Low Self-Esteem and the Entanglement of the Past – Howard P.

My name is Howard. I'm an alcoholic. A number of things that I'm proud of this group about, but one of them is when we go through the naming, we turn all the corners and make all the U-turns and it's just slick. That's what gives me confidence about being able to move from the fourth Wednesday to the third Wednesday to the second Wednesday. We just can slip that around and this group handles it, so we're grateful. I think last month, I've been talking so much in many places, I forget what I said where, but The truth is, when I first came into AA and looked at the steps, to start with, they weren't going to help me much. And they weren'T going to helped me because there was so much stuff about God in there. And also, there was stuff about like the fourth step and the fifth step. And those were not things I was going to do. But once I got to looking at the steps in detail, I could see very plainly that two of them were completely unnecessary. That the sixth and the eighth steps had just been made up steps in order to make it a 12-step program, probably because, Bill, there were 12 disciples. disciples. And anyway, I worked that all out pretty fast and not that I wasn't going to do them anyway, but I was going to, if I could see the unnecessariness of the sixth step and the Of course, in my life's experience, being willing to do the steps has obviously been a difficult thing. And without willingness, I couldn't do them at all. and I suspect the first half of the first step was the one that willingness came the easiest. But I really, willingness has been hard and I can in retrospect see willingness is an essential part. Now in the back of the book on the spiritual experience where Spencer says, where they quote Spencer as saying that, well, I don't have to make that up. I can read it. So on page 569, there is a principle which is a bar against all information which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. And I'm telling you, that rings my gong, you know. That certainly rings my gång. the sixth step as I talked about last week last month I did the sixth step a number of times but I was nearly ten years sober when I really did the six step for the first time with any success. And I can see that was true because I had not done the second step until I was nine years sober. And I came, and I just started working and it took effort on my part. It took more than willingness. It took effort. I had to do things to convince myself, and things happened to me to convince me. And once I became convinced, the difficult things in my life, you know, on a daily basis, I faced them, and there was difficulty. But in retrospect, my life had become magic. I had a very important and difficult work assignment, which I had to work hard on. But in the last days of it, everything fell into place like it was magic, you know. And there was a jillion reasons why they shouldn't have, but they did. They fell into places. And then problems came up after that where people that worked for me, you know, there was a solid criticism of this design. And one of the guys, and we all knew about the problem, but it had never been made an issue before. Now it was an issue. At 9 o'clock, I found out I'm going to have to redo this difficult assignment in order to address this problem. And at 10 o'clock, one of the guys that worked for me came into my office with the perfect solution. And it was a cutting-edge new idea called artificial intelligence, which isn't so new now. But in 1991, it was an idea. idea and and this guy came in with this is the solution and it was a perfect solution for this problem and when I when I thought my god this thing is magic you know and each of these things that happened strengthened strengthened my conviction on the second step so that when I did the first, when I did the sixth step and in the sixth step we review the first five steps and make sure we haven't left anything out. And when I did that in my mind I as I said last week there was a fork in the road and I saw that when I was doing in my minds eye I just saw a fork on the road and I knew this one road was the road I had been on. It was the one that I had described in all the fourth steps and the fifth steps, and I new it was one where my sense of well-being was based on me making my life work. Independent of God, I had to make my life worked. and this other road was the one that we turned to in the third step and I saw that in my mind's eye as I may have to do the same work. You know, I had to work on this problem but I didn't make it happen. It dawned on me I was talking to somebody the other day and I said if we have to make our lives work it's like let's say we're going to make a garden grow now if we're going to make that happen then the first thing we have to do is make ground out of nothing now you can't use the ground that somebody else made if you're going to make it work you got to make your own ground and And then you got to make your own seed. Well hell, both those things are hard. Both of them are hard, but if all I'm going to do is participate, if all I'm gonna participate, water it down once in a while, add some fertilizer, do the things I can do, well that's kind of taken that other road. where now I've still got to make, I still have to participate or I won't get an experience of the benefit. I have to participates but I can't make stuff work and I saw that and I was willing to have my, whatever stands in the way of my taking that road, I'm willing to give those things up. I'm unwilling to give those things in favor of taking that route. And I had a great feeling of willingness. And that one time when I said the seventh step prayer, it was one of the best prayers, the best praying I have done. because when I used the seven-step prayer language, my creator, it was clear to me that I'm talking about the entity that made the dirt, made the seed, you know, created it all. And me as part of it. You know, we hold well we use you know we let's just say as a culture we hold sir isaac newton in high esteem we hold dr einstein in high Esteem because they knew things about the universe that it seems like it's impossible to know but they knew them and then they come up with mathematics that you can use to predict what they discovered as truth and it comes out, it works. That's terrific. But when I think of the entity that thought of this stuff to start with and created it you know a simple little thing like the law of gravity ever who thought of that and balanced it perfectly with inertia so that everything falls in a vacuum towards the earth follow falls at the same rate of acceleration even though it's the empire state building or a feather in a vacuum they'll all fall who thought of that if it wasn't that way the earth wouldn't orbit the sun I mean the whole world would be unstable if we didn't have that perfect balance now we can hold we can hold Newton in high esteem for discovering the laws of motion and gravity but how about ever who thought of this whole thing to start with and then created it and makes it happen from moment to moment. That is my creator. And I was at that moment willing that he should have all of me, good and bad, the whole kit and caboodle, because at that point, at that time, it was clear to me that he has me. Anyway, all I'm doing is going along with the gag. All this prayer is just a surrender to what is so that instead of the self standing between me and it, I'm in it, I'm part of it, and there's a willingness, and I am now willing that that be that way. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may do thy will. You know, whatever stands between me and my being of service to God and my fellow. May I do thy well always. And that was a powerful prayer for me at that time when I did it. And now, having had that experience, I would think the eighth step was going to be duck soup. The eighth step Was not duck soup The same willingness that I had for the seventh step, I've never had for be. Eight step. Now, you know, a willingness and let's say an extreme example of willingness was me taking my second drink. I was willing to take that second drink, oh boy was I willing Now, I've never even had a willingness where I have felt, I've Never Had the Experience Where I Felt Willing to Make Amends. I made lots of amends. The other night I made an amends that I was willing to make, but that was a 10-step thing. Which is where, of course, when we get to the tenth step. The ability to do the tenth step comes from the ability to do the steps leading up to the 10th step. On page 76 after the seventh step prayer on the big book it says Now we need more action without which we find that faith without works is dead. Let's look at steps eight and nine. Kind of interesting to me after a while that Bill has that language like that because when he comes to step three, he says, we're at step three. at step four he says this is step four and at five he says this is that five if we can answer to our satisfaction we then look at step six and if we don't have the willingness we ask for the willingness and when we feel willing when we're ready we say something like this my creator. 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 or character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellow. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. Then we've completed step seven. So each one of these steps takes place and then telescopes into the next one. There's no separation. It just interlocks with it. But on the 8th and 9th, he said, now we'll talk about the 8h and 9h, like these are something that we do more in tandem than in series, more in parallel than in serious. And I think that's probably the only way that I can do it is I can get psyched up to go to Pat and say, do you remember when we were in high school and I told you this? And damn, she remembers. I don't really feel willing to even go in and say that to her, but somehow, you know, it's just all at once I hear this voice saying those words and then I realized that's me I'm saying this I'm seeing it and now the toothpaste is out of the tube you cannot get the toothpaste back in the tube you've got it out there and I said well I lied that was a lie those stories I told you were lies and she says why did you do that and I said because I'm a liar I had an immediate answer so in retrospect I can see I must have been willing because I did it but I never felt the willingness but the only way I could do these steps is one amend at a time become willing to make that one amend and then make it because if I start putting them back if I started putting them together I was with somebody who's working on the fourth step doing a good job on the fourth step but at certain place he stopped and said my god how do you make amends I said you don't not in the fourth steps you just write on the fourth step you just put this stuff down on the fourth step. You don't even worry about the fifth step. All we do is the very best fourth step that we can do and then once we've done the very best fourthstep we do the very best fifth step that we an do but we don't even worry abut the fifthstep or it'll stop me. And if I thought I have to make all those amends I couldn't do it. There's no way that I could do it I'd say to hell with that let's go have a drink, you know. That's what I, you now. But if I can just make one amend and every one of my amends is paid off. I haven't had any where anybody tore me up for it, you know, it's worked. And you'd think after a number of these successes that you had become willing and anxious to get all of these others successfully out of the way but that hasn't been my experience I've had to drag myself through the keyhole every time and willingness is not a step that was made up in order I can see that now willingness is non-existent it's made up willingness we have to have before we can make the amend it's hard to do a fourth step it's hard to look back at the past you think my god damn this is hard you know and then you start thinking god I gotta tell somebody this that and that's hard enough but you know becoming and it's hard to become willing to give it up it was hard for me to actually see how there's a life a goodness in life that could be lived if I just trust God I used to argue you know what if my boss says did you get that presentation ready are you ready to go through this and I'd say no I've turned that over to God you know I would make that stuff up and say hell you can't turn it over to god and I really couldn't I had to do it but I never made it happen I couldn't you know it was all the time this higher power that was making it work but I had to be willing now we have a list of all persons we have harmed and to whom we are willing to make them in this is from the big book and later as i said before it's dawned on me slowly that at the time bill wrote the big book he had discovered some things that maybe we needed to do better on the steps than how he had described them in the big book. Because in the Big Book, he said, we have a list of all persons we had harmed and to whom we are willing to make amends. He said that, but it turns out I don't think he believed it anymore when he wrote to 12 and 12. He didn't think we were willing and he didn't think that that list was good enough. Now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage we've done in the past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which had accumulated out of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. If we are not willing, We have to be willing to do it or we won't do it. So we keep asking and we have sponsors that ask and pretty soon we'll do it one day. Remember, it was agreed at the beginning and this is in italics. These words are in it and Dr. Paul says why it's almost like they're trying to emphasize something when they put it in italic. We would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. We agreed to that at the first. How many of us remember agreeing to that? I don't remember agreeing to that. He says, well, you agreed to THAT at the FIRST. Don't remember that. Probably there are still some misgivings. Maybe we're not actually as willing as we need to be. As we look over the list of business acquaintances and friends we have hurt, we may feel diffident about going to some of them on a spiritual basis. At the moment, we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. I'm trying to putting my life in order in truth and in fact my life is in the care of a power greater than myself which i have come to believe is an all-powerful guiding creative intelligence underlying the totality of things all things me and and the circumstances and events of the life that i encounter during the day and this is all principally interactive depending upon on how you know that God is law says Chuck Chamberlain and God's law of life is whatever you sow that you will reap and love is the fulfillment of the law and if I'm loving my life and practicing spiritual principles in my life, then there's order and harmony that I don't experience when it's self-will run riot. At the moment, I'm trying to put my life in order. I have never lived a life of God reliance now I'm trying to put my life in that order but through the inventory process I discovered there are certain character defects that stand between me and God and that I'm doing this first step in order to find what these are and finding what they are put some of them in the past the fact that my dad beat me when I was a little kid and I end up doing the inventory and towards the end of the inventory it dawns on me dad's not beating me anymore being beaten isn't my problem dad died in 1951 dad is not my problem this is 1973 I don't know what the hell the problem is and he may have caused the problem but he ain't the problem I'm the problem I'm screwed up I gotta have my life in order and in order for me to run my own life, in order to find the strength to do it, I must have self will, I muss have anger for strength and fear and selfishness and self thinking and I muss be dishonored and because none of that would let me feel good, how about a little sex that feels good you know And if it hurts somebody else, this is the way I have to live my life in self-will. And I'm trying to see that and then somehow telling somebody about it changes it. It puts the past in the past. the stuff that hung on me that I had done when I was a young teenager after I did the fifth step were what I did as a teenager and didn't hang on me anymore. Didn't hang on me now when I'm 40 years old although I had it with me with shame and everything up until I did the fifth step and I helped put some of it in the past by strengthening my conviction that I'm God reliant rather than self-reliant with the sixth and seventh step and now there are some things that I did in the past that are not in the past until I take the equipment back. You know, I stole the equipment. The way you put that in the past is to take it back and say, I stole this, I brought it back. And whatever the consequences are for doing that, but this is all done because I'm trying to put my life in order so that I can have a conscious feeling of goodness in my life. And I can't have a consciousness feeling of goodness unless I put these things in my past and I cannot put them in my path unless I have some degree of willingness and willing like I said willingness came hard but I did take the equipment back I didn't sell anybody now our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people around us that in the long run is probably our purpose in life is to be of service to our fellow man and to God you know just be of service to God and his creation, not my purpose probably isn't that I feel good because I get money or that I feels good because i get my way. That's probably not the purpose but that's the way self-will lives my life. Our man is sure to be impressed with his sincere desire to set right the wrong. He is going to be more interested in demonstration of goodwill than in our talk of spiritual discovery. It may be he has done us more harm than we have done him, and though we may have acquired a better attitude toward him, we are still not too keen about admitting our faults. Nevertheless, when a person we, with a person we dislike, we take the bit in our teeth. We go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit confessing our former ill will. Our former ill well. Now I think the application here is that in the fourth step, I list everybody I resent and then I forgive them. I give them tolerance, patience. kindness, and pity or compassion. The book says we give those things or we ask God to help us give those things, and those things are forgiving. There's no quid pro quo. They don't deserve it. We don't care if they deserve it because we're giving it to them because those things are forgiving, and we do that, and then we can go to the person because it's a former ill will. Under no condition do we criticize such a person or argue. We're there to sweep off our side of the street realizing that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we do so. Never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank and open we will be gratified with the result. Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any length to find a spiritual experience, which we agreed at the very start to do. But I don't remember that. Had to back out, I think. 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 before taking drastic action which might implicate other people we secure their consent if we have obtained permission we have consulted others ask God to help and the drastic step is indicated, we must not shrink. It turned out that I told Pat, I went home from work, my sponsor called me, told me where the equipment was. He tracked down the equipment that I'd stolen, told me what it would cost me to get it. I didn't have the money. But I went Home and told Pat that I had stolen this stuff and now I've got to have money to buy it back and take it back to the company. And she went to the bank with me and co-signed, we had to both sign for the loan and I got the money and I went to do... Pat was actually in the car, I'd forgotten about that but she was in the cars and I took the equipment back and she sat outside and then I drove her home and she'd been going to Al-Anon and I said well I'm going to take it to Tom and we'll see how it works out and I said I'm sorry that I did this and I've got you in and she said is there anything else laughter you know laughter she was wondering is there another shoe to drop I said no I don't think so I can't think. I think this is the tall pole in the tent. But that's a night step. This becomes a more important line. The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Just knowing that in theory, willingness would help you know that's a pretty good theory but if we don't live it if we dont find the willingness to do it it's just a theory and there's no payoff the payoff is in doing it must be willing now in the 12 and 12 believe it or not on page 77 Step 8, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. The first four words are Steps 8 and 9 are concerned with personal relations. First, we take a look backward to try to discover where we have been at fault. Next, we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done. And third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know. Every AA has found that he can make little headway in his new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake. To a degree, he has already done this when taking moral inventory. But now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt and in what ways. So the implication is that the fourth step Bill thought maybe wasn't... had not adequately done what he would think that we need to add in the eighth step. The first, the obstacles to doing this are very real. The first and one of the most difficult has to do with forgiveness. The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person, our emotions go on the defensive. To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us. This is especially true if he has, in fact, behaved badly at all. Triumphantly, we seize upon his misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting my own. when listing people we have harmed most of us hit another solid obstacle we got a pretty severe shock when we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt it had embarrassing enough when in confidence we admitted these things to god to ourselves and to another human being but the prospect of actually visiting or even writing to people concerned now overwhelmed us especially when we remember in what poor favor we stood with them most with most of them well that was certainly true in all the instances but it's sure as hell true and going to my wife and because I had always emphasized to her how honest I was, how integrity was very important and if she was less than truth, you know, somebody says this dress makes me look fat. No! You know no, you don't look fat at all. I'd say that's not, you lie all the time and then I have to go say I lied here and I lied there and when I think about having to do that you know I could never be willing if I thought about having to deal with that somehow you just go and do it why we cried shouldn't bygones be bygone I have said that I have said that one I said that equipment if you divide Howard Hughes worth into that equipment there ain't a calculator in existence that won't just come up with zeros so technically I didn't steal anything the fact that it's owned by the federal government Hughes will probably Hughes may have to pay something but we can just forget that let bygones be bygomes the important thing is I don't steal now it don't bother me that I stole that I don' t feel bad about stealing that the important things is that I don''t steal again but when I took it back the weight of the world was off my back I was kidding myself that it didn' t bother me it bothered me and it goes back to the old cliche that denial is not only a river in Egypt. Why we cried, shouldn't bygones be bygons? Why do we have to think of these people at all? These were some of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder our making a list of all people we had harmed. I had no trouble making the lists. I had trouble being willing to make them in. Some of us tripped over a very different snag. We clung to the claim that when drinking, we never hurt anybody but ourselves. We made a living. We paid the bills. We were good fathers. We, you know, up until the very last, none of that was true, and I knew it wasn't true, but I had argued that for years. This attitude, of course, is the end result of purposeful forgetting. It is an attitude which can only be changed by a deep and honest search of our motives in action. While the purpose of making restitution to others is paramount, it is equally necessary that we extricate from our examination of our personal relations, every bit of information about ourselves and our fundamental difficulties that we can. I needed to see this. I needed to see the entanglement and the mess that I had created. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things which are superficially wrong with us to see those flaws which were basic. Flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we have found, will pay and pay handsomely. And I think maybe that we can, you know, like I'm sure that I went through the steps the first time And then several years later, I went through them again. And going through them Again, I got more out of it than I had. You know, it always works. And I think Bill's implication here is you'll get a lot out of the fourth step and you'll see a lot. But after you've done the fifth step and the sixth step andthe seventh step and you've realized those benefits, then maybe if you go back now and look again, you'll see more and get more out of it. So he added that in the 12 and 12. Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human relations and having decided exactly what personality traits in us injured and disturbed others, we can now commence to ransack memory for the people to whom we have given offense. To put a finger on the nearby and most deeply damaged ones shouldn't be so hard. Then, as year by year we walk back through our lives as far as memory will reach. As year by year we walk back through your life as far as memory will reach We shall be bound to construct a long list of people who have, to some extent or other, been affected. We should, of course, ponder and weigh each instant carefully. We shall want to hold ourselves to the course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done to us, real or fancy. we should avoid extreme judgment both of ourselves and others involved we must not exaggerate our defects or theirs a quiet objective view will be our steadfast aim that's it for tonight thank you very much for letting me do this Thank you.