Fourth Step Resentment Inventory – 16th Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Local AA Speakers

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to our 16th installment of the Big Book is Alive workshop. I'm a recovered alcoholic, and my name is Mike Chase. And I'm an recovered alcoholic and my Name is Joe. Our spiritual duty is to put newcomers' hands in God's hands as quickly as possible. We have found this to be most effective by doing our part to make the Big book come alive. As a disclaimer, we're not experts. We're just a couple of recovered alcoholics that love the big book. however we have made it our utmost spiritual errand to become as familiar with the facts and the history as possible in other words if we are reading from the big book it means that we are studying what we know to be a divine solution to alcoholism at other times we may share an experience an observation or an opinion and we certainly encourage you to investigate the history and do your own research as you grow spiritually basically we aim to reproduce what we do with our students in a one-on-one session only here with a much larger larger audience this however should not replace your own personal one-on-one work with your own teacher absolutely that's right this is workshop style study our aim is to invigorate your current experience with god this is an opportunity for you to learn more about the book with your sponsors if you like so when you're bringing the book to live when it's reading this it's an interesting road read for the guys and gals tonight we aim to continue in the chapter how it works and look a little bit about the fourth step but we always appreciate spiritual consent to allow god to lead us as we study tonight material please enjoy the pages which have been uploaded to mikechase.org you'll find underneath the podcast there you'll be you'll fine reference to the specific highlighting structure that we are referencing as we studied this will give you a completed teacher's edition toolbox but before we begin our study of the big book we'd like to invite you to join us in a brief two-minute meditation we do this for a definite spiritual reason and that is to allow god to remove all forms of self which might block us from the sunlight of the spirit so that we may have a clear connection with god as we study so what we're going to do is we're gonna invite the monks in as soon as we're done with these bells that are ringing they always bring us into study i love how that works we've uh invited the harpist back i don't know if she's gonna show up did you see did she show up today there's a good possibility good good let's hope she's here We're going to invite the monks in right now as we start moving into this. What we're going do is we're turn off our lights. We're gonna get meditative state. We're gunna concentrate on our breathing and our posture, and for two minutes, we're guna get reconnected to a higher level with God. You know, we never disconnected, but we always have an opportunity to get more connected with God, and as we like to say, you never get enough God around here, so let's get some God. Joe, I'm gunna sit back and relax. You want to invite the monks in and we shall see you on the other side. © transcript Emily Beynon © transcript Emily Beynon Satsang with Mooji Bye, guys. Please join me in the lay-aside prayer. Dear God, please set aside anything I think I know about myself, about my disease about the big book the 12 steps the program the fellowship and all spiritual terms especially you God so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with all these things please help me see the truth Amen thank you Joe Joe you want to tee us up from where we left off absolutely absolutely we're in this exciting chapter called how it works uh we typically hear a set portion of that chapter at the beginning of lots of meetings that we go to um and what's lost in the process of reciting that is the fact that that is actually um a page in a book that has context where in other words it's it's in page 58 59 for a reason that everything you've read up to that point has prepared you for that information rather than getting thrown with the invitation before you have a context of what it's about and that is very um important for us especially when we reach the abcs at the end of how it works it goes through um and we talked a little bit about the differences between the original how it worked and the the final edition um there were a lot of you musts that were taken out uh it's most most notably you must find him now in reference to god um it got changed to may you find him and we also go over that whole concept of the things that are blocking us from god you know we're not adding anything this is a process abstraction taking away the things that have currently blocking us form that pure connection to god so we see a bunch of character defects shortcomings wrongs another way to call them And there's our six and seven stuff scattered all over that place. That's leading up to the third step, which is that opportunity to turn your will, which is your thought and my actions or my life, which is my actions over to the care of God as you understand him, not the stuff that the Oxford group was selling on people. Remember, this is your own conception of God. So we get to the ABCs of how it works. And, you know, all we need to be at this stage that we are in the process is convinced based on the investigation and the research that we've done and the time that we spent one-on-one with our sponsor going through this material highlighting underlining um talking about one alcoholic relating to another and praying and meditating are we convinced of the abcs joe we went through this i brought you through the book this way when we reached this point did you feel like you were rushed hurried or was it just happening at the right time do you feel You know, because we followed the book, something was clicking into place. It came at exactly the right moment and it had the desired effect that it should have had at that time because of where it was placed. Yeah, I love that. That's so cool how this works. The first requirement is to be convinced that any life running self-will can hardly be a success. We went over the different ways character defects. We went through some analogies and I gave you some examples of how it shows up in our day-to-days. And we saw that the stuff that was blocking us was self-induced, stuff that we wanted that God trying to manipulate life and God to do the things that we want rather than just appreciating what we have and making the best of what God's given us. And the real sort of spirituality of the book as we're starting to see is we're getting a lot of references to things that are going to be very pertinent in the fourth step and in the sixth and seventh step much later on. Root of our troubles. The root of our trouble. What are they? Selfishness, self-centeredness. That, not alcohol, we think is the root of our troubles this is the how and why but first of all we had to quit playing god it didn't work next we decided that hereafter in this drama of life god was going to be the director he is the principal we are his agents he is the father and we are His children most good ideas are simple and this is the concept of the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we pass to freedom and then it goes on when we sincerely took such a position all sorts of remarkable things happened we had a new employer being all powerful he provided what we needed if we kept close to him and performed his work well established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves our little plans and designs more and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life as we felt new power flow in as we enjoyed peace of mind as we discovered we could face life successfully as we became conscious of his presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn. Now this is not a prophecy. This is the actual promises experienced by that first group of recovered alcoholics as a result of having made this vital spiritual decision. We are now at step three. Many of us said to our maker as we now understood it. Do you want to give us a third step prayer? God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt relieve me of the bondage of self that i may better do thy will take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those i would help of thy power thy love and thy way of life may i do thywill always we thought well before taking the step making sure we were ready that we could last abandon ourselves utterly to him and we discussed how we handle this in our family how we we read through this part up to this point we discuss what the prayer is actually going to encompass them so we can go into it with full knowledge not not some peer pressure not really understanding what we're getting ourselves into but going in wise-eyed open spirit ready and willing we found it very desirable to take this spiritual step with an understanding person sort of interesting the the uh the directions and suggestions on who to do it with are given actually after the the the prayer is written in the book so i assume that We're supposed to get an idea of what the prayer is, and then we decide who we're supposed to do it with. And then a little bit later on, as you say, now's the time to go pray perhaps. And no suggestions come in the form such as our wife, best friend, or spiritual advisor. How about your drinking buddies? Probably not a good selection. But it's better to meet God alone than with one who might understand. The wording was, of course, quite optional as long as we expressed the idea of voicing it without reservation. You can rewrite it. You can change the words to your own. We like to do it three times, the first time out of the book, second time in our own words, in our own belief structure, and then one time just sort of loud announcing to the world this change of concept and this whole, I like to call it a new covenant with God. This was only a beginning. What? This was только начало. You mean I got more to do? Absolutely. Though if honestly and humbly made an effect, sometimes a very great one was felt at once. So what this third step is is it's really a spiritual decision, an affirmation to seek this vital spiritual experience that we've been studying and reading about and hearing about. This spiritual awakening is sufficient to recover from alcoholism, to have the obsession of the mind lifted. We've got the personality mind open for some new thoughts, new directions. we've had let's see 16 hours one-on-one with your sponsors and your students talking get them ready ripe for this thing by the way if we uh sneak ahead to page 89 at the bottom of the page where you guys are getting ready to do this third step part it says first make sure you have all the ingredients i.e have your four-step packet prepared ready off to the side so we're going to be presenting that pretty darn soon so we don't by theway the way this is broken up we we do this an hour. Each podcast is an hour when we do how it works. Actually, when we do any chapter, we do the entire chapter with our students. We don't do half chapters unless something, you know, emergency comes up, but this is all a flow. So for us to do, you now, how it works, this is usually two and a half, three and a half hours sit down reading and we do the third step prayer. We get connected to God. They get a moment, you know, to get some chills and some goosebumps and you know we get this moment together just like you know we've got god with us and then what do we do joe next when's next right now how about tomorrow no that doesn't cut it uh how about next week no joe i want you to sit and enjoy the the new relationship you have with god okay by by i used to do that sounds like taking god's grace uh for granted yeah like i said i usedと do the one two three steps in the morning by lunchtime you know i'm pretty much got it all back in control and by four o'clock I've decided, ah, it's going to be different. I'm going to the bistro for a couple of knob creaks. And by 6 o'clock, Phenomenon of Cravings kicked in. I'm on the phone with Mr. You-Know-Who. And at 4 o' clock in the morning, am I... No, see, next. See, this stuff that's blocking us from God. We're living on the grace of God up to this point. Now it's time for us to kick in with some action. We need to go in and discover how those character defects are showing up in my life, in your sponsee's life. And this is the program of action. After the third step, we jump right into the fourth step. We're going to hear words like launch, next, at once. You know, I love this. A countdown. A rocket, when it launches, you can't have a slow launch. No. You can have a very slow countdown. Ten, nine, eight, seven. But as soon as you hit zero, whoosh! An explosion. It's launching. And we're using words like lunch and next. And next is now. Okay, you got the point? Absolutely. Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action. There's not much napping around here, is there? The next step of the first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, though this third step that we just took was vital and critical, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which have been blocking us. And so if we go back down to the bottom of page 63 where it says, Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action. I have that highlighted in green and underlined. The rest of it's in yellow. And then once again, it's green on page 64 from, Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it would have little permanent effect unless at once by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things on ourselves which had been blocking us. I've got some sparkles on either side of that because we're going to be referring back to that in a few pages, that part that we don't launch right now. It's like, dude, yeah. And, you know, as Mike Chase was saying, we are seeing words like launched vigorous action instead of just action, strenuous effort to face and be rid of. The language is getting very flowery, so it's really trying to emphasize the absolute necessity of doing this immediately. I can see Lois with her fingers shaking. Get in your first station! Our liquor was but a symptom, so we had to get down to the causes and conditions. yellow underlined therefore we started on a personal inventory this was step four now bill at the time had been working with a lot of business people um so he's gonna look at this in a a business-like way which in itself worked out to be fantastic because this is a fact finding the inventory that we're going on to we don't want to get it caught up with emotions and feelings and stuff like that this is facts we got to find the stuff our character defects are blocking us from god so the fact that he did it in a business thing the fact he wasn't business may not have anything to do with it it's it's the best way to handle it and and what we're really looking at here is we're trying to find these things within ourselves which are keeping us blocked from the sunlight of the spirit from enough grace to have this obsession removed and this is the one part that you know that uh written by the hand of god and stuff that he claims this is stuff that directly just came out and you can't wiggle around this. This inventory is a specific laid out columns with stuff, it's not a life story, don't start writing your life story from page one to it because that absolutely, there's a lot of writing and it's probably fun and that's your writing skills but it doesn't get the information that this particular, well what the book is asking you to do. So let's start reading here. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is fact finding and a fact facing process. underlined fact finding and fact facing process it is an effort to discover the truth about the stock in trade underline that word truth boy that's a word we're not too good at before we get through four three nine is it green one object is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods to get rid of them promptly without regret yellow if the owner of a business is to be successful and we have this yellow underline he cannot fool himself about his values up to this point in my recovery i was nothing but a fool when it comes to my values i thought he meant this i thought i was living by this my intentions were great my actions were completely different i thought that my intentions Were true and good i was a good person but no the actions didn't meet up to the intentions i was my actions so bill's giving us this example of a business here and the wording of the fourth step says made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves in that sentence that we did a lot of green underlining and stuff in it we're going to parallel the fact finding term with searching because that's what fact finding is fact facing as fearless because it takes courage to face that fear and then truth is like a parallel to moral he doesn't say air amoral or immoral it's moral which is truth so many people think they got to write down all these horrible immoral immoral things we've done that's part of it but it's the truth is what we're going after that's why we have that's where the book is laid out and bill's gonna like do a really good job in this first page and a half laying out how to do a resentment inventory column by column line by line so when we jump into the fears and sex and harms we've got it down you know bill's assuming we're business people and we know how to doing inventory we did exactly the same thing with our lives we took stock honestly so we're gonna find and face the facts to discover the truth of self from the wording of the previous paragraph first we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure yellow first we search out the flaws in her makeup which our failure being convinced that self manifested itself in various ways I have that green underline because we're this is the six and seven stuff popping up right self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us yellow and underlined we considered its common manifestations going back to the analogy of the bar stools or the what are you good at which ones do you use the most which ones pop up without you even knowing it you know we start lying without even well let's see what can i do to lie about just blah falls out we start lying to people and then we get halfway through the conversation like oi vey i've been lying and now how do i get out of this one well i'll just have to let this lie and i hope they don't meet those people because the lines get together like boom resentment is the number one offender See, what we're looking for is the stuff that has started to block us from the connection of God. When we do this, the God moment where we sit in silence and just try to live in the moment. When we're in the movement, that's the closest connection we can get to the power of God It's calm and it's peace. The past will distract me from the moment, the future will distract me from my moment. Fears, shame, guilt, remorse will keep my mind going so I can't take that moment of just silence wow I was told to when I listen to my sponsors and talk listen to the silence between the words it makes me a much better listener but it's that connection to God that we need to get back and this is the stuff we're going to look that's been blocking us from that so this resentment is the number one offender why? because we keep living it over and over resentment comes from some greek word that says resent is to live over and meant is to refill we keep refilling and keep feeling you know something happens on the way to school you know i get pushed down somebody's you know by the time i get home that afternoon i was attacked by 15 gang members and uh you know they they tied me down and pulled me down there's lies and there's resentments that come up it's like but in actuality you know it's not a big deal but boy our brains can take it which is very very key because for us alcoholics walking around with a spiritual malady these resentments these things that we're refeeling can be real or imagined matter of fact green from its stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have not only been mentally and physically ill we have been spiritually sick you know i was listening to the gals talk the other night and they were talking about you know how we come into these rooms spiritually and emotionally damaged and for alcoholics that is so true you know the rest of society has it too but for some reason we just take that to heart so much more because we don't have that relief we don'T have that solution that other people have you know we go out and we try to medicate it with drugs and alcohol and stuff like that and it doesn't cut it. It doesn't. It just makes it worse actually yellow underline joe when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically Now, notice the order that is given to us in that sentence. When the spiritual malady is overcome first, then we straighten out mentally and physically. So let's not wait until we get the job or the car or the girlfriend or the apartment, everything lined up like a duck before we jump into that step stuff or before we start a relationship with God. Because if we do, we're never going to reach that point to get really connected to God. this is why it's so important to get these guys in the steps as soon as possible once they're able to comprehend and have conversations get them connected to god because let's face it it's the grace of god that's keeping us over to get them to the rooms we've got them in the rooms let's get them into the steps let's get them collected to god let's make sure that they're connected to god let'S GET THIS STUFF CLEARED AWAY SO THEY CAN START ENJOYING WHAT LIFE WITH GOD IS LIKE YOU KNOW NOTHING WORSE THAN GOING TO AN ALCOHOLIC ANONYMOUS MEETING AND NOT HAVING ANY SOLUTION Being in AA jail where, take my booze away from me. I was more uncomfortable than when I was drinking, you know? Absolutely. Give me a connection to God and I'm home. Others feel the mess of our disease when we're in it. But when we sober up, that's when we feel it. You know, I'd come to the meetings and I would be fine for that 45 minutes I was in the meeting. And then I'd leave the meeting and then I would get crazy again. And I would start falling through the cracks and I Would go relapse, you Know? Most meetings are an hour, by the way. You probably came late and left early, right? No, there was just, you know, all that 15 minutes of blah, blah. Right. You know. No solution. Yeah, okay, 20 minutes. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. I was referring to like therapeutic meetings, not... Yeah. Okay, good. You know, like drop your problems so you don't drink during the hour, and then I go home and drink. That was crazy. So in dealing with resentments, we have to set them on paper. Hmm, inventory, paper. I used to work in a gas station. We did inventory. I knew it was there. It's like what good is inventory by the time I count something and get back and I forget what the number is. This is all down on paper, and now he's going to give us really specific directions on how to do this. And for you guys who are actually following on with us from the pages uploaded to the website, you'll notice how we've spliced this up into the directions that we're receiving. and we've got little red hashtags to separate our directions that we're working with here. So a matter of fact, Joe, you know, in dealing with resentments, these are the number one offenders. You know, imagine that, well, first of all, we listed the people, institutions, or principles from whom we were angry. Everyone that had wronged us in our mind, that would be our first column. The second, we asked ourselves why we were angered. What is it that they affected? What is that they prevented us from getting? I like to go through this analogy, this story of Joe's been wanting to meet this gal and he's just discovered that this is going to be the soulmate, the one who's going to fix his life. And he finds he meets somebody. He says, oh, I know her. I'll introduce you to her. So Joe's got this date planned out. So he's goingto go to this little French restaurant, stuff like that. Joe's a little short of cash. And heaven forbid Joe's goingt show up without some procurement, a little buzz to get him going through the desk. So he stops off to pick up some of the stuff that he needs to feel more comfortable at this one-time date. He's also a little short of cash, you know. So he goes and visits his friend who's going to get a couple shots at whatever he's doing. And while his friend was in the back room getting the shots ready, whatever he was getting for him, Joe notices some cash in the drawer. So he puts the money in his drawer. And the guy comes in. He catches him, Joe, stealing the money. And Joe grabs the bottle and runs out the door. And the guys like, Joe you, and he's gone. So Joe managed to break away from this guy, right? Now he's in this restaurant. He's sitting across. It's a little French restaurant, you know, little booths and some curtains and stuff. And he's sitting there. He's talking to this girl, and he's doing fine. He's having this great conversation. All of a sudden the door opens, and there's Mike Chase standing there in his plaid. And he walks over and says, Joe, you knows something? You are an oak tree. I look over at the girl like, hi. That's right, Joe. You are. You are a oak tree, and I walk out the door. Joe sort of looks at the girl, and the girl sort of looks at Joe, and I don't know this guy. I keep seeing him. Two minutes later, the door flies open, and it's his buddy showing up he had stolen the money from and got the bottle of stuff from. And he comes over, and he starts screaming at Joe. You stole my money! I can't believe it! You're drinking my blah, blah, bla! And Joe looks over,and the girl's gone. And Joe's like, How dare you ruin my date? And they're screaming back and forth. And Joe was just thinking, How dares this guy ruin my date you know well so okay never mind let's go back so we are spiritual maladies overcome we straighten out mentally and physically in dealing with resentments we set them on paper we listed people institutions or principles with whom we were angry that is our first direction that's our first column and mike chase did mention uh the word column when we were kind of teeing this up this is to be done top to bottom not across so we make a list of everyone we're mad at and then we asked ourselves why we were angry that's our second column what did they do to make me angry in most cases it was found that our get your highlighters and underliners out self-esteem pocketbooks our ambitions our personal relationships including sex were hurt or threatened so those things actually have to be heard or threatened for them to have a problem with us huh absolutely so on our grudge list we said opposite each name the injuries was it our self-esteem security ambitions our personal sex relations which had been interfere with so going back to my analogy we just had um i showed up at your restaurant you're having this date mike chase shows up and he walks up to the table and he calls you an oak tree joe did that interfere with any of that that affect your self-esteem your pocketbooks your ambitions or your personal relations no it didn't absolutely not do you have resentment against mike chase not at all you think he's a kind of oddball but but other than that he's cool oh you left me puzzled but i always leave people puzzled i wasn't experiencing a resentment so that's sort of cool how that would but how about your buddy who finally tracked you down shows up yells at you embarrasses you in front of oh matter of fact she's gone so you gotta you got a little resentment against him huh yeah i can't i can stand him how dare he have the audacity to publicly humiliate me and he's your friend me of all of these things ruin my date and then ruin your date this was the dream girl this was the life this is the girl who's gonna make your life perfect and this guy had the audacity to do that so this guy so mike chase probably is going to show up on this inventory list i would reckon so so we're going to call your friend we'll just call him ralph Okay. So Ralph's name is in column one, isn't he? That's right. What's the cause? Now you could, this is the little part here that says we're usually as definite as this, right? The cause is you could have said, oh my God, I was on this date with this beautiful girl. It was beautiful. We were in this French restaurant. They were playing music. I was dressed immaculately. She was hot. It was gorgeous. Everything was going great. And then he showed up and it's like, no, it's not. It's like he ruined my date. Right. He ruined my life. We keep that very definite as the example is. And then what did it affect? It affected my sex relations. Your self-esteem, your pocketbook, all that money wasted. Pride because I was embarrassed in front of everybody at the restaurant. And that's about as far as you get. So if we're just so you can see how that works and how we can figure out how that works. But let's take a look at page 65. If you guys go to the download, you'll notice that in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, at the time that the book was made, they didn't have Adobe Illustrator and I guess they were sort of on the cheap, so they didn't do a bunch of lines. When you have columns, if you look at a spreadsheet on Excel, it's broken, and the resentment is one column, the cause would be another column, and my effects minus in a column. Well, we had this great idea. It's like, what if we drew the lines? Absolutely. So if you go there, you'll see what this actually looks like. So it actually looks Like a Spreadsheet. So the first column is, the first is the who am I resentful at? The second column is why? And the third column, affects my what? And if we relate those back to the page on 64 at the bottom, first column is we listed the people, institutions, or principles from whom we were angry. Second column is, we asked ourselves why we were anger. And the 3rd, in most cases, we found that our self-esteem, pocketbooks, ambitions, or personal relations, including sex, were hurt or threatened. And so this highlighted up and put some lines in, and the columns made it look like columns. It certainly made a lot more sense to me. And when I'm working with my guys and we add lines in the columns, they look and go like, oh, yeah, I can relate to that. But without the lines and columns, that was like confused me. And we've got some words in red above the I'm resentful at. It's our first column. It's the who column. The second column, top to bottom, is the why column. And then the third column is affects what? What has it affected me? Now when we're going through these columns, and you presented this a little later on, we can only do one column at a time. So when you're working on who you're mad at, it's like just go to town. My grudge list, my mad list, and just concentrate on who screwed you over. Who has done me wrong? Because you can't go straight up and down. And then we've exhausted everybody who's done us wrong. And then, we go back at the top and say, well, what did he do? What did Mike Chase do? Well, his name, he's not on there because I didn't do anything. But we've got, you know, Ralph, ruined my date. And we just stay in the cause until we get down to the bottom. This is very important and it's definite for this way for a reason and kind of what you just said so that our mind can flow with everybody that we're resentful at. Then we can go back to the top and our mind can flow with why these people one thought kind of leads into the next. And if you work with some prayer and meditation around doing this writing, work with Sam or do you must you do prayer before you start any column? God, please tell me to be thorough and honest. Pray second column. God, help me be thorough. Help me. This is this is you and God's prayer meditation with between every column, between every action we're doing. This is not you. This is asking God to come in and help you. So when you're putting the stuff down in the papers, well, should I put him down? Did it come to your head? Yeah, well, then I guess you better put it down. God will provide you everything you will need for this process. And this is one I really do recommend you go to MikeChase.org and click on this to see how this is laid out. It really does make this whole inventory process a lot more understandable. And then the third column would affect my sex relations, and we just go through that. So that's basically Bill giving us a little idea of how to start off an inventory column style. And he's going to spend a little bit more time because we've got a couple other columns. That's right. If Bill had spent as much time on the inventory as we do talking to our guys and explaining it to them, we'd be at page 217 by the time we actually get through the work of this. So he's giving us an idea, and then it's just like, okay, you guys got the idea, just carry on. because he's assuming that we know how to do spreadsheets and columns and stuff like that. So let's move to the – well, we're going to have you guys look at that and then we're just going to move on a little bit. I'll put it aside, by the way. I've got this just written there. I'm going to expose the facts. You know, for so long I've been living in delusion, misunderstanding, and now I'm writing this stuff down on paper and it's like, wow, truth. Ooh, ouch. So this is what happens. We went back through our lives. yellow underlined nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty when we were finished we considered it carefully the first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got you know the usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves this is the part of the book where i like to go blame game and victim This is where we can go, bring out the violins and go, you know, just go for it. This is Where We Let It Flow. Green underlined, but the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. The manipulation mounts, the stealing mounts, everything mounts, and it just builds up and it's going to blow up in our faces. As a matter of fact, as in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived. This is a malady, a fatality we're dealing with. There's certain things we have to do in life. As a recovered alcoholic, as someone who's walking shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand with God, we've got to take the high road. We can't play games anymore. We have to just live in the power of God and grace and live by the four absolutes. And this is the process that's going to get us there. So we get to this part, it's yellow and underlined. It is plain that a life which includes deep resentments leads to fertility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile? You know, we only have a certain number of breaths. We only have certain number heartbeats. We only certain number minutes and hours on this earth. Do we want to waste them? No. Let's get on and move on. But with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. Yellow underlined. We found that it is fatal for when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit green and the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And for us, Joe, the drink is to die. If we were to live and this is yellow and underlined, we had to be free of anger, new, current and old. We have to process this. And this is the whole purpose of this resentment inventory, this relationship building with God. the cool thing about this whole process as we're going through this that we start processing these inventories in resentments and situations and as soon as we start to look at them on paper and get a little bit of godliness they start to lose their importance and validity and as that space that we've been wasting on those dissipates god's love starts to flow in as we go through this four-step process, God is slowly and sometimes majestically flooding us. But as those things are taken care of, so by the time we're done with our fourth step, we have a lot more relationship with God than when we started. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal people, but for the alcoholic, these things are poison. Now at this stage you know i i always imagine uh bill sitting down opposite this sort of three column list and you can feel god feeding him with the need for two more columns the actual application of everything that we've uncovered and discovered and this is why it's going to start to explain from this point forward the the final columns those fourth and fifth columns of the resentment inventory green we turned back to the list where it held the key to the future we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle instead of us being the victims of this being blaming people it's like it's time to say well what was my role in this yellow and underline we began to see that the world and its people really dominated us in that state the wrongdoing of others fancy to real had the power to actually kill how could we escape we saw that these must these resentments must be mastered but how we could not wish them away any more than alcohol we cannot wish them in a way we cannot pontificate them where we cannot talk them away we have to process them with the aid of god through the step process and we can move on we can offer forgiveness god forgives us why can't we forgive everyone else this was our course yellow underline we realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us they like ourselves in green were sick too as is god's kind enough to forgive us we probably need to forgive other people you know this is going for those times we have resentments and stuff where we played a part in but there's also these other things that have come upon us horrible things that happen to children horrible things like that happen as through adolescence that are brought on by just people who are basically sick sicker than us how do we deal with that you know it's like um do i continue hating this person for the rest of my life which is causing me to be blocked from god or do i have to process that hate into a forgiveness state and move on with my life because that happened years ago it's time to like let it go and move it should be clear-cut how much of our thinking is dominated by people that we don't like so to speak for stuff that happened a long time ago they've gone out their lives they're moving on you know yeah what they did to us was wrong and horrible in a lot of cases but the fact that we're still hanging on to it that's the problem here we ask god to help us show the same tolerance pity and patience that we cheerfully grant a sick friend when a person offended we said to ourselves and this is the prayer joe this is a sick man how can i be helpful to him god save me from being angry thy will be done and obviously uh earlier on a little bit up there it said we ask god obviously that's teeing us up for the fact that we're going to be praying this is the prayer to the people who've wronged us um don't have to be their best friends don't have to sit at the dining room table at them but won't it be cool to be able to like see them on the streets and not have the hate and anger and the vile and the bile come up and it's like guy was sick the gal was sick matter of fact the bells wow that's amazing we avoid retaliation or argument we wouldn't treat sick people that way if we do we destroy our chance of being helpful now remember this whole process is to get connected to god to help god come into our life so we can be beneficial and useful to his sick children we cannot be helpful to all people But at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. And here are our fourth and fifth columns, referring to our list again. So he's saying, go back to the piece of paper. Let's get ready to add another list. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done. For the first time, what an amazing opportunity. By the way, you're connected with God. This is all a work in progress. As we're doing this, you've got relationship with God growing. We resolutely looked for our own mistakes, made a resolution to honestly, factually say, what did I do to get the ball rolling? Where had we been? This is green. Where had мы been? Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened. Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Let's see. Stealing money from that guy, Joe. That was dishonest. Lying to the girl about yourself. Well, that's sort of frightened. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in that analogy we had about you and your buddy. Absolutely. Though the situation is not entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved. Where were we to blame? Green, where were we zu blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's. This is where we get into our fifth column. We saw our faults and listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. I went to my buddy's house. I stole his money. I beat him up for his bottle of drink stuff, you know, and I lied to a girl, and you stole the money to try and entertain her, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. We admitted we were wrong. Because honestly, we were willing to set these matters straight. I don't care what kind of relationship you had with your buddy. This was like an ongoing. We did this to each other over time and time, or it just boiled up to this thing. We have to be honest with this stuff. And the cool thing about this, writing this down on paper, by the time you've reached this part and you've put down that last harms to others and this thing, I don't know if you've ever, we live in Florida and we got this thing off to the east, it's called the ocean, the beach. And if you get close to the water but not at the water and start digging in the sand, you dig down deep enough and water just starts to flow in. So we start taking away the resentments, the fears, the angers, all the stuff that we're holding against people. It's like digging a hole in the sand of our heart and our soul. As we take the sand, the shame out, God's love flows in just like the water. It's a fabulous analogy because this is the stuff that processes it. This is where we start getting closer to God. As a matter of fact, we have resentments as the first inventory for a purpose. It's really easy to point your finger at other people. It's realy great to say how they did them wrong, which immediately gets us in the process of some growth. And then what are wrong, and it's like we're a little bit closer to G-d so we can honestly say that, you know? And that was my part. And it's like there is so much growth at the end of this. We've got the different powers, the amount of God that's flowing through us at this point. So when we do come to this next section, which is the fear section, we have a much better relationship with God going on. So we can honestly write down our fears. You know, if we had fears or sex first, it's not going to happen. It's like, I'm great, I're great. But everything in this book is written in concise order to build and grow upon the previous thing. So now we're coming out of the resentments closer, connected to God. And now we can honestly look at our fears and we can write those down on paper. Read this, Joe. Notice that the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer, and the wife. They're referring to turning back to page 65. You look at the effects column off to the right. It says fear, fear, fair, fair. It's all over the place. Look back to Page 67. This short word, this is yellow and underlined, somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. Wow, the bells. 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 feel we didn't deserve. But did we not ourselves get the ball rolling? you know everything that we have in life is a purpose we have fears i remember i was doing my fist up and we're going through it and i've got you know fear fear fear and um pete said you know maybe you should just have concern instead of being fearful but it's okay to have some concern for stuff and not see fear is a natural instinct you know it's like we were supposed to have fear why are we afraid of the dark well because if we aren't cautious we may step on a poisonous snake or walk off a cliff you know we have these natural fears of things that we don't know how to swim on cliffs it's it's a safety but the problem with us is we have this imagined fears and these these phobias that can block us fears of people fears of not trusting God all these fears are just making our life harder to deal with so and imagine that sentence the fabric of our existence was shot through it the thing that uh makes up our existence the thing that's continuous throughout our being this fabric is shot through with fear and any decision based on fear imagined or real tend to have some extraordinary consequences so we want to make sure that they're real and and we're handling them properly but i don't know about you but fear was just all over my life yeah absolutely and i can make a situation worse or better by how i respond so if i'm being fear driven it's probably going in that direction of worse what's the opposite of fear driven god driven faith faith i like that joseph's smart he's the smart one but we did not ourselves set the ball rolling sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing it seems to cause more trouble on the top of this page they've got losing or not getting and we're usually fearful of not getting something we need want or should have or fear of losing something we already have green i like this part we reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper, first column, even though we had no resentment in connection with them. Second column, we asked ourselves why we had them. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Self-rebliance is good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Third column, some of us even had great self-confidence, but I didn't solve the fear problem or any other green. It made us cocky it was worse yeah i can handle this i'll take care of the self oh boy self-confidence is the opposite of god confidence selfless it's just it's ripped up i was thrown over i did so many things inappropriate because of some silly and unreal fear and we've got our god box here this is a god box this is box highlighted yellow joke 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 made this decision in the third step to give us a try then through trying and believing we will soon have faith we trust infinite god rather than our finite selves what does that mean joe we trust a power that is beyond measure rather than something within ourselves that can be limited that has in the past has continually unequivocally failed us time and you know we talk about that that pile of history that big pile of doo-doo joe likes to call it you know of facts and figures of the past that we don't bother to look at you know that if we looked at it like we wouldn't be doing the stuff we're doing we'd be a totally different you know person but yeah the fears that we have these false fears we are in the world to play the role he assigns just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him does he enable to us to match calamity with serenity so when the stuff hits the fan we've got god holding us walking hand in hand shoulder to shoulder yeah i know it doesn't sound like it but i'm actually like 54 or something like that and there were these moments in my life these end of life moments that you know and situations jobs that i i just thought my life was over and i would freak and i'd panic you know well here i am some And 54 years later, living pretty good, happy, joyous and free. I think of the times that I put myself through so much anguish for nothing. And listen to the sort of the tangible explanation of that sentence. There's a proportion here just to the proportion that we trust God and rely upon God. Does he enable us to match calamity with serenity? if we put limitations on how much we trust god we're only going to get little if nothing relief if we limitlessly trust god and rely on him he will limitlessly enable us to match calamity with serenity when problems see my god come and they run because my god is big and powerful and amazing i tell you then the funny the great thing is you know with all this um this opportunity that God's given me to get to help people, to work with people and stuff like that. You know, a little coming up on seven years of the big book sponsorship, reading the book one-on-one with people, there's been some stuff that's happened that I just was so busy working with God and newcomers and doing what I'm doing and I didn't stick my fingers in the gears to get it all messed up. It just works out, which is the great thing about this big book scholarship. I'm out there working God's work, you know? It's not my life. It's God's life. And what does He want me to do? You know, there's people dying. There's a certain commitment one needs to take in big book sponsorship because we have been given an opportunity to save lives by introducing them to God through the book. And if we don't take that seriously and toss it aside and become selfish, self-centered in my needs again, A, people die, people get sick, lives get damaged, and we get miserable too because we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. You know I can actually attest to that. But I've seen that working in your life, and it's a phenomenal role for me because I know it works. Because you're in that too. And I try to go by it the same. After finishing working with others with sponsees, I've often said to them, look, I'm not telling you for any specific reason but I was going through some really trough-tying times when we were working together, and working with you is how I got through it. working god's work with you is what got me through it our purpose as soon as a friend but soon as we forget what our purpose is why we're here then we tend to get a little crazy and start getting frayed at the seams i was talking to conversation with somebody just the other day they're like talking about stuff going on in their life and i said so how many guys you work with oh i need to get to it like it's like yeah what how's the primary line it's like guess what hopefully they're back as a matter of fact one of the guys who's gotten back into that he's back on track you know it's like we can learn from our laziness and our self-centeredness pops up you know it's like well i gotta you know i gotta get more buff at the gym so i'm gonna stop working with so many guys i heard this just the other night somebody was talking about it's like well you know can't you get a little off balance helping too many people what did you say helping too Many people you can never really false logic it's false logic because it was the selfish self-centredness that i was living in when i was in sobriety recovery for 15 years being a selfish self-centered you know going to meetings but taking my life in my the way i want and now have this life where i have an opportunity to help people this is by far the best way to go through life as a matter of fact green underline we never apologize to anyone for depending on our power our creator my god gives me my strength my energy and my reason we can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness big word paradoxically it is the way of strength the verdict green the verdict of the age is that faith means courage see we come into this believing we got an idea we see what we have but it's actually this working and worth others and having a life that belief becomes faith and then with faith we can do anything because god may not necessarily remove the thing that's making you fearful what it's really getting us uh to look at here is the relationship between fear and courage. Here we're going to ask for the courage to walk through the fear with God. 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. Yellow underline, wrap this up for us. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be at once. We commence to outgrow fear. We look at the fears. We see the rational, irrational we see them we we deal with them we turn it over to god god starts filling us up even more with his love and abundance and we start we're stronger as a matter of fact we're going to wrap up here we've got six and seven written all over the side here all these behaviors that we're just trying to control uh we've Got the God Box we've GOT uh matter of effect we're gonna wrap this up next week we're gonna jump into the sex and harms to others part of the inventory we look forward to that and i hope you guys join us at this time we're going to from the doctor's nightmare joe yes but just before i read that actually something to meditate on that uh you know i liked working with when when i do this and what i direct my guys to we kind of touched on it actually the the best definition of fear that i've heard is negative imagination so from the dr's nightmare if you think you are an atheist an agnostic a Skeptic or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book I feel sorry for you if you still think you are strong enough to beat the game alone. That is your affair but if you really and truly want to quit drinking liquor for good and all and Sincerely feel that you must have some help We know that we have an answer for you It never fails if you go about it with one half the zeal you've been in the habit of showing when you were getting another drink. Your Heavenly Father will never let you down. Thank you, Joe. You guys, please join us next week as we continue to study the big book and remember to download the highlighted pages from tonight's session found under the podcast link. We always enjoy hearing feedback from you guys, so don't be shy about dropping us a line as the privilege to meet other alcoholics who are also on fire about God and on fire about this big book. And also thank you to the folks who who are uh communicating with us and visiting with us and uh hi guys appreciate it thanks a lot um we're gonna close out in our traditional way with with our family's fog light prayer so let's take another moment to get reconnected and uh we'll lead into that God, let your love shine through me like a fog light for those who are lost, sick, and dying can find your love through me. Amen. Thanks, Joe. This was a hoot tonight. I look forward to seeing you next week. We're going to jump into some sex and some harms to others. They go hand in hand. It's amazing. If we had put the sex first, I don't think there would be much written on those things, were there? Godspeed, you guys. We'll see you all next week. Thank you for joining us. Peace. Peace.