Inventory and Spiritual Experience – Workshop – the Lost Tapes – Part 3 of 8 – Mark H.

My fears fall from me. Fourth promise, I begin to feel the nearness of my creator. Fifth promise, I may have had certain spiritual beliefs but now I begin to have a spiritual experience. In the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous we do not begin to have spiritual experience until we do a fifth step. If you've never done a fifth-step you are not having a spiritual experience. You are having and operating on certain spiritual beliefs, which is why we're asked to say the prayer, God, give me your protection to abandon with complete protection. Those of you who are in this room that have never done a fifth step, you are sober through God's grace, love, and mercy. He's giving you protection to abandoned. But I'll give you a little warning a friend of mine shares. This is not in the book. Here's what he says. Once I see truth, I don't know how much longer grace is available to me. Meaning, once I've seen the truth in my first step and I've see how this works, if I put this off I don' t know how long grace is available to you. You understand what I'm saying? Second step, I commence spiritual growth. I do not begin to have the spiritual experience until I have completed my fifth step. Fifth step. Quick little story about inventory for those of you who are going to balk at writing it, and we all will. But this helps me write inventory. How many of you got kids in here? Okay, almost all of you. If you said to your kids, go down and clean your room, would they go down with great excitement and enthusiasm? How about this? Say to your kid, got a deal for you today, son or daughter. You go down to your room and everything in your room you don't want anymore, you pull out, and I'm going to take you down and buy all new stuff. They'd run over you to get to the room. What do you think happens to us in inventory? I go into my room, I take all this junk, all these defects and I take it to God and he gives me all new stock. I take my dishonesty to him and he give me honesty. I take lack of faith to him and he gave me courage. See what I'm saying? How do you not get excited about writing inventory? The men and women I got sober with get excited when they write inventory i get excited when i write inventory what do you hear in a oh god i'm writing inventory how do you not get excited that god's going to take all that stuff away and give you brand new stuff and give you more new power you see what i'm saying sponsorship i have a sponsor that said get excited about inventory man it's the stuff that blocks you It's gone. You're free. You got freedom. Wow. Wouldn't it be nice if we were giving everybody in AA that message instead of the message we give them? Oh, inventory is a dreadful thing. It reminds me when I had a bisectomy. I've got to share this. Men who've had bisectomies lie to you about the results of that. I asked several men. Did it hurt? No, not at all. No big deal. They lied to me. Three days later, all my products are jet black. I go running back to the doctor and said, what the hell is going on? We lie to people about the effects of what can happen with inventory. Jeez, where the hell did that come from? Yeah. So we may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience another promise another promise feeling the drink promise disappeared will often come strongly another promise we feel on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe now the next time someone comes up and lays a bullshit inventory on you not all this book you open your book up and say tell you what i'll do be happy to use it we'll get will these things happen i don't think so you know why these things happen my experience i believe this book to be divinely inspired you know why i'm a drunk like bill wilson he ain't got the brains to put this together this is a path of spiritual exercise designed to get me close to god myself and you no human beings got the power to write this thing that's why i believe we get the promises when we do the inventories in this book now we're not done yet with the fifth step we have some more instructions and you remember that stuff on page 17 we talked about cement and mortar and sand and then stones and all that now imagine reading this page and not having gone through the work you'd think an idiot wrote this book here's what it says i leave my sponsor's house i go home returning home i find a place where i can be quiet for an hour now my book does not say 42 minutes or 93 says an hour so At this point in time, I follow instructions. I set a timer for an hour. I carefully review what I've done, meaning my inventory. I don't read it again. I just kind of sit and I just think about it. Now here's what's interesting. Look at the next sentence. We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. Now Don always said something to me. He said if this book tells you to do something or I tell you to do something, it don't happen, call me up and bitch at me. So I called him up and I said, I'm confused. He said, about what? I said I just sat and shared some absolute insane things and harm and guilt and shame and selfishness and fear with you over several hours about a lot of stuff and this crazy book says I'm supposed to know God better. He said don't you remember the book says as I reveal myself to him, he reveals himself to me. wow and all of a sudden i begin to see how this process works he uses another human being to allow me to reveal myself to god and then he reveals himself to me goes on to say taking this book down from the shelf i turn to the page which contains the 12 steps carefully reading the first five proposals i ask if i have omitted anything for i'm building an arch through which i shall walk a free man at last is my work solid so far are the stones properly in place imagine if you're reading this and you didn't understand the second steps the cornerstone the third step's the keystone you'd say what the hell they talking about look at the next sentence have i skipped on the cement put into the foundation have i tried to make mortar without saying but you and i based on the work we've done we understand all those questions don't we so i have now and then top of page 76 if i can answer my satisfaction these questions now i'm done with step five it says we then look at step six everything i can tell in my experience is that the sixth step is all about god as are the seventh and only an alcoholic would want to pontificate upon god's work there are two short simple paragraphs here that are not difficult to understand the sixth step really says we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable now i get two questions and only a drunk would ask this next question am i now ready to let god remove for me all the things which i have admitted are objectionable think about that you just did a fifth step right you got reams and reams of all these defects and now you're going to ask well i don't know if i want him to take it or not right it's what separates you from god here's another question one of faith can he now take them all every one on the second step i made a decision he's everything so i think he can now it says if we still cling to something we'll not let go of we ask god to help us be willing here's a point in time where i always tell people are there some things you're unwilling to let go of what do you mean well you keep telling me you got fear of abandonment are you willing to let go of that what does that mean it means that if you want to let it go and he removes it you can't go to any meetings anymore bitching about fear of abandonment you only experience that oh hell i never thought about that you know things like check this one out masturbation watch the room shutter get real quiet wow am i willing to let go of that smoking cigarettes look at everything you're unwilling to let go of right ken just said it to me outside damn it i realized last night mark there's a whole bunch of things i'm unwilling to do and unwilling to let go of right now. That's why they say in the sixth step, willingness is indispensable. When ready, meaning when I've answered those questions, we say something like this, my creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad, and I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding, amen. Third step prayer had no amen. The amen is behind the seventh step prayer. Says we have then completed step seven. Now at that time one would think they would get a little rest. Not true. Book says now we need more action without which we find that faith without works is dead so it says let's look at steps eight and nine and we're going to go through some pages in this book and we are probably going to smash a whole bunch of middle of the road solution you hear in Alcoholics Anonymous about making amends I could show you last year in Breckenridge Colorado over 200 people who have made every amend that they are consciously aware of every amend they're consciously aware of there's a man sitting in this room that 11 months sober has finished every single amend that he is consciously aware it is possible to finish all of your amends how much freedom do you want so the books and mark let's look at steps eight and nine we have a list of all the persons we've harmed into whom are willing to make amends we made that list when we took inventory. All those names in my resentment inventory, all those names on my sex inventory. And then I do one other thing. I ask God to show me any other people I've harmed that are not on any of my inventories. And he always shows me some. Says Mark, you made this list when you took inventory, when you subject yourself to a drastic self-appraisal. Now we're going to go out to our fellows and we're going to repair the damage done in the past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated our effort to live on self-will and to run the show ourself. Here's a great cop-out for amends. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. A friend of mine tells a story I like. He's one of these guys that goes around doing guru shit every now and then And in this group, they can ask questions. So he shared one time at a meeting, he gets done, and he was talking about an amend he had to make to a girl he was engaged to that he didn't want to make. And he made the mistake of saying in front of some other people that had done the work, I'm praying for the willingness to make this amend, and I'm asking until it comes. It hasn't come yet. And somebody from the audience says, is it possible? And he knew right away he was headed for trouble. he said is it possible you're not praying for the willingness he said why yes i am i'm praying every day he said well i'll have you think about something he said i submit to you that the day that you're willing to make this amend you'll know it and you'll Know It Very Easily he says how's that he said you're going to hear a real strange noise he said what the hell are you talking about he said yeah you're gonna hear a really strange noise He said, what's it going to sound like? He says, it's going to sound like this. That's you knocking on her door to make the amend. People in AA say, well, I haven't made any amends in four months. I'm praying for the willingness. No, I agreed at the beginning to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. We're going to be reminded of that in the next sentence in squiggly lines. Book tells us three times, Mark, are you willing to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol let me comment on that there's not very many people nay you can walk up to and ask them this question and get an answer what does it mean to be willing to go To any links for victory or alcohol I give you that answer it means go from the title page to 164 and do everything it says that's exactly what it means and in steps eight and nine they remind you in squiggly lines what you agreed to mark now don gave me an exercise and i'd never seen him give me something out of the book once i got done with all this list he said mark for simplicity's sake get some three by five cards take every single amend and put it on the three by five card put the name address phone number all relevant information and then in the right hand corner i want you to do something i want you to go through and visualize yourself making an amend to every person and if it feels comfortable put a plus and if feels uncomfortable put a minus now i knew don didn't tell me to do some stuff out of the book and i didn't know where he came up with that well he cameup with that in the next sentence probably mark there are still some misgivings misgiving means i'm uncomfortable making the amend. So I did that. Here's what it says. As I look over the list of business acquaintances and friends I have hurt, I may feel diffident about going to some of them on a spiritual basis. Let us be reassured. To some people we need not and probably should not emphasize the spiritual feature on our first approach. We might prejudice them. At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and to the people about us. It is seldom wise to approach an individual who still smarts from our injustice to him and announce we've gone religion. In the prize ring, this would be called leading with the chin. Why lay ourselves open to be called branded fanatics or religious boars? We may kill a future opportunity to carry a beneficial message, but our man is sure to be impressed with a sincere desire to set right the wrong. He is going to be more interested in demonstration of goodwill than our talk of spiritual discoveries. Demonstration of good will—if I owe the money and he asks me to pay it back, I pay it back. You're gonna find in the amends that the big book covers every kind of amend that you have to make financial family business the people we hate criminal offenses everything we've ever done any category the big book is very specific about how to make that amend you hear this in meetings some of you probably heard this what talks about when i make amends i shouldn't do so if i'm going to harm others and i've heard people say in ai mothers bullshit that isn't in these pages nowhere i hear this name the greatest harm i ever did i did do myself yeah you did you know how to fix it go out make amends to all those people you screwed over that's the greatest gift i ever gave myself was when i had the day when i made the last amend i was consciously aware of it's a day I wish everyone in this room could experience it's a level of freedom that virtually few people can talk about because they buy this crap about you can't finish all the amends we've been talking about the power of God haven't we have to make that you're consciously aware of some of them may take time if you're like me I'm a geographic drunk it took me three and a half years to get back to the six states I had to get back to I could tell you of a guy that when he put his men's cars together he put them together by continents and it took him two years i can tell you of a black guy in los angeles who had 350 amends and 250 of them were burglaries knocking and entering you know how salesmen go around make cold calls you know what this kid did he went into neighborhoods where he burglarized houses knocked on the door and told him why he was there i broke into your house i sold this what can i do to make it right He finished in two years 350 amends, 250 of them were breaking and entering. That guy's so on fire with this program he vibrates off the floor. It is possible to make, consciously make all of the amends that you owe and that come to you. How much freedom do you want? This book and one other book I know are designed to transmit a spiritual experience. This and the Bible. The Bible talks real, real clearly about cleaning your stuff up with your brother. How free do you want to be? This is not in the book, but this is my experience. I don't have any future until I clean up my past. Let me say that again. I do not have any feature until I clear up my path. What does that mean? It means if I owe money and screwed people over and don't pay them, I doubt if I'm ever going to do very well in that area. It means If I have personal relationships, people I've harmed and haven't cleaned them up, I'm probably not going to do very well in this area. That's my personal experience. My life changed after I consciously finished all amends for the first time. When I went through last year in 93 and all the amends I had to make, there are two I still have to make. Those are to dead people. I want to comment on that. This happens a lot. Some people say you can't make amends to dead People. Really? see in a when you talk about stuff like this about three-fourths of the room will say oh no you can't do that but there's going to be about a fourth of the room people like myself will say in god's world anything is possible and you can make amends to dead people and you can write their letter of amends that you'd like to make if they still were alive and you can go to their grave i've made several this summer the second week in july i'll fly back to humble iowa and I will go to my grandmother and great aunt's graves and I'll make amends at their grave site in the world of the spirit anything is possible and the reason I do that is real simple because that amend is sitting right down here and I harmed those women and I love them and I want to be free of that how much freedom do you want? goes on to say we do not use this as an excuse for shying away from the subject of God when it will serve any good purpose we're willing to renounce our convictions with tact and common sense. Now, here's what's interesting. The question of how to approach the man we hated. How many of us in here have men or women we hate? Every hand needs to go up on this one. It may be he or she has done us more harm than we've done him. And although we've acquired a better attitude toward him, we're still not too keen about admitting our faults. Nevertheless, with a person we dislike, we take the bit in our teeth it is harder to go to an enemy than to a friend now look at the promise but we find it much more beneficial to us we go to this person in a helpful and forgiving spirit confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret so the book has given us instructions about business acquaintances and friends and now it's told us what to do about people we still hate I had someone say this to me the other day. They said that they were told that they had to be free of their resentment toward this person before they could go make amends. That and what the book says. The book says, I may still hate this person and I may have a little better attitude toward him but I'm still not too keen about talking to him. Go make the amend. It goes further and I'm getting more instructions. Under no condition do I criticize such a person or argue. We've passed out a form, and there's a very special format I follow when I make amends, and I've given that to you. It says simply we tell them we'll never get over drinking until we've done our utmost to straighten out the past. Highlight utmost to strengthen out the path. You know what I heard a man say from the podium one time? and this got to this guy was about trying to find people we've harmed in the past he said are you really willing to go to any length do you ever consider hiring a private detective oh i don't want to hear that i don'T WANT TO HEAR THAT it says mark we will never get over drinking until we've done our utmost to straighten out the past and i'll challenge some of you who've been in a sitting in this room for a while Get brutally honest about where you're at with all your men you're consciously aware of. And are you doing your utmost to straighten out your past? And if not, go back and look at your first step. It's as a result of the desperation of the first step that I've become willing to go to any length. Maybe you're not a real alcoholic. More importantly, how much freedom do you want? we're there to sweep off our side of the street realizing nothing can be accomplished until we do so look what the book just says nothing can be accomplished until I sweep off my side of the street why do you think it tells us that why do you think it tells us that because we had to search fearlessly in steps four through nine to turn our will and life over to the care of God I'll submit something to you those you in this room when you leave here if you continue through this work that from the day you finish your last amends within one year what will happen in your life will blow your mind from the date you finish or last conscious of men you track 12 months down the road and what will happen to you will blow you're mine how much freedom do you want His faults are not discussed, we stick to our own. If our matter is calm, frank and open, we'll be gratified with the results. My experience shows what happened from this next sentence. Nine cases out of ten, the unexpected happened. Amends I thought would be horrendous went great. Quite frankly when I look back, the worst experience I ever had Of course for me that just means it didn't turn out the way I wanted going into it when I looked at my card I write how I've harmed these people where I'm at fault and I say a prayer and go make the amend I didn't see much harm this lady looked me dead in the eye and said I don't ever want to see you again I think that's real nifty you're sober I don'T want you ever talking to anyone in my family again and I left went whining to Don he said did you do what the book asked you to do yeah Then he said, you cleaned off your side of the street, Mark. That's all the book asked you to do. Now you need to follow what she told you to do. Goes on to say, sometimes the man we're calling upon admits his own fault so feuds of yours standing melt away in an hour. Rarely do we fail to make satisfactory progress. Our former enemies sometimes praise what we are doing and they wish us well. Occasionally they will offer assistance. It should not matter, however, if someone does throw us out of his office. We've made our demonstration, done our part. It's water over the dam. Now, next paragraph deals with owing money. Never understood it. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand this next paragraph about owing money. I have guys come to me and say, I don't know what I'm going to do about these financial amends. Well, I Don't Know. Maybe they're writing your book change. Let's see what the book says. Most alcoholics owe money. We do not dodge our creditors. Okay, so I'm not going to run from creditors anymore. Telling them what we're trying to do, we make no bones about our drinking. They usually know about it anyway whether we think so or not. Nor are we afraid of disclosure or alcoholism on the theory it may cause financial harm. Approached in this way, the most ruthless creditors will sometimes surprise us. Arranging the best deal we can, we let these people know we're sorry. Our drinking's made us slow to pay. We must lose our fear of creditors no matter how far we have to go for we're liable to drink if we're afraid to face them. If you are afraid to Face your creditors and you're living in fear, you're blocked from the sunlight of the Spirit, you live there long enough, you'll drink alcohol. It's not that difficult. Did I like making them? No, I'm selfish and self-centered. when I pay back these financial amends that's money I'd like to spend doing other stuff but how much freedom do you want so if you owe 10 people money you go to them and arrange the best deal you can see I'm an alcoholic, here's what I want to do I want a way let's say I owe someone $2,000 I want wait until I can walk in there with $2.000 and crisp $100 bills and throw it down God forbid if I sit across and tell you that I can only pay you $10 a month for the rest of my life. But the book says I arrange the best deal I can. That's what I did. Some of those amends I had to make, they were $10. $10 dollars a month. I make them. It's real clear what I do around my financial stuff. Now, once again, I told you this book would cover every single area. The next area of amends are areas where we committed a criminal offense. It says perhaps we committed a criminal offence which might land us in jail if it were known to the authorities. We may be short on our accounts and unable to make good. We've already admitted this in confidence to another person but we are sure we would be imprisoned or lose our job if it was known. Maybe it's only a petty offence such as padding an expense account. Most of us have done that sort of thing. Maybe we're divorced and we've remarried, but we haven't kept up the alimony, number one. She's indignant about it and she has a worn out for our rest. That's a common form of trouble too. Next paragraph has got a lot of instructions about amends. Although these reparations take innumerable forms, there are some general principles we find guiding. Highlight this paragraph. Reminding ourselves we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be. We may lose our position or reputation or face jail, but we are willing, we have to be, we must not shrink at anything. that's a pretty powerful paragraph isn't it now I'm also given instructions example you were out there ripping and roaring drinking and single now you come into AA you get married have a child you die you're dying of untreated alcoholism and God forbid go to a meeting where some spiritual gunfighters at walk up to him and make the mistake ask him to do the work with you so you do the work up to this point in time now you owe a bunch of money or maybe you got a criminal offense but now you got a wife and child involved so the root of my problem is I'm selfish and self-centered so I need to use some discretion and think because this wife and child are now going to be affected by my financial amend right so now the book's going to give me instructions about that says usually however other people are involved therefore we're not to be the hasty and foolish martyr who would needlessly sacrifice others to save himself from the alcoholic pit. A man we know had remarried because of resentment drinking he had not paid alimony to his first wife she was furious she went to court she got an order for his arrest he had commenced our way of life he had secured a position and was getting his head above water it would have been impressive heroics if he walked up to the judge and said here I am so it says we thought that meant he went and talked to somebody in the fellowship we thought he ought to be willing to do that if necessary but if he were in jail he could provide nothing for either family so we suggested that he write his first wife admitting his faults and asking forgiveness he did and he also sent a small sum of money he told her what he would try to do in the future. He said he was perfectly willing to go to jail if she insisted. Of course, she did not and the whole situation has long since been adjusted. Now I mentioned the Internal Revenue Service. When I got sober and did this work for the first time with a real sponsor, I had seven years that I had not filed. The Internal Revenues Service does not like that. They like their money so I went to a man said I'd like to talk about this I don't know what to do he said well I would suggest the first thing you do is you probably go to a CPA and have them put those seven years together and when that's done let's take a look at the damage and how much you owe and then probably we need to sit down with you and your wife so I did that I took what information I could gather. He did the seven years' worth of returns. We took a look at how much money I owed, and I sat down with the wife there. And he and I, well, here's why we needed to do that. Because it was a lot of money, and it meant a lot of money out of my check was going to have to go to the Internal Revenue Service to make this amend. Yet she's now my wife, and she's going to be affected. So I needed to know how she felt about that. She had been around this thing long enough to know that if i didn't make these amends i was going to drink alcohol and i'm blocked from god she said i support you what you're going to want to do so i brought her in on it i also didn't lead with the chin i didn'T walk into the irs and say here i am help me i went to a cpa and he did all that stuff and he also gave me some wise instructions which I'M GLAD HE GAVE ME LIKE MARK ONCE YOU DO THIS EVERY NOW AND THEN JUST FOR GRINS THEY'RE GOING TO TAP ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS So if you never have over $50 in them and they tap it, don't worry about it. I've done that, been a means of AA. The IRS hit my account and took $2,000. Never happened to me. Why? Because I listened to a man in the program and I followed his instructions. And they did. Until I got that taken care of two times, they hit my count. So I don't lead with a chin. There are people in AA who've had to make every kind of amend known to man. Go talk to them. particularly if other people are involved you need to talk to, okay? It says before taking drastic action which might implicate other people, we secure their consent. If we've attained permission, which I did, have consulted with others, which i did, ask God to help and the drastic step is indicated, we must not shrink. This brings to mind a story about one of our friends. While drinking, he accepted a sum of money from a bitterly hated business rival, giving him no receipt for it. He subsequently denied having received the money and he used the instance as a basis for discrediting the man. He thus used his own wrongdoing as a means of destroying the reputation of another. In fact, his rival was ruined. He felt he had done a wrong he could not possibly make right. If he opened that old affair, he was afraid it would destroy the reputation of his partner, disgraced his family, and take away his means of livelihood. What right had he to involve those dependent upon him? How could he possibly make a public statement exonerating his rival? Now here's what he did. He followed instructions. After consulting with his wife and partner, he came to the conclusion that it was better to take those risks than to stand before was created are guilty of such ruinous slander. He saw that he had to place the outcome in God's hands. The outcome of our men is in Godís hands, or that he would start drinking again and all would be lost anyway. He attended church for the first time in many years. After the sermon, and he quietly got up and made an explanation. This would take some serious courage, wouldn't it? His action meant widespread approval. Today he's one of the most trusted citizens of his town. This all happened years ago. Now it's going to move into another area called domestic troubles. Perhaps we're mixed up with women in a fashion we wouldn't care to have advertised. we doubt if in this respect alcoholics are funnily much worse than other people i love this next sentence but drinking does complicate sex relations in the home after a few years with an alcoholic a wife gets worn out resentful and uncommunicative how could she be anything else the husband begins to feel lonely sorry for himself he commences to look around the nightclubs of their equivalent for something besides liquor perhaps he's having a secret and exciting affair with the girl who understands in fairness we must say she may understand but what are we going to do about a thing like that a man so involved often feels very remorseful at times especially if he is married to a loyal and courageous girl who has literally gone through hell for him. Whatever the situation, we usually have to do something about it. Now, those of you who are going to have to make amends to wives or significant others as a result of this area, please pay serious attention. If we are sure that our wife does not know, should we tell her? Not always, we think. I love this next one. If she knows in a general way we've been wild, should we tell her in detail? Undoubtedly, we should admit our fault. She may insist on knowing all the particulars. She will want to know who the woman is and where she is. Or who the man is and where he is. We feel we ought to say to her that we have no right to involve another person we are sorry for what we have done and god willing it should not be repeated more than that we cannot do we have no right to go further though there may be justifiable exceptions and though we wish to lay down no rule of any sort we have often found this the best course to take our design for living is not a one-way street it is as good for the wife as for the husband. If we can't forget, so can she. It is better, however, that one does not needlessly name a person upon whom she can vent jealousy. Perhaps there are some cases where the utmost frankness is demanded. Now, the next sentence, most important. No outsider can appraise such an intimate situation. If you are in a marriage, if there are amends to be made in this area, pay attention. No outsider can appraise such an intimate situation. Read the book, talk to your sponsor, pray, and you do what comes to you. this is important we're talking about the most intimate of all situations and the most terrible of all human emotions jealousy i think there's reasons the book says no outsider can appraise such an intimate situation i've seen this go both ways i've seeing men who decided through this exercise the best thing was to not say a word to the woman about their affairs and i've seen men who decided the best thing was to tell her about the affairs and both of them came out fantastic so no outsider can appraise this situation it says it may be that both will decide the way a good sense and lovely kindness is to let bygones be bygone each might pray about keeping the other one's happiness uppermost in mind keep it always in sight we're dealing with that most terrible human emotion jealousy good generalship may decide the problem be attacked on the flank rather than risk a face-to-face combat. If we have no such complications, there's plenty we should do at home. Sometimes we'll hear an alcoholic say the only thing he needs to do is keep sober. Certainly he must keep sober for there will be no home if he doesn't, but he is yet a long way from making good to the wife or parents whom for years he has so shockingly treated. passing all understanding is the patience mothers and wives have had with alcoholics had this not been so many of us would have no homes today or would perhaps be dead and these next few sentences describes me and most drunks i've known the alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others hearts are broken sweet relationships are dead affections have been uprooted selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil we feel a man's unthinking when he says sobriety is enough he's like the farmer who came out of a cyclone cellar to find his home ruined to his wife he remarked don't say anything the matter here ma you need to grant the wind stop blowing page 83 and here's some real instructions that i can do on a daily basis for my family For me, my family consists of my brothers and sisters in AA. So these are tools I can pick up in my daily meditation in my interaction with them. Here's what it says. Yes, there's a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead. A remorseful mumbling we're sorry won't fill the bill at all. Let me say that again. A remourceful muggling we're Sorry won't Fill the Bill at All. Making amends is not about sitting across from someone saying I'm sorry. We passed out a form, and when I make amends, I follow the same procedure. And it comes out of the book. I'm in a 12-step program for recovery. I will never get over drinking until I've done my utmost to straighten out my past. In my relationship with you, this is where I was at fault. I borrowed this $500 from you, told you I would pay it back, and did not. I slandered your names at times I did this, I did this, when I get done talking about where I'm at fault here's a question do you need to tell me how what I did harmed you and then I shut up and I listen and they will tell you how your actions harmed them and then i ask another question in addition to that is there anything else I have ever done that has harmed you and they will sometimes said yes now that you mentioned it this and this and this and then I asked the most important question of all what can I do to set things right between us to balance the books and I shut up and they tell me and if it's moral and if it legal I do it understand something about finishing amends finishing amens isn't just about the approach it's about doing what's asked of you to do for example my sponsor when he made amends to his mother you know what she told him she wanted him to do she said i only wanted you to be happy since that day every time his mother sees him he's happy irregardless of what's going on in his life why because that's what she told Him she wanted Him to do to make amends for her so he shows up at her house he's happy all the time whenever he's around his mother that's what we do when we make amens what can i do to set this right what can i do to balance the books so it says we ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it being very careful not to criticize them their defects may be glaring but the chances are our own actions are partially responsible so i clean house with the family now i'm going to be given a spiritual tool i ask each morning in meditation that my creator show me the way of patience tolerance kindliness and love that's a prayer if you have a family for me i have an aa family that i can take into meditation every morning the spiritual life is not a theory we have to live it we haveと live the spiritual life it's not a story unless one's family expresses a desire to live upon spiritual principles, we think we ought not to urge them. We should not talk incessantly to them about spiritual matters. They'll change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words. We must remember that 10 or 20 years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone. It says there may be some wrongs we can never fully right. We don't worry about them if we can honestly say to ourselves we would right them if they could. some people cannot be seen we send them an honest letter and there may be a valid reason for postponement in some cases but we don't delay if it can be avoided we should be sensible tactful considerate and humble without being servile or scraping as God's people we stand on our feet we do not crawl before anyone and that sums up the instructions on steps eight and nine The book is highly, highly specific. And my experience is most of what I hear in AA around amends is not in this book. I don't think there's much doubt in any of our minds as we went through this together about this making of amends, is there? We must not shrink at anything. We must be willing to go to any lengths, willing to lose position, reputation. Now, I'll share this experience again. I could give you a lot of stories about amends and the incredible things that happen. But my experience most of all with all that, how free do you want to get? I don't have any future until I clean up my past. Amends are spiritual exercises. I shared this with a friend, another reason I like to do the 3x5 cards. When I'm done, I put them in groups. Here's what the groups look like. Remember I said I put a plus or minus? I take all the minuses, the ones I don't want to do and I put them here all the pluses here if I got some amends out of state I put financial over here now I have four distinct groups he said to Don how do I get the willingness to make the ones the one I don' t want to make he said by starting to make amends to the ones you're willing to make and I did that and I began to see that this was kind of a neat deal the other neat piece is as I make the amend I can throw the card away There are two times when I'm going through the steps that inanimate objects talk to me. One of them happens in inventory. I'm writing inventory, and I set it in my office, and I'm walking down, and then I go to my bedroom at night, and I hear this thing out of the office. Mark, I'm your inventory, and I've sitting in here, and I'm waiting for you. You ever had that happen with your inventory? It talks to you? Here's the other time. Here's why the admin cards are so neat. Those cards, three by five cards, you can carry with you. So you have them in your briefcase. You go to open your brief case, go sit down back at your desk and you hear this voice. Mark, I'm that guy you screwed out of $500. I'm here. The amend cards, if they're there, I'm carrying them with me all the time. You know why? We're going to read instructions. The day I begin to make amends, I begin on an 8 1⁄2 11 by piece of paper my experience in working with people they may or may not look at that list once a month or once a week but you get all these three by five cards and you begin each day when i started men's my sponsor only had one question for me when i saw him it wasn't even a low it was how many amends do you have left i know this works there's a lady sitting in this room that left here 60 days ago and started with like 65 amends she's only got 22 left i told you there's a man sitting in this room went down to trinidad i love this when people say well i can't go make all the amends his story's like 100 hopped a plane spent his own money went downto trinidad and spent a month making every amend he was consciously aware of i loved his story you guys will get a kick out of this you know how they do amends on trinida because it's an island when it comes time for amends the sponsor comes and picks up the protégé and takes him on every single amend. Wow, I'd love to have my sponsor with me. But think about that. That would be kind of a neat deal. It is possible to finish all your amends. How much freedom do you want? Are you really willing to go to any length? There are levels of freedom in this program and it does get down to how much freedom do YOU want? You will have more of a future as you clean up the past because the things that have you blocked from god and other people get removed from you are men's easy no are they fun no are there rewarding absolutely to get free from your past there's nothing like it in the world the day when you finish the last of one the absolute last one and you know in your conscious memory there's no harm left that you haven't attempted to clean up give me an idea the book talks about i'll send out an honest letter here's what i do on amends from the past long time ago First of all, I try and find an address. If I can't find an address, I think is there someone I know that knows them? If not, I can go to the library in the town I think they're living in and try and find them. And if I have a real old address, even if I know it's not any good, I write the letter and send the letter out into the universe. Then I've met the criteria of the book, I've done my utmost to make that amend. Some interesting things happen off that stuff. I think I'd like to stop, we're going to take a little break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna take a look at the promises and then i'm gonna show you some stuff with 10 and 11 okay oh i'm mark houston i'm an alcoholic we are heading into the home stretch here uh probably about another hour and a half and uh we will uh we'll be finished here page 83 bottom of the page we read i stressed a lot the promises in the big book and i did that because we read the first promise on the title page we read some incredible promises in the second step we read about a lot of promises after we made our third step decision some of the most powerful promises in the whole book come after i've shared my inventories with somebody fifth step promises there were promises after the seventh step and now we're going to take a look at the promises we get about what happens when i attempt to go out and clean up the wreckage from my past so page 83 bottom of the page says if i am painstaking about this phase of my development highlight the word painstacking i will be amazed before i'm halfway through now let me explain what halfway through means if i have a hundred amends it means that i will be amazed before i get to 50. i have had different experiences i have sometimes been amazed at what happens when i finish my cards i have been amazed when i finished all of them and i've been amazed quando i'm halfway through so i've had all different experiences but here's some of the promises i get as a result of being page taking about this phase of my development making amends i'm going to know a new freedom and a new happiness i will not regret the past nor will i wish to shut the door on it i will comprehend the word serenity and i will know peace no matter how far down the scale i've gone, I will see how my experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. I will lose interest in selfish things and I will gain interest in my fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. My whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave me. i will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me i will suddenly realize that god is doing for me what i could not do for myself sometimes when i when i get to page 84 having had experience with all the promises in this book uh i'm overwhelmed by how much god loves me we're not talking just little promises of you're going to have a nice day here we're talking about being rocketed into the fourth dimension called the world of the spirit and literally every single area of your life being dramatically changed and most of all that interior change that takes place goes on to say are these extravagant promises we think not they are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly sometimes slowly that sentence might speak to me about how long i take to make amends next sentence i think is very important these promises will always materialize if i work for them we've been shown how to work for him haven't we go make the amends i want to share some stuff in 10 11 i've been able to spiritually understand these steps more in the last two years than ever before, and in particular in the last year. And that's what I want to share with you. I hear in meetings that 10 and 11 are maintenance steps. They are not maintenance steps for me at all. They are growth steps, tremendous growth steps. So let's go through and take a look at what happens. Now, it says this thought brings us to step 10 what do you think the book means when it says this thought the thought is those promises will materialize if i continue to make my amends that's the thought so when we look at the instructions in the big book the day that i got through with all my cards and i was going to start making the first amendment was the day my sponsor said come on over to the house and we're going to sit down and go over the instructions on the 10th and 11th step and the reason is we're gonna read in the 10 step the instruction is i commence this way of living as i vigorously cleaned up the past i was at me not long ago and a person was out making amends and we talked a little bit afterwards and i was explaining to him how i used 10 and 11 to go make amends and they said my sponsor told me not to do anything with 10 till i was done with amends I was flabbergasted. I can't conceive of making amends without using 10 and 11 to get the power to go make the amends, let alone live in the world. So let's look at what this step says. This thought, the idea of finishing amends brings me to step 10, which suggests that I continue to take personal inventory, fourth step, and continue to set right any new mistakes as they go along. i vigorously commence this way of living as i cleaned up the past that's the instruction to start the 10th step the day you start your amends look at the next sentence and ask yourself how often we hear this is a topic for meetings in aa i have entered the world of the spirit remember i told you in the second step we commence spiritual growth in the fifth step we may have had certain spiritual beliefs now we have the spiritual experience well when i get to the 10th step having done this work i've now entered the world of the spirit why don't we talk about you want to really screw up an a meeting the next one you go to and the chairman says you have a copy yes i have a topic i'm not there yet but i'm curious in the 10 step it says we've entered the role of the spiritual spirit i'd like to hear from some people in this room what their experience is with having entered the world of the spirit and watched the meeting change to fear or something. Think about it. Look at the next sentence. It says we've entered the role of the Spirit. My next function is to grow, circle the word grow, is to growth in understanding of effectiveness. Is it possible that I'm supposed to grow in understanding and effectiveness of what it's like to have entered the world of the Spirit. Think about that. Is it possible? The book is suggesting that my next function is to grow an understanding of effectiveness of what its like to enter the world of the spirit. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for my lifetime. It says continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. Well, that's my fourth step, isn't it? When these crop up, that implies they're going to crop up. I ask God at once to remove them. That's what I do in step six and seven. I discuss them with someone immediately, step five, and make amends quickly if I've harmed anyone, step nine. Then I resolutely turn my thoughts to someone I can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. now in the next few paragraphs we're going to read about what i call the 10 step promises you do not hear the 10-step promises talked about much in the halls of alcoholics anonymous either it was told to me by several people who've been doing this work a lot longer than me the reason we don't hear that is because most people they have never finished all their amends so they don't have any experience with the 10th step promises is that true i don't know look at your own experience here's one of them do i have the power to operate with love and talents of others is my code and this next sentence i absolutely love and i have ceased fighting anything or anyone dash even alcohol and alcohol is last i have ceased fighting anything or anyone the irs the woman or man that wants to leave the financial difficulties the physical ailments i have seized fighting anything or anyone because in the world of the spirit there is no room to fight anything or any one there's just love and service now second step talks about came to believe that if our greater ourselves could restore me to sanity look at the next sentence for by this time sanity will have been returned i will seldom be interested in liquor if tempted i recall from liquor is from a hot flame i react sanely and normally and i find this happens automatically automatically means i don't have to think about it i will see my new