelt.\nHere we go.\nYou're on the ride now, pal.\nAnd that's how it felt to me.\nIt felt to me\nbecause as soon as I did it,\nit felt a little spooky.\nIt felt like,\nwow, man.\nI really did that.\nI did that\nas well as I could do it at that time.\nAnd I got back in my seat\nand the book...\nBasically, the book says at that point,\nwe were hoping you're serious\nabout what you just did.\nIt's like,\noh, now you tell me.\nCouldn't you have said,\nyou better be serious\nbefore you do this.\nRight?\nThat would have...\nI could have hovered right there\nat the brink of fear.\nThree for several years\nhaving heard that.\nBut it said,\nwe hope you were serious\nabout what you did\nbecause, see,\nnow we have to embark upon\na plan of rigorous action.\nRight?\nOr this is all\njust a conversation.\nRight?\nA lot of guys\nsitting around in the bars,\nyou know,\ngoing,\nyou know,\nthat third step is a bitch.\nAnybody in here\never heard of a guy\nnamed Mike Ross?\nIt's apparent\nI need to tell you\nabout Mike Ross.\nNow, one hand went up.\nMike Ross was bigger than life\nin every respect.\nBig man.\nI think when I got sober,\nMike must have had,\nI don't know,\nyou know,\nlike 1,100 years of sobriety.\nHe'd been sober forever.\nHe was this old guy,\ngruff, gruff man.\nAnd we used to love the guy.\nMy friend Christopher and I,\nwe would go to this one meeting\nwhere Mike always went.\nAnd if he didn't have 10 years,\nhe wouldn't even talk to you.\nYou know what I mean?\nBecause he figured\nyou could die at any moment.\nThere's no point\nin investing any time in you.\nI mean,\nhe's just this hard-edged guy.\nBut what we loved,\nwe didn't care.\nYou know what I mean?\nWhat we loved about the guy\nwas what he shared in meetings\nand the way he would say goodnight.\nBecause, I mean,\nevery time you'd see Mike\nand he'd be walking off\ntowards the door to leave\nand we'd be behind him\nand we'd go,\ngoodnight, Mike.\nAnd Mike would think\nthat a friend of his\nwas calling out to him\nand Mike would turn around\nand say goodbye\nto a friend of his.\nAnd he'd just dismiss us.\nYou're not even worth\nsaying goodnight to.\nYou know,\nwe only had like eight years,\nyou know.\nThe guy was hysterical,\nbut he saved my life\nmore than one time.\nWe would be sitting in\na step study.\nI remember going to this one\nstep study,\nbrand new,\nand I mean,\nmy head's on fire.\nI'm in flames.\nJust nobody can see it.\nYou know what I mean?\nI'm walking into a meeting\nand I'm like,\nyou're going to see\nMike Gacy.\nI'm going to sit him\nand say,\nwe're going to talk about this step.\nWe're going to talk about this step.\nOkay, good, good, good, good.\nApparently steps are a big thing.\nWe'll talk about steps.\nFour step.\nAh, four step.\nHaven't done that yet.\nLet's hear all about it.\nGreat, great, great, great.\nI just,\nyou know,\nsit in a meeting.\nI'm like,\nout of my mind,\nbut you know,\npeople are walking up to me\nand I'm like,\nhow you doing?\nFine.\nHow you doing?\nFine.\nMy newcomer mantra.\nYou know,\nhow you doing?\nFine.\nFine.\nYou know,\nin my head,\nI'm thinking things like,\nyou're not being attacked.\nYou're not being attacked.\nHe just said hello.\nYou're not being attacked.\nMayday, mayday.\nPerson coming at me.\nDicey in my head.\nAnd I'm sitting down\nand a guy shares about the four step.\nTalks about the four step.\nGreat length.\nGreat detail.\nMinutia.\nJust,\nI mean,\njust,\nGod,\ncould there be any more\nabout this step?\nIt's brilliant.\nI remember thinking,\nGod,\nI get to get guys.\nFabulous.\nFabulous.\nFabulous.\nBroke the step down.\nWhat more could I need to know?\nNext guy,\nready?\nThis is his hand.\nGoes on for five minutes\nabout the four step.\nJust fabulous.\nIt's just unbelievable.\nCouldn't be less like\nwhat the last guy talked about,\nbut delightful.\nVery entertaining.\nGreat stuff.\nThinking,\nokay,\nall right,\nwe got two,\nwe got two ways to do this now.\nIf I have the fifth guy,\nyou know,\nI'm thinking to myself,\nokay,\nwell,\nI don't need to buy a new gun\nbecause I'm only going to use it once.\nI'm ready.\nThis is it.\nI can't do this.\nAnd all of a sudden,\nin the back,\na big mitt goes up in the air\nand the guy calls in here,\nMike Alcoholic.\nHere comes Mike Ross, right?\nAnd he goes like this.\nAnd I go,\ngeez,\nmaybe he knows,\nan old guy,\nyou know what I mean?\nAnd I see this go up.\nIt goes like this.\nI got to ask,\nhas anybody in here read this?\nI don't know.\nAnd I just went,\nthank God for this guy, right?\nAnd he just basically says,\nwhen you do your fourth step\nis when you're done with the third.\nI got that.\nThat sounds good to me.\nHe made it very clear.\nWhen should I do my fourth step?\nDid you do the third?\nYep.\nGet on it.\nMake a list.\nMake a list.\nOh, okay, okay.\nThe guy just had a,\nit's just,\ndon't want to go round and round and round.\nWant to move.\nWant to move.\nWant to carry through this process.\nBecause here's the thing about this whole thing.\nYou are not going to get this right,\naccording to Mike,\nin your first pass.\nThis isn't about getting it right.\nThis is about getting it.\nDoing it.\nHaving an experience as a result of the process.\nThe cool part about the steps is,\nyou know,\nyou're not like,\nokay,\nhas everyone in here recognized that\nyou're allowed to do the steps once?\nWe don't allow you to do it any more than one time.\nSo you better get it right the first time.\nBecause if you don't,\nyou're screwed.\nYou know?\nYou will be relegated to the half measures room.\nAnd there you must stay\nuntil one day,\nmercifully,\nyou just drink.\nNow,\nif I do the steps to the best of my ability,\nI'm doing something.\nI'm taking an action.\nAs a result of the action,\nan experience comes.\nAs a result of the experience,\nI change.\nSo that when I come back,\nto step one,\nI'm looking at it from a different perspective.\nIt's a new step.\nRight?\nI remember going into a meeting.\nI was 11 years sober.\nAnd there's a guy.\nI was meeting this woman at this meeting.\nAnd I go in there.\nI'm not going to a meeting.\nI'm going to meet her.\nRight?\nAnd I slide in.\nAnd right before the meeting starts,\nand there's one seat.\nShe's got a seat for me in the front row.\nOh, good.\nAll right.\nNow, the front row\nis six feet from the speaker.\nBecause it's just a table.\nYou know,\na fold-down table.\nAnd there's the leader\nand the speaker sitting there.\nAnd this guy,\nJack,\nis going to talk on\nstep one for 20 minutes.\nOh, Christ.\nYou know?\nAnd I'm in the front row.\nAnd I can't just go,\ncan't hang with you, Jack,\nand run out the door.\nYou know what I mean?\nI'm stuck.\nI'm going to have to sit and listen.\nNow, I've got to live in your sobriety\nat this time, right?\nYou can't tell me a thing about step one.\nI have done step one.\nDone.\nPut it to bed.\nCase closed.\nOne hundred percent.\nDone.\nStep one.\nYou're not going to...\nI don't want...\nThis is hell.\nI'm in hell.\nI've got to listen to this guy\ngo on about step one.\nWell, it turns out\nthe guy was Jack Prose\nwho had 43 years of sobriety\nat the time.\nHe talked for 20 minutes\non step one\nand blew the top of my head off.\nHe was talking about\nconcepts and ideas\nand a level of awareness\nthat had never even\noccurred to me before.\nJust talking about the step.\nJust kind of tripping on\nwhere he was at with it, right?\nAnd when the meeting was over,\nI looked at my friend and said,\nshe said,\nwell, what step are you on?\nI went, well, one.\nApparently, I'm on step one.\nAnd the cool thing about AA\nis that if you hang around here\nand actually pay attention,\nthat's going to happen all the time.\nAll the time.\nI thought AA was very cool with God\nuntil a woman...\nI was about 16 years sober\nand a woman with two and a half years\ngot up at the podium\nand started to talk about\nher relationship with God.\nBlew my mind.\nIt was great.\nThat's what goes on around here.\nDifferent people\ncoming at it\nfrom different perspectives\nand different directions.\nSo if you're thinking\nabout doing it,\nif you do the book,\nyou come up to me\nat the end of this and go,\ndelightful, Earl,\nvery entertaining.\nHowever, I do it\na completely different way.\nOkay.\nThat's my response.\nOkay, good.\nThat means more dialogue.\nWhat I love is people\nwho get up here...\nOccasionally, we'll do\nthis sort of stuff\nand somebody will come up\nto me and go,\nEarl, I find your comments\non the process of recovery\ndisturbing.\nReally?\nYeah.\nYeah, I think you're\nkilling alcoholics, Earl.\nFor Christ's sake,\nyou need to do it this way.\nHere's my workbook\nthat I've developed\nover the last eight months.\nAnd I'd like you\nto take this workbook\nand explore\nwhat I've seen\nas the relationship\nbetween God, self, and others.\nOkay, cool.\nAnd Earl, please,\nfor God's sake,\njust, you know,\ndon't talk in AA anymore\nuntil you've read my book.\nAll right.\nThanks for sharing that with me.\nThat's lovely.\nAnd I love how pissed off\npeople get about this stuff.\nIt's hysterical to me.\nI'm standing...\nI'm standing in a room\nwith a bunch of dead people\nsitting up pretending\nthey're paying attention to me.\nRight?\nWe're alcoholics and drug addicts\nand we're arguing over\nhow to develop\na relationship with God.\nIt's like,\nI can't get too upset\nabout this, all right?\nIt's just...\nIt's crazy, right?\nWhat we're doing...\nWe're wrestling\nwith the concept of God here.\nRight?\nIn this third step.\nI wrestle with the concept...\nThat's what Israel...\nIsrael means one\nwho wrestles with God.\nRight?\nI'm not...\nIt says...\nThe book...\nIt says to me\nin the portion of chapter 5\nthat I've heard\nGod knows how many times\nin 22 years.\nGod couldn't would\nif He were sought.\nIt doesn't say\nGod couldn't would\nif He were found.\nGod couldn't would\nif He were sought.\nThen I must seek God.\nI'm given very, very\nspecific instructions\non how to go about doing that\nlater on in the step.\nI must seek God.\nBut what I've got to do\nat first is throw myself\nat it.\nTo open up my arms\nand say,\nI let go.\nI let God.\nI surrender.\nI can't.\nGod can.\nI'll let Him.\nGod could.\nRestore me to sanity.\nSoundness of mind.\nRelieve me of the obsession\nof drink.\nNow, what's interesting\nis that these actions...\nThe action of these steps\nwhere I seek this God\nis remarkable to me.\nThat...\nThat...\nIt's about my willingness\nto get the stuff\nthat I place between me\nand God\nand me and my fellows\nout of the way.\nI put it there.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI get rid of it.\nI don't ask God\nto get rid of it.\nI do it.\nI don't ask you to do it.\nI do it.\nI do it.\nI don't sit in my apartment\nand wait for life\nto come knock on the door.\nI must get up\nand go outside.\nI had a sponsor,\nmy second sponsor\nafter Donald died.\nI had a second sponsor\nfor six years.\nHe's a great friend of mine\nand I love him dearly,\nAl F.\nHe's the guy that...\nGet between those.\nRight?\nHe's a big meditation guy.\nIt's very difficult\nto talk to\nbecause he's just\nbeing there\nwhile you're...\nwhile you're talking to him.\nHe's a fantastic example.\nYou know,\nhe's a sponsor.\nYou don't do what he says.\nYou just watch him\nand feel him.\nYou know what I mean?\nJust right there.\nHe's just...\nHe's an amazing human being.\nAbsolutely amazing.\nBut he said,\nyou know,\nEarl,\nif you give your life to God\nand sit in the closet,\nwhat you get is coat hangers.\nRight?\nIt took me six months\nto wrap my head around that.\nIt's like,\nall right,\nI'll be back\nwhen I have any idea\nwhat that means.\nYou know?\nDonald used to say to me,\nEarl,\nGod comes in shoe leather.\nOkay.\nApparently God\nis a shoe salesman.\nI don't...\nSo I get it, right?\nThere's these actions\nI take\nto open myself up\nto this experience\nof a power\ngreater than myself.\nI can assure you\nI do not understand God.\nI pray to a God\nI don't understand.\nBut I do pray to a God\nthat I see the evidence of\nin my life\non a daily basis.\nOn a daily basis.\nYou know?\nIt's there\nif I want to.\nThat's a lot of\nwhat the big buzz is for me.\nThese sudden realizations\nthat if I just\nstand still\nand feel the life\nthat is around me\nthat there's something\nquite remarkable\ngoing on\nall the time.\nThat's the cool thing, man.\nIt's better than\nany drug I ever took.\nI took so much LSD\nthat I was classified\nlegally insane\nby the military.\nRight?\nAnd this buzz is better.\nYou know?\nThis buzz is better.\nYou know?\nI've done enough heroin\nin one night\nto sit around\nand just talk about it.\nYou know?\nYou know?\nYou know?\nYou know?\nYou know?\nYou know?\nI'm checking my pulse.\nJust...\nYeah.\nThere it goes again.\nGood.\nI've slowed it\nway down.\nI've drank enough alcohol\nto come to\nin different cities.\nRight?\nNo buzz better\nthan that\nthe clarity\nof being completely\npresent in a moment\nand feeling\nthe presence of God.\nThat's an amazing\nand amazing\namazing event.\nAnd this is\nthe only way\nthat this buzz\nthat that's available.\nHow I begin that process\nis by being willing\nto turn my will and life\nover the care of God\nas I understand Him\nor don't understand Him.\nTo get out on my knees\nand say the third step prayer.\nIf you have...\nAnd I mean literally\nget down on my knees.\nNot figuratively speaking.\nFor me, literally.\nI literally get down on my knees\nand say that prayer.\nThe reason I do that\nis it's...\nI've got to humble myself.\nHumility is the willingness\nto learn.\nFor me.\nAnd I have to\npresent myself\nwillingly.\nAnd that way\nI know for a fact\nthere's no mistaking.\nI can't say,\nwell, I feel willing\nas I stand there\nwith my chest out.\nBut if I'm willing\nto get down on my knees\nand just do it\nfrom a position...\nI'm not being submissive.\nI'm relinquishing power.\nI'm relinquishing control.\nCome on.\nI'm here.\nI'm willing.\nIf I ask,\nGod will come\nwith the book set.\nI have to ask.\nI've got to ask.\nSo I do.\nSo that's the way\nStep 3 for me.\nNice and simple.\nEasy.\nIt's about the experience of it.\nIt's about gathering\nan experience.\nIt's about creating\nan opportunity for\na deeper and more\nmeaningful experience.\nThat's what it is.\nStep 4.\nI just pulled the trigger\nin Step 3.\nBoom.\nI'm in.\nThe ride stopped clicking.\nHere we go.\nRight?\nIt says I must immediately...\nI get up from Step 3\nand I embark upon\na plan of action\nimmediately.\nWhat's the action plan?\nFor me,\n4 through 9.\n4 through 9.\n4 and 5 is me.\n6 and 7 is God.\n8 and 9 is you.\nNobody else to play with.\nThat's everybody.\nWe're all covered.\nWhat do I do in 4?\nWell, according to this,\naccording to this,\nI do a resentment inventory,\na fear inventory,\nand a sex inventory.\nWhy do I do it\non those three things?\nBecause if you want to see\nwhere I can\nlead you,\nif you want to see\nwhere I can leave\nthe playing field,\nthose are three pretty good areas\nto take a look at.\nWe're going to see\na pattern develop here\nthat a blind man could see.\nAll right?\nThen that's why I do it.\nAnd I just do it\nout of the book.\nI do a resentment inventory.\nRight?\nI do it in four columns.\nThere are those\nthat will tell you\nit's three columns.\nThere are those\nthat will tell you\nyou need...\nThere's four columns,\nbut three of the columns\nare broken down\ninto four specific areas.\nThere are others\nthat will tell you\nthat there are two columns\nthat are broken down\ninto one into three areas,\nand one into two.\nThere's others\nthat will say\nwe do it in black and white,\nso when you do\nyour fourth column,\nwe suggest you use\nthese four things\nand write a sentence\ndetailing specifically\nhow those things\nhave come into being.\nTo all of this,\nI say,\nokay.\nSure.\nWhatever floats your boat.\nWhatever you can look at\nand go,\nwell, you know,\nthat makes sense to me.\nI can see that.\nGreat.\nThen dive into that.\nJust do it.\nJust do it.\nJust do it.\nThe first inventory I did,\nI went to my sponsor\nwho was not a big book guy.\nDonald wasn't a big book guy.\nHe used to rant and rave at us.\nHe called us\nlittle book-thumpers.\nYour little book-thumpers.\nHe goes,\nbefore there was a book,\nthere was one alcoholic\ndown in the dirt\nsharing his experience,\nstrength, and hope\nwith another alcoholic.\nWell, that's true.\nWe're going back to the book now.\nAnd you get into the book.\nAnd my first inventory,\nI said,\nwhat do you want me to do?\nGet rid of the garbage.\nSo I wrote 27 pages of garbage and told them about it.\nAnd I got my first direction from my sponsor.\nAnd hey, my first direction was we don't kill people here one day at a time.\nWhich I thought was very reasonable, doable.\nOne day at a time, just today.\nAnd I haven't killed anybody one day at a time.\nI was actually planning a murder when I came to AA.\nSo he felt compelled to tell me immediately.\nWe don't do that.\nMy best thinking again.\nSo I do a resentment inventory.\nI make a list.\nAnd it talks about it in the book.\nI mean, if you guys want me to, I can waste a lot of time up here,\nput my glasses on and read it to you.\nExactly what it says and why you do it that way.\nBut I'm figuring these are readily available.\nYou know, these are readily available.\nYou want to see precisely how it is in here?\nGo here and look, read it.\nWhat I'm telling you is what I did was I went here.\nAnd when I finally did an inventory that was out of this book,\nthat's when things changed for me.\nThe getting rid of the garbage was great.\nIt made it possible for me to take action\nthat suggested I was making a commitment to being here.\nThat was a value.\nDoing it completely different than the book told me to do it\nwas a value.\nAbsolutely a value.\nI think what that did was it allowed me to then feel like\nI'd earned the seat I was sitting in.\nI was an active member.\nI'd written 27 pages of this stuff down on paper.\nI was doing something in support of my own life,\nin support of my own recovery.\nI wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.\nI wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.\nI wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.\nI wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.\nI wasn't acknowledging that this was my solution.\nI wasn't quietly slipping off the couch to my knees,\nsaying the third step prayer and popping back up.\nI was actually at the direction of another human being,\nmy sponsor, writing down all my secrets,\nall the stuff I was going to my grave with.\nIt was really, really valuable.\nDid it change my life?\nYeah.\nDid doing it out of the book have a more profound effect\non my life than that?\nYeah.\nMuch more so.\nMuch more so.\nBecause I was able,\nI was able in this inventory out of the book\nto see the pattern of behavior in my life.\nWhen I looked at my inventory,\nwhen I looked at my side of the street,\nwhen I looked at how resentment,\nfear,\nmy sexual behavior\nwas isolating me in the world,\nwhen you looked at my whole inventory,\nI saw one word,\npowerlessness.\nA powerlessness to be effective in the world.\nPowerlessness in terms of my own individual well-being.\nPowerlessness in terms of my relationships with other people.\nThat I was in a position to say,\nI was in fact a self-centered, frightened man\nand that this was ruling my life.\nIn my sexual relationships,\nI was either completely in control\nor totally unavailable.\nRight?\nNever in the middle.\nNever an equal participant.\nUnable.\nCompletely unable to do that.\nMy relationship with God,\nI already told you about that.\nThat wasn't doing so well.\nRelationship with self,\nfilled with self-loathing.\nAll of my relationships were just in the trash can.\nThis was a painful experience.\nI listed my resentments.\nI listed the individuals that I resented.\nI listed the institutions that I resented.\nI listed the principles that I had great objection to.\nYou know?\nLoving and being loved.\nBeing on time.\nBeing accountable for my actions.\nHated all that stuff.\nAnd when I did my...\nWhen I got to this enough,\nI realized,\nI just got out my address book.\nBecause it basically got down to...\nBecause the question I ask myself\nwhen doing an inventory is,\nhow free do you want to be?\nHow free do you want to be?\nWhen that thing goes by and you go,\nwell, not really, right?\nEh, well, if it floated by, write it down.\nWe can discuss it later,\nwhether or not it's pertinent, right?\nAnd people always ask me,\nEarl, can you have a resentment in your life\nthat you have no part in?\nAnd my answer to that is,\nprobably.\nThere weren't any in mine.\nBut I have actually sponsored a couple of guys\nthat had some things listed.\nAnd there was...\nThey had no part in it.\nRight?\nThey had no part in it.\nThere are circumstances that can occur in life\nthat can cause you great deep-seated resentment\nthat you have no part in.\nYeah, I've actually seen it\nand I'd be happy to discuss with anybody\nat one of these breaks that we have along the way.\nFor you smokers,\nof which I am now a proud non-member of that group.\nYeah, the smokers.\nNo, here's the smokers.\nAnyway.\nSo you do the inventory, right?\nI list my resentments.\nI resent my father.\nCall him too.\nWhy do I resent him?\nWhat's my specific resentment against my father?\nWell, I've got 54 resentments against my father.\nRight?\n54.\nList them.\n1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, or 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1, 57.\n1-57.\nI've got 57 resentments against my father.\nSpecifically.\nWhat areas of my life are affected by this?\nI use the seven things that I was taught\nto come up in the book.\nIt affects my personal relations,\nsexual relations, pride, self-esteem,\nsecurity, ambition, pocketbook.\nYeah, that's seven.\nRight?\nI list...\nAny or all of those that are affected\nas a result of this specific relationship.\nWhat's my part in it?\nList four things in the book.\nSelfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened.\nWhat are these things that aren't in the book?\nAnd specifically, how did this come about in my life?\nNext.\nNow, other guys break it down way more than that.\nOne other guy that I hold in high regard,\nadore him,\nhas now come to the belief that there is no fourth column.\nThat it's a three-column inventory.\nI have yet to discuss this with him.\nI have absolutely no idea what he's talking about.\nBut I'm willing to listen.\nI'm not going to reject it out of hand.\nFine, you got another way of doing it?\nLet's hear it.\nIf it works for me, I'll give it a shot.\nBecause this isn't about this way.\nIt's about doing it.\nIt's about getting this stuff down on paper\nand being relieved of this.\nThis is the stuff that I put between me and you\nand me and God.\nSo I get out my phone book\nbecause basically I realized at one point,\nmy address book,\nif I knew you well enough to put your name\nand phone number in my address book,\nat some point you had frightened me.\nAnd if you frightened me,\nyou probably would have frightened me.\nYou pissed me off.\nYou frightened me, I resent you.\nNow, early on,\nall you had to do to frighten me\nwas walk up and say,\nhow's it going?\nWell, what the hell are you asking me that for?\nHow the hell am I supposed to know what's going on?\nI don't know what's going on.\nAnd clearly you don't either\nor you wouldn't be asking me.\nI hate you.\nI hate you.\nThis is all entirely too much work talking to you.\nWrite them down.\nI had Thomas Jefferson on my inventory.\nHave you ever read this guy's life story?\nThe stuff that he did?\nWho could live up to this?\nHated that man.\nInstitutions, groups of people.\nAnd what you write down,\nit doesn't have to look good.\nYou don't have to say,\noh, you know,\nI don't really like that I feel that way.\nWrite it down.\nThat's your best way out of it.\nRight?\nYou may discover that you're a bigot,\na racist,\na liar,\na thief.\nYou may discover that you're all of them\nand that you don't like that about you.\nMaybe those lessons your daddy taught you\nare not lessons you should have embraced\nor cared to embrace.\nAnd you've gotten to a point where\nto be who you really are,\nwhich is not a racist,\nnot a bigot,\nnot a thief,\nnot a liar,\nthat the ills of your father,\nthat you can say,\nno, this is not who I am.\nI disagree with this.\nThat you can get to a place\nin order to save your own life\nwhere you can make your own father wrong.\nNot easy to do for a lot of us.\nBut we get there in this process.\nWe write it down\nand see the pattern of your own life.\nSee it right there.\nI resent this stuff, right?\nFear inventory.\nWhat am I afraid of?\nFear of flying.\nWhy?\nBecause I crash.\nI'm afraid of being crashed.\nRight?\nIt's not a,\nwhat do they call it\nwhen it's just,\nit's not a phobia.\nThank you.\nHe gets an extra bagel.\nIt's not a phobia.\nIt's based on my experience.\nRight?\nThat I'm afraid of flying.\nRight?\nWhy am I afraid of crash?\nAnd then move through your inventory.\nMove through.\nBasically, what I've discovered\nis I'm afraid of two things.\nI'm afraid of rejection\nand I'm afraid of abandonment.\nThat's what I'm afraid of.\nPretty much every fear I've got\nyou can put under one category or the other.\nRight?\nIn the 12 and 12,\nin the seventh step,\nright?\nSecond to the last page,\nit says,\nself-centered fear is the chief activator\nof all my defects of character.\nEither I'm not going to get something I want\nor I'm going to lose something I already have.\nRejection and abandonment.\nAnd it gets real, real simple\nso that when I'm functioning in my life,\nI don't have this blanket,\nvague,\nunexamined wall of fear\nthat I can throw up in the world.\nYou know what I mean?\nSo when you walk up to me\nand suddenly you're confronting me,\noh, I hate your discussion about step three.\nWall of fear.\nNow lob things over the wall\nuntil this person goes away.\nYeah, well, I don't like your clothes.\nI don't like your discussion on step four.\nI hate you.\nI don't like you either.\nScrew you.\nLob and stuff like that.\nMake him go away.\nHe's scaring me.\nThen the person goes away.\nBut if I recognize all I'm afraid of is fear.\nI have a fear of not getting what I want\nor losing something I have.\nI'm afraid of two things, right?\nSo you come up and you scare me\nand I throw up my wall of fear\nand I just go, huh.\nWell, that didn't work.\nI got to take a deep breath and go,\nwhat am I afraid of here?\nI'm afraid I'm not going to get something I want\nto be accepted by you\nor I'm going to lose something I already have.\nA reason for being here.\nOr just fill in your own blank.\nWhatever it may be.\nWhat works for you, right?\nAnd it's just silly.\nAnd so then you say, you know,\nI don't like your thing on step three.\nAnd I go, well, you know what?\nLet me take you back to the room back there.\nThere's a whole bunch of tapes and stuff\nof other guys back there.\nSome of whom I think are really good\nat talking about the book.\nMaybe one of them has got a way\nof breaking down step three or step four\nthat you like.\nMay I suggest Joe and Charlie?\nRight?\nIt's got nothing to do with me.\nYou don't like it?\nNo?\nOkay.\nFine.\nI personally delight in the way I do this.\nFind your own way.\nFind your own way.\nThis is just one little glimpse of it.\nI don't have this thing wrapped up.\nI'll come back here next year,\nsit down and go,\nremember that time I was out here?\nYou got a tape of that last one?\nBurn it.\nWe got a whole new way of doing it.\nWhat would that mean?\nWould that mean that I was wrong today?\nNo.\nNo.\nIt would mean that I've continued\nto explore the process.\nI have another way of communicating it.\nI have a different experience of it now\nwhich requires yet another way\nof communicating it.\nSo you just find your way through.\nSome of you are going to become\nbig Joe and Charlie fans.\nThose are going to be your guys.\nSo that guy and that guy and that guy?\nCrap!\nThen you're going to pick up a Joe H. guy.\nThe rest of us are peasants.\nFind your own way.\nIt's all good.\nBecause what you are,\nif you're prescribing\nto a particular,\nis that you're saying,\nI'm an alcoholic\nand I seek this thing.\nI seek this process.\nI seek this unfolding\nin my own life.\nAnd that's what it's about.\nSo that's all we're doing here today\nis wrestling with it this way today.\nAlright?\nSo, I do these four column inventories\non resentment, fear, and sex.\nRight?\nNow, in step five,\nI'm supposed to reveal these\nbefore God to another human being.\nI'm supposed to sit down with somebody\nand get it out.\nI would suggest doing that.\nReally, it's not that deep.\nDo you know what I mean?\nWhat you have to do.\nThe specific way you go about it.\nThe book will suggest,\nthe 12 and 12 will suggest,\nthe book will suggest\nthis is how you go about it.\nRight?\nYou sit down with somebody,\nthe 12 and 12,\nBill talks about all kinds of stuff\nin the fourth step.\nHe talks about,\nonly thing in the 12 and 12\nI disagree on,\nit's just me.\nI actually disagree\nwith something he says.\nHe says,\nwell, if you got a bunch\nof really, really heavy stuff\nthat you're reading\nmost of them,\nit's your sponsor\nand then you go to another person,\nthere's one paragraph,\nand talk about the rest of it\nwith somebody else.\nI don't go for that personally.\nI was so good\nat compartmentalizing my life\nwhen I was out there.\nThat was one of my major problems\nwas that nobody knew\nthe whole story.\nThis guy knows a little bit,\nshe knows a little bit,\nthat guy knows a little bit,\nshe knows a little bit,\nbut nobody knows Earl really.\nNobody knows the whole deal.\nAnd there's pieces\nin each of those compartments\nthat say an awful lot\nabout who I am.\nSo I had to find me,\nthat's just me,\nI had to find,\nI had to find a place\nwhere I could give it all up.\nAll of it in one place.\nSo that's what I did.\nBefore God to another human being.\nAnd I sat down\nand I laid out my four columns\nin resentment inventory\nand I did it in columns,\nright,\nand I read it in rows.\nRight?\nI wrote my resentment list\nuntil it was done,\nthen I went to column two\nand answered the stuff\nin column two.\nWhen that was done,\nI went to column three.\nWhen I read it\nto the individual\nthat I read it to,\nI read it across in the rows.\nOne, one,\none, two,\none, three,\none, four,\none, five,\nuntil one was done\nand then I went to two\nand I read across.\nAnd that was how\nit became a completely\ndifferent document.\nDoing it that way.\nInstead of just this way,\nall of a sudden\nI'm doing it in another way\nand this incredible pattern\nof behavior in my life\nis revealed to me.\nRight?\nWhen I saw,\nso that was the fifth step.\nI sat down and I did it.\nWas I happy about this?\nNo.\nWas it a comfortable experience?\nWas it a good experience for me?\nAbsolutely not.\nDid I have a lot of discussion\nwith my sponsor\nas I was reading it to him?\nNo.\nAnything that was said\nin that meeting\nother than what I had written down\nwas conversation\nthat he introduced.\nMy job was to show up\nand read what I had written.\nNot offer further explanation.\nNot get,\nread what was written.\nNot,\nnot an occasional\npreemptive strike\nwhere I would sit and go,\nnow this next one.\nLet me discuss this next one\nwith you.\nI want to restate\nthat I was not in my right mind.\nThat I personally\ndo not consider this\nto be an example\nof who I am.\nNone of that.\nHe just shut up\nand read it.\nAnd I read it\nand occasionally he would say,\ntime out.\nRight?\nRead that last one again.\nI loved that one.\nAnd he would,\nhe would do that to me.\nOr he would do\nthe wonderful,\nloving sponsor type thing\nwhere he would say,\nthat reminds me of a story\nbecause he'd see that I'd read one\nthat I was particularly ashamed of.\nAnd he'd say,\nthat reminds me of a story.\nAnd he'd tell some atrocious story\nabout something he'd done\nthat was very, very similar\nto this hideous event in my life.\nAnd it relieved me.\nI mean,\nthere was healing that went on\nas the process took place\nbecause of who he was.\nI mean,\nit was just an amazing,\namazing experience.\nDid I feel,\nand at the end of the step,\nfifth step,\nI felt different.\nWhat I felt was\nremarkably exposed.\nThat's what I felt.\nAnd it was remarkably uncomfortable.\nBut it was the only way\nI was going to discover for myself\nthat I could tell you the truth\nabout who I was\nand you wouldn't throw me away.\nThat you would just consider me more\nas one of yours,\nas with you,\nthan before.\nRight?\nThat was it for me.\nThat was the only way\na guy like me was,\nbelieving you because you told me so?\nNah.\nNot like,\nI got it when I did it.\nWhen I did it,\nI was in.\nI was in.\nI showed up.\nAnd I looked at my sponsor\nwhen I was done with my fifth step\nand I said to him,\nnow all I have to do\nis wait for you to die.\nAnd he looked at me and he said,\noh, isn't that lovely?\nAnd he walked away.\nAmazing experience.\nAn amazing experience.\nLet's take a break.\nThank you.