How To Mechanically Clear Character Defects For Spiritual Flow – Sandy B.

We're alcoholics. You know what I mean? It's a fatal disease. So that we have a gun at the back of our head going, you're going to keep working on becoming God-centered or I pull the trigger. And that's our gift compared to the people that don't have a gun at the back of their head. I don't know how they get it done. They're doing it voluntarily. It just occurs to them, I ought to become spiritual. Whereas you and I, we're going to do this and we're going to suffer dire consequences. There's a place, and I forget where it is in the 12 and 12, we're going to fall by the wayside. You ever see that sentence? Sounds like a bad place to me. Also sounds biblical. I think Bill must have got that out of the Bible. Fall by the wayside. Like, oh my God. Not the wayside. Anything but the wayside. I'm not even sure what it is. But I know I don't want to be there. So this is the struggle. This is the decision in this third step. And of course, why are we trying to do this? You know what I mean? Why are we trying to do this third step? And then you look at that third step prayer. So that I may... I may achieve a victory and help others. Already the selfishness is going away. It's not even so that I'll be happy. It's so that my victory over myself, over my character defect, will inspire the next new person to try it. Because this is so common. You know, sometimes we have new people come in here and they get sober and they immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to be happy. They immediately want to become alcohol counselors. And we put it down a little bit. Oh yeah, everybody wants to become an alcohol counselor. But you know what? There's something beautiful in that. This is what Bill Wilson felt the second after he had that spiritual experience. He wanted to run out and sober all the drunks up in the thing. When spiritual transformations take place, part of the transformation is the desire to give it away. It just comes with it. It's just automatic with the territory. And you find that in the Oxford Movement was the same thing. That Frank Buckman had this big spiritual experience and he just raced around trying to share it. Okay, let's start little groups. I've got to share this. I've got to show you. I've got to show you. So it comes with the transformation. It's a desire to pass it on. So anyway, why can't we just do it? Why can't we just turn it on? Turn it over? Why can't we allow this transformation to take place? Well, it turns out that there's some problems in accomplishing this. And I like to think about them by using the prayer of St. Francis. Let's just imagine that turning our will and our lives over to the care of God is opening a channel, like St. Francis writes about. Make me a channel of thy peace so that I can bring all these things. You know, where there's darkness, I can bring light. That where there's sadness, I can bring joy. So where there's wrong, I can bring forgiveness. Where there's error, I can bring truth. In other words, I want this channel to be opened so that everything can flow out. And notice that when we talk about spirituality, we're talking about opening a channel so that things can flow out from us. Whereas intellectually, we feel I need stuff to flow in. My problem is I don't have enough. Right? That's what intellectually is another one of those paradoxes. I need more money. I need, I need. And then we go, you don't need anything. You need to open this channel so that you can flow out. What you're experiencing isn't those things that you think it is. What you're experiencing is you're blocked. You're blocked from your true nature being able to flow out. And it's like all of the water that flows into a Dead Sea. It's wonderful. Water. It's just the most wonderful water in the world. And if that was God's energy flowing in, if it doesn't flow out, it doesn't exist. It doesn't do anything. And we feel there is no God. I don't feel it. I don't experience. I don't experience. So this channel has to be open in order to allow it to go out. So what's blocking it? Well, if you use the analogy of the Suez Canal, you remember when they sank all those ships? They put ships in there and blocked it and do all that many, many years ago, then they had to go in and clear it. Well, think about that as your channel that we're trying to open is blocked with character defects. There's greed. Great big boulder sitting in the middle. And here's lust over here and envy and anger and fear. So nothing can come through. And if nothing can come through, it doesn't exist. And that's why we have this hardest time. You know, I want to believe in God. I have faith. I can see, but until it flows through, it's a theory. It's just a comforting theory, but it hasn't penetrated yet so that we can go. Now, it's a reality. It's not a theory anymore. This is a reality. So really, in the beginning, we really stay sober on other people's energy. You know what I mean? Other people's spirituality, the people that came, before us and we get inspired by it. And we just go, God, I know it's real. I can feel it from them. I can feel it. And eventually we're going to have to rely on our own. So how are we going to open up this channel? Well, we're going to have to find out what these blockages are and get them the heck out of the way. And that's the point of an inventory. And there's a whole bunch of sheets up here and there's we're not going to work on them or anything, but I want everybody to take one. And when you go there, wonderful Bob Darrell of Bob D of Las Vegas prepared these and they're right out of the big book. Resentments, fears, sex relationships, the whole deal on the mechanics of a four-step inventory. In other words, how do I list all these blockages and how do I take a look at them and how do I get them ready to be lifted out? How do I mechanically go through this? And so be sure and take one of these at the end of the meeting. Be helpful with somebody new that you're you may already have them, but I highly recommend them and I think we have Fred was nice enough to make some more copies and I think we have enough to go around. So I want to talk about the dynamics of this. That there's the mechanics. I'm not going to go through how to do a fourth step, but I want to talk about because so many of us have guilt guilt. I don't know about you, but guilt was one of mine and in the pamphlet the members. I view by McGinnis. I don't know if you've read that members. I view of a with the eyeball on the front. You haven't read that pamphlet yet is really cool. I think in the old days we had better pamphlets. Oh is General Service representative around? I don't know what's going on up there, but I was at a meeting the other night. There were two pamphlets. Oh, I shouldn't be doing this. And here's what I swear to God. First pamphlet said is a for you. You know what the second pamphlet said is a for me. So I said, well, I wonder what the difference between is a for you and is a for me. So I looked in there and there was no difference. It's just that one had a better title. Figure that one out. Oh, so the dynamics of this and the guilt and McGinnis is that yeah, and he says that guilt was the first to come in the last to go. Of the character defense and it's it's connected with pride. The prideful person is inordinately. Good and the guilty person is inordinately bad and rotten, but they're both pride that both there's an arrogance to guilt real arrogance. Who are you to say you're worse than everybody else? Oh, you don't know me, man. I'm the worst. I'm terrible. I'm the rottenness rottenness. No, you're just arrogant. You just think you're rotten, but you're not. You just average. So there's a lot of things. That have to be accounted for and guilt will make it seem like it's our fault that we have all these things and that feeling can be oppressive and a 12 and 12 is really helpful to this because it says guess where these character defects came from. That that it are they were God-given. That's where they came from. They came from instinctual drives that were born in us. Just like they're born in every single person is the sex drive the drive for security and a drive for a place in society. Everybody arrives on this planet with those drives period. Nobody fault. They got him nobody's credit that they got him. That's what we arrived with and those drives are what caused us to go ahead and live to reproduce to function to become a society to grow. That's the energy the raw energy that causes us to be alive and to be human beings. So their purpose is to supply us the energy to exist as human beings, but they are not in charge. There's there's just simply there to give us the energy to do this. Now for most of us since we don't involve we were self-centered. We were trying to control these drives on our own. That is impossible. As it said earlier, we could wish to be moral. I wanted to live up to moral standards and I couldn't I kept failing and the only way I knew to solve that was to lower the standards. You know what I mean? Just keep bringing them down bringing them down bringing them down. Finally, I get down. I said, well, at least I haven't murdered anybody. So that makes me good. And then if I had killed somebody I'd have to come up with something else. You know what I mean? Because I couldn't get peace of mind. I couldn't live up to anything. The problem was I'm trying to live up to them on my own power. I was trying to be godly by myself. And then I could take the credit for it. Don't want to give God the credit. That's what an ego will do. So here the these character defects were born in us. And they take over our lives and they and we end up doing terrible things. And of course alcohol just lets all the character defects. Out of the bag unchained. You know, soon as we poured in whatever control was there before who here we are. We're just out unleashing ourselves on the world. We do all these things and then we feel terrible about it. And it just this cycle runs on and on. So I must be a terrible person. We come here and they go. No, you're not a terrible person. Here is the correct adjective. It's used throughout our literature. This is the type of person you are. Stupid. You're not a terrible person. You stupid. You look in there you build right there. We were especially stupid in this area. Made a lot of stupid mistakes. We're stupid. The stupid plan to live without a God. What a stupid plan. That would be like deciding to drink. Without alcohol. Well, I got the glass. I got the bar. Got the music. Hey pal, you're missing the main event. So we had a stupid plan. The only problem is in order to change it. We got to admit that it's stupid. That it's wrong. That this plant isn't working. And so we do that by we don't convince you. We don't show you a age theory and get it on a blackboard and then you intellectually see that it's superior to your. Plan for living. We don't do that at all, but we win the argument every time we get a new guy in here. PhD from Princeton smarter than the whip and it keeps losing discussions with somebody who had a second grade education filled with street smarts. Just keep losing every discussion. You know why? Because they don't discuss theory. They only discuss results. Oh, I see. You went to Princeton. You have a PhD. Whether you're wearing a wristband from a nut ward on your arm. Your family doesn't talk to you. Your mother hates you. You can't hold a job. I on the other hand have a third grade education. I have Serenity peace of mind 23 years of sobriety. My family loves me. My children love me. My boss loves me. So you want to talk? So we'll never compare theories only compare results. And if you're a new alcoholic, he just moves automatically. So we got to be willing to entertain this idea that we're not guilty. None of this is our fault. We had a stupid plan. It's a mess. The channel is blocked. It's nobody's fault. Why don't we? We can clean it up. Okay, you know what I mean? And we can just walk into this thing. No guilt. No, nothing. It's just this is the deal. This stuff is blocked here. There was a hurricane. I don't care what you want to say. It's blocked. Let's clear it up. As soon as you're willing to do that. We now can fearlessly go in inventory. This has nothing to do with what we did or anything like that. This is just how it is. And then we're able to fill out one of these sheets. We're able to look at it a little more relaxed fashion. Then we come and now what are we going to do with this information? We got it all written down. We got this thing. This is an accurate appraisal. This is what the channel is blocked with ready to go. Let's go. And we notice on the list that one of the things that shows up all the time is rationalization. Rationalization. We constantly explain things to our advantage with our ego jumps in and we have motives. That are this way and that way. Well, a rationalization is such a powerful force in our lives. How do we know this thing is worth anything? This could be all crap. How do we know that this is true? How do we know this is the real blockages? We don't want to send all this effort in to clear this stuff out and it's wrong information. Well, that's why we have a fifth step. We had this a spiritual. Principle that in order to see the truth about ourselves. Run it by another human being. We admit it to ourselves to God and to another human being. It reminds me of trying to see the third dimension in aerial photos so that you can measure height and depth and all that. So you get two photos that are just slightly from a different angle and then you use those glasses and then boom it jumps out and you can see it in order to see the truth about ourselves. We need this. Second perspective sitting right next to us looking at the same sheet that you're looking at and it can bring the third dimension out and stuff that we thought was real serious turns out to be not so serious stuff. We were hiding and minimizing will suddenly come to light and we have a wonderful picture and we suddenly are free to start forgiving ourselves and we're suddenly free to trust other people. We had secrets that we thought had to go to the grave with us and they held great power over us and we just walked around year after year with the secret knowledge that God if anybody ever finds out. Oh my God. And the only power that that junk had was that we hadn't told anybody and that's where it got its power. Well, why is this stuff so powerful because I can't tell what if you told well, then it wouldn't be powerful anymore. You see what I mean? As soon as it's out and the person you're talking to go. Oh, I did that about 12 times. Yeah. Yeah. And you well, I thought this was going to get me in jail. I thought this would be nobody would ever talk to me. No, no. What else you got there? It's just there. It is. God facetiously said one night that I've heard a lot of this steps over the years, maybe in a couple hundred something like that. Not. I was trying to think if there's anything different. You know what I mean? I see if you really think about it. It's so it everything is almost exactly the same. And I think the only difference this there's two categories that I've been able to determine and that is the group of guys that have not had sex with cows. That's about it. That's about the that's about it. Other than that, everybody's exactly the same. I mean, it's just it's just remarkable how we agonize over these things. So this sharing in the fifth step is huge and we have a set of promises. We begin to trust other people. We begin to understand that living in isolation is the worst possible thing we can do. And what's our tendency? The next time something goes wrong, stop calling. Oh, something went wrong. I guess I'll handle it alone. Okay, I'll stop going to meetings. Okay, I'll stop calling. And that's why when Larry was talking about last night is so important to have a home group. So you go there and people can see that something's wrong. Okay, what is it? Sandy? You're going to tell us now or when we get coffee afterwards? Nothing's wrong. Don't tell me nothing's wrong. I can see your face. What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? And then finally, okay, look, is that it? Yeah. Oh, let's go get coffee. You know what I mean? It's just. It's got to be shared. And so this is tremendous lessons in this fifth step about all the rest of our future that will never live alone again. That we don't want to do that. We want to. But why are we doing all this? It isn't so that we're more social so that we get along with people better. It's to open this channel. We got to keep going back and keeping our eye on the ball. We already went to the end of the book. We already saw the ending. The ending is spiritual awakening, conscious contact. So this is what this is all building up to. This is how we get it. So then we finally do this. And then we sit down and we go, man, wasn't that huge? I just went through the fifth step. And now I can go into the big book and step six and seven, two paragraphs. I'm out of there. I'm almost on eight. Right. We go into the second. Well, are you ready? You have you did you skimp? Did you do this? Did you do that? I am now willing that you should have. All of me. Good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character, which stands in the way of my useless. Do you and my fellows grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding? We have now completed step seven. Then about 12 years later. No, I'm going back in history. Now, Bill wrote that and 1938 and then about 12 years later, he's writing the 12 and 12. And guess what? He says about step six. This is step that separates the men from the boys. This step separates the girls from the women. This step is huge. This step is the epic step in Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, I didn't notice that when I read those two sentences before. Didn't say anything about epic in there. Well, maybe we better go back and look at it. What does that say in there? It says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. That's all it says. It's a pretty simple thing to me. You want to become a better person? You want that channel? Yeah. It's just like when you ask people, you want the federal deficit to be removed? Yeah. Okay, we'll raise your taxes. We'll take that deficit out and nothing flow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, we'll cut your favorite program. Then we can reduce it. It's in the specifics that we run into the problem. You know what I'm talking about? You want to become a better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How'd you like to get rid of lust? All of it. Yeah. 100% totally gone. No kidding. 100% totally gone. Lust free. What does that mean, lust free? I mean, I want to do it, but I'm just trying to get a thought. Is that like no sex? Is that like? I'll tell you what. What I'd like to do is make some progress in the area of lust. Because after all, and then we see this is where we grab something from another part of the book. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We claim progress, not perfection. So what I'd like is to get rid of most of my lust. I like to get rid of most of my, okay. Most of your lust. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How about gossiping? You know, you do a lot of that gossiping. You know, it ruins AA groups. It's very destructive. It hurts the other person. What do you think? Totally? Totally? Lifted out of you? Yeah. Yeah. I'm tired. Well, but if there's a really good story, what I'd like to do is get rid of almost all of the gossip. I'd like to practically, practically eliminate gossiping from my life. So what I'd really like to do. What about anger? Yeah. I'd like to get rid of anger. I'd like to get rid of unjustified anger. That's what I'd like to do. But once in a while, I mean, you just got to vent your, so I'd like to get rid of, yeah, I'd like to get rid of most of that. Okay. That's good. How about greed? Trying to get more. Trying to get, yeah, I think we should get rid of most of that. I should get rid of most of that greed. I should get rid. We can go through every character defect there is. And we want to get rid of most of it. Isn't that funny? We don't want to get rid of all of it. And Bill writes about why. Why not? Why don't we want to get rid of all of it? Because we like some of them a lot. That's why. And he writes an interesting sentence in there. He says, this is the riddle of our existence, is knowing that this help is available, we decide not to take advantage of it. Why? Why? Why would we keep holding on to lust or greed or gossip or fear or envy or laziness or gluttony? Why do I keep eating a bag of potato chips every night? A big one. Why do I keep doing that? Because I like to eat a bag of potato chips every night, okay? It makes me feel good. I like to chew. It just makes me feel better, you know? What's wrong with an occasional potato chip? That's a carton a week, Sandy. Okay, okay. So there's this interesting sentence in the 12 and 12. It says, we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by. That's what we tend to do. You're in business. You would like to be known as an honest man, an honest woman. I would like the reputation of being totally honest. I don't want to be totally honest, but I would like the reputation. I want to reserve the right to stick it to them once in a while just to keep the business going. I don't want to have the option stripped from me. You see what I'm saying? I remember looking at this and going, holy cow, the implication of step six is perfection. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects here. I'd be Mother Teresa. If I took this step, I'd be Mother Teresa. And then panic started setting in. I think Mother Teresa's great, but don't you think that's a little extreme? I mean, does she bowl? What does she do? I don't want, you know, that's going too far. And so then I got to make up a reason why I'm not willing to do this. Am I into this to grow spiritually or not? Yeah, I am. Well, why aren't you doing this? Well, I'll tell you. It's because I'm unselfish. That's why I don't want to do this. Okay. If I did this step and became perfect, you know what I mean, like perfect. And then I'm like living in my neighborhood. Well, the rest of the people aren't perfect, and there I'd be, perfect. And they'd be looking over going, God, that guy is perfect. And we're not. And it would make them so uncomfortable to live next to a perfect guy. So for their sake, I'm going to stay an ass. You see what I'm saying? I'm... I got to find a reason for not being willing to do this. So I'm... And the ego is just going all over the place. So you can see this step is pretty big, isn't it? We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. And so then our ego says, hey, that's just a theory. Have you ever met anybody that's perfect? What do you mean God will remove all these defects? Have you ever seen God remove all these defects? Show me one example. Give me one example. And the problem is every one of us has an example. What was our worst character defect? Drinking. Did it get removed? Yes. Why? Because I got entirely ready to have it removed. I was ready to have that totally removed. I didn't want any reservations whatsoever. So if you can become 100% willing and humbly ask, it can be removed. And so this is the struggle for the rest of our lives is to try and become more willing. Uncover, discover, discard. Chuck Chamberlain. What else can I inventory that's wrong about me that maybe this year I could become entirely willing to get rid of? Spirituality is like riding in a balloon. And you throw over some weight and you get up to 3,000 feet and it's the best view you've ever seen. It's the most exciting thing. You look around and say, I never saw a view like this in my life. But if you stay at 3,000 feet for five years, that view gets old. I've seen 3,000 feet. I've seen 3,000. I've been seeing 3,000 for five years. Well, why don't we find a couple more character defects to throw over? And we throw over, we go to 7,000. Yeah, that's more like it. And we're there for five years. And then we go, 7,000 sucks, just like 5,000 sucks. Well, what else can I get rid of to get a better view? And so we look and inventory, well, all right, all right, all right. And over it goes. See, I thought we came here just to stop drinking. I thought that was the deal. Not drinking is the name of the game. You know what was in the fine print? And changing everything about you. That's the other thing. And so this is a huge step. And the reason it's such a huge step is there's a story that I generally tell with this. And it came from, oh. C.S. Lewis. So I give the proper credit. And it involves the story of the little boy with a toothache, baseball player. He's supposed to go out and play this big game. The coach said get eight hours sleep. He goes to bed early. And long about 11 o'clock at night, starts a little tingling. And he knows if he calls his mother, she'll bring two aspirin. He'll go right back to sleep. He'll get eight hours sleep and play the ball game. But he doesn't call his mother. He sits there and goes, maybe it'll go away by itself. And you know, after two hours, it just . . . And it tingles a little harder and a little harder and a little bit harder. And he's not getting any sleep. Finally at 3 a.m. he calls his mother. I got a little toothache. He gives him the aspirin. He goes back to sleep. But he only gets four hours sleep. Makes three errors. Gets no hits. So the question is, what's going on with that kid? What the hell's wrong with that kid? Why didn't he get the two aspirin and get eight hours sleep? Now we'll see what it is. He knew he'd get the two aspirin. See, the problem was he knew his mother, who's the supply of help. He knew he'd get the two aspirin, but he knew that his mother wouldn't stop there. She would make a dental appointment. You know what I mean? To go in and check this little tingle in the tooth out. And then when he got to the dentist's office, he knew his dentist. And the dentist wouldn't stop there. He would look at that tooth and then he'd say, while you're here, let me just look at . . . Uh-oh, here's one here and here's one here and here's one here. Let's make three appointments. Now he's going to have three appointments, three little fillings. And when he finishes, he has perfect teeth. Perfect teeth. He didn't want perfect teeth. He wanted two aspirin. You see what I'm saying? He did not want that kind of help. He wanted limited help. And that's what we're talking about in step six. I'd like to be semi-lustful. I'd like to be semi-honest. I'd like to almost get rid of this. I'd like to get a little better in this area. Well, if you're going to do that, you have to do it on your own. Because the only help that's available is perfect help. You see, that's why this is such an epic step. Would you ever be willing to allow God to totally come into your life in this area and be totally free of it? Wow, this is hard. This is really huge. So to make this kind of a journey is remarkable. It's the biggest journey that human beings make. We're trying to move from the material world into the spiritual world. We're trying to live in this material world but not be affected by it, not be jerked around by everything that happens. Because there's something inside of us that tells us where we ought to be heading is towards this God, towards this higher power. Look what happened after the World Trade Center. The churches started filling up. In meetings, we're starting to get a little more crowded. It was as if... I need something beyond myself. I need... So this is inside of each of us and the sixth step sends us there. And so finally we get this willingness and we go, well, now I'm on my way. And then the seventh step is just as big. And very briefly, the rest of them go fairly fast. So we'll get through them. The seventh step is, you know, think about it. Now here's what's wrong. I finally got willing. Now I'm just going to ask God to remove them. And it just goes like this. Okay, God, please remove. The following. That would be asking God to remove. Now the quiz for today is take out a sheet of paper and write down the difference between regular asking and humbly asking. And if you're new, you probably are sitting there with the pencil going, huh? The difference between regular asking, yeah, what is the difference? Like just regular ask, hey, God, get rid of these. That would be regular asking. Now humbly ask. And then the sixth step is, you know, ask God to remove. And I remember when I tried that, I went, how do you humbly ask? Oh, you're probably getting your knees. No, you got to get humble first. What is humble? Well, humble is when you look like this. There's a look. There's a look that humble people have. So you probably got to do this in front of a mirror. Okay. Hi, God. What is it? And Bill writes, we don't have a nodding acquaintance. We don't have a nodding acquaintance of humility. We haven't got a clue what humility is. It has no place in the free enterprise system. Hey, drive a Buick, get humble. It would sell nothing. And we talk about pride, pride, pride. And you look in the dictionary and guess what humble says? Humility says a total absence of pride. Zero pride. All pride. And I was in the Marine Corps and I'm going, pride? What is this, communist organization? Get rid of pride? Pride is a wonderful, powerful energy if you're not going to use God. You know what I mean? It'll motivate people. It'll get something done. But totally is self-centered. That's what you can accomplish on your own. And what this is saying is you can go way beyond what you can accomplish on your own if you involve God. Why just bring your power? Why not bring infinite power? Why not bring infinite power to everything that you encounter? And so humility is the awareness of me being nothing and God being everything. Instead of becoming a big shot, I want to become a small shot. You know what I mean? I want to be so tiny I can go through a screen door. I don't want to be this big. See, big shots have to push all that bigness through the universe. They have to push it into the shopping center. Hey, I can't walk through the mall. Everybody's in my way. You know, we're so big going out there. And everything goes against us. And we feel the resistance as we try to push this ego through the world. And then we go, well, I'll just be nothing. And then we just go through the world like, I'm not even here, man. I don't have a way. I'm just doing God's work. I don't have nothing. Nothing can go against my way because I don't have a way. Do you ever think that your only problem you ever have is not getting your way? You'd be a servant of God. Servant is the highest pay grade we have in AA. You know that? You can't go higher than that. That's the top. You've got to work and work and work and climb your way all the way to servant. And that's what a winner is, is a servant. And you say, I'm just out here? I'm just doing what God gives me this intuition to do. And so when this transformation takes place, our needs are being met from the inside. So we don't have to go out and get anything to get fixed. We're already fixed. We already have everything that we need. And we're simply moving through life. And so humility is an awareness that we want to go through whatever it takes to become God-centered. That means we're going to have to go through the pain of not getting our way in everything. And so we're going to voluntarily go through this transforming pain. The story I always tell on this one is there were some horseshoes at Bars of Iron. You heard this story? I told it, I'm sure. And they were up in the horseshoers' shelf. And they'd been there for 25 years, hidden behind brown paper. And they were complaining up there. They'd been 25 years. And they're going, this is it. This is all there is to life. It's hanging around. Listen to all that damn noise out there. And it's dusty. There ought to be more to life than this. It sounds like us on a bar stool in a bar. You know what I mean? And one day they ripped the paper off. And the blacksmith said, my God, these guys, look at this. Where are you guys doing up here? You're not supposed to be on that. Yeah, I knew we weren't supposed to be. You're supposed to be a horseshoe. What the hell is that? Well, that's the most beautiful thing in the world. You're going to be on this great animal. You're going to be traveling all around the world. You are going to be the most useful thing. Oh, it's so exciting. You're going to be a horseshoe. Well, wow. I'm ready. You're ready. We're ready. We're ready. We're ready. We're going to be a horseshoe. Right then, they could ask to be a horseshoe. OK? They just said, you want to be a horseshoe? Yeah. Yeah. Let me show you how you become a horseshoe. They stuck it in the fire, got red hot, put it on the anvil. Boom, bam, bam. And they're watching. Their eyes are popping out. In the hot water, the steam's coming up. And more banging, shaping. And they're going. And then punching holes in. And they held it up and said, there. That's a horseshoe. Now, if you ask, you're humbly asking. You know what's involved. You know that it is not going to be easy. But you want it anyway. Spirituality is changing our attitude about pain. It is looking through the pain to see the beauty of what is coming. It is the transformation. It is the transformation. It is just on the other side of the willingness to experience not getting my way. And as soon as we go through it, it wasn't even painful. It becomes effort. It's kind of like when you're out of shape and you want to get back in shape, it's hard. Remember that first week in the gym and you go home at night and every damn thing hurts everywhere. And you're like, ah, ah, ah, ah, I'm dying. But as you keep it up, you know, three weeks later you go in the gym, it's not painful. It's just effort. And it's wonderful because you know the results it's going to produce. And you're just, I love going down there and go pushing myself through this because I get these results. And the same thing can happen in the spiritual world. I understand I'm not going to be comfortable, but I'm going to go through with it anyway. And that's really what humility is. Now, eight and nine are making amends, making a list of people we've harmed. And that is learning a new thing about harm. And harm, you know, is gossiping. Harm is withholding affection. It's not punching and all that. It turns out that us alcoholics, self-centered in the extreme, even after we get sober, until we work the program, have a very unusual talent. We can bring out the worst in everyone. We just walk in the room and da, da, da, da, and people start fighting with each other and they start causing trouble and doing all this. And this is our secret talent because we've got to keep everybody off balance. And we've got to do this. So we do a lot of harm. I can remember coming to work Monday hungover and people would come in all happy with their weekend. And I didn't think it was fair. They were happy and I wasn't. So I would just be grump. I don't want to hear about your weekend. I wanted to bring everybody down to my level. You know, this is the type. So harm, harm, harm. Well, that's fine. We're going to go make amends to those people. But let's see and learn what it is that we do to harm so that we can stop it. Why would we want to stop it? So that people will learn. So that people will behave differently when we're around. We transform the world this way. My parents were having their 50th wedding anniversary. My sister was doing the list of people that were coming in. This was quite a few years ago. And there was this one uncle. And I said, oh, no, so you're not going to invite him. No, no, no. God, God, he's so abrasive. He's so busy. And he's just, you know, it's just one argument after another. And my sister said, he only does that when you're around. What? Oh, no, everybody loves him. He's great. He's wonderful. And she had about 20 years in the program then. So I had to believe her. I had to believe that this was true. And so I just pretended he was as great as my sister was saying. When I saw him, I went, hey, John, how you doing? I'm so glad to see you. And I started shaking his hand. And he, hi, I'm glad to see you. You see what I'm saying? It was just transforming. And that's what step eight is. Learn to love. Learn how, what it is about us that is causing this in the other people. And once we do that, we now bring a program of attraction in. I'm talking about the dry cleaning lady. I'm talking about the gasoline station. I'm talking about the supermarket. The line is too long. I'm talking about every little place where you take yourself and I take myself during the day's march. And as I take that old personality in and stir up every little pocket as I go around, I just come home the end of the day and I go, man, it's awful out there. Everybody's got an attitude. I say, this place sucks. I work this stuff. I start seeing my role in it. And I go out and I'm this different person. And I go from here, the dry cleaning lady, and over here and over there. And everybody responds to a different energy. And I come home at night and I go, what a day. These people are great. Those people are great out there. And it was all because of me. It all came out of this eighth step. This learning about myself. And then we finally do make these amends in order to not drag the past with us. It's very hard to live a day at a time and drag the 1990s with us. And all the memories and the people we don't want to run into. So we can go out and we can do this. But it's a bigger purpose than that. We're getting closer to God. All of this is designed to get us closer to God. About 15 years ago, I was a pastor. I was sitting in a townhouse on Capitol Hill where I was living at the time. I was getting ready to watch the Redskins. I love to watch football on Sunday afternoon. I had everything all set up. I'm all excited. And I was just sitting there and this memory bubble came up right on the couch. And it said, back in 1954 in Pensacola, Florida, you borrowed $70 from Bill Marseille to pay your rent and you beat him out of it. You got transferred. And then you forget. And then every time you saw him, you may believe you didn't remember. You beat him out of the $70. And I went, right. Yep, I did. Now let's get the game on and we're going to watch the Redskins. And this energy just said, no, you're going to find Bill Marseille. You got to pay him back. Yeah, I know. But you know, not now. Yeah, now. Not during the game. I'm not going to be caught. I haven't seen the guy in 20 years. How am I going to find him? I can't find him. I don't know where he is. How am I going to find him on a Sunday? You could try. What? What am I going to do? How do I know? This is me talking to me. You know what I mean? I want to watch the game. I don't want to call Bill Marseille. I don't mind the $70. I just don't want to call. Why now? It wouldn't let me alone. I'm just going and going. So I finally cut a deal. I said, OK, here's the deal. I know you like to ski. And I don't know where all the ski thing is, but I know Vermont has skiing. Here's the deal. I call Vermont, ask information. He's not going to let me go. He's not there. I watch the game. And it was like the other end, whoever's on the other end said, OK. So I go to the operator. Hello, Vermont? Yeah. Have you got a William P. Martin? You do? What's his number? OK. So I call him up. And I'm trying to get this all done. They're kicking off. Hello, Bill? I got to talk fast. So I get him on the line. He's thrilled to hear from me. Oh, my God. Because we were close buddies and drinking and all that. And I said, Bill, I'm going to call you. Bill, Bill, let me get right to the point. 1955, I borrowed $70. You remember that? We were in the apartment, my wife and I. And I never had the rent. And you're like, vaguely, I think so. Yeah, but I did. I did, Bill. And listen, I'm in AA. And we do these steps. And your name came up. I got to do these steps. What steps? Well, I mean, you know, there are 12 steps in the program. So I started telling him how happy I was and all this kind of stuff. And he said, OK, OK. And I said, well, $70, all these years of interest, I'll send you $150. And he said, OK. And I said, well, I'll do it. And he said, OK. I mail up the $150. A couple weeks later, he sends me back a box. He ran a gift shop at this ski resort. I must have had $200 worth of stuff in it, you know, wind chimes and this and that. Then he called me a year later. And he said, I'm moving to North Carolina. Here's my phone number. We've got to get together. Yeah, Bill, we've got to get together. Now years go by. And I'm speaking to him. And he said, Bill, you're going to be a good guy. You're going to be a good guy. And I said, Bill, I'm going to be a good guy. And he said, Bill, you're going to be a good guy. And I said, Bill, you're going to be a good guy. You're going to be a good guy. And he says, Bill, you're going to be a good guy. And he says, Bill, you're going to be a good guy. Now years go by. And I'm speaking down in North Carolina. After the meeting, a lady comes up and introduces herself. And she said, you don't know me. My name is Mary Marseille. Well, it's such an unusual name. I said, oh, Bill Marseille's wife. He said, no, it's Widow. And I went, oh, God, I'm so sorry. When did that happen? Oh, it happened a couple of weeks ago. My name is Bill. My wife's name is Widow. And I went, oh, God, I'm so sorry. When did that happen? Oh, it happened a couple of weeks ago. He said, you don't know me. My name is Mary Marseille. Well, it's such an unusual name. I said, oh, Bill Marseille's wife. He said, no, it's Widow. And I went, oh, God, I'm so sorry. When did that happen? Oh, it happened a couple years ago. Oh, I'm so sorry. And then I'm going, what is she doing here? And she's got an Al-Anon badge on. And she said, you know that day you called and you told him how great AA was? He joined the next day. And so this had nothing to do with the 70 bucks. This had nothing to do with working the eight steps so that I could get to watch the Redskin game. This had to do with how do we get Bill Marseille sober? How do we cause that to happen? And so we never know when we make an amend. When you make an amend, you tell the person, I'm in AA and I'm trying to do this. How many times? They will say, can you help my sister? Can you help my brother? It's amazing what's here. It's so much bigger than we think it is in steps eight and nine. We finally finish with this settling of the path and ready to live a day at a time in the tenth step. And ten is, I'm going to talk a little bit about in 11 and 12. We'll be real quick and we'll be out of here. Day at a time is the tenth step. How to live a day at a time. All it says is continue to take personal interest. And if you're wrong, promptly admit it. So what does that got to do with living a day at a time? Well, if you look in the 12 and 12, this is what I think spirituality is. I think this one little sentence has the whole package in it. And it's that spiritual axiom that's in the 12th step. And it says, whenever we're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. What's wrong with us? We're disturbed. That is what's wrong with us. We're disturbed. That is what's wrong with us. You know where it says? We have a daily reprieve, contingent on our spiritual condition. Disturbed is a bad spiritual condition. That is a very bad spiritual condition. That is a non-spiritual condition. That is, God is blocked off. Don't worry about you feel bad. God is blocked off. The channel just got shut. Disturbance is shut. No energy from God flowing through us. We're blocked again. We're alone. We are out, just us, against the world. And we're overpowered. Because it's just us. When we have God with us, it's like having your big brother in grammar school. Nobody picks on you. You see what I'm saying? And so, disturbed is the biggest warning thing we can get. That's why Bill talks about a spot check inventory. Uh-oh, disturbed. Time out. Why time out? I don't want to do things. That's when I'm disturbed. Then I've got a lot of messes to clean up. The boss comes in. He said, hey, Sandy, you wrote this memo about Congressman so-and-so? Yeah. It stinks. Well, screw you. I quit. And the words are going across the room to his ear. And I need the money. I don't really want to quit. And I'm trying to get the words back before he hears them. And he hears them and he says, you're out of here. You're out of here. You're out of here. Don't want to act when you're disturbed. So what can we do? What can we do about that? Self-restraint. You know that right out of the 12 and 12? We pray for self-restraint. We pray for this wonderful gift. This is a five-second cushion around us. A time cushion, if you will. So that when events happen, we have five seconds before we do anything. And during that five or six seconds, we can allow us to come back down to a state of undisturbed. We can make an honest analysis. We can make an honest analysis of what's wrong. If the fault is out there, we can forgive them. If the fault is here, we can make an amend. And we can go back to being undisturbed. And that's all there is to life. It's always going back to being undisturbed. Because if we're undisturbed, we don't need anything. We're just existing. How are things going? Great, man. Well, I hear you don't have your job yet. I know. But right now, I have everything I need. It is absolutely wonderful. That's undisturbed. So undisturbed is the point. Because when we're undisturbed, people react to us that way. We bring it everywhere that we go. And so this is what the tenth step is. Anytime I'm starting to get undisturbed, I want to go, time out. Time out. Call up my sponsor. What's the matter? I'm disturbed. Okay, let's talk about it and get you undisturbed. You got to forgive him. But he did something that's unforgivable. It goes way beyond the limit. It's unforgivable? Well, I let my sister do that, but holy cow, now she did this. So I was trying to think to myself, where do you draw the line on forgiveness? You know, how far do you let somebody go? Where is the limit? So I was thinking of, do we have any examples anywhere of where the line is? Great spiritual teachers. And I was thinking of one who was around a couple thousand years ago and they were nailing him to a cross. And he said, forgive them. They know not what they do. So it appears that forgiving goes up to and includes nailing to a cross. Now my problem is I'm always having stuff worse than getting nailed to a cross happen to me. See, nailing to a cross is happening to somebody else. But cutting me off in traffic is happening to me. So I have to expand forgiveness. Why? To let people off the hook? Is that what it is? It has nothing to do with them. It's to get undisturbed. It's to get undisturbed. It's so that I win. I want to be a winner all the time. I want to be undisturbed. If I let you off the hook and I get undisturbed, I win. Who cares whether it was fair? Fairness is a one-way street. It's not supposed to come back. It's not supposed to come back. I'm supposed to be fair. That's what the spiritual program says. If I'm fair, the whole world will be fair. That's it. Because if I'm not acting fairly, if I don't trust, I'm my own role model. And if I don't trust, then nobody does. Because nobody's better than me. So that means you can't trust anybody. You see what I'm saying? Nobody's better than me, and I'm not fair. So that means nobody in the world can be trusted. And nobody in the world will ever treat you fairly. So then we just... You've got the energy going the wrong way. Fairness isn't supposed to come in. Trust isn't supposed to come in. It's supposed to go out. So now I trust people. I'm fair to people. And the world becomes a trusting place. And the world becomes a fair place. It just does. And I get taken for 50 bucks once in a while. So? So? What's that? You want the 50 bucks back and stay disturbed all the time? You want to not trust anything in the world and still have your 50 bucks? Would you pay 50 bucks to be free of all those insecurities? I'd pay millions! Boy, that's cheap getting hit up for 50 bucks every so often. Just because you're too trusting. It's just the dynamics is just huge. It's huge in the 10th step. Undisturbed. Undisturbed. Remember that. That inventory. The end of the day inventory. How can I go through and do this better? And then as we get into 11 and the prayer of Saint Francis which, let me just read now that we can think about it. We've been talking all about the jackpot. We're right at the very end. What does it feel like? What did a saint think about what we're trying to accomplish as a human being? What are your goals? Let me see. He said yacht. Probably wanted a mansion. Probably wanted a big family and a lot of security and the President of the United States. Let's see. What did he really want? Look what he wanted. My God, that doesn't look like anything. Make me a channel of thy peace that where there's hatred I may bring love. That where there's wrong I may bring a spirit of forgiveness. That where there's discord I may bring harmony. That where there's error I may bring truth. That where there's doubt I may bring faith. That where there's despair I may bring hope. That where there are shadows I may bring light. That where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand than to be understood. To love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. This isn't some abstract words that a saint wrote. This is us. This is us. Each one of us can look at this and go, Hey, make me a channel. You know, hey God, cancel the yacht. Cancel the yacht. I want to be a channel. I'd rather be a channel. Forget the yacht. Make me a channel. Make me bring harmony. Let me flow through me as I go out. Use me to sober this guy up. Use me to help somebody forgive. Please, let me use that. It's just a question, what are you asking for? It's just a question, what are you asking for? See, I was asking for yachts. I was asking that this stop and that this person be healed and this person do that. None of that's in the 11 Step. Pray only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Who am I to know if somebody should get well? Maybe it's God's will that they go up to the big meeting. I'm trying to block it. You know, God's going, Mary, I love you, come on up. Come on up. And I'm going, no! You know what I mean? So that's why this is it. Let me just do Thy will. And so that's the new thing to ask for. This is the in thing. It's hip, it's cool. Right here, prayer of St. Francis. Let's become a channel. Let's become a channel and the channel goes out. And then in our 12 Step, and we wrap it up right here. Forget about, we're going to carry the message. It just comes with the territory. It's hard to hold people back from carrying the message. They've been sober a week, they're out there. They don't know what the message is, but by God, they're carrying it. And you know something? All they've got to do is get that car and go pick that guy up or that gal up and put her on the front row. Okay, Mary, watch what happens. And that's enough of a message. I mean, we're there. We're doing it. We're doing this. But what about... Having had a spiritual awakening. Obviously, we even ourselves will see this. We now see the world differently. Mark Chamberlain says we've got a new pair of glasses. We just couldn't see the world and now we see it clearly. We've been given a new vision. It's the energy from this channel is coming through and causing us to see everything differently. We see the world as a wonderful place. We see human beings as children of God. We see that maybe we don't understand it right now, but it'll all come about. And we'll see the answer later on. And this is very powerful stuff. But then it says, practice these principles in all our affairs. And it really means that. It doesn't mean just in AA. We shouldn't feel as safe in AA and not safe out of AA. Those are all God's children at the office place, down here, over there. I make everybody an honorary member of AA. I meet them on the plane, wherever it is. And boy, if I'm talking to a guy on a plane for five minutes, AA's in the conversation. Oh yeah, I'm talking to a guy on a plane. Well, I joined AA 35 million years ago. Saved my life. It's the greatest damn thing in the world. Yeah, I used to be a Marine fighter pilot. There's other things, but I always work that in. And guess what? One out of five. Can you help my sister? Can you help my sister? So I'm this way. Everybody sets their own comfort level in that area. But the thing I want to wrap up with, practice these principles in all our affairs. And my favorite example of this, and I use it in a lot of talks, is, let's see, I went over about two years, went to a meeting every night. The Marine Corps wouldn't promote me, and they pushed me out. So I'm at home and I'm going, let's see, what did God do for me lately? This great loving God that we got in AA. I go to a meeting every night, now I'm out. I got no money, I got six kids, I got no job, what am I going to do? I got a resentment, I can't stand it, this sucks, you call AA a loving program, whew, whew. Anybody ever get that way? So I get to a meeting, I never do this, I never raise my hand. You go to a meeting, anybody got a topic? I never raise my hand. But that night I'm mad, and I go, yeah, I got a topic. Well, what's your topic, Sandy? Getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. Oh, I don't think that's a good topic for AA, getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. Okay, okay, topic, getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. That's the topic. Topic tonight, getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. And I figured, this is an AA group, they love me, you know, God, everything will help. I figured the first guy is going to raise his hand. Sandy, you get thrown out of the Marine Corps? That means you're available. I have a company, a large corporation, looking for a smart guy like you to come add to our corporation, with $75,000 a year and a car, and a new home, would that be good? Now see, that would be help. That would be help. Guess what I get? Oh, thrown out of the Marine Corps? I'm not going to throw you out. You get thrown out of the Marine Corps, double up on your meetings. You've got a lot of time on your hands anyway. Another guy says, you get thrown out of the Marine Corps, help a new guy, take your mind off yourself. What's wrong with you? Last guy, stated prayer of St. Francis, he was a Marine. I went home that night and I said, you're going to ruin my problem very well. What was that? What was that? I couldn't believe my ears what I heard there. So I never raised my hand again. Maybe seven years went by and boom! 20 year marriage explodes like an atomic bomb. I'm gone, another guy's moving in, there are kids like him, they don't like me. So I'm in a meeting, getting thrown out of your own house, another guy's moving in. Oh Sandy, I don't think that's a good topic. Alright, alright, topic tonight, getting thrown out of your own house, another guy's moving in. You know what happened, the guy says, thrown out of your own house, surrender prayer. You've got to say surrender prayer. Thrown out of your own house, double up on your meetings. Throw out of your own house, work with new people, take your mind off of that, take your mind off of that, just work with new people. And the last guy, prayer of Saint Francis, he got thrown out of many homes. Five more years went by, I'm in the real estate business, there's no mortgage money, everything's gone. You're not supposed to have all this sobriety and be almost broke. So I'm at a meeting, and we've got a topic, bankruptcy. Oh Sandy, bankruptcy's not a topic. I want to, okay bankruptcy, guess what happens? We go around the room, oh bankruptcy. Surrender prayer, that's what you've got to do for some bankruptcy. Double up on your meetings, go to the eating meetings, get free food. Work with the new people, take your mind off of that, take your mind off of that. Prayer of Saint Francis, he took a vow of poverty. That's what it was. Now why am I telling that story? You already know it, you can see it. What does it say? It says there's one solution for all problems. That's what it's saying. First things first, get right spiritually, and see if there's any problems left. Just as we read in that book, just as we read in that wonderful chapter, it just happens. It's automatic. It just happens. We're freedom from all of this. Sure, those are problems. But if I'm close to my higher power, I don't care. You know, this will get straightened out, I'll get a job, I'll get back with this, I'll get that. But in the meantime, I'm relatively comfortable. So what is the wonderful thing that happens, and then this is the absolute wrap up, there's a lot of pain that happens in life. Larry was talking about it last night. This is not a pain-free thing once we get sober. But let's try to measure pain. Let's say that you just got laid off because of cutbacks. And you've got four kids and you're not quite sure how you're going to feed them. And let's all agree in this room that that is worth 2,000 units of pain. Okay? That's a lot of pain. And you're not quite sure how you're going to feed them. That's a universally accepted standard. You have now been inflicted with 2,000 units of pain. Now we're going to add on to that the fact that you are irate over the fact that you got laid off. Matter of fact, you've got a resentment. You think you got screwed in getting laid off. You're going to get your boss. You're going to you hate the fact that you got laid off. Oh, this is 10,000 more units. It's now we're at 12,000. But the 10,000 is optional. And the program can enable us to get rid of those 10,000. And always keep the pain level down at where it should be. Somebody dies, there's a mourning period that goes through. But we add on top of that, because we're so self-centered, they shouldn't have died to me. They hurt me so much. They did this and I build it up so that I quadruple the amount of pain that is supposed to go with the event. And so it really feels like a wonderful world even when the pain is coming because we don't quadruple it with our self-centeredness. It is tremendous freedom. We just accept it. Acceptance is so powerful. Because God is in charge of this. We just go okay, so now I don't have a car. I accept it. Now I've got to deal with the anxiety of getting one. Instead of the rage that this happened to me. You all connect with that. That is what we get free from. So if you're new, I want to just wish you the best of luck. It has been an absolute pleasure to share with you. And as I said in the very, very beginning that if one new person out of this gets motivated to take the action to get closer to your personal God, that would be the greatest reward I can imagine. We're at the end of the time. Why don't we wrap it up with the Lord's Prayer for everybody who would care to join in.