Resentments and the Fourth Step – Big Book Workshop – Part 6 of 8 – Joe C.

Thank you. That's why we've got to get rid of them. The book says if we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics, these things are poison. We turn back to the list. See, this is why you've got to have a written inventory. If you were trying to inventory this in your head, you would already have lost it. We turn black to the rest for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. Always before, I looked at it to see what those suckers had done to me. Today, I look at it from the angle that if I carry that resentment, it's going to cause me to get drunk. And I'm looking at it now from an entirely different angle. We begin to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrongdoing of others fancied or real had power to actually kill. And I read that and I thought, Oh my God, how stupid can you be? All my life, I've been proud of the fact that I stand on my own two feet. Nobody tells me what to do. I don't need your advice, thank you. And I suddenly realize that other people have controlled and ruled and dominated my thinking as far back as I can remember through my resentments toward them. When I'm resenting them, they're controlling and dominating the way I think. They're controlling undominating the decisions that I make. They're controling and dominating my actual life. And if it's going to cause me to get drunk, I've given other people the power to actually kill me through my resentments toward them. And I said, man, you really are dumb because some of these people have been dead and buried in the graveyard for years. They've been reaching out from the grave and had me with a yang-yang as far back as I can remember. And when I saw that, I said to hell with them. I'm not going to let those people, alive or dead, live in my head rent-free any longer. I've made a decision to let God direct my thinking. If they direct it, God can't, and it's just that simple. And you know, a marvelous thing happened to me. We alcoholics fancy ourselves as reasonably intelligent people. Now, I don't think we're smarter than anybody else, but I think we are reasonably intelligent. And we don't like to look stupid and dumb. And we see how dumb and stupid these resentments really are. how much we've let other people control or dominate our thinking for us, that looks dumb as hell. And about 95% of my resentments begin to automatically disappear when I saw the stupidity behind them. When I saw what he was doing and letting other people control me, about 95 percent of them begin to disappear. But if you're like I am, I had two, three, four, five that were so deeply embedded in my mind that just seeing the stupidity behind them didn't get rid of them. So in order to get rid of those, I'm going to have to have a little extra help. It says how could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. So those that are deeply embedded, they don't automatically disappear when we see what they're doing to us. We now come to the first prayer in the Big Book in step four. We hear always about the step three prayers, the step seven prayers. We never hear about the prayers that are spread throughout the entire book. The first prayer here is in step four. Now let's see what we can do about those kind of resentments. We saw these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. Can't heal a sick mind with a sick heart. We can't wish them way. Can't think them away. Well, this was our course. We realized that the people who had wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us, they like themselves were sick too. Here's the first prayer. We ask God to help us to show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done. Excuse me. When I got divorced from that first lady, I start thinking real good now I said to myself, self, you're going to drink. And I know you are. And what you need now is a woman that drinks. I'm thinking good because these women who don't drink are mean and ugly. I've just proven that. So I looked around the bars and I started to find me a woman who drinks. Finally ran up on my present wife, Phyllis. And we were introduced one night and she looked at me and said, well, Joe, you look like my third husband. And I said, well, my God, how many of you had? And she said two. I kind of like that, you know. So I've been watching her and she drank and she'd come into the bar about 5 or 30 in the evening and drink until midnight. And then Oklahoma we had to go to private clubs to continue to drink. And we did that night after night after tonight after night, after month after month. And I like this. She's my kind of woman, see. So we get married. and boy that was a big one see I had come out of that bad marriage with a list of things this long I wasn't going to let this next one do and she'd come out of her bad marriage with a set of things this long and she wouldn't go let me do and we're enforcing our lists on each other and trying to stay drunk half the time nothing but trouble we got to where we couldn't even drink together so we kind of made a deal we split Tulsa right down the middle 41st and South was hers. 41st and North was mine. And I don't bother her, and she don't bother me, and we meet at the house from time to time. So I got me a mobile home out there on the lake on my side of town, back out west about 25 miles. And Phyllis didn't know anything about this. But one night about 3 o'clock in the morning, there was a knock on the door. Well, I kind of peeked out. Well what she did was she just broke right in there. He embarrassed me in front of my girlfriend. Next morning I got up and all my stuff was thrown out on the lawn like it's supposed to be. Took my car, went to the bank, took out what little money we had, filed for divorce with a lawyer again, put a restraining order on me again after all I'd done for her and her treating me like that. And I said, I'm going to drink as often as I want to drink and I won't give a dang who knows it. And so I set about doing just exactly that. And after a while, I got sober, a couple of years later, I guess. And I was sitting in a bar one night, the Misty Dawn, and a beautiful place, and I had a real sick feeling in my stomach. It wasn't a throwing up sick, it was just sick, and I didn't know what that was. And when I got in my car and laid down and slept a while I went to home, and next morning I got sober the next day. About a month later, I was in Apache, Oklahoma, to my first AA conference, second AA conference. And there I met a lady from California. Her name was Alabama Carruthers. Some of you all knew Alabama, I'm sure. Lovely lady. Everybody knew that Alabama loved her, at least I thought she did, and I loved her. She couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. Always in a hurry. But she made a talk that night, and two things she said It just went off in my mind like a thunderbolt. And one of them, she said, I have peace of mind tonight. And I said to myself, my God, I've never had peace of mind. I wish I had peace of mind. And she said she had a soul sickness. And that's the first time I had some words to put together that feeling that I sat on that bar stool with, a soul sickness. And that was what I had. And afterwards, I wanted to talk to Alabama. We got in the lobby of this old hotel. One by one, everybody went to bed. It was about 3 o'clock in the morning. They left Alabama, and George, my little black friend George, who was my sponsor then, he's laying over in his sleep in her lap, and I'm being able to talk to Alabama. And I said, Alabama, you said you had peace of mind tonight. How did you get peace of heart? She said, well, tell me what's going on in your mind. And I began to tell her what is going on in my mind and all the things that had happened to me up to that point. And she said, Joe, you're just full of resentments. I said, what's a resentment? She said a resentment is old angers and old hurts that are re-felt over and over and over. And all that anger you intend to use on those other people, you're using it on yourself and you're making yourself sick and blaming it on them. And she had explained to me that several different times. Finally got the message. I said well is there any solution for that? And she said yes there is. And those of you who knew Alabama, you know she had a purse that was about that big. and she went down in there and she finally picked up one of these books and pulled it out and she flipped over here to this page she said if you'll read and do what this says she said it helped her and maybe it would help me so I did that I turned over to this page 551 freedom from bondage and this is what Alabama had me to read that night third paragraph she said I've had many spiritual experiences since I've been in the program meaning I didn't recognize right away for i'm slow to learn they take many guises but one was so outstanding i like to pass it on whenever i can and i hope that help someone else's has helped me as i said earlier self-pity and resentment were my constant companions and my inventory began to look like a 33 year diary where i seemed to have a resentment against everybody i'd ever known all but one responded to the treatment suggested in the 12 steps immediately she made her inventory saw how stupid they were all but One of them disappeared automatically but this one posed a problem It was against my mother, and it was 25 years old. I had fed it, fanned it, and nurtured it as one might a delicate child. And it has become a part of me, as much a part of me as my breathing. Look what it did for her. It provided me with my excuses for my lack of education, my marital failures, my personal failures, inadequacy, and of course my alcoholism. And though I really thought I'd been willing to partner with it now, I knew I was reluctant to let it go. One morning, however, I realized I had to get rid of it before my reprieve was running out. And if I didn't get rid of it, I was going to get drunk and I didn�t want to get drunk anymore. In my prayers that morning I asked God to point out to me some way to be free of this resentment. During the day a friend of mine brought me some magazines to take to a hospital group I was interested in and I looked through them and a banner across the front of one of them featured an article by a prominent clergyman which I caught the word resentment. He said in effect and here it is �If you have a resentment you want to be freed of if you will pray for the person the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will not be free You will be free. Ask for their health and their prosperity and their happiness and you will be free even when you don't really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you find that you've come to mean it and want it for them and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness, resentment and hatred you now feel compassion understanding and love. Well, I went home after that conference and I got in my little bed over there and sure enough, my whole mind started racing uncontrollably and I began to think of those people, replaying that in my head again. And I said, I think I'll pray for those people. And I prayed for them several times that night and went to sleep. The next morning I got up and I said I think I'll prayer for those people. And I pray for them. My list began to get longer and as the days went by I began to pray for them. It seemed like I was in constant prayer all the time. I'd be driving down the street praying out loud in my car. I'm sure people thought I was crazy. I was, but you know, I was praying for those people. Now, I don't know exactly what happened, but I know that some two, three weeks later, I don' t know, it was in the springtime, though I know of that after a cold winter, and I got stuck in the stoplight there in 31st and Lewis in Tulsa. It's a beautiful area of Tulsa and just the length of a stoplight. I looked over there at that beautiful, beautiful house that was sitting on the corner. All the tulips were in full bloom, red and yellow. The grass was green. The birds were singing. Those squirrels were jumping around the trees. The trees were in bloom. And I thought to myself, my God, it's a beautiful morning. Yeah, I mean absolutely a beautiful mornin' this morn''. And then the thought came to me was this. Well, how long has it been since I've seen those colors? Do you know I could not remember ever seeing those colors, ever? When this talks about being cut off in the sunlight of the Spirit, I know what that means. I really do know what that means and I don't want to go back into that ever again. And I've always tried to figure out a way to get even with people. And I finally figured out the way you get even with people is you pray for them. You love them. You get even without loving them. There's not a better way to love people than pray for them. And when you pray for them then you're even. And all that hate and anger goes away. See, I've learned another little lesson from that too. That love is forgiving. And love is forgiven. You see. Thank God for this program. Otherwise, I'd still be back there somewhere. I think the reason this works so well is that when we're praying for the welfare of another human being, asking God to give them in their lives what we wish for them, the same peace of mind, happiness, serenity, prosperity, whatever it is we want, prayer for another human being is one of the greatest expressions of love that one human being can have for another and love and hate can exist on the same plane as we pray for them after a while we wake up some morning and i got his resentments gone and in this place we find a little understanding a little compassion a little tolerance a little patience with other human beings now just think if 95 percent of these resentments up here in my display cases in my head, if 95% of them disappeared because they looked so stupid, if the other five can be removed through prayer, then that means I can empty those display cases out. My mind becomes resentment free. When that happens to me, another natural law applies. There's another law that says nature abhors a vacuum. No such thing as a vacuum or a void. There's always something rushing in to fill it up. If those resentments disappear, God's not going to leave another hole in my head. I've got to know those already. If the resentments disappear, they're going to have to be replaced. And the only thing that will replace them will be the opposite of them. And where my mind used to be filled with resentments, now it's filled with love, patience, tolerance, compassion, and goodwill toward my fellow man. You see, that's God's thinking. And to my amazement, when I found out I didn't have to go to any other fellowships, I didn' t have to read any other books to find love, patient, tolerance compassion, and goodwill. If God dwells within me, that's always been a part of my makeup. I just never could use it before. In my chase for money, power, prestige, sex, what I thought were the good things in life, those feelings had to be repressed to let me operate on the level I wanted to operate on. But now the resentments are gone. Automatically they are replaced. I'm in much less chance of getting drunk now than I was before I started this little process. I've gotten rid of those resentments. that part of my mind now has a little serenity at least a little peace of mind and a little bit of happiness a very simple positive process nothing negative here at all now I've got to do one more thing before we quit it really wouldn't do me any good to get rid of these resentments if I didn't know how to keep them from coming back because the world's full of sick people and they're going to do it to me again tomorrow and if I'm not careful I'll let myself resent And if I resent one, I can't have just one. The next thing you know, I've got two. And then they double up and I've got four and then eight and then 16 and then 32 of a basket case before you know it. So I've gotta do one more thing. Now let's look at your last two columns in your handout sheet. And let's go to page 67 down in the middle of the page referring to our list again. You see, that's why you've gotta have a written inventory. This is the second time we've been I asked to go back and look at it again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's. When we saw our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. who admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight. So I went to the fourth column, and you'll notice that fourth column in your inventory sheet is headed up. Putting out of mind the wrongs others had done, I resolutely looked for my own mistakes. What did I do, if anything, to set in motion trains of circumstances which in turn caused people or institutions to hurt me and eventually led to my resentment of them for doing so? So I went to the first name on the sheet, a lady named Barbara. And I said, okay, Charlie, now you do what your book's telling you to do. You forget those three divorces that she filed for her. What did you do, if anything, to set that thing in motion and perhaps cause her to file for the three divorences? Well, it didn't take five seconds. I said if I hadn't been out there screwing around, I'd go ahead and got caught. Joe calls it committing adultery. I call it screwing it around. If she hadn't have caught me, she probably wouldn't have filed for divorce. I thought about this a little bit more and I said, Charlie, if you hadn't been sneaking around behind her back lying to her all the time, she might not have filed for divorce in the first place. I said Charlie, if you had been using your money to take care of your wife, your children, and your home instead of blowing it on booze and everything that goes with it, she might have not filed for divorce in the second place. I began to see where I had made decisions based on self, which later placed me in a position to be hurt. And all Barbara did was react to the things that I myself had done. Then I looked into the fifth column and I said, Where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, or inconsiderate? Those are the basic character defects that all human beings have. All others stem from those listed right there. Was I selfish in this situation? You bet you I was. I wasn't worried about God or anybody else. Was I dishonest? You bet I was Was I self-seeking and frightened? I found myself saying, Man, you're getting close to 40 years old. If you don't get out there and get some of it now, it'll be too late before long. Fear drives people to do a lot of things they shouldn't be doing. Was I inconsiderate of my life and children? You betcha. And the first time in my life I begin to see why I love that resentment so well. You see, every time I played it over in my head, I distorted the picture just a little bit. I made her filing for three divorces a littlebit worse. I made what I did just a littlet bit less. And let me play it long enough I can distort the picture to the point that I transfer all blame to her and make myself as pure as a driven sun. If you're a good practicing alcoholic, you've got to develop those kind of skills. There's no way that we could live with ourselves if we had to honestly see what's going on when we're out there doing our thing. But you see, we don't have to do that because we can use those resentments, distort the picture, transfer all blame to them, make ourselves as pure as a driven snow and go right on living the kind of life that we want to live. And we men go from woman to woman to women and you ladies go from man to man to band that we go from job to job to job, and we go from city to city to city, and country to country to country, and it's always their damn fault. God, that's like killing me when I saw that. And I thought, well, is this the only one on this thing? Have I hurt these other people too? I looked at the Internal Revenue Service. What did I do to set that in motion? Well, it became obvious I was cheating on my income tax, and they caught me. Yeah. And all they're doing is trying to put me in jail for trying to steal from them. I put it in motion. Now, was I selfish when I did that? Was I dishonest when I did that ? You betcha. Let's look at old Rose there with Joe. Joe, what did you do, if anything, to set that thing in motion? He was doing the same thing I was doing. and Rose caught him. And Rose said to hell with him, if he's going to do that, then I'll do it too. And she went out and did it also. Was he selfish? Was he dishonest? Was he inconsiderate? You betcha. My whole list of names, 152 names, I never found a one that I hadn't done something to them, made a decision based on self which hurt them. They in turn retaliated against me and created pain and suffering for me, I in turn resented them for doing so and played it over and over andover and gradually transferred all blame to others. That's the truth behind my resentments. That's a moral inventory when I saw the truth behind these things. It was all me. I did it in the first place. Now yours you may have some that you didn't do anything to set it in motion. But in my case there was not a name on there that I myself hadn't set that thing in motion and for the first time I begin to see look it out in that fifth column if I stay selfish if I stayed dishonest if I say self-seeking frightened and inconsiderate I'm going to keep right on doing the same old things. I'm okay right on hurting people and they're going to retaliate and I'm gonna resent and eventually it's going to cause me to get drunk. Just think just think if I could become just a little less selfish don't have to get perfect never will that if I could become a little less selfish, if I can become a little more honest, if I could become a little less self-seeking and frightened, if I could become a little more considerate about the human beings, maybe I wouldn't do those things that hurt other people. Then they wouldn't retaliate and then I wouldn't resent and then I wouldn't get drunk over it. For the first time in my life I saw in the fifth column what I had become through living a life run on self will. I but God, I just drank too much. And when I looked in that fifth column and saw how selfish I really was, how dishonest, how frightened, how inconsiderate I really was for the first time, it damn near made me sick when I saw that. But if I could get just a little better in those areas, then just maybe I wouldn't be hurting people. Now what we're really doing here, we're in the process of doing step four. This is the resentment part of it. In the fifth column, I now see the exact nature of the wrong that I'm going to talk to another human being about in step five. The resentment is the wrong. That's what blocks me from God. But what's the exact nature of it? The exact nature of something means what's at the core of it. What's the inherent characteristic of it and what's true about it? Psalm see there, the exact nature of the role, my selfishness or my dishonesty or my inconsideration. That's why we're going to talk to another human being about instead of five. Also, in the fifth column, I see the character defects that I'm going to become willing to turn loose of in step six. Knowing full well if I don't and stay that way, I'm gonna get drunk sooner or later. Also in the fifth column, I now see the characteristic character defects and when I ask God to take away the shortcomings in step seven. And quite naturally, in column one, in my case all of them and your case part of them were people and institutions I've harmed. I'm gon' take them off of column one add them to a sheet to be used later on for steps 8 and 9. Have you ever seen anything any more simple? I've got all the information I need for steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 resentment-wise. Did we make a list of dirty, filthy, nasty items? Was there anything too complicated? Was there nothing to be afraid of? No. And you can do this in a matter of two or three hours at the most if you just sit down take the sheets and do it. It's a very simple process with a very positive happening. Now, I hear some of you saying, and I hear good. I can hear awful good. I hear somebody saying, well, Charlie, that's probably all true for those people that we did something to them to set it in motion. But how about those that hurt us and we didn't have anything to do with it? How about those who hurt us when we were kids growing up? How about that physical, mental, and sexual abuse that we suffered when we were kids growing up? And ladies, make no mistake about this. You're not the only ones that got hurt in that area. I don't know how many fifth steps I've taken with people and had them take it with me, and I've never had a man yet that didn't have some of the same crap when we Were Kids Growing Up. How about those kinds of resentments? Aren't we justified in having those? I guess we are if we want to get drunk. But a justified resentment blocks you off from the sunlight of the Spirit just as fast as an unjustified resentment does. Because if we're resenting them, justified or unjustified, they're controlling the way we think. They're controlling our decisions. They're controling our lives. And we give those people power to actually kill us. It doesn't make any sense to let somebody hurt me 10, 15, 20 years ago and let them hurt me every day for the rest of my life. And as long as I'm resenting them, they've got me. They control what I think and they control what I do. So if you've got one of those resentments and I don't care what it is, if you got one for God's sake, put it on the sheet, put down the name of whoever it was, put down what they did to you, put out the part of self that was affected in the fourth column, put down what you did, if anything. In this case, you just put nothing. But then in the fifth column, let's look at it very carefully because if we got one of those resentments knowing it might get us drunk and we still don't want to get rid of it then we must be using it for some purpose are we so dishonest with ourselves that we refuse to see the truth about it if you got one in your head today it's not true i'm gonna say that again it's not true oh yeah it started with truth but if you played it over and over and over you've distorted that picture and it really doesn't resemble very much of what actually happened see if we're so dishonest we we don't want to look at the truth of it see if we're still afraid of facing life without it that we don' t want to get rid of it you see we can use a resentment to rationalize and justify not doing something we really ought to go do or just as importantly rationalize unjustify doing things that we shouldn't be doing? The lady in the story in the book, she used her resentment against her mother to justify everything. She used her resentment against their mother to testify her marital failure. Mama didn't cause that marital failure. She use that resentment to justify her lack of education. After all, if mother hadn't done that to me, I could get in a bull. She could have gotten an education if she really wanted to do bad enough. She even used that resentment against her mother just to justify alcoholism. And it's all Mama's fault. Bull. I'll tell you why she became an alcoholic. She kept drinking whiskey. Mama didn't pour it down her. But that's the greatest excuse in the world. I could have been this if it hadn't been for them. Or I wouldn't have to do this if they hadn't have done that to me. And if you got one of those, we're probably using it for some purpose and we're really afraid to get rid of it for that reason. Let's look and see if we're so inconsiderate that we fail to recognize the fact that people that do things to us like that when we're kids growing up, they're not necessarily bad people. They're sick people. They didn't necessarily do it to us. They would have done it to anybody in that shape or in that position. If we could even begin to realize that, just maybe, maybe, maybe we could start a forgiving process. Maybe we could get rid of that resentment. Maybe we can straighten up the relationship with another human being before it's too late to do so. And if you really honestly look at it, I think you can get rid of those kinds of resentments also. And if all else fails, by God we can pray for them. And that's the hardest thing to do. The hardest thing in the world to do is to pray for somebody that hurt us in those kinds of situations. But we've got to remember when we're praying for them, we're not praying for them for their benefit. We're praying for them for our benefit. And if we can get rid of that resentment, then we can be happy, peaceful, and free in those areas too. This thing really does work. If we pray for another, that doesn't mean we like them. That doesn't mean we approve of what they did. That does not mean we are going to walk hand in hand with them for the rest of our life. What it means is we are tired of letting others make us sick. We just don't have to be that way if we don't want to. It's a very simple process. Now, the next part of our inventory is going to be fears and sex. And Jolene, over here while we're doing it, he said, Charlie, I've got a headache, and I don't feel like sex this afternoon. How about we adjourn for the day, and we'll have sex on Sunday morning? Does that sound all right? Yeah! Yeah. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you. I've been sober since November the 3rd, 1973. For that, I'm really, really thankful. Yeah. And it's truly by God's grace. And I want to tell a little story before we get started this morning about these three little boys, about like David and Charlie and I. They were 22, 23 years old, and they were still in the sixth grade. I have to kind of get the picture there. And the principal wanted him out of the sixth grade desperately, so he called him in the office one day and said, Boys, I want to ask you a question. If you get the answer to these questions, you go on to seventh grade. So they asked David. He said, David, what is it that women have two of that men like to get their hands on? And he thought for a long time, and he finally said, Well, women have 2 hands. Men like to hold women's hands. He said that's good, David. You're going to seventh grader. He looked at Charlie and said now, Charlie, What is it men have 1 of that women like to give their hands of? And he thought for a long time, and finally he said, well, men have one bill full. Women like to get their hands on a half bill. I said, good, you're in the seventh grade. He looked over at me and said, now, Joe, I'm going to ask you a simple question. I said God, I hope so. I missed those first two. The main problem of the alcoholic center is in the mind. Are you through? I'm through. All right. Good morning, everybody. My name's Charlie Farman. I'm a very grateful recovering alcoholic because I'm a member of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and with the grace of the power that I found through the 12-step program of Alcoholic Anonymous, haven't found necessary to take a drink for 11,848 days today, one day at a time. And for this, I'm very grateful. God, you guys look good this morning. Not a resentment left in the whole bunch, isn't that something? Well, there's one back there. How many of you went back to where you were staying last not, and worked on at least one resentment. Could I see your hands? Oh yeah, lots of you did. How many of you got rid of at least 1 resentment like yeah, great. How any of you did we give a new resentment to yesterday afternoon? Yeah, pray for us. We need the prayers and you need the practice. We followed a little procedure yesterday in our inventory process in which we reviewed our resentments and we went to the examples on page 65 in the big book and we found out that we would fill those columns out one column at a time always starting from the top going to the bottom and by doing so while our mind is on one thing and one thing only we can do a much better job as we write those things down. As we filled out our first column we were amazed to find out how many resentments we really did have. Most of us just thought maybe one or two, but as we began to fill out sheet after sheet after sheet, we're amazed at the number of resentments we really do have. And we begin to realize how much those resentments control our thinking and dominate our lives for us. And they made a decision, step three, to let God direct our thinking. If the resentments do, then God can't, and it was just that simple. In the second column, we put down the cause of the resentment, just using a few short words, writing down what they did to us or whatever we were resentful about and et cetera. We found out in the second column as we filled it out that really it's what they've done to us that's got us upset rather than them it's not so much people as what they're doing to us has got us upset. We could take Mr. Brown at put Mr. Green in and we'd have the same kind of resentment if he did the same thing to us. Third column, for the first time as we filled it out, we began to realize where anger comes from. We began to realized that anger is a threat to one of those, comes from a threat of one of basic instincts of life. Also, we talked about the fact that if our basic instincts of life were under control, if our relationship with God is right, they could do about whatever they wanted to us and we don't have to be angry over it. But by the same token, if our relationships with God are not right Our basic instincts are not under control about anything they do to us that's going to cause us to have a resentment. So we really learned three good things just by filling out the sheet. We looked at it some more, and we began to realize the hours that we had actually squandered in resentments. We began to see that those things really never did us any good, certainly never made us any money, certainly never straightened up a relationship with another human being, never made this feel better, only made this field worse. We began to realize that we had squandered literally thousands of hours in resentments toward other people. And that was one of the bad things about them. But we also found out that wasn't the worst thing about a resentment. The worst thing is it blocks us off from God. And blocked off from god, we don't feel good. And after a while, we become insane and we believe it's okay to drink. And we end up drunk all over again. And we begin to really see those things. We begin to see how useless those resentments really were. As we look back to the list again, we begin to see that the world and its people really dominated us throughout our entire lifetime. Through our resentments toward them, they controlled our thinking. They controlled our decisions. They controlled their actions. We don't like to look stupid. So a lot of those resentments disappeared simply when we saw the stupidity behind them. We also had a prayer that we could use in order to get rid of those resentment that don't automatically disappear to the point we could become resentment free. We found out if our mind is freed of resentments, God can't leave another hole in our head. We've got enough already that those resentments would have to be replaced with something else. The only thing that could replace them would be the opposite of the resentments. Where our mind used to be filled with resentments now we have little love, patience, tolerance, compassion and goodwill toward our fellow man. And the great thing is we found out we didn't have to go to any other fellowships, read any other books to find love, patience, tolerance, compassion and goodwill. If God dwells on each of us, and I'm sure he does, the book says so, then that's always been a part of our makeup. Now where our mind used to be occupied with resentments, now it's filled with God's thinking in that part of the mind. We're in much less chance of drinking than we were before we started the inventory process. We did one more thing. We went back to that particular resentment, and we looked to see the part that we played in it. In the fourth column we had on a sheet, we looked at what we did to set this thing in motion and caused those people to retaliate against us, which in turn caused us to resent them. And we found out in the majority of the resentments, in my case every one of them, that I had made a decision somewhere in the past based on self which later placed me in a position to be hurt. and those people retaliated against me and then I resented them for doing so and then i played the resentment over and over and over in my head gradually distorted the picture transferred all blame to them make myself as pure as a driven soul and if you practice an alcoholic you got to develop those kind of skills we couldn't live with ourselves otherwise so i began to see really for the first time that it's not them at all it's me and my decisions that i've made which put me in a position to be hurt In the fifth column, we look to see which character defect is involved. And we found out the book talks about selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate. And those are the basic character defects that all human beings have to a certain extent. And I found out if I wasn't so selfish, maybe I wouldn't do those things to hurt other people. If I wasn'T so dishonest, maybeI wouldn'T put myself in a position to be hurt at a later time. If I wasn't so self-seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate of others, that maybe I could get along a little better in this world. I begin to see for the first time the things I'm going to need to change if I want to live in the future with a little peace of mind, serenity, and happiness. We also said in the fifth column we see the exact nature of the wrongs we're going to talk about when we take step five with another human being. In the fifth volume we see character defects we're willing to turn loose of. In the fifth column, we see the shortcomings we're going to ask God to take away. We also found that the majority of the people in column one were people or institutions that we had harmed, and they'll come off of that sheet, and then they'll be used later on for steps eight and nine when we get to that part of the program. So basically, we gathered up all the information we needed for four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine, resentment-wise, through that little inventory sheet yesterday. Today we're going to continue the same process. We're going to look at our fears this morning. We're gonna look at past sex life this morning. We're gunna look at harms we've done to people other than just sexually. And we're guna follow the same identical procedure that we use for resentment, Joe. Let's go to page 18 before we talk too much about those fears. We guna do what the book says. We simply guna find the facts and we guna face the facts and we gonna engage in a process so we can accept the facts. As Charlie said yesterday, when we reiterate this morning, we're not going to psychoanalyze ourselves. We're not gonna say that the reason we have these fears is because Mama put us on the body chair backwards or something. We're not gonna do that kind of thing. We just wanna find the facts and face the facts and engage in a process so we can accept the facts and we read yesterday, he said when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically the spiritual Malady. Spiritual not only means my relationship with God but it means my own internal feelings about things, the spiritual and the spirit of myself when the spiritual malady is overcome. Straighten out mentally and physically. And we're going to look at these ideas, emotions and attitudes of Dr. Yoon To-ro which were the guiding force of the lives of these people. And I'm going to go back here and read this page 18 because this one paragraph really tells my whole story. He says an illness of this sort and we've come to believe it an illness involves those who bow so they know what a human sickness can. If a person has cancer After all, it's hard for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness. For with it goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferers. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents, and anyone can increase the list. In other words, alcoholism is a family illness. It affects everybody in the family to some degree. and if you live with one of us very long you're going to be affected by it that's a fact and I go back into my life and I know today that my dad was an alcoholic I didn't know that at the time he had an obsession to drink and my mother had an obsession to see that he didn't drink it seemed like every time my dad took a drink my mother's personality changed and I grew up in this and my dad ended up in West Tulsa We lived on a farm back in the late 30s, and we couldn't make it there anymore. We came to California, didn't makeit out here very well, and we went back to Oklahoma. And my dad ended up in West Tulsa, which is the wrong side of the tracks, of course, and Charlie lived over there too, Garden City. But my dad got a job as an ice man, and he was hauling ice to people's houses to stock their refrigerators with six days a week, back-breaking work hauling that ice upstairs and wherever you needed to go with it. And he'd get off work on Saturday evening, and he'd go down by the bootlegger and pick up a pint of that whiskey, homemade whiskey we had back there, and spend a dollar for it. Now, I believe this today. My daddy needed a drink after back-breaking work. He deserved a drink, and they ought to have a drink. I think. But my mother saw that dollar going for that booze that could have gone for feeding of these five kids that they had. And she raised hell with my dad about his drinking. Well, naturally, he continued to drink. And we know that alcoholism is a progressive illness. And as time went by, he got sicker and sicker and she got sickier and sickier and the fights got worse and worse and I grew up in this and I was affected by it emotionally. My dad from time to time would put out a gun or a knife and threaten my mother and us kids with it, talk verbally abusive to us and eventually he got real bad. He got to where he'd tell us kids that he was taking our mother out this weekend and he was going to kill her. And they'd be gone all weekend from Friday or whatever until late Sunday night. And I'm sitting at home wondering, is he going to do that this time? I'm biting my fingernails. I'm worried about it as any kid would. And he got real bad with his drinking. She had to have him committed to Eastern State Hospital in Bonita, which is our local nut house. And they didn't have any alcoholic treatment wards in those days. What they did have was a Kremlin and Stainboard. And that's what they did with alcoholics in 1949 and 50, 51. They put them in the Cremley Insane Ward, and they would stay there until they got well. Think about that. And my dad was up there for three years and seven months and 13 days, and he was an alcoholic. And my little brother and I used to hitchhike up there and take him a couple of dollars in a carton of cigarettes from time to time. And they would let us go back into that Cremely Insane ward on Building 6. And I saw things back there nobody, I mean absolutely nobody is supposed to see. And I'm just seven, eight, nine years old, the most formidable years of my life. And I began to get some ideas, emotions, and attitudes which could become a guiding force in my life about this time. And one of them was this. I said if God, and I've got to blame it on somebody, right? If God is going to do this to me and to us and to hell with him, I'll never be talking to him anymore. Thank you. and another thought came to me was if it feels like this and hurts this bad to love people I'm going to quit loving people it hurts too bad so I began to push people out of my life and another thing another thought that came to me was this if anything good is going to happen in my life it's going to happen because I all along without any help made it that way so I didn't need God nothing or nobody thank you and I lived my life that way and if you threatened me or if I perceived a threat from you it was not good for you I'm telling you. And they put you in jail for those kind of attitudes, by the way, which they did for me. And I got arrested over there in Arizona a long time ago and convicted to go to prison. I was 15 years old. Finally got out of there as an aggravated assault. If a guy had died, you wouldn't have another speaker here this morning, I can tell you that. And not very good coping skills either, bytheway. They put you into jail for that. They divorce you for those kinds of things, and you have trouble, which I did. I had plenty of it. But I thought those were very brave attitudes on my part for a long, long time, even after an alcoholism illness because that's the way I'd always lived. I didn't need nothing or nobody. I thought that was brave. Come to find out after inventory is probably the most fearful ideas, emotions, and attitudes that anybody could possibly have, and I had them all. And I did not know it because I'd had them since I was real young. So as they said, thank God for the inventory process. I'm simply going to look at the facts and face the facts and engage in the process so I can accept the facts. A lot of people would have us to believe we can just run around accepting things up front. I can't. I just can't do that. I have to engage in a process. And acceptance is a process that we go through. And looking at the inventory progress is the beginning of it. So now if you don't mind, let's go back to page 67. talk about fears and again we're not going to psychoanalyze ourselves and say that the reason we have it is because mama put some body care backwards but we're simply going to face the facts here he said notice that the word fear is racked alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown Ms. Jones the employer and the wife this short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives it was an evil and corroding thread the fabric of our existence was shot through with it it set in motion trains and circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve but did not we ourselves set the ball rolling sometimes we think that fear ought to be classed with stealing it seems to cause more trouble and we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper even though we had no resentment connection with him we asked ourselves why we had them wasn't it because that self-reliance failed i didn't need god nothing or nobody i was totally self-reliant upon me self-reliance was good as far as it went but it didn't go far enough some of us once had great self-confidence but it did not fully solve the fear problem or any other when it made us cocky it was worse ok in that last paragraph that Joe read we are going to see basically the same kind of instructions to review our fears as we had for resentments so to avoid any confusion whatsoever we made up another little inventory sheet and we called it a review of fears And let's take a look at it in just a few minutes. On that inventory sheet in column one, just like we did with the resentments, we made a list of those things that we fear. Who or what do I fear? Now, we men, we have a little problem with this to start with because we say we're tough, we're macho, we don't have very many fears. But actually, I think if we really carefully look at things, We're going to find that all of us have many, many fears. We all have fears connected with our marriages. We have fears connecting with our children. We have peers connected with the Internal Revenue Service. We have fear connected with police department. We have fierce connected with, connected with connected when we can sit here and name literally hundreds of fears that human beings have. I did the same thing in listing the fears I did with resentments. I didn't think I had very many fears And when I started putting them down on paper, and I began to fill out sheet after sheet after sheet, I beganto realize how much fear I really do have. I made a decision in step three to let God direct my thinking. And if I have that many fears, then those fears direct my thinkings just like resentments directed my thinking also. They block me off from the sunlight of the Spirit. I don't think we'll ever realize how much care we've got until we put them all down on a sheet of paper. You can only see one fear at a time in your head, period. But if you start listening on those sheets of paper, you begin to realize how much fear we really do have. Column two, what's the cause of the fear? Just like Joe said, we're not going to attempt to psychoanalyze ourselves. Most fears that we have, there's a good reason behind it. For instance, it says at the column two, at the head of column two. What are they going to do to me? Am I perhaps going to jail? Am I going to lose something with material value? Am I gonna lose face? Will it result in divorce? Will it destroy a personal relationship? Might I lose my job, et cetera? Every fear we've got, there's gonna be some root cause behind it. I find in my own particular case, most of my fears are usually centered around about one of three different things. I'm usually scared to death I'm not gonna get something I want. I'm scared to Death I'm gonna lose something I've already got. Well, I've done something I shouldn't have done and I'm scared to death what they're going to do when they find out about it. Nearly all my fears come from those particular kind of things. Column two, I just list the cause of the fear. If I can't determine the cause, I'll just put unknown or I don't know. Column three, which part of self is effective? Just like with resentments, I can experience a fear unless there's a threat to one of my basic instincts of life. If you threaten my social instinct in any way, my personal relationships, my self-esteem, etc., it's going to create fear. If you threatened my security, it's gonna create fear if you threatened by sex life, it is going to creat fear. And once again as I go down and fill out column three, I begin to see for the first time in my life where fear really does come from. I always thought it was another one of those feelings just like anger was, it flitted through your head you could do nothing about it. But as I begin to fill out that third column, I see that fear is a reaction to a threat to one of the basic instincts of life. And just like with resentments, if my relationship with God is right, if my basic instincts are under control, you can say or do about anything you want to to me and I'm not going to experience fear. But you can bet your boots if my relationships with God are not right, if my basics instincts are out of control about everything you say to me and do to me is going to create fear in me. So we do the same thing there that we did with resentments, just exactly like that. Column four. What did I do? Just like with resentment. What did you do? What did it do, if anything, to set the ball rolling and set in motion trains of circumstances which have led to my being in a position to have the fear? And I want to find in many, many cases I've made decisions based on self which later puts me in a condition to have to experience that fear. Same way I had with resentments. So I look to see the part that I play in each one of those fears. Column five, which character defect is involved? If I wasn't so selfish, I wouldn't have to be worried about losing what I've already got or not getting what I want. If I weren't so dishonest, I couldn't be lying and cheating and stealing and have to worry about what are they going to do whenever they catch me. If I was such a selfish, self-seeking, frightened individual in the first place, I wouldn't have to experience so much fear. If I was more considerate of other human beings, more concerned with what they need and what they want than I am with what I need and What I Want, I wouldn' t have to expereince so much Fear. But just like with resentments, if I stay selfish, if I stay dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate, I'm going to keep right on experiencing the same old fears. They're going to block me off from God. And sooner or later, I'm gonna end up drunk over them just like I did with resentment. So we treat this just exactly the same way as we did with our resentment sheets. It's a very simple thing to do, nothing complicated about it at all. Now if you think resentments look stupid on paper, wait until you get your fears down on paper. They look good in your head. But you get them down on newspaper and they look double, double, double dumb. You know, they really do. And when we see the stupidity behind those sayings, and we'll never see it until we get it on paper and fill this sheet out. When we see this stupidity behind those things, about 95% of those fears are going to disappear automatically just like 95% of the resentments disappeared. But there's probably going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that have been embedded in our minds so deeply that we're going to have to have a little help in order to get rid of those. we now come to the second prayer in step four in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous the book said on page 68 perhaps there's a better way we think so for we're now on a different basis the basic trusting and relying upon God see prior to this third step in my life I didn't have any God in my Life I depended on me I was self-reliant and that failed me but now I'm on a difference basis the basic trust and relying on God we trust our infinite God rather than our finite selves We're in the world to play the role He assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity? Now, we never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator. We can laugh at those who think that spirituality is a way of weakness. Paradoxically, it's a way or strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. Now,we never apologize for God. Instead, we let him demonstrate through us what he can do. And here's the prayer. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. And at once, we commence to outgrow fear. You know, my sponsor, old Franklin, at the time told me, he said, Joe, the two most important things about prayer are absolutely the most important things. And he said the first one is to start and the second one is to continue. Most important. And as I look back over my life and when I first started praying, and I can see that every time I have prayed about anything, I have changed just a minute little bit, hardly noticeable to anyone, including myself. And the next time I pray, there's another little fuzz of a change. And the last time I prayed, there was another little bit of a change. And as time goes on, I have seen a major change in me. I am not what I used to be when I arrived at Alcoholics Anonymous. Believe me, I'm not. I have made a major chance in my life primarily through prayer. You know, we're always about the promises on page 83 and 84 in a big book. Hardly ever do you hear people talk about the promise spread throughout the entire book. I think this is one of the greatest promises anywhere in the book. We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow that fear. So if you've got one of those deeply embedded fears, if you can't get rid of it through filling out the inventory sheet and seeing how stupid it is, It is we turn to God, and we ask God to remove that fear from us, direct our attention to what He would have us be instead. And at once, we commence to outgrow that fear, just like with resentments. If we repeatedly pray for that, someday we're going to wake up, and that fear's going to be gone. Now, if the fears are removed, if my file cabinet that I held here in my head, if those fears are renewed and emptied out, then once again, God's not going to allow another hole in my hand. They're going to have to be replaced with something else. And the only thing that will replace them would be the opposite of the fear. Where my mind used to be filled with fear, now it's filled with a little faith and a little courage and I can do many, many things that I was afraid to do before and just as importantly, I could quit doing some things I was scared to do. I was always afraid to quit doing too. Absolutely amazing. In order to get the faith and courage, I didn't have to go to any other fellowships or read any other books. If God dwells within me, that's a part of my makeup. I just never could use it before. In order to live the kind of life I wanted to live, faith and courage had to be repressed to let me operate on a level that I wanted To operate on. And I was running on fear 100% of the time. But now that the fears are gone, then faith and encourage can automatically come to the surface. And I find that part of myself in my mind now instead of being occupied with fear, it's occupied with faith and courageous. Much less chance of drinking now than I was before I started the inventory process. A very positive happening, and you really can't understand it until you fill out the sheets and do this little bit of this inventory and you get the results, and then you'll know just exactly why you needed to do this fear thing. It really does work. Once again, we're in a process of doing step four. This is the fears part of it. Out in that fifth column, we see the exact nature of the wrong. we're going to talk to another human being about. The fear is the thing that blocks me off from God, but what's the exact nature of it? And it's those old character defects behind it every time. Out in the fifth column, we see the character defects we're gonna be willing to turn loose of in step six. In the fifth volume, we see this shortcomings we're gunna ask God to take away in step seven. And quite naturally, some of the names on column one will be people and institutions I've harmed. I'm scared to death what they're going to do whenever they catch me. And they'll come off of column one and be added to the sheet to be used later on for steps eight and nine. And one thing that really surprised me is I kept seeing some of the same names appearing on the fear sheet that I had on a resentment sheet. You know, I resented Barbara, and I feared Barbara. In fact, I'm still a little bit afraid of her today. If she ever finds out everything I was doing 34 years ago, she may file for divorce again. I resented the Internal Revenue Service, and I feared the InternalRevenueService. I resanted the police department, and I feared the police departmenet. I was amazed that I'd never tied that together in my head how closely those resentments and those fears relate to each other and how many of the people I resent, I'm also scared to death of them. You'll never see that until you get it down on a sheet of paper and actually take a look at it. Now, we don't want to try to lead you to believe that you could ever be 100% free of resentment or 100% afraid of fear. God never gave us anything that was bad. It depends on what you do with things that determine whether they're going to be good or bad. A resentment, for instance, can be used for a worthwhile purpose. If somebody does something to me that threatens my self-esteem, if it causes me to honestly look at myself and see some changes that I need to make, then that kind of resentment can beused for a worthwhilepurpose. Let me give you an example. Let's say we're living in the neighborhood. All the old houses are in pretty bad shape. They all need to be painted. Torn window screens, broken window panes. Mine's no worse than anybody else's. So I'm very complacent about that situation. I go home from work in the evening. I sit on the front porch and I rock and I rock and a rock and rock and I'm happy with the situation. Well one day I look up and some idiot has moved in across the street. He's out there painting his house. Fixes his window screens and window panES and makes my house look bad. I resent the hell out of him for doing it. I say, who is he moving in the neighborhood, screwing up the whole neighborhood? If I use that resentment right, it'll cause me to be a little ashamed of my house and I'll paint my house and fix the window screens and window panes. Next thing you know, my neighbor resents me for doing so and he fixes his house up. After a while, God's got the whole neighborhood cleaned up like it should have been in the first place. That's the proper use of a resentment. We alcoholics won't use it that way. We'll sit there on the front porch and we'll rock and we'll rock and we will resent and we Will Resent and 30 days later we'll go over at midnight and burn his damn house down. So we'll never be entirely free of them but we can get them to the level that God intends. The same way with fear. You can't live without fear. Fear brings caution. Fear keeps me from getting hurt. If it wasn't for fear I wouldn't be able to walk across the street I'd just jump right in front of vehicles and get run over. We probably couldn't have this meeting this morning if it wasn't for fear because we'd tell each other what we really think of each other and the whole thing would explode in just a little bit, see? So fear brings caution, and it's not always bad. It depends on what we do with it which determines whether it's going to be good or bad. Okay, we looked at the first two common manifestations of self. We looked at resentments. We found out how to get them removed. We found that they would be replaced with a positive happening, love, patience, tolerance, compassion, and goodwill. We found OUT how to keep the resentments from coming back in the future. And we saw what we would have to change in order to have those things occur. We've looked at fears. And we can see what fear does to us, how it blocks us off from God. We've got them on paper, and just like resentments, most of them look pretty stupid. We found out how to get rid of those fears. We also found out how to keep them from coming back in the future. If I stay selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened and inconsiderate I'm going to keep on experiencing the same old kind of fears that if I could become a little less selfish a little Less Dishonest A little Less Self-Seeking, Frightened and Inconsiderate then chances are in the Future I wouldn't have to experience so much fear. At the very least I'm gonna have to make some kind of changes. So the third thing we're going to look at, common manifestation of self, is the guilt and remorse associated with the harms we've done in the past. You know, we talked about the storeroom up here in the back of my head filled with the guilt or remorse that I've had. The guilt and the remorse are associated with people I've hurt in the past. And we're gonna have to do something about that too if I want to have final peace of mind. Now it seems as though we human beings hurt each other faster and deeper probably, in the sexual area than we do in any other way. And I think there's some reasoning behind that. You know, the other animals on earth have the same sexual urge that we do in order to be able to reproduce themselves. But the difference between our sexual lives and the lives of the other mammals on earth is simply the fact that they don't have self-will, and we do. They can't make decisions about their sex life. When it comes time for them to reproduce themselves, God usually signifies that by some physical change in the female of the species. The male senses that change. The two join together and it's kind of like bang, bang, thank you ma'am. And when it's over with, they normally go their separate ways. Not always, but they usually do. You see, they didn't think about having sex before they had it. They didn't take it seriously. They didn' t think about sex while they were doing it. They couldn't really make any decisions about their sex life. They can't decide whenever they're going to do it. That's all on God's time. Majority of the cases, they can't even decide who they're going to it with. Usually they can even decide whether they're going to go it with one or more partners. They can even decided what position they're gonna do it in. That's hold on God time and God's direction. They don't have self-will. Therefore you see very few sexual problems amongst the other animals here on earth. I've never seen a cow on a psychiatrist's couch yet talking about sexual dysfunction. We human beings are a little bit different. God gives us this thing called self-will, and He allows us to make decisions regarding our sex life. You know, we can have sex any day of the week or the year that we wish to. We can determine who we're going to have sex with We can Determine whether we're gonna have sex With one or more sexual partners We can even Determined how many times we're Gonna do it providing we're physically Capable of doing so We can Even decide what position We're gonna do it in They tell me there's something like 64 different positions a human being Can have sex in I have no idea what they are I only found three in my lifetime, and two of them damn dear kill me. I'm not sure I'm going back to them either. So what we're going to look at this morning for just a few minutes is not so much as to how we do sex as to how we think about sex because how we think about sex determines what we're going to do with it and that in turn is going to determine whether it's going to hurt other people or not and that in turn then determines whether we're going to have to feel the guilt and the remorse associated with it and also the fear of what they're going to do whenever they find out and so on and so on and so forth. So, Bill gives us a very simple way to look at this. It always amazes me when I look at it. He tells me down at the bottom of page 68. Now about sex. Many of us need an overhauling there. Now you older fellows, don't get your hopes up. We're talking about mental, not physical. Alex, did you hear that? Alex is one of my favorite, favorite people. where we're always joking back and forth. But above all, we try to be sensible on this question. It's so easy to get way off the track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes, absurd extremes perhaps. One set of voices pride that sex is a lust of our lower nature at base necessity of procreation. I've heard them all my life. They're the ones that say sex is a dirty thing. You ought to do it at one time in one position with one person only. and the only reason to do it is to reproduce yourself and if you enjoy it, it's a sinful thing. I've heard them as far back as I can remember. They are to the extremes on one side. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable as sex causes. They think we do not have enough of it or that it isn't the right kind. They see its significance everywhere and you hear them today. They're the ones that say you ought to be able to have sex any time you want to, with anybody you want too, with as many people as you want tu. You ought to enjoy it every time, and if you don't, there's something wrong with you. Maybe they call that the sexual revolution. I know it happened 25 years too late for me to participate in it, I know that. One school would allow man no flavor for his fare, and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them? And I read that last statement with great relief because I knew this book was getting ready to condemn me for what I had been in the past. I knew it was getting later to tell me what I was going to have to do in the future, and I'd made up my mind that I wasn't going to pay any attention to it at all. and I'm real glad to find out that we're not going to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct except they're not gonna get into that if we start trying to tell people how to conduct their sex lives what they can do, what they cant do then surely we're gonna begin to alienate people besides that what's sexually acceptable in one part of the world may not be acceptable at all in another part ofthe world so we'renot gonna get in to that particular question at all what we are gonna do is see a way to review our own past sex conduct, see what we've been doing with it, see if we've hurt other people, and see if maybe we can develop a new sex life in the future where we can still engage in it, still enjoy it, yet at the same time not hurt other People. And basically that's the whole purpose of this little sex interview here, simply to see what We're going to need to do in the Future in order to be able to engage in it, enjoy it, and not hurt others, Joe? I'm certainly not going to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct because whenever I tell you about where I got my information, you'll not want to know anything from me. I can tell you that. Many of us needed overhauling in that area, and certainly I did too. Well, now I'm 12 or 13 years old, and my dad is out of the nuthouse. By the way, he was too dangerous to stay in Oklahoma, so they sent him to California right out of nuthouses. Southern California. And so now I need to know about sex, and I was thinking about this a lot. I mean, a lot, almost got brain damage. Well, I probably did get a little brain damage, but thank you. So I didn't have anyone to talk to, so I went to my mother, and I said, Mom, I've been thinking about sex. Boy, you should have seen she just jumped. She said, Oh, my God. Scared the heck out of her. I said. Oh, My God, Benny Joe. That's my name. You shouldn't be thinking about stuff like that. And that's a dirty, filthy, rotten thing to think about, she said. And you ought to save it for the one you love. Besides that, she said, you shouldn't have sex unless you want to have children. Well, I figured that out right quick. She had five children. She'd had sex five times. No wonder my dad was in a nut house, I guess. So somehow I didn't believe that. I just didn't I didn't believe that. And we had a sex education when I went to school, except they called it recess. I learned a lot of things at recess about sex. But I still was interested, and then I went to the Jenkins Cafe, and there were some older men and women, about 10 years older than I am, who knew all about it in front of the Jenkins Caf�, the men and women. They just knew everything about it. About 16 years old? About 16. 16 years ago. Very well informed. And they loved to share with me all their experiences. And those little guys were telling me how often they were going out with these women, how many different times they would make love with them at night. And my eyes got that big around. And I believed everything they said. The fallacy of all that is that I believed all that stuff way after I got into alcoholism and non-muscle. And I never could live up to what I heard on the streets. And so, therefore, I was disappointed all the time. And I know the first time I got to looking at this inventory process, I remembered again what it said here. I'm going to find the facts and face the facts. I'm gonna look at my ideas, emotions, and attitudes of where I got my information from. I'm wanna engage in a process to accept the facts, You know, the first I went out after I got married The first time I went out, the next day hurt. I mean, I really felt bad. I didn't know you were supposed to feel bad when a boy told me that. I felt bad about it, I mean really bad. And the next time I Went Out, it wasn't quite so bad as the first time and didn't feel quite so bad. And as time went by, I got to where it didn't hurt at all. And unfortunately, the thing with principles is if you don't have any principles to live by, ultimately, you don' t have any reasons to live. and that's one thing the compromising of principles did for me and that is where I found myself prior to alcoholism anonymous thank God I was able to look at this sex thing with the help of a lot of other people because I told you I was dumb as a sack of hammers when it comes to this idea and I needed help from other people who seemed to know what they were talking about, really know what they were talking about by the way how many of you got your sexual information somewhat like I did When I arrived at Alcoholics Anonymous, I had the spiritual knowledge of a 6- or 7- or 8-year-old boy. I had to cope with skills of an 8- or 9- or 10-year old boy. And I had this sexual knowledge of a 12- or 13-yearold boy that I learned off the streets from people that didn't know any better about it than I did. You think I didn't need inventory to find out what was true and what wasn't true for me so I could live? Now, that's what the inventory is about. And that's the first time? Oh, yeah. Charlie likes me to tell you That's the first time I had sex. I was very selfish, and I was dishonest and self-seeking, frightened, inconsiderate, and I was also alone. Would anyone like to discuss it with me? No. That's why he's wearing glasses today, too. Me, too, Every time we say that, I look out there at about ten of you guys and whip your glasses off and put them in your pocket. Okay, let's look at this next set of instructions. We also got another little inventory sheet. And again, to avoid confusion, We've made these inventory sheets basically all the same, except for a different subject matter. And you're going to see about the same set of instructions to review our sex conduct as we had for our resentments. It's worded a little differently, which is Bill's way of doing things. We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Were we at fault? What should we have done instead? We've got this all down on paper and looked at it. So in this little inventory sheet for our review of our sexual conduct of the past, column one, who did I hurt? Now I doubt if anybody in this room ever hurt anybody in a sexual area that we don't know just exactly who that is. that seems to be a form of knowledge that we all have there may be some question what do you do to hurt them and I think we hurt people in the sexual area in many ways if I'm in a married relationship I go outside of my marriage and I have sex out there and my wife finds out about it then surely I've created a problem for her if not physically at least emotionally if the lady I had sex with out there If it becomes common knowledge, then I've hurt her too. And if she has a husband and children, I've hurt them also. One sex act could hurt several different people. I think sometimes we hurt people in the sexual area simply by demanding more than our fair share. Maybe our partner isn't too keen about having sex every time we want to. Rather they consider their needs and wants, we selfishly demand that they have sex with us when they really don't want to surely when we do that we create a problem for them if not physically at least emotionally I think sometimes we hurt people in the sexual area by demanding that they do things with us sexually that they really don't want to do and once again rather than consider their needs and wants we selfishly demand those things surely we create a problem for them and hurt them if not physically at least emotionally I think sometimes we hurt people in the sexual area simply by withholding sex Maybe we're not too keen about sex every time our partner wants to. Thank you for listening.