Fourth Step and Inventory – Steps Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Scott R.

With that, let's welcome our speaker this morning, Scott. My name is Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Hi everybody. And I'm as sick as a dog. And thanks for your patience and your support last night. I really, really had a good time. And I had a great time with Chris so far this morning. I want to welcome all new people to AA. Happy Father's Day for all you fathers and people who have dads. And I wantto say something, and I really am going to ask you as I'm going to—I implore you to know that for this workshop, I'm not telling you how to do AA. I have absolutely no idea how you should do Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know the right way to do Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to talk about some very specific things that I do, and I don'T think they're right. I DON'T. I think they are the way. Our book says that I have to find a power greater than myself that'll solve my problem or this hammerlock that this spiritual illness has on me will never loosen its grip and I'm going to die. And I know that when I hear people talk, I tend to go, yeah, you know, what? Are you like even sober? You know, I mean, how do you even what? So I'm sure that will not happen for anybody this morning. But I just want to assure you that that if I if I really felt that I knew how you should do this, I wouldn't be having a really good time here. I really wouldn't being I'd be pissed off because some of you hadn't changed yet. And you keep acting like you. I've noticed that my wife continues to act like her despite all my efforts. This is a workshop. It's a little different from a regular meeting. I'm going to talk about the inventory process and how I've used it to change, how I used it when I did my initial fourth step and howI've continued to use it to changetwenty years in. I regularly blow my life up. I blow it up, and I've blown it up a lot. Sometimes it's been a good explosion, sometimes a bad explosion. But just a couple of years ago, my wife and I, I mean, I talked last night about blowing my life off. I told God I'd be willing to do anything for a living, and I wound up doing something that I had really not planned on doing. By the way, let me tell you that while I continued to do inventory while I was working as a cook. Right before I got sober, I was at my dinner table with my family and I reached across the table to grab something and my arm came near my older son and when my arm went near him, he went like this. It was a reflex and my heart fell out of me. I just couldn't believe that when I came physically close to my son, he had this knee-jerk reaction of repulsion. And now at 26, he sits down next to me and puts his head on my shoulder. And as I continued to do inventory because I was very resentful of myself working as a cook on a catering truck, I was Very resentful at the people who saw me working as A Cook on a Catering Truck. And my son Jesse, you see, the way I thought I was going to get close to Jesse was while we were buffing my Oscars oscars in my academy awards on we would get close on oscar buff and night and when he was a little boy what he was really interested in is learning how to cook because he had seen me cook so jesse and i have been cooking together for 20 years uh he was at the university of chicago studying mathematics and he'd call me and i'd talk him through sauces and stuff like that and he that's what he and i still do today um that's not how i would have elected to get you know i would wanted my son to be uh involved in the afi tribute that would be done to me not not uh not learning how to cook with me um i uh you know it's an interesting thing and i feel comfortable talking about it um there was uh i love your group and i love your meeting i just love that meeting one of the things and i will really love everything about it one ofthe things i really love about it is the applause that you give each newcomer It's just fantastic. And something happened at your meeting last night that happens at many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and it took me a while to understand why I found that hurtful. When some people took a chip or a birthday, there was a lot of hooting and very demonstrative stuff. And at first, it used to bother me, and I couldn't figure out why. And I thought, why did you, like, get the stick out of your butt? You know, why are you so uptight about it? But there was something still. And then I found out why it bugged me. it bugged me is because if we hoot for one person, we need to hoot for everybody. That's what bugged me, bugs me about it is that what happens to the people who don't get hoots and what the deal is, it's a violation of anonymity for me. It's a violation of anonymacy. Anything that brings me out from the crowd and makes me what I'm not really, which is a child of God, a rank and file member of Alcoholics Anonymous, the most powerful person in AA, rank and file member, you know, um the more special you become the lower you go on the totem until you become trusty and then you're crap pretty much um and it's an interesting thing uh in terms of my defects of character i get hungry when does hunger become gluttony i have amorous feelings when does being sensual or amorous or sexual become lust when does sharing become cross-talk they are all to me for the same reason at the end of the day. Hunger plus power equals gluttony. What I mean by that is if I'm hungry, but I become self-serving, if I start eating at you, if i become ashamed of the way that I look, then I'm exercising godly power over myself or you. It's hunger plus power. If I feel amorous, there's nothing wrong with that, but if it becomes uh uh uh amor plus uh power in other words i'm going to manipulate you to have you or i'm going to feel ashamed and deprecate myself for not being worthwhile then it's those feelings plus power and sharing plus power equals crosstalk referring to other people's sharing during a meeting to me is not crosstalk a good alcoholic synonymous meaning a great alcoholic synonyms meeting is often like a an internal combustion engine this it's the sparks the sharing of the sparks that drive it forward that you can see it reach critical mass sometimes you could feel the room bulge sometimes as it builds and feeds off each other but when i act acts when i when my sharing plus power which means i'm having a one-sided conversation with you i'm using this is a bully pulpit i'm being didactic or pedantic i'm being um even you see to me there was cross talk if you talked bad about me from the podium then there's good cross talk when you talk nicely about me on the podium i never seem to have a problem with that um but but they're both cross talk because then i'm a little more special than the rest of the people here at any rate i'm getting sidetracked but i think in a delightful way. I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years by the time I got to AA. You told me I was going to get involved in self-examination, and I thought, well, this is my area. I think this is going to be great. I'm going to really be able to bring something to the table here. And I think whoever guides me through this is gonna be very fortunate because I'm really gonna, I'm so steeped in this material, I really feel I'm going to enrich their experience of this. And then I got the horrible news. The horrible news is in here. I want to read to you what used to be my favorite sentence from the big book of AA. It's in the fifth chapter. It's on page 65 and it continues on page 66. I used to read this sentence and then just go to sleep. They're assuming that you're looking at a list of the wrongs that have been done to you. They're assuring you've written a list of people who have tried to have you committed to mental institutions. People have screwed you at work. People who have been thinking behind your back. Hard to catch them, but you can do it. They're assuming that you're looking at this list and they say upon looking at this list, here it comes, the first thing apparent was the world and its people were often quite wrong. That's enough for today. don't read the next two pages. Don't read them. And I'll tell you why. Because what the next two pages say is that so beautifully, they just don't argue with a drunk. They never argue with a drug. They don't say that you haven't been screwed. They say, you've been screwed terribly. You're right and you're dead. You're wrong and you know right and you are dead because you experienced the wrongdoing of others in a way that is so injurious, in away that eclipses everything good in your life that you actually die from it so what are we going to do now you're right and you're dead what a gorgeous thing that is it says we know a way out and this was the worst news in the world for me this way out because it's it is it is moral psychology it's the turn from my psychology which treated me psychologically but didn't treat me spiritually here's the turn that they make. They say, we're not only going to see what the problem is. We're not only going examine it and see what's been creating anxiety, but now we're going to see what in you that you could resolve, that you can bring to a higher power because nothing else has ever resolved this for you. No amount of talking it. One of the things I always get the willies for when I go to a meeting and somebody says, I'm going to talk this to death. I've heard that phrase. I don't know if you've heard that phrase and I always go, why take me with it? That this notion that if I air it enough, somehow it's going to get resolved for me. That simply hasn't been true. It might be for the other person. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for me after a while, but my, what I don'T know if you've ever experienced this, but when a new person comes to a meeting and says, my sponsor told me I should share at every meeting. And I always think, then why isn't he here? Why isn't he here listening to this? Why us? If you're going to say that, you got to follow the guy around. Okay, I'm just saying. It'll be used a lot less, believe me. I once sponsored a guy. I didn't sponsor him. This is what happened. There was a guy at my group who was such a blowhard that when he shared people through nooses over rafters, people hung themselves. It was unbelievable. And he walked up to me after a meeting one day and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, you know what? You really have not been there for me and I'm really going to move on with sponsorship. I had no recollection of him ever asking me to sponsor him ever. So I just got the good part. I got fired. And that was my only experience of sponsoring this guy was getting fired at any rate um what is it in me that if god would remove the resentment would be gone i have to put aside the wrongdoing of others completely absolutely and completely in order to get the vice grip of this spiritual sickness off of me in order to start breathing again in order to have an inclusive life instead of an exclusive life. Now, I've heard people say many times in AA that the road gets narrower as I get here, and I understand what they're saying, and I appreciate it. It's just, that's not a sentiment that I gravitate to. That's not a way I want to live. I want to be, the book talks about the broad highway. Come join us on the broad hallway. Become part of the great idea, the great reality, the big idea. Join us on The Firing Line of Life. Help us to pack things into the mainstream of life. It talks about life getting bigger, more inclusive. And I really like that paradigm a lot. That's really how my life, how I've experienced Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm resentful at Scott for being loaded on heroin the night that his father died. Affects my self-esteem, pocketbook ambition, personal relations and sex. What are the defects of character in me that if God would remove, the resentment would be gone? I'm not living in today. I'm a grudge holder. I'm filled with shame and guilt. I'm playing God. I'm Not Trusting in God. I have unreasonable expectations. What was I supposed to do at that time? I woke up, and I got loaded. That's what I do. I'm resentful at my father for dying. What a horrible thing to admit. Horrible thing to emit. It affects all five. What are the defects in me? plain God, ungrateful. I had my father until I was 21. A lot of people never have a dad. Irresponsible because if I hadn't been so irresponsible about how I was behaving at that time, I probably wouldn't have all these feelings. Not living in today because I was going to suffer for the rest of my life. You know, and one of my defects, which has just been really has been a very, very difficult one for me that I benefit so much from when I pray and meditate on it and get some relief is I'm unwilling to accept the fact that Scott is a child of God who's spiritually sick. And hand in hand with that is I am unwilling to except the fact that you are a childofGod who could be spiritually sick like me. You know, and I, last week my wife, you know, I said something about something I wanted to do with my career and my wife went, well, sure, go ahead and do that and we won't be able to blank. And I looked at her and I said, boy, you would never say something like that to one of your sponsees. And she went, you are right, and I am sorry. I would let my sponsee say it. I'd appreciate it. And later on, if they were boneheaded enough to do it, we'd deal with it. But I'd give them some oxygen in the room. And I'm not trying to vilify Nancy. That's something I do to her too. How great that we can talk about that. You know? So I read that to a sponsor, and I go to God in six and seven, and I say, Pop, please remove this self-seeking. Please remove this unwillingness to accept spiritual sickness in myself. Please remove the shame. Please removethis guilt. And sometimes something appears to me. Sometimes an action appears tome, and quite often I just experience that prayer. I just experienced that prayer and then go on with the treatment. The treatment is these actions, these actions which I got to tell you, quite often we hear that faith without works are dead, which I really understand, but I also really get that works without faith are dead. That if I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm walking the walk and I're doing commitments and I'M DOING ALL THAT STUFF AND IT'S NOT TETHERED, IF IT'S not moored to a spiritual endeavor, it's a lot of noise. and i just wind up with great tunnel sobriety i just want to pissed off pissed off at other groups they don't do it right i'm doing it right I'm an a.a. I'm over sober you know and I'm doing x y and z and I want to tell you at this point it's it's not it's pretty to me and also then I will tend to make an identity of being really the guy who really knows who is doing that and who is not. It's endless. At any rate, when I did my initial inventory, I had a lot of material about my father, about my children, about my wife, about being a bad employee. I had a fear list. There are three sections of the inventory you're asked to write four times. Once, twice on resentments, a list of resentments with three columns and a defected character list. The second time we're asked to write is a fear list. And we're asked, and it's a real interesting kind of a tricky thing. It says right fear is not in connection with personal resentment. Now I could make, if I wanted to dot all the I's and cross all the T's, I can make a case for every single fear I have being tethered to a personal resentment, but I don't want to, I want to go with the spirit of law and not the letter of the law. I'm scared of being alone. I'M scared of being with people i'm scared of success i'm scared of failure i'm feared i had this in my inventory i'm scared of being cut by newspaper i mean if you really get all your fears down there's very few fears that somebody will admit to you that you'll think they're nuts because of you know i mean i had fears down there that i'd read and i go oh you live in a psychological theme park oh no people, institutions and principles I'm resentful of the South African government I'm so I'm resentment homophobes I'm respectful at racists I'm responsible at the state of Israel and I'm Jewish that was fun and I wrote a fear list and I write sexual inventory the second paragraph on page uh 69 it says i suggest that i write about seven individual things about each situation where i've created a problem or created harm where have i been selfish dishonest and considerate unjustifiably aroused jealousy suspicion and bitterness and what should i do instead not what could i do what should I do what could I do well what I did what shouldI do something vastly different And in the next two paragraphs on 69, I believe is one of the most astute, beautiful descriptions of moral psychology. Moral psychology is a term that Silkworth uses in the beginning of the book where he says we long suspected that some form of moral physiology would be necessary. It's self-examination with a moral application and a plan of action based on that moral application. It's a vastly, vastly different enterprise than psychotherapy. And and that's why when I see I hear people comparing the two. I I think it's unfortunate It's really saying that rome's a nicer town than london They're very different at any rate It says that in this way I try to shape a sound ideal for my future It's his sex life. I say my future life when I write what I should have done instead It's the guy I want to be it's the man i'd like to be That's the man that I'd like to be. So when I hold my sons, when I talk to my sons when my sons come to me I don't have any shadow back here. I'm current. I'm free. I'm with them and that goes for the men that I sponsor and the people I encounter in the course of my life. So I did this big inventory this initial inventory I started it when I was six months sober I finished it when i was nine it took me eleven and a half hours to read The shortest inventory I've ever heard as a sponsor was 15 minutes, and the longest was 22 hours. They're both dead. I just don't think it matters how long the document is if it's not followed by a continuation of taking inventory. It's been my experience that it doesn't matter. That's what the 10 steps for in my book is to continue taking personal inventory. if i had remembered everything in that initial inventory i would have looked like an outtake from the movie scanners my head would have blown up it just would have flown up i don't really believe that i could have dealt with all i couldn't fit all the pain in my head and um i read this inventory to my sponsor was a profound experience to me i talked uh last night about the kind of experience i had reading that uh resumed against nazis about finding out realizing the difference between the event and the resentment was an absolutely life-changing experience for me. And it has been so helpful to me with men that I sponsor. Another thing that's been very interesting for me is sponsoring, because I live with a committed member of Al-Anon, because I have so many friends in Al-Anon and have attended so many meetings and listened to so many Al- Anon speakers. And if you're an AA member and haven't exposed yourself to Al-Al-An, But I believe you're missing a great, great gift. The men I sponsor who grew up in alcoholic homes have a little something extra that I don't have. I didn't grow up in an alcoholic home. I just grew up on a psychotic home. But it's different than growing up in a non-alcoholic home. And it's been my experience, not all, but some of the men that I sponsor who come from alcoholic homes, they've got something extra to deal with. And if we don't deal with it, eventually they stop doing 12-step work, some of them. Because they've got that idea, that awful idea that the alcoholic is never telling the truth. It's always going to get over on them. You know, there's – they deal with a lot. And I have gotten tremendous gifts of really throwing that on the table and discussing it and looking at it through the inventory process. And it's freed a lot of guys up to do service who perhaps wouldn't have done service. And I went on about my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I started doing the 10th step. When I – about six months before I got sober, my older brother, who was two years older than me, came to visit us. And shortly after his visit, he wrote me a letter. It was about a five-page single-spaced letter, which was an indictment of me, just explaining what an abominable person I was and a horrible husband. and um i got the letter and uh i asked him it was a complete shock to me and because we had had i thought a very good relationship really up into including the last time i'd seen him and he refused to talk to me about it he said i'm writing you another letter and i said i don't please don't write me another letter at any rate uh when i got to the inventory process and through it, and I got through 6 and 7, my initial blush of 6 and 7. I was really anxious to talk to my brother, to make amends to him for whatever I had done. And he wouldn't return my phone calls. And so eventually I wrote him a letter saying whatever I've done, I'm really deeply sorry for it. And you know, and he wrote me back a letter and the letter said, if you don't owe me anything, if you live to be a million and you're sorry every day of that million years, you wouldn't even come close to being sorry enough. So I called my sponsor and I read him the letter and God bless him, he said, rip it up right now. And I said, why? And he said because if you don't you might reread it. I ripped it up on the phone and he said good work, I love you and I'm really proud of you. And i moved on through my life, my brother stopped talking to me, wouldn't talk to me and he wouldn't talked to my mother. He broke relationships with our entire family. For my mother this is a point of terrible suffering from her she's a very troubled woman she's a very sad very depressed woman and she for anybody it's got to be very difficult for a child to refuse to talk to him and for somebody who is has made an identity of being miserable if you're quiet you could actually hear her sighing right now actually she lives in the Bronx my mother if you ask me to describe her you know there's a phrase people say well will worry about that later if you say that to my mother she'd go okay get your book out like tuesday at nine that's good um and um a couple years later you know nice things were happening with my kids and the and and the resentment would come up i'm resentful at mitchell for not talking to me and not having anything to do with my children it affects my self-esteem pocketbook ambition personal relation sex what are the defects the defects are stubborn people pleaser I want them to like me. Spiritual pride, I'm a really nice guy. Why don't you want to talk to me? Not living in today, who knows what can happen? And ungrateful, I am surrounded by guys. I have got a million brothers and alcoholics in the house. And time went by and we are talking through 10 years. You know, and now the boys are graduating high school and big stuff is happening and it erupts again. Every couple of years it kind of erupts. Now something different appears on the defective character list. what appears is ungrateful because why do i want my sons to have contact with this guy why am i wishing on my sons this is a very very troubled guy who knows what they would go through if they had to be in contact with him and i got a lot of relief there and then 15 years into my sobriety i was working with a new sponsor and um and it erupted again again something happened i I think one of my kids graduated college or something like that. Something came up again, and something wonderful happened for me. What appeared on the list was what I got was, okay, why doesn't he want to talk to me? I'm really a great guy. People all over the country like me. I'm a spiritual Goliath. I mean, listen to two of my tapes and call me in the morning. People would, you know, I know guys would love to sign up to be my brother. Putting the wrongdoing of others completely out of my mind. What if it is so injurious to have contact with me? To him. But what if it's so injorious? What if he hurts so much to be in contact with him? me. Who am I to deny him that blessing? And I got it. I got it. The only reason that I would deny him that blessing is because I need that thing. I need that. I mean, I need him to see that, you know, he's the boy in the bubble. If you go outside of the bubble, you'll be killed by the microbes, whatever that is, whatever that is. And I got it. I got it. And about two months ago, I got a call telling me that my brother was dead and he had died from a virulent, very fast acting form of blood cancer. And I just wept. I mean, I wept because I was able to mourn my brother without without making an identity of being a rejected brother that's really what it comes down to i got to just say oh my god i just i just i don't love you because i don'T know who you were i haven'T talked to you in 20 years i have an idea of you that'S my attachment my attachment is to my idea of YOU not YOU i DON'T know who you WERE 20 years later i mean me 20 years ago a vastly different person but i have this wonderful sweet memory of this guy who i shared a room with who i adored who i experienced being a kid with who I experienced being terrified with who was also terribly cruel and mean to me broke my head three times smashed a jar over my head deep I could just take the whole thing in and say pop I love my brother I'm so sad he's gone this also does not remove a piece of my life it removes a huge piece of My mother's life because I can say really with some degree of certainty that my mother has made an identity of this and has has craved him almost on a daily basis. And that has not been true for me. So there's no part of really a big part of my life per se, that's missing. This has been the result of, of the 10th step of continuing to re examine through this inventory process and pry it open and change. Otherwise, I would have been locked into some other stuff. Well, how can I change? Maybe if I sponsored just one more guy I don't like, you know, that'll be the demonstration. No, I sponsor enough guys I don' t like. Just kidding. Into sobriety, about 10 years of sobriery, I found myself in a really untenable position. I had been part of a group of AA. It's a great group of AAA and I really needed to get out of I had made some tacit agreements about my sobriety that were killing me. And they were basically, okay, you chase women, you gamble, I'll overeat, you do that, but we're sober and we're okay. And it was really – the ice was really starting to get thin for me. I was up over 300 pounds. I was terrified of my wife. Not because she's terrifying. It's because I was terrifying. And I got another sponsor, and I moved on to another home group. I'm resentful at Scott for being overweight. It affects my self-esteem, pocketbook, ambition, personal relations, and sex. What are the defects of character in me that if God would remove, the resentment would be gone? Well, I'm self-serving. I'm gluttonous. I'm ashamed. I'm not living in today. I'm stubborn. Okay, so I went to God in six and seven. I asked for the removal of the defects. I said, Pop, what do I need to do? And my inner voice said, go to OA. And I said What else you got? And I'm willing What else do you have? So I do the inventory Read it to my sponsor Go out and have a bowl of spaghetti and a pie And What does this have to do with sobriety? Absolutely nothing unless you're going through it Absolutely nothing unless you're traveling all over the world, talking at AA meetings, and the worst moment in your life is when you have to walk the 10 feet from the chair to the podium. Absolutely nothing. Happy, joyous, and free. We do not believe that this life is a veil of tears. I want the whole thing. I'm not asking to, you know, my ideal weight is my birth weight, okay? That's not what I'm asking for. I'm just asking for it to have a reasonable body and a reasonable life and not be cut off from other people, which is how I feel right now. But I didn't feel it then. And it says in 6 and 7, we go over the first five propositions in the book before we go to 6 and 8. This has been the key for me. This has being the fire-starting moment because I initially did that with my fourth step. But now when I do 10, when I have recidivism, which I believe the attorneys in the crowd will tell me that recidivism is a bad thing. It's not just repeating. It's a bad things. It's chronic wrongdoing, right? That when I continue to examine these things and continue to repeat them, whatever it is that's cutting me off from my higher power and not allowing me to really be part of the deal here, Chris and I really have a good time together. We have fun together. There's a connection that happens. And it's a spiritual thing because we talk a lot about AA and stuff. How crazy is it to think that when you take Chris and I out of the equation that this thing disappears? This is the face and the breath of God. This is what's in the room right now. This is The Thing That Happens Here. This is THE Thing That People, you know, people of religion, many of whom have a good idea, have been talking about for centuries. It's what the Buddhists talk about, you Know. The Buddhists say there's three kinds of suffering. One's a dual kind of suffering, my personal favorite, which is craving mental and physical comfort, my favorite suffering. And then there's wanting things to stop and wanting things to never stop. Those are the three sources of suffering of attachment. It's called dukkha and what the translation of the word dukkah means is a wheel that's not set right, that doesn't move right when the vehicle goes forward. And I can say that those three sources of suffering have been my major source of disconnection. So I go through the first five propositions in the book with this problem of food that I've been having. Because I'm told, go over the first 5 propositions. Now I'm applying it to a specific deal that I'm not getting movement on, that is killing me. Is it step 1? Am I not really admitting that I am powerless over food, that my life is unmanageable around food? Is it Step two, do I not really believe that God will restore me to sanity in this situation? God can keep Saturn on its axis, but he can't order lunch for me. Is it step... It's just too big a job for him. One of the things that just used to drive me crazy, and it doesn't drive me crazy anymore, I just know it's not right. So what I used to hear in meetings that, some meetings, that it's all the same disease. No, no, it's only the same disease if you have it. I'm allergic to food. I eat a loaf of toast for breakfast. I mean, this is what I go straight to. I am allergic to certain foods. I can't stop. It's the same as alcohol at any rate. Or is it step three? Have I not really made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God in that situation? Or is it step four? Have i not done enough inventory? Have I really or is it step five? It says in our book that in the description of step five, that sometimes newcomers have kept facts about themselves, which later they drank over. So I go over the first five propositions in the book in this situation with food or in this situation with work or in the situation with sex or in The Situation With My Relationship. And I go, where is it? Where's where? Where is my experience here? How can I demonstrate? How can i work step one in a more robust, fuller way? How can I surrender more completely? And I went to OA because it was the, for me, it was a huge demonstration. And I said, you know, I'm a circuit speaker. And they said, yeah, and a very fat circuit speaker, by the way. And so would you like me to speak? They said, no, no. No. And your mouth's full. And I got relief. I got relief about work. Work was just killing me. I had to change careers five years ago. My sponsor, Paul, I called him up and I was just weeping. I realized I was actually, because when I would take non-show business jobs, I would let the employer know it was the kind of job that I could leave. And, I had two kids in college and i had to get another career and um i was resentful at show business for not giving me um i gotta tell this other story real quick before i do this um when i was working on the kitchen truck one day and i'd done a lot of inventory the kind of inventory work i'm talking about the first five propositions in the book you know finding other ways to demonstrate and um i was on a movie set now again you get you make a lot of dough but you do everything so when the meal's over if you're the chef you're cleaning up you're just covered with crap you know and on this set of this big movie i was catering a guy who had worked as a stage manager on the last sitcom i had directed walked onto the set and i went and i hid behind the truck and i said to myself you're either going to hide behind this truck for the rest of your life or you're going to go out there and do your job. And I got it. And I went out, and I started to clean up. And Lenny walked over to me and said, Scott, how you doing? I said, fine. He was really glad to see me. I was glad to be here. And he said, I'm glad to see him. And then I knew that I was free because of that. Now on a movie set, when the director screams at the first, at the assistant director, the assistant screams at second, the second screams at third assistant director. And the third assistant says, where's the god damn caterer? And he goes and screams at him. so i'd have kids you know nine-year-old kids screaming at me and i would think and i had to do inventory on this i'd think you know someday you're going to come in and meet your new boss and it's going to be me and it'S GOING TO BE FUN AND A COUPLE OF YEARS LATER I WAS BACK I WAS DIRECTING SITCOMS BACK DIRECTED SIT COMES WHICH I DID FOR YEARS AND WROTE SCREENPLAYS FOR MAJOR studios and uh and i was on the lot and this guy a crew member a grip and grips make sure everything's okay on a movie set he came up to me said oh you're that caterer you're just you're such a great guy what are you doing on the plot and i said well i'm directing the show on stage 36 and he said did you go right from the catering to the directing did you just he was he was sensing a new career path at that point but uh i was interviewing staff for this uh i was the staff director on the sitcom and they brought in an assistant director and he walked on the stage he looked up and i saw in his eyes he went not the caterer oh no no and a little shiver went through him and i didn't have to punish him because i had done the work but i really enjoyed the shiver a lot i really just that little thing he doesn't didn't know what he had done for me in that little at any rate um i was resentful at show business for not having a place for me anymore i was resentment myself for not being gifted enough to be successful in show business i was resentful of myself for being a loser and then i had a lot of different personalities who wouldn't give me work and i was presentful at them for cutting me out and i wasn't resentful at them for being successful. And if I hadn't done this inventory work later on in my career, in my life, I don't, I really don't know where I would have been. I think I would've gone mad. I know that I would Have started hating Alcoholics Anonymous for not working that I know. And I went back to the first five propositions in the book and it really became clear to me that I had to stop complaining about this. I had To take it from a complaint to a real piece of business. My entire life, I have alcoholism and my alcoholism would stay above the horizon as a real peace of business for a very brief amount of time. Sometimes it would stay aloft because something great had happened. I'd fall in love, out of love. I get a job, lose a job. It would stay as a piece of real business but it's on my own juice so eventually it's going to go below the horizon and I'm going to act without reason, without explanation i'm going to act insanely and what has happened for me since april 22nd 1985 is my alcoholism has stayed above the horizon as a real piece of business all of that time and here's the miracle the miracle is that it's happening even when i'm not concentrating on it even when I'm not staring at it because it's buoyed on the heads and shoulders of the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous and the higher power that you've introduced me to. That's a miracle. And what my goal has become in sobriety is these problems like food, like career, like these other things that have gone below the horizon. And I act without reason, without explanation. I want to have that kind of profound experience, that profound experience which after a while stops being profound. It just starts being your achievement, the achievement of this thing that's come into my heart. you know uh and um my sponsors you know when i and i made this decision to go into sales and my spot i was weeping on the phone with him and he said he said to me i'm going to tell you how spiritually developed i am and i said oh please do and he says i'm not going to rub it in he said when you find out that this is like the best thing that ever happened to you i'm not going rob it in and um i i don't i don' t know that it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I do know that I still write. I'm involved in a writing project right now. If I don't write, I get sick. I've been very successful in business. I have not had to write a resentment against myself for being financially responsible in three years. And I used to have to write those all the time. I got tremendous relief. So that's really I'm going to we've got about a half hour left. I want to open up for question and answers. But that's some of my experience with the inventory process, four through seven, that I had when I initially practiced it and as I continue to practice it as a tool for change in AA. So thank you. Any questions? Yeah. Do I have crap on my forehead? Yeah. Before I do, I'd like to talk briefly about one of the most troubling defects that I have had inside and out, in sobriety and before I got sober, and it's the defect of mind reading. I think that I know what people are thinking. and they're never thinking anything good. They never are. I never catch people thinking, wow, you're pimpy. I like you. They're always thinking, you know what? You're a peckerhead, man. And I'm better than you, and you don't know what you're doing. My wife once said to me, you'RE not a mind reader. You're barely a mind user, which really hurt my feelings. So mind reading is one. Selfish, self-centered, and self-seeking. I like that. It's a disease of self. And when I talk to God, I like to be as specific as I can be. Selfish is wanting it all for me. Self-seekings is trying to figure out what's in it for me, and self centered is figuring it's all about me. Self-pity, probably, I think if you bottled self-pitty, it would not crack off the market in a week. It's just better. get a little lump in your throat lean forward eyes water it's available all the time guilt and shame you know shame is kind of i'm sorry for what i did and guilt is i'm Sorry for what I'm doing. I think there's a time element there playing God and not trusting in God. One this was really upsetting when my sponsor suggested this nosy ooh nosy i just i make stuff about me or kind of get involved in stuff that i shouldn't get involved um also and one of my friends will get a kick out of this one of uh sponsees has a terrible marriage um they don't know how to fight they they don t um There's a lot of lawyering that goes on. I'll give you the Scott Redmond. This is the real Scott Redmund couples workshop. I'll just give it to you right now. Talk to her until she changes her mind. Just talk to her until her eyes roll back in her head and she keels over and on the way over she goes, oh, okay. I mean, have you ever done that? You just talk to the other person until they go, whatever, whatever. Just shut up, shut up. Shut up! I used to get that a lot. People pleasing and mind reading go together quite often for me. In the last couple of weeks, I went through something. It's had a really fantastic impact on my marriage. i uh i have uh been dealing my whole life with a basic horrible assessment of myself really just miserable miserable assessment of myself and um and i still have this nagging sort of attitude of hi my name's scott i'm a knucklehead uh i really do i'm my name scott I'm sorry. Really? We'll get to why later. And it's, it's had a really bad impact on my marriage all these years. And after writing about it and praying about it, my, I just felt like my back was broken and I got, I was just done with being ashamed with the defect of shame. I realized that the defective shame, if I took a look at the anatomy of it, what the anatomyof shame in my marriage is, I'm scared that she's going to be mad at me. I'm scared that this is going to translate into no sex in the upcoming millennium. I am scared that I'm going to be punished. I're scared I'm gonna be disapproved of. That shame in that moment in my relationship, if I break it down, is about 10 different kinds of fear. And what I did was I started asking myself to do something that I have asked my sons to do, that I've asked my sponsees to do which has been please don't dance for me. Don't. You don't have to dance for me I love you I love my sons, you don't have to danse for me I have been, my sponsor said try to be an enthusiastic interested observer instead of a psychotic participant What a beautiful thing and I try to do that with my wife don't don't dance for me my sponsees and and in the last month 20 years in in the past month i really feel like i'm stopping dancing and it's great any other questions yes your mother absolutely not this is a fantastic question okay there's a difference don't confuse something and i used to confuse it too and i've been a really i deal with this with so many men I sponsor. Just because you're not experiencing the resentment now doesn't matter. The whole architecture of spiritual sickness is it's opportunistic. So when the time and place comes for it to erupt and be applied to a wrongdoing that's going on, believe me, you'll feel them. All right? How wonderful that you're now experiencing them now. Put them through the God computer. Process them. Write it down and admit it. And then do the prayer in meditation. Do the step. Don't be concerned with feeling it now. If you felt it all now, you would blow up. Okay? So don't, please don't be concerned with not feeling it. Now, it doesn't mean they're not there. It doesn't mean that the time and place is not going to come where they are going to present and present horribly. Because remember the last paragraph of chapter 3, the time and place will come where we will have no mental defense. And we don't know when that's going to be but i know that when that mental defense wasn't there i know what i did i drank and now i don't because my not drinking muscle is so strong so this is a great question and i just want to urge you to go through the process whether or not you're feeling them right now absolutely absolutely yeah but it's it's a how great that you're getting relief right now but long-term relief permanent recovery that's a whole different deal so it's a great question um i have had things that have come that have presented to me years into sobriety that i haven't remembered you know where i call my sponsor and i've said have i told you about anyone no you never have you know um resentments fears and sexual misconduct and some people have said to me, well, I haven't hurt anybody. And I've said, have you hurt yourself? And they go, yeah, I have. It's a funny thing about dishonesty as a defect. I used to lie when there was a lull in a conversation just to keep things moving along. And I have such a knee-jerk reaction to lie, I still have to keep a governor on it. I'll find myself completing a conversation and going, you didn't. You were never in the Army. What are you talking about? So getting in the habit of that self-examination and that admission, it's been the only key to attaining any humility and without humility I can't possibly stay sober but that was a great question. Anybody else? Thank you. uh that's a great question i um i had a tremendous amount of resentment against myself and some of my 10 steps these days uh no one appears on them except for me it's been my experience and this is just me and i know a lot of people have a lot of different experience in a lot of ways i've never deliberately gone and to make resentment um to make amends to myself i was not on my eight step list and a lot of people need to be on the right step list i didn't need to be and i don't indict anybody who does that being said that so working through those resentments against myself or and helping men do that has not been part of that deal for me um i have sponsored guys who have experienced things in their life that are beyond description, have been brutalized and victimized and molested and abused in ways that are beyond comprehension for me. They're so horrible. I'll just give you one example. I sponsor a guy who his mother was so crazy that when he was about three, she made him sleep in the same bed with her. But before they went to bed, she would look at him and say, I might kill you tonight. what am i to say to this guy what can i possibly i'm coming to him with these pathetic tools in the face of this mind-boggling thing so we sit down and we go he says i'm resentful at myself for not being a good son what do you do well what you don't do is you don t throw your chair back and say, you're wrong. You were a great son. You don't say you don't feel that way. You don'T argue with the drunk. You go, let's look at the interior of this resentment myself for not being a good son. What are the defects? Well, the defects are self-delusion, not being delusionary. There's a difference between the two. Self-delution is lying to myself. Being delusionery is telling you i'm going to going out of space as a young filipino woman all right could happen could happen got a lot of stuff doctors can do now um so self-delusion shame guilt unpitying not showing yourself any love or pity uh not living in today because you're you're accessing this terrible misinformation that was given to you now if a guy writes those defects down which are a very wonderful kindness to himself and admits them to you and then can say to god please pop please let me appreciate this terrible thing look what i'm doing and it's blocking me and also the self-pity and all this other stuff. So there's been a myriad of ways, Carl, where I've really benefited so much from this. My sponsor, when he first showed me how to do a four-step, he asked me every time I wrote a resentment to ask myself the question, do you have any resentment against yourself in connection with this? Well, I was resentful of my father for dying and I was certainly resentful at myself for not showing up when he died. I was resentful at my sons for being a mess, and I was resentment myself for being a bad dad. So I found that sort of using that as a tool really you know when your dentist probes around with that awful tool and they find a little pinprick and they open it up and it's like this the Carlsbad Cavern is in there and I have found that to be true with some of the spiritual work. I'll find a kernel, the pith of something, and then it opens up into this other this other thing so I hope that's helpful anybody else Chris yeah six and seven have led me to an examination of 11 because I have these problems that that are ongoing, and I've continued to suffer in certain ways in sobriety. I've had great joy, great pleasure in sobrietty, but I've also had problems that have reappeared that I would like to be shut of. In the 12 steps of AA, there are only two steps that there are no specific written instructions on are the first two steps in AA. There are no scientific work. They're contained in the first three propositions in the book. But, of course, we focus on them a lot because without them we have really nothing. We're just pissing into a gale force wind. And there are the first three propositions of the book, a lot of talk. A lot of people do workbooks and writing assignments, which I think is all fabulous. A lot people pray about them. But for the rest of the ten steps, there's no suggestion on how to meditate. There's nothing there. There's very specific stuff to do about every other step. There's prayers throughout the entire book. There's many suggestions on prayer. but they were told to pray and meditate. In the section on step 11 in the 12 in 12, they actually give a few examples, which were never very helpful to me at all about visualizing a sunlit beach. They're not stupid things to do, but they would never... And so 15 years into sobriety, I'm working 11 1⁄2 steps. I guarantee you if you gave me 12 pills to take, I would take every one of them pills. But I'm taking 11 1½ pills. and in my effort to work six and seven, and Paul had started to do it with me and then Bob, who became my sponsor after that, after my sponsor passed away, took me further to really, really starting to meditate and really become much more of a deliberate seeker. And so he took me to Eckhart Tolle. He took me Peman Chodron, who's a Buddhist nun. He tookme to Anthony DeMello, who's a wonderful Jesuit priest who has incredible teachings. And all of these implementations and learning how to meditate, making meditation part of my life. I started by committing to meditating 30 seconds a day. And I meditated 30 seconds a day for a couple weeks and then I committed to a minute. And now it's part of our lives. Not every day. Anthony DeMello has this great story in his tapes where he says this other priest told an elderly man And he said to DeMello that in 60 years of his spiritual work, never once had he had ever missed his period of meditation. And DeMelo says, sounds like an obsession. And what had happened to me was my prayers and my implementation of six and seven were starting to become hastily mumbled prayers. And when they weren't hastily mumble, I was having they were flattening out for me. i was having a hard time getting some real penetration with it now i don't ask for that all the time but i need it i need and uh so as i did six and seven and i went through the first five propositions in the book and i made it more robust and i started changing in my life and i needed more tools to change really getting involved in the second half of the 11th step and really seeking spiritual teachings, which I needed because the book didn't – they just told me I needed to meditate. And I have found nothing, nothing that would injure my experience of Alcoholics Anonymous in any of this stuff. There's some stuff in some of these teachings where they talk about stuff that would be just insane for an alcoholic. You know, they say if you do this and this, you should not have certain problems. And I go, no, I like the relaxing thing, you know. So I hope that's helpful. We've got time for one more. Yeah? Can you do an annual inventory of, say, the several ones on the home treatment? If a person keeps coming up on your inventory list or if they keep showing up, how do you resolve that spiritually? Really the way that I've described it. I, number one, I don't do a yearly inventory. I do inventories all the time. I don' t do a daily inventory. I do it when I get lit up. There are certain things now, you know, the book says that I'll be able to deal with situations that used to baffle me. And I know, man, there are things that come up that would have lit me up like a Roman candle a year ago and they'll come up now and I'll feel them pass over me. After my brother died, I needed to go to New York and tell my mom that her son was dead. Ugh. And I knew that I needed to hold her while I told her. I needed a kid on a plane, so I didn't tell her. I made some excuse up about going to New York. And the other thing that I wanted to do was something I had not done, which was find out about my brother's life. The thing I wanted him to be able to tell his mother was how he had died, if he was alone, what had happened. I really felt that it was a real kindness for me to beable to have that information for her. So I contacted some people who I knew my brother knew. because I had asked my friends not to give me any information about my brother. I was not interested in having a relationship with him that way. And I found out that he had died of multiple myeloma. I found OUT that he HAD become married, and I found OUT a bunch of stuff about him. So I then did the thing I didn't want to do and I knew I had to do because of the life I lead now. Through this third person, I extended myself to his wife, and I said, Please tell Mitchell's wife that if she would like to have any contact with us, it would be my pleasure. And I knew, I mean, I so did not want to do this. So the message comes back to me the next day. And the message is she would not, she doesn't want. And also there had been some mention of a memorial. And I said if there would be any interest in me being involved in the memorial or anything. So the messager comes back and says, The message comes to me next day saying, no, she does not want any contact with you. And the memorial is just for a few people who he really liked. so my first blush was oh you son of a bitch he got me one more time one more time he just got me and what happened was and my wife was sitting with me and i just went oh and i felt it wash over me and i was done i had done too much work i had experienced the touch of the master's hand in this area too profoundly and what a great thing that i could feel it and that you know that it was done so that's been my experience when i've really effectively gotten god involved and then i have certain things that i have created attachments to there's a couple of people in aa who don't like me and they've been i know they don't Like because they've told me and uh and they reiterate that point whenever they see me as best they possibly can and i've developed this mania to get these guys to like me and now what one of my teachings because of my involvement in 11 step connected to six and seven is one of our teachers has suggested that i instead of experience this that i observe myself experiencing it that i separate from it as i would with a sponsee and i go oh scott look what look at that you adorable guy you're adorable look at you you nut and at first i'm going look at you you're a nut you know and now i go look at you you not you know um i was told early on you know sometimes they say if you resent somebody pray for them it says in our book also that we cannot will these things away any more than alcohol and sometimes a prayer is a wish for me just doesn't work you know and I know that praying for people does work it has never worked for me because the prayer becomes help this man, please Pop kill him he needs killing it's going to be good for everyone I think it will be good for him too so and I Know that praying for people works for a lot of people, it just hasn't worked for Me I've had to sit down and take a look at the map of that resentment the architecture of my sickness resentments, defects of character fear and sexual misconduct. And one last note on all this, I believe that the more enlightenment you achieve, the more power that you gain. And I've seen it to be certainly true in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if one does not deliberately divest himself of the power that your crew through enlightenment, you will eventually become Swami Bhagawinda. That will be your fate. And it's a painful, interesting, joyful process to do this work, to get involved, to receive enlightenment, and then to gain power and say, I quit. I quit." There's a guy named Krishnamoorthy who was preened and prepared to be the leader of a group called the Theosophists. This is some years ago, in the last 20, 30, 40 years. He was a guru. And he was a boy wonder, kind of a Dalai Lama-esque kind of figure. And they groomed him to take control of this group. And when he finally came to his own and took control of the group, he brought the group together and disbanded it. I love Krishnamurti. I love that idea. The reason why I'm saying this is that I have started groups where I've really instituted this work through sponsorship and the group has become about this work. and I've started three groups that I've quit because they've turned this 10-step work and this work into a god and it's ugly. And they don't miss me. They're perfectly fine. They're very robust groups. They're growing. They're doing good. My new home group is five guys. So if you knew, I want to welcome you to Alcoholics Anonymous. I wantto urge you, you know, if anybody puts their finger in your chest and says this is the way AA is, I've just steered clear of those people. If you read the literature, if you read the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, it was founded by a bunch of niacin-eaten, acid dropping, Ouija board plan wackos. I mean, it was really started by incredible valiant seekers. You know, before Bill Wilson died, Earl Marsh who wrote Dr. Heal Thyself, Physician Healthyself in the book, was going to India for the first time and Bill said to him, see what you can find bring me back something see what you could find what are they doing you know that's what i want and i've been hanging out with people with people with a lot of time in aa who are relentless seekers they're not relentlessly uncomfortable they're relentlessly seeking and uh and i pray that for you thanks so much for having me as your guest today