Outstanding Amends as Spiritual Dead Weight — You Cannot Be Present While Carrying the Past – Peter M.

About This Speaker Tape

Peter M. shares from a workshop at the Fellowship of the Spirit in Dublin, Ireland, covering Steps 6 through 9. He opens with reflections on mindfulness and presence, describing how the ego demands to put Higher Power on a spreadsheet but the spiritual life requires letting go of attachment to outcomes. He recounts a powerful experience during his second or third time through Steps 6 and 7, where he entered meditation and began vibrating as if he were brand new in AA, raw off the street. His sponsor told him he was experiencing the death of self and not to talk it away. That Sunday, something arose in his home and his instinct was to seize control, but he stayed still and let Higher Power work — and everything resolved perfectly.

The bulk of the talk centers on Steps 8 and 9 and the roughly 200 direct amends he made his first time through. Peter worked as a longshoreman on the docks where his father was shop steward, and he had left a trail of borrowed money, theft, verbal abuse, and disappeared paychecks that humiliated his father in front of the other men. He describes meeting truck drivers one by one at a hole-in-the-wall diner at five in the morning, paying back money with interest, and hearing again and again that his father was proud of him. One enormous truck driver he had publicly cursed simply gave him a bear hug and said his pop would be proud.

Peter shares deeply emotional amends to his Italian grandparents, describing how he had once shown up at his grandmother's house after a three-day bender to rob the place. When he made the amends, his grandfather, who was deaf and spoke no English, waved as if to say it was okay, and the whole family wept together in healing. His amends to his father were the hardest — he barely got a few words out before his dad expressed gratitude at having a son back. He also recounts the amends to a landlord he hated, a man whose house he had nearly burned down, and describes a white-light spiritual experience leaving that house that he says words cannot capture.

He closes with the story of searching for a man nicknamed Jimmy Hilo, praying to find him, and spotting him outside an off-track betting parlor in Brooklyn. Jimmy was still angry and told Peter he was nothing like his respectable father. Peter listened, paid the money with interest, and it was closed. His message is clear: outstanding amends block presence and spiritual growth, and the courage to make them produces experiences that transform not just the alcoholic but everyone around them.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with mindfulness and presence — warns against putting Higher Power on a spreadsheet
• 5:00 Steps 6 and 7 instructions: listing defects alongside their opposites and turning both to Higher Power
• 8:00 The death of self experience — vibrating like a newcomer during meditation after the 7th Step prayer
• 12:00 Staying still on a Sunday morning instead of seizing control, and everything working out
• 16:00 Step 8 willingness and the longshoreman backstory — borrowing money, stealing, humiliating his father on the docks
• 22:00 The arrogance of just not drinking — his alcoholism owned his father, uncles, brothers, and grandparents too
• 28:00 Making 200 direct amends: paying truck drivers at the diner with interest, the bear hug from the giant driver
• 35:00 Amends to grandparents and father — his grandmother weeping, his dad grateful to have a son back
• 42:00 The landlord he hated — white-light spiritual experience after the hardest amends of his life
• 50:00 Jimmy Hilo at the OTB, the Brooklyn library, and closing message: outstanding amends block spiritual presence