Fear Is an Evil and Corroding Thread and I Based Every Decision on It – Chris S.

Hello, and welcome to SoberCast, where we provide AA speaker meetings and workshops in podcast format. We're an ad-free podcast, and if you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by visiting Sobercast.com, look for the donate link, and drop a dollar or two into our virtual basket. We hope you enjoy the podcast. Have a great day. Great to be back here. What's the sale? So great town, great people, great AA, really. I consider myself very lucky. Sometimes when you move from an area that you're real used to your AA and you're kind of worried about how it's going to go in another area, and we lose a lot of people who move. We lose a Lot of the people who retire to a different area, and AA is not the same. And, you know, they go for a while and then they just kind of lose interest. And there was actually a panel at the Akron, they have a, I forget what it's actually called, but in Akron Ohio they have like an event there every year, Founders Day it's called. and they had an old-timers panel and they asked the old-timers to basically come up with a topic, and the topic was moving and losing touch with fellowship and program and it seems like it really is a very, very common thing and I'm incredibly grateful that when I moved I moved into a hotbed of great AA and I thank you all for that It's been an absolute pleasure for me to come down and integrate into this really good AA. All right, tonight we're going to be going over fears and we're gonna be going the sex inventory and the sex ideal. We're gonna finishing up the chapter how it works but I want to sum up just real quickly for anybody that hasn't been here. We talked for weeks about step 1. Why? Why? Because step one is the most misunderstood step in Alcoholics Anonymous. There are people that are here 20 years in AA that don't understand what step one is because they haven't done a detailed study of the first chapters in the book AlcoholicsAnonymous to see what AlcoholicsAnalymous considers step one. And to make it very, very simple, they see Step 1 as fully conceding to your innermost self that you have the obsession of the mind that leads you back to a drink even though you really don't want to drink. The allergy of the body that ensures that once you drink you have little or no control over the amount you take. And also that there's unmanageability in your life, dash, that your life has become unmanable. Now, what does that unmanageability look like? It can be external DUIs, getting thrown out of the house, losing jobs. But mainly what they talk about is the internal unmanagability, the emotional unmanigability that we have. Our inability to be consistent with personal relationships, our trouble, you know, that we had with our families, the depression that we suffer from, the anxiety and self-centered fear that we suffer from. Just being uncomfortable with ourselves and our environment. This really is step one. And to fully concede to this, you're basically saying that I'm powerless. I am powerless. It's not going to be up to me whether I take a drink of alcohol. It's not going to be up to me whether I survive alcoholism. If you're powerless, you're powerless. That does not mean you're going to go the rest of your life without power. One of the things that these steps are about and that Alcoholics Anonymous is about is about getting the power to keep you safe and protected from the next drink or the next drug. Getting the power to help you recreate your life getting the power to enable you to move away from your gross or handicaps or your defects of character, the things that are blocking you off from God, your fellow man, and an effective life. So in step two we come to believe that there is a power that we can access and how we access that is going to be through spiritual living. In step three we say, okay, you know, I understand I'm in real trouble with alcoholism. I've internalized step one. I've come to believe that there's a power greater than myself that I can access, you know? That I can come in contact with who can solve my problems. I believe that that's possible, you now. I'm not absolutely sure that it's possible but I believe it is possible. And in step three, we make the decision to access that power. If there is a power that can save my life, that can help me recover from alcoholism, recreate my life move away from the grosser handicaps that are causing my failure at life. You know, yes, I'm in. Tell me what I need to do. And that's basically step three. in step four the first thing we're asked to do is inventory uh the things that have caused our failure at life the first thing is our anger or resentment resentment really is holding on to anger and allowing it to build a home within us and you know this anger and i've never met an alcoholic who didn't have this this gut-level resentment going on about something. Sometimes we fool ourselves. You know, I have had people sit down with me and I'm explaining the four-step and they'll say to me something like, well, I don't have any resentments. I'm okay with everything. And, you know, that really is not true. I'll start asking them, oh, so you're okay with all the police in your county? You know? They're on your Christmas card list, I would guess. No, you're not. Oh, you were okay with what happened? teachers you had at school and every one of your family members is absolutely wonderful right none of them have any problems and and you'll start to be able to pull out of out of these people their resentments the things that they've held on to sometimes for decades well we need to be free of this we need To be free of this too. To be able To access the power greater than ourselves ourselves that can help us recreate our lives, we need to be free of some of these grosser defects of character. Certainly resentment. It says in this book that resentment kills more alcoholics than anything else and that would have to include alcohol. So we have to take this seriously. We cannot harbor these resentments. We can't do it. Every once in a while I'll see an old timer in AA who really has never done this work, never done the step work and they've been able to maintain a tentative sobriety for sometimes decades and they are a cranky lot you know what I mean I think we've all met some of them they are pissed off at anything and everything at newcomers it's like they're parking space you're sitting in my seat or whatever what it says is even if we can survive these resentments, they they steal from our quality of life. They rob us of a quality of life. So even if we can survive, even if we cannot drink and still have them, it's in our best interest to move away from them because they are ruining our qualityoflife. That's basically what we went over last week. Column number one, person, place, or institution, we are resentful at. column number two why we have the resentment column number three the seven areas itself that can be affected because it's usually money power and sex if our instincts or ambitions are harmed threatened or interfered with with money power or sex we get we get angry instincts would be what is ours and that we're going to protect ambitions are the things that we want out there that You're getting in the way of, you know, move out of the way. You know, I want that. So money, power, sex, instincts and ambitions, harm threatened or interfered with. We look at this and we start to realize why we have anger and why we have resentment. And through understanding that, we start to get into a position where we can be free of it. There's more work to do, but we have to understand the problem before we can move away from it. Nothing is so damaging to the alcoholic than resentments. I think I shared here last week how resentments almost killed me was I didn't like people when I came into AA, all right? I looked around and I wasn't real pleased with, you know, the individuals I saw. I had an acute ability to see the defects of character in other people and an almost utter inability to see them in me. So I'm sitting in these rooms, and I'm listening to somebody share, and I am like, oh, God, I can't, you know. And then I started to get into the politics of the meeting, you know, the hostile, painful, root canal-type group consciences and business meetings that they would have, you now. And I'd be like, ah, you guys. And what happened was I was driven out of a home group. I was proven out of the home group by my resentments. Luckily, I joined another one and I was driven out at that home group because of my resentment's. And luckily, I join another one. The only thing that saved my life was joining another home group and trying again. But I have seen so many people resent themselves right out of Alcoholics Anonymous and back to the bottle that you know, you can't shake a stick without hitting somebody that that has happened to. And that's why it says, resentment is the number one offender. It kills more alcoholics than anything else. Now we're going to move into fear. For anybody with a big book, bottom paragraph on page 67. Notice the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer, and the wife. Let's just turn back a page page to the example of the inventory. There's only three columns here, but this is the column one, two and three of a resentment inventory. And if you look, fear is bracketed around in the third column. Fear is bracketted around everything. And it's because you cannot be angry at somebody unless you are afraid they're going to take something away from you that you have or keep you from getting something that you want. So fear is operative in every single resentment. So we need to look at fear. This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. Now, I want to give you an example out of my own life. The more recovery work that you do, the more inventory that you write, the more meetings that you go to, the mehr people that you sponsor, the more you start to understand this process and what it means to you as an individual. Now, Now, I was doing a fear inventory one time, and the person who was taking me through this said, Chris, I want you to do something extra. The big book doesn't say to do this, but I wantyou to dosomething extra. Alongside every fear that you list, you have, I wantyoutogivemeanexampleofthefirsttimeyoufeltthatfear. And one of the fears was large crowds of people. Now, this was one of my earlier inventories. You never would have gotten me behind a podium, you know, back in my first two or three years. I had way too much anxiety about that. So I'm inventorying this and fear of people was basically the fear. And my first recollection of that fear was when my mother was driving me across town to drop me off for kindergarten. Okay? I'm five years old. I've been hanging around the house a lot, you know, with one woman. And all of a sudden, I'm told that, you know, I got to go do with other people. And, you know, this is okay for some kids. Some kids are like, ooh, ooh. Kindergarten, you know? Like some, like, well-adjusted people. Well, what happened with me was she took me, drove me across town, opened up the car door, told me to get out. I'm standing on a hill. She closes the door. she takes off and I'm standing on a hill looking down at the kindergarten building, okay? And the kids are outside playing kickball and tag. They've already assimilated. They're already all best friends, I can tell from the top of the hill. And I'm standing up there feeling like a complete idiot, alright? I'm thinking, you know, this kindergarten thing, who the hell thought of this? This is a bad idea. You know, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can walk down this hill. What if those kids make fun of me? What if they don't like me? You know, what if, what if I get into a fight? What, you know, what if I'm ostracized? I mean, that's not exactly how I put it, but that's how I felt. I felt, I felt apart from, I felt less than, you know, I had an amazing amount of anxiety and self-centered fear. but I knew I had to do this thing I couldn't like run away home you know, so I sucked it up, I act as if I was cool about this whole thing and I went down there and I did the kindergarten thing now that you know what would have really helped me at that point in time? Be a pint of vodka I would have been able to walk down that hill with confidence you know What I mean? But the problem The problem was they weren't serving five-year-olds. So I had to go another eight years with that anxiety, going to school, thinking that it was absolutely ridiculous that I had to do this, thinking I was so different than everybody else because I had this anxiety and this fear. And nobody else could have possibly had this because I could see that they didn't because of their demeanor. So I felt completely apart from. Now, fear is an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence is shot through with it. I understand what that means now. I base decisions on how comfortable I was because of how much anxiety or fear I had. I base decision on whether or not to go to college, whether or no to take certain jobs, whether or to ask certain women out on dates. It all revolves around a level of comfortability that was in direct proportion to my anxiety and my self-centered fear. So is fear an evil and corroding thread that shoots through your entire life? Absolutely, but we recognize it sometimes as anxiety disorder or we recognize it as I just don't feel like doing that. You know, I'm going to take a pass and pull the covers over my head today, thank you. You know, does anybody understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, well, this is a damaging emotion. Now, some types of fear, like fear of crossing the highway with, you know, semis doing 80 miles an hour, that's an appropriate fear. That's an instinct that has been put into us for our self-preservation. But what happens with alcoholics is our instincts go awry. We have too much of them, or we have too little of them. We don't have a balanced emotional state, and that's part of the unmanageability of step one. So what do we do? We take a vacation from that stuff with drugs and alcohol, because we just don't feel like feeling uncomfortable all the time. You know, you want me to go out to a party tonight? Well, I would get drunk before I went to the party. I always needed a little ballast. So I would show up at the party where everybody's going to get drunk at, drunk. And that would cause problems, you know. This one time, I was going out on a date. I finally got a date with somebody I was so attracted to. I thought this girl was the coolest girl in the world. But I had to be cool. I couldn't be, like, shaking in fear. So I started drinking, what was it, Miller malt liquor in the red cans. Does anybody remember that from the 70s? You drink a six-pack of that, man, and I'll tell you what. It had, like wood alcohol in it or something. It was horrible. And I got so drunk I was in a blackout. I vomited on her, you know. I mean, really. And I did. it. Now, that was all caused by fear. I had to get rid of that fear and I had to use the booze. So let's look at what they're telling us here. Did we not ourselves set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. Why would they say that? Why would would they say fear should be classed with stealing? Isn't stealing a conscious act? I mean, unless you're like some crazed kleptomaniac. I mean if you're going to steal something, don't you make a decision to steal it? Well, I think they're saying we're making a decision to have fear. Why? Because we're relying, we're We're making a decision to rely on self and not rely on God. That's why we have these fears. In step three, we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. If we really mean that, we're placing ourselves in God's protection. He's going to have a care for us. Care and protection. What is He going to let get through to us If we're doing his work well, what is he going to let get through to us that's not going to be in our best interest? So you start to think about this stuff. You start to put yourself on a different plane when you're not operating from self all the time. You're operating through spiritual principles. You start To Outgrow Fear. So fear should be classed with stealing. Maybe it's because we're choosing in our life to have it because we've chosen to take take the reins ourself, and run our lives ourself without any spiritual guidance or help. You know, I went to kindergarten. I'm sorry, I Went to Sunday School. Anybody in here go to Sunday school? They taught us a lot of good stuff. Don't steal. You know don't lie. You know share your toys. You know Don't Tattletale. you know, all of these things that I chose to, like, ignore. I was being prepared to live a spiritual life. I believe I actually chose to go the other direction. You know, I'm running this thing. So fear a lot of times is our own fault, but it still drives us. If we've allowed it to embed itself in us, it still drivers us. we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them we asked ourselves why we had them so column number one is the fear column number two is why do you have the fear and then they ask you a couple of questions which is almost always going to be yes wasn't it because self-reliance failed us you're running your own life you've been managing your own life, how's that been working for you That's the great question. Self-reliance was good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it did not fully solve the fear problem or any other. When it made us cocky, it was worse. Perhaps there is a better way. We think so. For we are now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. Remember, we have made a third step decision. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role He assigns. How do we do that? Well, further on in this book, it gives us exercises, spiritual exercises that puts us in tune with the consciousness of the presence of God. And we start to be able to access that level of intuition where we know right and we know wrong intuitively. Intuitively means you know without conscious thought. And once we get to that place, they call it sometimes the sixth sense or the fourth dimension in here. Once we getto that place we know what we're supposed to do. We're guided through that intuition toward right and toward wrong. And when we have the power to move in the right direction, we're placing ourselves in the place where we believe God would have us. So then we would be playing the role that God assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely upon him, does he enable us to match calamity with serenity? so let's look at that sentence really carefully because it's a key sentence in this book to the extent that we do as we think God would have us, so again as we develop this sixth sense, this intuition we'll more and more be able to understand at a closer level what God would have us do what he would assign sign. When we humbly rely upon him, he enables us to match calamity with serenity. Matching calamity was serenely is something that we've not been very good at as alcoholics. We usually met calamity, with violent anger or a bender. You know, that's the way we would handle it. humbly relying upon god is something that we have to practice it it takes a lot of practice the best possible atmosphere to be in to get to the point where you can humbly rely upon god and do as we think he would have us is to finish these steps these steps place you in the spiritual atmosphere where you can do this stuff. Whereas if we're operating on our own, if we'RE making all of our own decisions, if we'Re not seeking guidance, if weRE not trying to become disciplined about these spiritual exercises, we can probably be fooling ourselves as far as our spiritual growth is concerned. And nobody's going to punish us for doing this wrong. alcohol is what punishes us if we do this stuff wrong, or if we don't do enough of it, or if We're not sincere, or if W'ere not painstaking, or if w'ere Not willing to grow along spiritual lines. We never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator. We can laugh at those who think spirituality is a way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of strength. Okay. I used, back in like 1988 or so, I'd just gotten my license back for like a third DUI and I'd go out drinking and I, I, be using some cocaine because the cocaine would enable me to stay awake longer. You know, I usually drank myself into unconsciousness in about four hours and that was cutting down on my social life. So I was using cocaine as an embellishment to prolong my ability to drink like I wanted to drink and, you know, to some degree it would work for two or three minutes until I became insane. But I would be driving home. I wouldbe driving home about 8 in the morning on Sunday. day. I'd be out all night long, partying all night long, up all night with my buddies Rat and Green Man. And I'd driving home in my 1976 Ford Granada with busted-up quarter panels and white walls, no muffler, no clutch, no registration, no windshield wipers, no heater, no emergency break because i was busy and i couldn't couldn't fix it and i'd be i'd be rolling through town with this loud smoking piece of crap and i would be behind the wheel and i drive by a couple you know dressed up real nice for for church and they'd have the two or three little kids with the sailor suits on you know they'd be walking off the church and i've rolled down my window i go you losers you know you don't know what life is all about? And I mean, think about how insane this is. These are probably homeowners, you know. I never knew how do you get a house, you know. These aren't homeowners. They probably did good jobs. They're raising their children right. You know, they're affluent, making the right decision. And here's me, you Know, I'm living with mom, you You know, I'm driving like a $50 car and I'm calling them losers. You know sometimes we are so far off the mark with our perspectives. So paradoxically spirituality is the way of strength. It really is. You want to be able to do what you want to do? Grow spiritually and the power will come to you. usually you're your own worst enemy because you've got resentment and you've got fear and these things are interfering with your ability to do the things you really really want to do that that you know you really can do that God gave you the abilities to do you know what we do is we shoot ourselves in the foot every five minutes somehow and and I didn't believe that when I came in to Alcoholics Anonymous I didn't believe it. I thought that by growing spiritually, I was going to become a wimp. You know what I mean? And it's the exact opposite. It really is. It's the exact opposite of you gain an amazing level of power. As long as as long as you know, you're you have the right motives and you're really practicing these principles, you get get stronger every day you you get to be a better employer a better uh husband a better wife a better father a better mother a better friend you're you're just more consistent and uh and again i didn't think that when i came in here i really thought my life was over uh i'm going to be in church basements you know talking about god the rest of my life just shoot me now and get it over with. And it's the exact opposite. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. I used to think I had courage because I did crazy things. I raced motorcycles, go-kart snowmobiles. You know, I would do bridge diving, you know, into the Delaware River. I would just pick on the biggest guy at the bar. I was nuts is what I was. And I mistook nuts for courage. I think what courage is, is courage is the ability to walk through the fear. To be able to face that fear and move through it anyway. Because you're trusting and relying upon God. That really is what courage is. All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead we let Him demonstrate through us what He can do. Here's a prayer directive. I'm going to try to highlight Highlight all of these prayer directives so that we don't miss them. It's one of the things that we do when we go through these steps. We forget these prayer correctives, and I think they're essential. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be once we commence to outgrow fear. So as you're inventorying the fear, fear, why do I have the fear? You answer the redundant questions like, isn't it because self-reliance failed you? And then you do the fear prayer. Okay, God, please remove my fear of, you know, my boss and direct my attention to what you have me be. And at once we commence to outgrow fear. I don't think fear is going to ever disappear completely, but we're going to become more courageous about whatever we're afraid of. We're goingto grow bigger than the fear. All right, that's fear. Now about sex. Next, here's another area we totally fouled up. I love it. I love in here. It says that we need an overhauling here. Now think about what it all, you know, a lot, there's a lot of Harley Davidson riders in here. If you're going to overhaul your Harley, what does that mean? That means you strip it right down to bare metal, right? I mean the engine off, you don't want to overhaul it. New piston rings, the whole deal. Well, it doesn't say that we need a mere tune-up with our sex life. It says we need an overhauling. You know, Bill had us pinned down. He really knew what... Listen, if we're operating from a place of selfishness and self-centeredness, that's our platform, our operational platform. Of course we're going to screw up our intimate relationships. We're going have motives that don't belong in intimate relationships We're going to have behavior that doesn't belong in intimate relationships. We just will. Let's see what he has to say about it. Many of us needed an overhauling there. But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. It's so easy to get way off track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes, absurd extremes perhaps. One set of voices cries that sex is the lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. Remember, Freud was doing a lot of his theories right about this time. You know, Alcoholics Anonymous was influenced greatly by Carl Jung. Jung believed in God. Freud was basically an atheist. Freud believed that you wanted to kill your father and have sex with your mother. I mean, that was like one of his main things. Thank God Alcoholics Anonymous wasn't influenced by Freud and it was influenced by Young who believed in God. Just a little observation there. They think that we do not have enough of it or that it isn't the right kind. They see its significance everywhere. everywhere. One school would allow man no flavor for his fear, and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. What is an arbiter? An arbiter is basically a judge, someone who renders a decision. You know, I believe that this is true. I believe that this istrue with one exception, and this is not from the big book. This is my own personal uh personal exemption to this rule and that is you know i've seen predatorial behavior in an alcoholic synonymous for many many years somebody brand new will come in and before they have a chance to get on their feet you know get a sponsor start working the steps somebody you know wants to come up and be mr good daddy to them or or something you know what i'm saying and hustle them off into a sexual relationship, that can be a killing thing. And so I'm not real happy when I see that go on. But as far as what type of sex and, you know, what he's basically saying is, you Know, this is between us and God. The type of the type of Sex ideal we come up with really is between And what we do with consenting adults, as long as we follow some of these principles, which are about keeping the levels of harm as slight as possible, we really shouldn't, as Alcoholics Anonymous members, go around and be telling everybody what their sex life should look like. We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them? All right, here's the inventory for sex harms. We review our own conduct over the years past. What I like to do is take one piece of paper for each relationship that meets this criteria. So review the relationship. I'll write a paragraph on where I met this person, how long I was with them, a little bit about what happened, just a little review of the relationship So when I'm doing a fifth step with somebody, I can paint the picture a little bit about what happened. Then it asks us three where's. Where have we been selfish, dishonest, and inconsiderate? Okay, note this doesn't say were we. It says where were we? Because if we're an alcoholic and we were in a relationship, it's a given that we were selfish, dishonest and inconsidereate. We need to list out where we were. I don't like the inventories where there's a checkmark. I make my guys write at least a sentence on where they were selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate. Whom had we hurt? Now obviously the person we're inventorying, but there may be collateral damage. There may be a husband or a wife that was affected on our side. There may have been a husband and a wife affected on the other side. There may children or families or mothers and fathers who got hurt. There can be all kinds of collateral damage. This is a question where we fill out the other people who we may have hurt as well. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? We can do this because we manipulate. We use our affections or our offering of sex sometimes as manipulators or to punish, we'll pull it back. You know, there's a lot of ways we use sex in a wrong way. So we need to answer this. You know did we arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? You know I'm almost always guilty of this even if it's at a very subtle level. You know the levels were extreme when I was out there drinking but now that I'm in recovery I'm certainly not a perfect person so these things can be a little bit below the horizon. They can be hard to pick up on, but I need to be honest and I need to be searching and fearless and try to see where am I arousing jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? Not what could we have gone instead. What should we have gotten instead? We probably couldn't have done any better because we were driven by a hundred forms of fear and resentment and our whole whole life system was based on a foundation of selfishness and self-centeredness? We probably did the best we could. But it says here, what should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it. So again, one piece of paper for every single instance that I need to inventory and answer all these questions. And I like to do it in sentence form. In this way way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. So after you've done all of your inventories, you now know what doesn't work. I mean, you're going to have example after example after example of defective intimate relationship behavior. You know what doesn't works. So it's now asking you to shape the same and sound ideal for future sex life. And what that means is you need to develop the attributes that you would like to bring in to the next party. How would you like to be showing up at the next party? What would you want to show up at? What would YOU like to BRING IN to the NEXT relationship? Because it's a given, you attract attract what you are so if you're very healthy you're going to attract the same type of thing in a partner or you can or you'll develop it let's let's say you're you've been married an alcoholic and you start to develop this this uh this sex ideal and you starts to ask god to help mold you and direct you into it a lot of times the rest of the family or your wife or husband and start to get better, because you're getting better. So this is very, very important that you do this. We subjected each relationship to this test. Was it selfish or not? Here's another prayer directive. We ask God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them. So again, for at least a while, what you want to do is in your morning prayer and evening review, you need to look at this. you need to ask for the power to mold your ideals into what you would like to be how you would Like to be showing up we remembered always that our sex powers were God given and therefore good needed to be used lightly or selfishly in order to be despised and loved I believe that God gave us instincts in this department and I believe two things about that one of them is I believe we have it so that there's a continuation continuation of the human race, so we have a sex drive and it's instinctual. And he also made it fun so that we would do it. So think about this. God made sex fun and wants you to do it, okay? And that's true. It's just he doesn't want, I don't think God wants us to use it in the wrong way, where it will cause harm. Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it. We must be unwilling to make amends where we have done harm, provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing. In other words, we treat sex as if we would any other problem. This is actually a meditation directive. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter the right answer will come if we want it so after you've got this inventory done you're going to have to be thinking about whether there's possible amends that need to be made we're supposed to ask god in meditation about how we should handle these amends or the change in behavior if we're still you know with somebody remember meditation as far as bill wilson was concerned was deep deep, concentrated thought. It wasn't the type of meditation that you see Kung Fu doing. You know, emptying his mind in a lotus position with the incense burning. That's not how they meditated back then. What they did is they concentrated on specific subjects and they went into a deep guided meditative state where it was really contemplation more than it was meditation. God alone can judge our sex situation. Counsel with other persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge. That is, we let our intuitive self be the finally judge. Is this right or is this wrong? We need to be true to ourselves and answer this very honestly because we could be in big trouble if we continue to be selfish. We realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. We avoid hysterical thinking or advice. All right. We are not perfect. Bill Wilson was a great example of not being perfect with his sex drive, okay? And I don't think any of us can claim to be perfectly pure as the driven snow in this area. you. So this is important. We need to look at this because this is a warning. Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble. Suppose if we step out on the Mrs. or the old man. Does this mean we are going to get drunk? Some people tell us so, but this is only a half truth. It depends upon us and on our motives. If we are sorry for what we have done and have the honest has desired to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and we'll have learned our lesson. So this is the operative thing. I have seen people in Alcoholics Anonymous absolutely refuse to subject their sex life to spiritual principles. It was nobody's business and they were going to have relations with whoever the hell they wanted to and you better stay out of their way while they're doing it. and every single case where those people were alcoholic they got drunk and many of them died you know so when there's a warning in this book we need to pay attention to it because it really does happen these guys knew what they were talking about if we are not sorry and our conduct continues to harm others we are quite sure to drink now the people that are predators that last in AA you know year after year they're doing the same shit they're not alcoholic okay what they're what theyre doing is theyre here for other motives because if they were alcoholic they would be drunk we are not theorizing these are facts out of our experience to sum up about sex here's another prayer directive We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and for the strength to do the right thing. If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. Two people, two of my closest and dearest friends, in the last two weeks had their husbands come to them and say, I've been seeing somebody, I'm separating, I're looking for a divorce. two of my closest friends for 10 years they've been married to the same same same guys and they they looked like they had the perfect relationship you know the perfect aa relationship two of them now both of them you know what they did because they were good aa members they they went headed headed straight for their sponsees they headed straight trade for the beginner's meetings. They started doing 12-step work like crazy because they understood that that is the way to get out of the horrible emotions that come from defective intimate relationships. We think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge when to yield would mean heartache. If we had been thorough about our personal inventory, we've written down a lot. We've listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality, how they can kill us and how futile it is to have them. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have began to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies, for we look upon them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. In this book, you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him. If you have already made a decision, the third step, and an inventory of your gross or handicaps, what we just covered in the last two weeks, step four, you have made a good beginning. beginning. That being so, you've swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself. And we need to do that. We need to see what the truth is about us. And we've only made a beginning. I've seen a lot of people get up to step four and then do a fifth step and really, really stop there. Really stop there。 I know up in my area, there was a real lack of attention attention to detail when it came to steps 8 and 9, 10 and 11, and 12. I think we always must remember that rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed the path. And we're looking in a very detailed fashion in this workshop here about what following the path is. What does it look like? How do you do it? And, you know, I can't tell you how much my life has changed because of multiple fourth and fifth steps, multiple eight and ninth steps, and working with other people. I was pathetic in the late 80s. I was pathetic. My alcoholism was so bad. I had, you know, my world was so small because of my alcoholism and the way I behave. All I can tell you is from my own personal experience, adherence to these principles to whatever ability, you Know, I've been capable has led to incredible things in my life. And I want to thank everybody for listening tonight. And next week we're going to move into step five. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free, and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar or two a month, visit SoberCast.com and look for the donate links. Thank you very much.