Sandy B. on Step 4, the Five-Column Inventory, and Personality Change — Part 10 of 13

I said, you stole them people's stuff. You was dishonest and self-seeking and inconsiderate. That's the way you got in prison. You know what I mean? Your basic character effect is what put you in that prison because if you hadn't have done that, you would have never been down there. He could have never spit on you. I said that's that man's job description to spit on people like you. You did something based on yourself to put yourself in a position to be hurt. And you're resenting that man. I said, you ought to be looking at the things that you've been doing. And if you don't do something about those, you're going to do that again. You're going big direct down there again. He's going to spit on you again. Forget about him. You can't do nothing about him." You can only do something About Yourself. So the whole process of the inventory... and I love this inventory in China but I've been working with many people with it you notice how we started inside started outside when you analyze something when you do it does use the word analyze you start outside and you work in right because the way it really happened it started inside and went out that's the way it started well we got to find it from the outside in so the fifth column is what we want to get hold to see we can't do nothing about number one and number two we can do nothing about other people we can' do nothing about what other people do in fact with self we turn that over to God only then we can do something about what we do and the fifth fourth and fifth column is ours to find what we need to work on. And these are the things that are going to be worked on in 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. In Epiphanics 2 Dr. Jung told Roland Hazard that during a vital spiritual experience old ideas, emotions and attitudes are cast aside and replaced with a new set of ideas emotions and attitude That's exactly what we're doing here. The old ideas, emotions, and attitudes of resentment, selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate are being cast aside and replaced with a new set of ideas. See, we don't have to wait until we get to step 12 to get something out of this. We are building the personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism as we go through the steps. and every step there is a positive thing an old idea is exchanged for a new idea and we begin to find a little peace of mind serenity and happiness isn't that great now the next two parts of the inventory are going to be fear and sex and Joe leaned over here a while ago and he said Charlie I don't feel like having sex tonight said I'm tired and I've got a headache he said why don't we get a good night's sleep and have sex on Saturday morning is that ok with you guys tomorrow morning you all are going to be the most beautiful people in the world because you're going to go back to wherever you're staying tonight and you're gonna work on resentments and tomorrow morning you're gunna be 100% resentment free God, you're going to be beautiful people in the morning. Thank you all for being here tonight. You all look absolutely beautiful this morning. Not a resentment left in the whole bunch. Isn't that something? How many of you went back where you were staying last night and worked on at least one resentment? Could I see your hands? Many of you did. That's great. How many of you got rid of at least one resentment last night? Could I see your hands? Oh, yeah, that's great. How many other of you did we give a new resentment to yesterday afternoon? Can we see your hand? They tell me in AA you shall know the truth and it makes you madder than hell once in a while too, but that's all right. Joe. My name is Joe. I'm a real alcoholic. Going to be back for our step four. went through our resentments and in the process of putting them down on paper black and white we were able to as that book says to analyze them another word for getting down to the truth same thing another word said the same thing and we know that we can't do this in our minds because we can just see one part of it at a time but once we get it down in black and white then we can analyze our fears and see where they're coming from, what we have to work on in step 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. So we had all of our work laid out as far as resentment is concerned as far when we finished the inventory process. The beautiful thing about what we did last night when we had it all laid out on that sheet, we not only got to see the truth behind those resentments for the first time, we saw we were able to get rid of them because they looked so stupid after we get them on paper and see what they've really been doing to us. We found out we could get rid of the rest of them through prayer, and we found that we could really remove those resentments at least to the level that God intended for them to be. We also found out that if the resentments were removed, they had to be replaced with the opposite. And where we used to have resentments, we now have love, patience, tolerance, compassion, and goodwill toward our fellow man. We also found out the exact nature of the wrongs. We looked within ourselves and we found those character defects in column 5 that caused us to keep doing the things in column 4 that hurt other people, that caused them to do the things they did in column 1. That caused us not to resent them in the first place in column one. And we began to see the type of personality we had developed through our years of living on self-will. And we could see if we didn't change that old selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened and inconsiderate character, we would keep on doing the same identical thing. We would keep On hurting people. They would retaliate. We would resent. And eventually we would get drunk over it. So we had a very positive happening. Now, the second common manifestation of self that the book talked about was fears. So this morning, very briefly, we're going to go to page 67. Last paragraph. And for just a few minutes now, we'll take a look at fears. He knows that the word fear is bracketed along with the difficulties of Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employee, and the wife. This word somehow touches almost every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. it said emotion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve but none did not we ourselves set the ball rolling you know once we analyze our resentments we're going to really find that we they all start with one of us they start with us i want to end a defect sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing it causes more troubles now we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper here's the process of putting them down in the inventory even though we had no resentment and connection with them we asked ourselves why we had them it wasn't because self-reliance failed us 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 didn't fully solve the fear problem or any other When it makes us cocky, it was worse. He gives us instructions of how to do this. And we're going to look at the fear sheet, and we list our fears again from top to bottom. I don't know how much we talked about it yesterday, but you know, one thing about these inventory sheets, the real secret to them is to fill out one column at a time from top-to-bottom. Most people, and if you're working with a new person, you have to be sure to tell him not to go across the sheets. And if he starts it, if he goes across, he's going to have to change his mind five times on each fear or each resentment. But if you go down the column, you're just thinking about one thing, who do I fear? And the changes are it will confuse the person. It's hard to use if you don't cross the sheet. Now most people will go acrossthe sheet because that's the way we're taught to usually read and write, is go across. But if you go down the sheet, you've got your mind on one thing, what do I fear? And we list all of our fears in the first column. In that first paragraph on page 68, we see basically the same instructions to look at fear that we had for resentments except it's worded just a little bit differently. So to avoid any confusion, we simply made up another little inventory sheet. You have one of them in your handout material, and it's called a review of fears. And once again, we have the five columns just like we had for resentments. In column one, we make a list of the people, institutions, or principles that we fear. Now, we men tend to say, well, we don't have very much fear. We're tough. We're macho. But we're not talking about physical fear as much as we're talking about all those fears that run through our minds, control us and rule us and dominate our thinking. I know when I started out looking at fears, I had the same thing I did with resentments. I didn't think I had very much fear until I started listing them on this sheet of paper. And I find that all of us have fears connected with our marriages. We have fears connecting with our jobs. We have fears connected with our children. We have fears connected to the police department. We have fear connected with the Internal Revenue Service. We have fears connected with, connected with and we could just sit here and name literally hundreds of fears that most human beings have. All I have to do in column one is take them out of my head, put them down on this sheet of paper. I think I'll realize they're the same thing I did with resentments. I'll never realize how much fear I've really got until I get them all down on a sheet of paper and look at them in their entirety for the first time. You can only see one fear at a time in your head. But when you get them All Down on a Sheet of Paper and you see how many fears we've really gotten, we begin to see how fear really controls and dominates our thinking for us. And we made a decision in step three to let God direct our thinking And if we've got that many fears, then those fears direct our thinking just like the resentments directed our thinking and God can't. And I don't think we'll ever see that until we get them all down on paper and see them for the first time how many we really do have. Column 2. What's the cause of the fear? Now this is not an attempt to psychoanalyze ourselves. You know, I'm not going to say that I'm afraid of the dark because Mother set me sideways on the potty when I was two years old. Fear is just like resentment. Some fear is okay. Fear can be used for a useful thing. If used correctly, fear brings caution. And yeah, I am a little bit afraid ofthe dark. Why? Well, I don't have headlights and I can't see at night and that keeps me from getting hurt. I'm a little but afraid of heights. Why? Well, I don't have wings and I can't fly, and that keeps me from getting hurt. But if those fears would keep me from going outside after dark, keep me from riding in an elevator or airplane, I better put them on this sheet of paper and see what's going on with them because they're controlling me, ruling me, and dominating me. I'm going to find that most of us will find that most of our fears are connected really with about one of three different things. Usually we're scared to death we're going to lose something we've already got. We're scared to death we're not going to get something we want. Or we've done something we shouldn't have done and we're scared of death what they're going do whenever they find out about it. See, column two is headed up. What are they going to do to me? Am I perhaps going to jail? Am I going to loose something of material value? Am I gonna loose face? Will it result in divorce? Will it destroy a personal relationship? Might I lose my job? Etc. If we've got a fear, there's a root cause behind it. So we simply put down the cause of the fear. Column 3. Which part of self is affected? Just like with a resentment. I don't feel fear unless there's a threat to one of my basic instincts of life. If you threaten my social instinct in any way, my self-esteem, my personal relationships, etc. If you threaten my security, emotional or material. If you threatened my sex life, either hidden or acceptable. In any case, when you threaten those things, I'm going to experience fear. If you threaten what I've got today, I experience fear if you threaten what I want to get in the future, my ambitions, I experienced fear. And as I fill out the third column, I see just the same thing I did in resentments. I'm probably going to see one part of self really standing out. It might be that under every one of them I'm putting self-esteem. Or it might be that I'm put in material security. It might mean it might mean sex. Probably going to be a combination of all three. But at least I'm going to see one party self that really does stand out and shows me the party self I'm having a problem with. When I finished up column 3 for the first time I realized where fear was coming from. Just like anger and resentment, I thought fear was just one of those feelings that flitted into your head. You could do nothing about it. And you really can't do anything about a problem until you understand it. And I finally saw that fear came from a threat to one of the basic instincts of life. And also, just like with resentments, it determines how I react to that threat which will determine whether I am fearful or not. You know, if my instincts are under control, my relationship with God is right, you can say and do about anything you want to me and I won't experience fear from it. But if my relationship with God's not right, my instincts that I'm in are out of control just about anything you say or do to me creates fear. So once again, I begin to realize that my fear is going to be based upon really my relationshipwithGod and whether those instincts are under control to the level that God intended for them to be in the first place. Very revealing information. Column 4, just like with resentments. What did I do to set this thing in motion? The book says we invariably find that we made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. and I think we're going to find with most of our fears that we ourselves have done something that set us in a position that set the ball rolling that put us in a position to have to experience that fear what did I do if anything to set theball rolling and set in motion trains of circumstances which have led to my being in a situation to have the fear and if I can't pin it down I just put nothing or I put down I don't know but usually I'll see where I myself started the ball rolling. Column 5. Where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, or inconsiderate? Which of the above character defects caused me to do what I did or caused me want to hold on to the old fear even though I may have done nothing to cause it? And once again I see in that fifth column the exact nature of the wrong. The fear is what blocks me off from God. But what's the real truth behind that fear? What's the inherent characteristic of it? And invariably I find it is caused by my own character defects. If I wasn't so selfish, I wouldn't have to experience so much fear. If I weren't so dishonest, I wouldn'T be lying to people and stealing from them and putting myself in a position to have to experienced fear of what they're going to do when they find out. If I wasn't such a self-seeking, frightened individual in the first place, I wouldn't experience so much fear. If I really considered other people and their needs and their wants ahead of my own, I wouldn'T have to be so concerned with me and what I want and have to experience so Much Fear. But you can bet your boots if I stay selfish, dishonest, self- seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate, the same old things are going to keep going on over and over and Over. I'm going to experience the fear from them eventually that will block me off from God and eventually I get drunk over the fears just like I would get drunk over resentments so what we're really doing here is we're doing step 4 the fears part in the 5th column we see the exact nature of the wrongs we're going to talk about to another human being in step 5 the 5 th column we see character defects we'll be willing to turn loose of in six. In the fifth column, we see the shortcomings we'll ask God to take away in seven. And quite naturally, some of the names in column one will be people or institutions that I've harmed and I'm scared to death what they're going to do whenever they catch me. So they'll come off of this list and be added to the sheet to be used later on for steps eight and nine. I was absolutely amazed to see the same names appearing in many cases on both sheets. I resented Barbara, but I feared Barbara. I'm still a little bit afraid of her today. If she ever finds out all I was doing 30 some odd years ago, she'll probably file for divorce again. I resanted the Internal Revenue Service and I most certainly feared the Internal Review Service too. I resented the police department, and God, I was scared to death of them. And I never had tied that together in my mind before. Now if you think resentments look stupid when you put them down on paper, look awful good in your head, but look stupid when you don't know what's going on, when you look stupid, when you see the truth about them on paper. Wait till you get your fears on paper and really see the proof about them. Oh God, they look good in their head. but you get them down on paper and they look double, double, double dumb. We don't like to look stupid. So we're going to find many of these fears are going to disappear simply because we now see the truth behind them just like resentments did. But there's probably going to be one, two, three or four embedded in our minds so deeply that we're gonna have to ask some extra help with those too. We now come to the second prayer in the book on step four joe perhaps there is a better way we think so far we're now on a different basis the basis of trusting and lying upon god we trust the infinite god rather than our finite selves we're in a world to play the role he assigns just the extent that we do as we think he would have us and how much rely on him does he enable us to match calamity with serenity we never apologize to anyone for depending upon our creator we can laugh at those who think spirituality is a way of weakness, paradoxically it's a way or strength the verdict of age is that faith means courage all men of faith have courage they trust their God and never apologize for God now we have a little prayer instead we let him demonstrate through us what he can do we ask him to remove our fears and direct our attention to what he would have us be at once when we commence to outgrow fear. You know, if we enter in communion with God in prayer about a particular fear, the fear will leave us. You know courage and faith and courage won't exist on the same plane and when we pray it will remove these fears. So if we have done this That means that where we had fear, the fear is gone. And where there's fear now, we now have courage. We're going through already as we do our inventory. We're Going Through a Process of a Personality Change. And a personality change is going to take place after each action step. As a result, you don't have to wait until the twelfth step. We get some change and we go in the inventory process. It's a very positive process. There's not anything to be afraid of. that some real positive things happen as we go through doing the inventory before we even get through it. Where there was resentment, we got love, patience, and tolerance, and understanding. Where there were fear, now we should have some courage. You know, we hear always about the promises on page 83 and 84. We never hear about the promise that's spread throughout the entire book. I think one of the greatest promises in the book, Joe just read it, it said we ask God to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be instead and at once we commence to outgrow that fear you know if we take each one of these fears that's still embedded in our minds so deeply we work on them one at a time just like we did with resentments and every time it pops up we ask God to move it and direct your attention to what He would let us be instead some morning we wake up and that fear is no longer there now just think if 95 percent of the fear has disappeared because they look so stupid on paper five percent that's left can be removed through prayer then that means we can be free of fear to the level that god intended for us to be this little file cabinet in my store that was filled with fear has now been emptied out And once again, the natural laws apply that nature abhors a vacuum. God's not going to leave another hole in my head. I've got enough of those already. If the fears disappear, they've got to be replaced with something else. And the only thing that can replace them will be God's thinking, which is the opposite of the fear, which is faith and courage. And where my mind used to be filled with fear, now it's filled with faith and encourage. I'm in much less chance of drinking now than I was before I started the inventory process resentments have been removed and replaced with love, patience, tolerance, compassion and goodwill fears have been removed and replaced with faith and courage I was absolutely amazed to realize that I didn't have to go to any other fellowships didn't have to read any other books to get faith and courage If God dwells within me, that's always been a part of my makeup. But in my chase for money, power, prestige, sex, and what I thought were the good things of life, those feelings had to be repressed to let me operate on the level I wanted to operate on and fear literally ate me up. But now that the fear is gone, the faith and the courage automatically begins to come to the surface. Damnedest thing I ever saw. It really does work. Two-thirds of my store now has been straightened up. But also, just like with resentments, if you've got a fear that you don't want to get rid of, knowing full well that it might get you drunk, then we better get it down on this paper and look at it very, very closely. Because just like With Resentments, we're probably using it for rationalization and justification. Trying to rationalize doing something we shouldn't be doing. Trying to justify doing things we shouldn'T be doing and we're probably using it for some kind of excuse. Let me give you an example. How many of you here this morning, and please be honest with me, how many of yOu in here would really, really like to go back to school and finish your education? Could I see your hands? Man, there is a bunch of you. Now I'm going to ask you another question. Please be honest. How many of you really, really intend to do that? Could I see your hands. I'd say about a third of the hands went up this time. Why not? Nothing in the world but fear. Fear of failure. Fear that we won't measure up. Fear of hard work. Keeps us from doing things we really would like to go ahead and do. And by the same token, fear can keep you doing things that you know you shouldn't be doing. So if we got one of those, maybe we better look at it very closely because we're probably using it to rationalize and justify just like we did with resentments. None of us will ever see that until we get it on paper and see the absolute truth behind it. Okay, now the third common manifestation of self We talked about the little storeroom in the back of our store that was filled with guilt and remorse associated with people we've hurt in the past. If we want real peace of mind and serenity and happiness, not only do we need to get rid of the resentments and the fears, but we needto get ridof that guilt andremorse. And there's no way we can get ridoff guilt andremoise till we see the truth behind it. Just like we had to see thetruth behind resentmentsandfears. Now it seems as though we human beings hurt other human beings in the sexual area probably faster than we do any other way. And maybe deeper than we doing any other ways. And I think there's some reasoning behind that. You know, the other animals here on earth, they have the sex urge too, just like we do. So that they can and will reproduce themselves. If they didn't have that urge, then there would be no reproduction and they would fail to survive too. But the difference between them and us is they don't have this thing called self-will. God doesn't give them very much choice in their sexual 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, prepares himself. 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 usually. Now see they didn't think about having sex before they had it. They didn't Think about having Sex while they were doing it. In the majority of the cases, they don't have any choice in who they're going to have sex with. They don't even have any choices as to how many they're gonna have sex with. Usually they don' t even have a choice in how many times they're gonna do it. And they don''t even have any choice on what position they're gonna do in. That's all done at God's time with God's direction period. 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. I just don't have those kind of problems. We human beings are a little bit different. You know, not only do we have sex to reproduce ourselves, but we also can make choices about our sex life. You know we can have sex any day of the year we wish to. We can decide who we're going to have sex with. We can even decide how many times we're going to 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 those damn near kill me. I'm not sure I'm going back to them. So what we're going to talk about for just a few minutes this morning is not so much as to how we do sex as to How We Think About Sex. Because How We Thinking About It determines what we are going to do and that in turn determines whether it's going to hurt other people or not and that, in turn, determines whether we're gonna have to suffer the fear and the guilt and the remorse associated with those things. So basically we're going to look just a little bit at how we human beings think about sex. At the bottom of page 68, now about sex, many of us needed an overhauling there. Now you older fellows don't get your hopes up, we're not talking about physical, we are talking about mental. 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 cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation, and I've heard them all my life. They're the ones that say sex is an absurd thing. Sex is a dirty thing. That you ought to do it at one time in one position with one person only. And the only reason to do this is to reproduce yourself, and if you enjoy it, it's a sinful thing. I've read them as far back as I can remember. for 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 anytime you want to with anybody you want too, as many times as you want tu, in any position you want tur and you ought to be able to enjoy it every time. And if you don't, there must be something wrong with you. You know, maybe today they would call that the sexual revolution. The main thing Joe and I see wrong with it, it happened 25 years too late for us to participate in it. I know that. Joe said it just went right on by him. He never did get in on it. That's the whole thing. I love the way Bill Wilson writes. 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 Ready to Tell Me what I was going to have to do in the future and I'd already made up my mind I wasn't going to pay any attention to it whatsoever. And I'm glad to find out that we are not going to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We simply are not going to get into that question. You know, this book is meant to be helpful to anybody in the world anytime. And if we start trying to tell people how they're going to have to conduct their sex lives then surely we're going to 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 of the world. So we're not even going to get into that question. What we are going to do is see a way to review our own past sex conduct, see if perhaps we've been hurting other people with it, see If perhaps we can't develop a new sex life in the future where we can still engage in it and enjoy it, yet at the same time not hurt other people. At the very least we're going to have to do something about some of these things. Now we read back in Appendix 2 that ideas, emotions, and attitudes were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side replaced with a new set of ideas, emotions, and attitudes. so i think what we need to do is take a little look at where our ideas emotions and attitudes came from and see if perhaps some of them might be wrong and then perhaps discard some old ideas and replace them with some new ideas now i can't speak about for anybody else in the room But I know when Joe and I were growing up, we didn't have this thing called sex education in school. Oh, we had it, but we referred to it as recess. We certainly didn't learn anything sexually on a formal basis. Your teachers didn't dare talk about it. Mother and father would hardly talk about It at all. and for us to learn anything about sex as young boys growing up, we had to go to a different source of information. And every town that I've ever known always had a certain cafe or a certain pool hall down on First Street, Second Street, or Nogles Avenue or somewhere. And in front of that cafe or that pool hall, you could find a bunch of 15, 16 year old kids who were well versed in sex and more than willing to tell you not only all you wanted to know but probably more than you wanted to know about sex. And I remember as a 12, 13 year old boy when I really got interested in sex I would go hang out with these guys and I would listen to them talk about sex and they would be talking about how many times they had sex the night before. Three, four, five, six different times. They would be talking about how many different girls that they had sex with. Some of them seven, eight, nine, ten different girls. And you know I was in AA three years before I figured out those guys were lying to me. At least I hope to hell they were lying to me because I based my sex life on what they told me and I tried to live up to what they said they did and in the process I literally destroyed me and everybody around me through this sex thing. I came here with a sexual knowledge of a 12 or 13 year old boy who had been taught about sex by a bunch of 15 and 16 year old kids My God, no wonder I needed an overhauling in the sexual area. I shall never forget the first time I had sex. Absolutely scared to death. Very, very worried. Extremely apprehensive. Really, really excited. And I was also alone. Joe says that's why I'm wearing glasses today, too. Oh, boy. Every time we say that, I see about six of you guys jerk your glasses off and put them in your pocket. How many got your sex education the same way I did? Could I see your hands? My God, no wonder we're screwed up. We get here with the spiritual knowledge and the sexual knowledge of 10, 11, 12, 13-year-old kids who are in the body of adults 30 and 35 and 40 years old, still trying to conduct our spiritual and sexual life based on what we learned as a little kid growing up. No wonder we get fouled up in these areas. No wonder some of our attitudes, emotions, and ideas need to be cast aside and replaced with a new set. Bill says 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? What should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it. So once again to avoid any confusion we made up another little inventory sheet Looks almost like the resentment sheet Except it's a review of my sex conduct Once again, five columns Column one, who did I hurt? Now I doubt if anybody in this room Has ever hurt anybody in a sexual area That we don't know just exactly who that was That seems to be a form of knowledge That we all have There may be a little question about well, what do we do to hurt people in the sexual area? And I think we can hurt them in many ways. You know, if I'm in a relationship with my spouse and I go outside of my marriage and I have sex out there and my spouse finds out about it then surely I've created a problem for her if not physically, at least emotionally. If that little sexual escapade out there creates trouble between my wife and I and there's children in my home then I've hurt them by the same sexual escipade. If the lady I had sex with out there, if it becomes common knowledge, I've hurt her too. And if she has a husband and children, I'll hurt them too. One sex act could hurt many, many different people. Sometimes I think we hurt people in a sexual area by demanding more than our fair share. Our partner isn't too crazy about having sex every time we want it and rather than consider their needs and wants, we selfishly demand that they have sex with us when they really don't want to. Surely we create a problem for them, if not physically, at least emotionally. I think sometimes we hurt people in the sexual area by demanding they do things with us sexually they really would rather not do and consider their needs, wants, and desires. We demand those things. Surely we created a problem form, 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 crazy about having sex every time our partner wants to. Rather than consider needs, wants and desires, we selfishly withhold when perhaps we should give in a little more often. Lots of different ways we hurt them. I think we all know what they are. Column one, we make a list of those we've hurt. And again, I don't think we'll realize the extent to which we've heard people in this area until we get them all down on a sheet of paper for the first time. Column two, what did I do to hurt them? Column three, what part of self is affected? Now column three might be one of the most revealing things we can do for ourselves. You know you would think if I hurt anybody in a sexual area it would be caused by the sex instinct. And I guess once in a while to get the emotional and physical gratification that comes at the moment of successful completion of the sex act Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing at the wrong time with the wrong person because of the sex instinct. But I think if I carefully look at each situation, I'm going to find the other two instincts are involved just as much and maybe more than the sex instant. And in many cases, sex really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with it. Now I'm gonna express an opinion And I want to be sure everybody understands it's my opinion, not Joe's. Not AA's, it's mine. I'm convinced today that God gave us the sex urge so that we could reproduce ourselves. I'm also convinced He made it a very enjoyable thing, so we would do so. I just don't believe you and I would do the kind of work involved in sex if we didn't get some kind of enjoyment from it. And we know it's one of the greatest feelings a human being can experience. Now, if we're doing sex for purposes other than reproduction or other than enjoyment, we just might be doing sex for reasons other than what God intended. For instance, we boys found at a very early age that you can use sex to build your self-esteem. After all, the more members of the opposite sex you can attract to yourself, the greater man you really are, we thought. And we boys called that John Wayneism. I don't know what you girls called it. But some of you tell me that you use sex for the same purposes. Now if that's what we're using sex for, that's not to reproduce, that's to enjoy. That's to fulfill a part of the social instinct. And sex really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with it. Sometimes we use sex to buy a personal relationship. Maybe we're just lonesome. Maybe we just want somebody to pay attention to us. And we found out a long time ago that we can give sex and buy back a personal relationship. Now, that's not to reproduce. That's not to enjoy. That's also to fulfill a part of the social instinct. And sex really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with that. Sometimes we use sex to buy material security. Maybe we're in a sexual situation we really would rather not even be in. But we've become so overly dependent upon another human being for our material well-being that we give sex to Buy Back material security that is certainly not to reproduce nor to enjoy that's to fulfill the security instinct and sex really doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with that sometimes we use sex to get even with another human being maybe we find out our partner has gone out and they've done something they shouldn't have done and we say we'll show them and we'll go out and do identically the same thing in order to get evenly with them and the fallacy in it is we can't afford to tell them we did it after we did so. But there we certainly did not use sex to reproduce or enjoy. We used it to get even with another human being. Sex doesn't have a hell of a lot to do with that. Why, sometimes we use sex to force our will on another human man. Maybe our partner isn't doing what we think they ought to do. And we say we'll show them. We'll just cut them off at the pass and we won't let them have anything to come around our way of thinking. Now, we boys aren't too good at that. We only last about three days. But you girls have honed it to perfection. You know exactly how to do that and I don't blame you. I'd do that too if it weren't that good for me. When I filled out that third column and really truthfully saw what I had been doing with sex and why I was doing it, two things began to happen to me automatically. The first thing that began to happened to me is a lot of my guilt began to disappear. I thought I was just a dirty, rotten, no good SOB. But I found out that isn't true. I use sex for purposes other than what God intended not because I'm a bad human being but because I am a sick human being. And I needed that sex to fulfill and build the other instincts of life more so than sex and sex really didn't have much to do with that. And a lot of guilt began to appear right there. I tell you the other thing that happened to me too I always thought I was over-sexed. But when I filled out that third column, I began to realize, no, I'm not over- sexed. I'm under-secured. And I'm using sex to build my self-esteem. And sex really didn't have a hell of a lot to do with that. And when I saw that I wasn't over-sexed, that I was under- secure, I was using sex in order to build myself- esteem, it began to look pretty stupid to do that. And the desire to go out and do it at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong people began to become less and less and less. And I started getting a handle on the sexual thing right here in the third column. Absolutely amazing when we analyze, when we take a moral inventory, when we see the real truth behind these things as to what we're doing with sex. Most of us used it to build self-esteem or we used it to buy personal relationships. Not because we're bad but because we're sick of those areas. Column 4 What feelings did I create in others? Did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? What should I have done instead? Not only are we looking at our past sex life we're trying to shape a new sex life for the future. Not only do we need to look and see what we've done but we needto be looking at what we should have done in its place. and slowly, slowly our sexual ideas begin to change and we start developing a new life for the future. Column five, same basic character defects. Where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, and inconsiderate? If I wasn't so selfish, I wouldn't be doing some of those things that create problems for other people. If I wasn't so dishonest, I wouldn't be sneaking around behind my wife's back and lying to her all the time. If I weren't so afraid of facing life without that extramarital sex, maybe I wouldn' t be doing that. If I really considered my wife and my children and other human beings first, I wouldn''t be doing those things that create problems for them. But I'll guarantee you if I stay selfish, dishonest self-seeking, frightened and inconsiderate, I'm going to keep right on doing the same old things over and over and over. Keep right on hurting people. I'm scared to death of what they're going to do when they catch me. I'm filled with guilt and remorse. If they catch my heart, if they catch and retaliate and I'm full with resentment and eventually it blocks me off from the sunlight of the Spirit and sooner or later I get drunk over it. It's not a question of right and wrong. It's a question of can I continue to do those things and find the peace of mind, serenity and happiness in order for good long-term sobriety and I found out from me I couldn't. I had to start coming to terms with this stuff. Joe? In this way we tried to shape a shape a sane and a sound idea of our future sex life. We subjected each relationship to the test whether selfish or not. And we see prayer throughout here. We ask God to mold our ideas and help us live up to them. Remember always that our sex powers of a God-given and therefore good needed to be used lightly to selfish or to be despised or loathed. Whatever I had is turned to be, we must be willing to grow toward it. We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm but we do not bring about still more harm in doing and it relates to step nine. In other words, we treat sex with any other problem in meditation we ask God what we should do in each specific matter. The right answer will come if we want it. And this is true. You know, I think this is one area of our life, you know, I've never been in a sexual situation that was wrong that I didn't know it was wrong. It seems like we have a nature to know that. God alone can judge our sex situation. Counsel with other persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge. you know we already that's one way we already know what we should do we should follow that not listen to other people's directions I think it's very peculiar we can hear a lot of you can get a lot of sexual advice around AA that's a bad place to be getting it sexual and financial don't take none of that but let God be the final judge some people are fanatical about sex and others are the do's. We avoid hysteria thinking our advice. I had a young fellow come to me one time and he said, Charlie, my sponsor told me I couldn't have any sex the first year of sobriety. Is that right? And I said, no, that isn't right. He said, you can have all the sex you want the first years of sobrietty. The second year, you're going to have it with other people. Well, it's hard enough to quit drinking when you're young, much less quit this other stuff when you're younger too. But we fall short of the children's eyes. Every once in a while he blushes. You all can't see it, but I can. His ears get a little bit red. Does this mean we're going to get drunk? Some people tell us so, but this is only half true. It depends upon our motive. We are sorry for what we have done and have an honest desire to let God take us to better things. We believe we will have forgiven when they have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry and our conduct continue to harm us, we are quite sure to drink. And then we're not theorizing. These are facts of our experience. Anything that we do in any other area of our lives, if it's going to hurt another person, it's wrong for us. To sum up about sex, we earnestly pray for the right idea and for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and for strength to do the right thing. Sex is very troublesome. We throw ourselves hard into helping others. We think of the needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperialist urge when we yell and mean heartache. Okay. We're in the process still of doing step four, so I'm going to ask Ross to put the four up on the sheet. This is the sex part of it. Once again, in the fifth column, we see the exact nature of the wrong. the wrong is the harm we've done to another but the nature of it is inherent characteristic of it what's behind it in the fifth column we see the character defects we're going to be willing to turn loose of in step six we see the shortcomings we're gonna ask God to take away in step seven and quite naturally all the names in column one will now come off of this sheet, be added to the sheet to be used later on for Steps 8 and 9. And you know, I was absolutely amazed when I saw in many cases the same names appearing on all three sheets. I resented Barbara. I feared Barbara. And I certainly hurt Barbara too. I resanted the Internal Revenue Service. I feared the InternalRevenueService. And before I got through with them, I gave them a pretty good screw-on. They needed on this sheet too. Now, we're going to suggest that we do one more thing before we leave the inventory. When we get to step eight, it says we have the list. We made it when we took step four. Primarily, the only ones we really looked at that we harmed would be in this sexual area. But we've hurt people in many other ways too. we stole money from them and we lied to them and we undercut them and took their jobs and we've hurt them physically so we're going to suggest we make another little sheet just exactly like the sex sheet except it's called a review of harms other