Self-Searching and Confession of Shortcomings – Workshop – Part 4 of 9 – Earl H.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just glad it's almost lunch. Yeah. Okay, where the hell are we? What am I talking about? Five? Five. We were talking about five, weren't we? Yeah? Talk about six? Okay. You're going to hate me for this. I love this part. you say that as if you know what I'm looking for and you were correct I love the guys there's a guy I know that does the thing I mean he knows where everything is on what page blah blah blah he talks and says in the bottom of page 83 top of 84 it says right he does that through his whole talk and everybody's sitting up there going They're all laughing like, he's just making this up. Then you go back to the book and you go, oh my God. He's nailing it every time. He's got it memorized. I'm one of those guys that believes in libraries. I believe in books. Information's in here. I don't keep it in my head. Where is it? Wow, it's in there. You can find it. Which reminds me, it says something on page 25. Don't shout it out if you know. We love the suspense. That I wanted to say because there was something somebody said to me during the break that made me think of it. And I figured, what the hell? I get the backtrack if I want. It says, there is a solution. Right there. Almost none of us likes the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others and we had to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. I don't know about you, that's pretty good news to me because I've been living in a state of what I consider to be unparalleled madness and pain. So to discover that the tough part is going to be self-searching, leveling of pride, and confession of shortcomings, I'm in. Do I like those things? No. Am I willing to do those in an effort to get my... I was about to say to get my life back, but to get a life? I'm in. I'll do them. Tell me how to do them." Luckily, that's exactly what this step stuff is all about. It's doing this stuff. Remember, the whole idea here is to be restored to sanity, soundness of mind. To be relieved of the obsession to drink and use. To be free of the beast. To have that voice stop whispering in my ear. That's the whole point. So I'm doing this to bring about an experience. If I've done the fourth step to the best of my ability which I have done on more than one occasion. Some people do one a year. To this I say, terrific. Some people say they do one and that's it. To these people I say, wonderful. There are other people that say I do spot inventories monthly. Fantastic. I don't go more than five years without doing an inventory. That's me. To this I say good for you, Earl. Do I advise that you do the same? Nope. Do I advice that you sit quietly doing things that we suggest later in the steps so that you can do a proper assessment of where you're at. If you discover that you have once again in sobriety become restless, irritable and discontented on a consistent basis. If you find that you are no longer reveling in the life that you live. If you found yourself out of sorts. I might suggest that you reinvest in the path And a great way to do that is to engage in the action plan set forth before us. That action plan begins. Step one, what's the problem? Lack of power. Step two, what is the solution? Power. Step three, make a decision to do something about this. Third step, prayer. Begin the action program. Action plan that brings the solution about in my life. Four and five, me. Six and seven, God. Eight and nine, you. Me first. Got to clear away the stuff that I put between me and you and me and God because you guys are coming up in 6 and 7 and 8 and 9. I'm going to be engaging you all. I've got to get this stuff out of the way so that that becomes possible for me. I put it there, I get it out oftheway. Now people can say, newcomers will say to me, but you know these resentments are well founded. I beg to differ Earl, I do not put this stuff in the way. People have done me great harm. Just the other day, I was just horribly insulted. I said, well really, what happened? I was making the coffee at the meeting and a guy walked up to me and said, your coffee sucks. I consider this a heinous act, Earl. And my resentment is well-founded. I say, great, now, here's what I want you to do. Now, what, are you going to just say it again? Yes, I am. I'm just going to say it against him. again. Just do this and see what happens. See what happens? The discovery comes as a result of the action, of doing it, right? So my feeling about stuff like this, this one always gets me in trouble. If what you do is you come listen to Ezra sees it, dangerous at best. To then go out there and figure, well, you know, I'm doing the steps. Because I sat there and I listened to him. You're in trouble. Don't do that. No. Actually get one of these. One of the best kept secrets in Alcoholics Anonymous. The big book. Read it and do what it suggests. do it. If you don't do it, you ain't going to get it like you could. Do you understand what I mean? That's about watching golf on TV and then turning off the television and saying, I'm an excellent golfer. No, you're not. You have not experienced the horrifying moment when the perfectly struck four iron duck hooks. Right? You can't watch people surfing and go, I understand. No, you don't. When you go out there and try to catch 50 waves in a row and catch none of them, and then the one that you do catch shoves you to the bottom of the sea and back up again, and you come to the surface with sand and salt water exploding from every orifice of your body Right? When you go through all that and then suddenly the day comes where it all clicks and you catch the wave and you stand on the board and you slide down the face of a wave and you shoot, you do a bottom turn, goofy foot into the wave. Right? And suddenly you realize, you know, I'm not in the way here. I'm a part of this. I'm nicht interferieren mit dem Prozess des Waves �berhaupt. Ich fahre mit der Wave. I am in a very natural experience. I am at a rhythm that is of nature, not my own. I have found my way into that. And I'm getting a real buzz out of riding this way. Now you know about surfing. Skydiving? I assure you that I know nothing about skydiving. And I can also assure you that I never will. Jumping out of a perfectly good plane is lunacy. But you don't know until you do it, right? So when people come to you with problems in AA and you have no experience in those problems, say so and give them the numbers to the people that do. I was sponsoring a guy who came to me and he had a great problem and he had a sexual identity crisis going on and he came to him and he said Earl, I have a tremendous sexual identity process and I said bummer now here's a friend of mine call him and talk to him immediately because he also suffered from a sexual identify crisis and he has resolved that to his own great satisfaction. Maybe he can help you with his experience in that on all avenues. I mean, if somebody came to me and said, Earl, I struggle with being tall. I got to give you a number. Short guy back there laughing his ass off. It's not, you know, what do I know? right however i did have a guy conversely this is also true i had a guy i was sponsoring call me up and say we got to have lunch okay i do that daily we'll have lunch so we go and we have lunch and he goes well i gotta get another sponsor you know because i'm i'm married now i go i know i was the best man at your wedding he says i'm marriage now and you're single and you know i think i need a married sponsor. So I'm going to get a married sponsor, and I said, okay, that's fine. You know, I'm not upset by that. However, I would, you know, just as a passing thought, you're also French. And I would suggest that you get a Married French Sponsor. You're also quite tall, so clearly a tall French Married Sponser. You Know, and and I live on the west side and you live in the valley, so I would suggest a tall married French sponsor that lives in the Valley. He was pissed off enough at this point to pick up the check and take off. So what? This isn't about that stuff. This isn'T about the facts of our lives. I remember that there was a meeting in L.A. that started. It was a cocaine anonymous meeting for cocaine addicted Jewish attorneys. I was told of this when I was done laughing. They said, what do you think of that? And I said, fine. My experience says it ain't going to be there very long. And it lasted, I think, like six weeks. And then that meeting dissolved. Common problem, common solution. Our common problem is not that we are Jewish or that we are gay or straight or tall or short or where we live. Our common solution, our common problem is that we have that we are alcoholic. Period. And our common solution is this process. So, that brings me to page 76 where it says And it speaks at great length, great length in a very, very detailed manner precisely how to do steps six and seven. It says if we can answer to our satisfaction are these questions concerning step five and prior to that. We then look at step six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all, every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us to be willing. When ready, we say something like this. I didn't say precisely like this, I said something like that. My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. We have then completed step seven. Any questions? I have an opinion here. if you're taking notes note that opinion number 47 very short section on 6 and 7 and notice 1 through 5 we covered 75 pages plus doctor's opinion forwards all kinds of stuff circles, triangles a lot going on up there we get to 6 and seven, we go to eight and nine. Tremendous amount of conversation about eight and nine, and rightly so, because they're actually going to, if you'll notice, they're eigentlich going to let us out of the house for the first time. Right? One and two on the couch. Three, kneel down, get back up on the couch. Four, right. Five, guy comes in. Before God, I read this to him. He says, Good luck. He leaves. Six and seven, two paragraphs, getting ready to leave the house. Can they know how dangerous I can be armed with a little bit of information? So they're very, very cautious about how they let me out of the house, right? It's a very, Very Short Thing. And the reason I think is this. We're talking about a relationship with the unknowable, the one whose name cannot be unspoken. The face no man has seen, right? We're talking about infinity. I've taken lots and lots of drugs. I have tried to wrap my head around infinity and it just doesn't seem to get there. I get as far as I can go, spook myself, back in the room. That was close, you know. It's unknowable, right. I am going to embrace something on a significantly different level than any other relationship I'm ever going to have. And, in my opinion, again, this is opinion number 48, my opinion is the most powerful and influential relationship of my life. A relationship with a power greater than myself. God, for me. And it says, My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. Taking my judgment out of it. That's taking me out of the loop. Here it is, all of Me. The things that I consider good based on my belief system, my moral psychology. The things that I can do that I don't consider bad. All of it. Good, bad. Look at it any way you want. Here it is. Here I am. Take it. Alright? I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. It does not say please remove this stuff from me God so that I cannot be one hell of a guy. So that I can walk the earth with people as I walk by people saying, why that's Earl Hightower. Charming, charming man. Delightful fellow. He does a lot of good, doesn't he? Please. My usefulness to you and my fellows is that I can be of service in my life. This isn't about glorification of self. This is about getting out of your own way so that you can be a maximum service to God and your fellows. That's the whole idea. That's where the buzz is. I don't get off on me anymore, but it's an amazing experience to sponsor some guy and play some infinitesimal small part of being a catalyst maybe to get him to do something that pushes him closer to God and to you so that he has the experience of God and he has experience of you and the light comes back on in his lives and he lit in his eyes and he lives instead of dies. Wow! I never stuck anything in my arm that caught me abuzz like that. Nothing. I remember sitting in a meeting... I was crying when I told this story. Why do I tell it? I know I'm going to embarrass myself going in. Why don't I go in? Apparently, it must be told. So, I'm in a workshop. And we're doing this workshop and there's a woman in this workshop and her name is Kathy. I had watched Kathy wrestle with the obsession to drink and use for nine years. And she finally became willing to go to this book study. She was really one of the reasons I agreed to even do it. So, we got about 25 people and we're going through the book. And the format is we read two paragraphs and we stop. If anybody's got any questions regarding these two paragraphs, we mix it up. If anybody has got any experience with them, they share that experience and we mix it up and when everybody's done with whatever they need to say or whatever questions they need ask, then we move on. We have no time frame, we're in no hurry. We get through it when we get through. And we're sitting in the meeting and then we're going through the book and And then one day, we're going through, and it's not a different day than any other day. And before we start the meeting, Kathy raises her hand and says, I have something I want to say to the group. And we said, sure, go ahead. And she said, I've had the obsession to drink or use, drunk or sober, for nine years. I've Had Small Lengths of Sobriety Along the Way and I've Always Come to You, I Have Always Come To You and I Have Never Been Relieved of the Obsession to Drink and Use. And she said, I have not had the obsession to drink or use since our meeting last week. For this week, I've been free. I defy you to experience something like that and not be changed by it. not be changed by it to watch that woman struggle so courageously in the face of a disease that's going to win it's gonna win to suddenly be free she's free to this day she's married to a guy we knew was never gonna get sober and stay that way we knew he's sober in staying that way she's sober in staying that way they are mighty examples of what can happen if you engage the process they have a child they're two absolute maniacs are raising a human they made and are growing their own personal human and may I suggest that that little person is very, very fortunate questionable gene pool but a very fortunate child Because those parents have in their lives something that the normal man takes for granted. They do not. They do Not. That is the gift of today. This is a remarkable deal, right? So I think that it's important to continue in the process, engage the process. Keep moving. And I think the original 100 knew that when I got to 6 and 7, that I was suddenly going to humbly ask God to remove my defects of character. That I was going to give up the defects of character, which I have so enjoyed along the way. That I would really, I would spend on step six, I don't know, you know, 12, 15 years. You know? I mean, entirely willing. You know, I'm making great strides, but I'm not entirely there. I mean, I'm entirely... These ethereal concepts and ideas, I can just stay right there forever because I've read ahead. I've seen 8 and 9. And this needs to be delayed because I have letters to write to central office suggesting that this needs to be reconsidered. 8 and 9 is absurd. That's absurd. It's like Scott Hart talks about the guy who gets up at the podium and was asked to read a portion of chapter 5 and you can tell as he's reading it that he's never seen it before. He's reading for the first time and he's really excited and he reads through the steps. He reads, you know, made direct demands whenever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Have you seen this? Just shocked that anybody would think that was a good idea. So I don't want to go anywhere near that, so I'm going to hover in 6 and 7. Great hovering steps, right? To get into just all the vagaries and the humility, willingness to learn. I'd love to get to 8, but I'm on 7 and I have to go to India You know, to really make sure, you know. Come back as Mahatma Hightower before I can go on to 8 and 9. 8 and nine. Should we get into 8 and9 now? We have 20 minutes. Nearly enough time for 8 and09, is it? But I do have some lovely questions on the table. Should we have a moment for questions? So six and seven. Humbly ask God to remove your defects of character. Go ahead. And you know what? I ask God's removed the defects of character because I'll remove the wrong stuff. If it's up to me, right? I have defects here. I'll hang on to this for a little while. We'll talk again. Maybe we'll swap. I got to get out of that. God. Good and the bad. Take it. Take it, take it. Thy will, not mine. Thy will not mine." Donald used to always say from the podium when he would talk about me, he'd say, and I'm constantly having to tell Earl, your name is not thy. And I would sit out there going, you know. Which just made his day. He loved it. Here's a question. What do you say to a sponsee who has no part in any of his resentments? Let's try this again. That's what I say to him. Let's trying this again, give him some examples. Give him some good examples, you know, where I would say, well, see, you got a resentment? Yeah, what's your resentment? This one, whatever, you now, what is this, who, this person? What's the areas of your life, what specifically do you resent? Well, this. Obviously. What areas of your life are affected? Let's pick from these. Let's just see. What areas are you affected? Well, there's this, this, and this. Oh, all seven. Okay. Well, now, in my own life, here's an example. In a situation like that, I might find that I might be dishonest in this way. That I might not be honest. That I may be frightened in thisway. I might self-seeking in thisway. Can you identify... Just kind of, you know, by the hand, walk through and say, Let's just suppose for a moment that this applies, right? And you just kind of like ease them into it. Ease them into It. Because it is extremely difficult for a lot of us. We feel so self-righteous in our anger and in our resentment. We feel such a sense of guilt. We feel incredibly justified in feeling the way that we feel. Well, Earl, I've been told that my feelings are my feelings and that they shouldn't be judged. Yes, well, that's lovely, you know. and i would never in any way attempt to discount your feelings about anything you feel the way you feel but we're talking about something else now right we're not talking that this is the way you feel of course it's the way you feel right let's deal with the rest of it and let's see if we can't rid ourselves of some of these feelings to resentment is to refill is that you're feeling an event occurred when you were five and to this day you continue given the certain triggers or Certain events line up a certain way. You re-feel this resentment towards this individual over and over and over and again, who is suffering as a result of re-feling this is you. We're looking for a way out here, a legitimate way out. We're look for legitimate relief, legitimate relief. Not smoke and mirrors. Legitimate relief. So I think you kind of got to walk them through sometimes. I did a huge inventory when I was 10. I had 518 resentments. Apparently more does get revealed as we move along, right? And a lot of people said I would have been splitting hairs and I say fine, you think I was splitting hairs then don't do it. Me, how free do you want to be? And I've since looked back at that inventory and three of those resentments are questionable now out of 518. Not bad. You know, doing the rest of that inventory stuff seemed to work very well on that stuff. What else have I got here? Was I talking about something or did it just fade away? Am I all right? Somebody answer me. It says, what is your advice for AA members who only sponsor members that have sober time versus newcomers? Okay. Okay. Do you only want to sponsor people with time? Fine. But who are they going to sponsor? The people that you sponsor. Right? I remember there's a certain credential that you can get if you want to work in the field in treatment for chemical dependency. And on the test, one of the questions is... I actually wrote him a letter about this. And I don't write letters, but that one, I wrote him my letter. As soon as I'm done with the four columns on this. And they ask the question, how much time should you have before your response or an AA? The answer to the question is five years. To which I thought, really? So if I'm sponsoring a guy and he comes to me with five days and said, I'm afraid I'm going to drink any moment, what should I do? And I say, here we go. And we enter into this process and I engage the guy and we're going to meetings and he's working through the steps and this guy completes all 12 steps while he's going to meetings, has commitments in meetings calling me on a daily basis we're doing this thing, it's good, it' fierce he's got 18 months of sobriety he's completed all 12 step the lights have come on this guy is on fire for Alcoholics Anonymous at which point I then say to him ok, in three and a half years I'm going to want you to begin to give this away to someone because we don't like you We find it a bit premature for you to be giving this away until you're five. The fact that you have it to give away at 18 months is irrelevant. So again, we have this room, we Have the Half Measures Room, and then we have the Holding Room, where all individuals who have worked the 12 steps but are not yet five hover. We have them over there. please give it away you want to keep it give it a way that's what we tell them so give it away give it away do it do you have any idea what took me there oh this so sponsors only people sponsor us over time I don't understand doing that at all unless possibly somebody thinks that sponsoring somebody who's new is an inconvenience because the new ones are often times less than thrilled with the process. Again, I think sponsoring people who's new is easy because if they come to me and say, Earl, I'm in big, big trouble. What do you think I should do? Well, read the doctor's opinion in the first eight pages of Bill's story. Ask yourself with each sentence, is this true for me to identify with this? And if you do identify it, if it's big for you, underline it. If you don't identify with it at all right now, if you don' t know what the hell it means, put a question mark. Right? And then call me back. well i don't want to do that okay and don't do it but if you if you want what i got you got to do what i did to get it and if you don't Want to do That that's fine with me but maybe you should get somebody else to sponsor you who's you know gonna do it your way. Which, may I add, so far, going very well. Right? I mean, I don't want him to like me. I want him live. Do you know what I mean? I don' t want him like me, I want him to live. That's why I love Donald Madden. I needed my ass kicked, I got my ass kicked. When I needed a hug, I got a hug. Right? Donald Mann didn't care if I liked him. He wanted me to live. He loved me enough to tell me the truth. And his truth was far more evolved than mine. This is from a remarkable man. An absolutely remarkable man. So people say to me, well how can you tell the new guy okay when you know it's not going to work? And this is my reason. if alcoholism has not beaten that individual into a state of reasonableness like the book suggests, how the hell am I going to? We've already proven beyond the shadow of a doubt alcoholism is far more powerful than I am. Okay? I fought the beast and I lost every round. Okay? So what I can suggest by my example is a contrary way of living to a new person. If somebody comes to me and says, I like the light in your eyes, I like this buzz idea, let's catch the buzz. I say, fine. This is what we do to get it. If you do what you'll get it, it won't have anything to do with me. It will be your journey, your experience, your victory, your life, your understanding, your buzz. It won't be people... If you walk around and catch the Buzz of this thing, people are not going to say, oh look, he got Earl's Buzz. They'll say, oh look, Bob caught the buzz. Bob fired up. Bob's smiling. Bob was a nasty individual. Bob's not nasty anymore. Bob's kind of nice. I had a woman come to me and say, she's a mean woman. It's a Mean Ornery Woman. Whenever she gets called on, everybody just kind of hunkers down in their seat. Right? Because it's going to be venomous. You know? This goddamn program and all you little people. Chirp, chirp, chorp, chirp. Calling the party line a bunch of sheep. Whenever I'm leading a meeting and I call and I finish, I say, thank you for sharing. She's just to piss her off a little more. I said, well, you know what? One day she was doing it and I was just in a bad mood. She came out. And I said, you know what? How annoying are you? We all know you're pissed off. We get it, okay? You're angry. You're not happy. Got it. Don't want to know anymore about it. How about this? If you want something different, why don't you stop doing what you keep doing because you keep getting the same thing. Why don't we do something different? I got an idea. Why don't you get a commitment here? Why don'T you be a greeter? And every time I come to the meeting, you shake my hand and say, Hi, Earl, welcome. I'll know what you're really thinking. But I dare you to smile at me and tell me, Welcome, Earl. She got a commitment. You know what? She loves that meeting now. Now how can that be? How can that be? See, that's the cool thing about this. It's really simple. That's why it's so tough for us. We're so dramatic. You know? I mean, it would probably work better when we got sober and said, okay, you're sober now, you want to do this AA thing? Good. Here, here's an address on this piece of paper. If you go to this address, you will find the AA library. We have over 100,000 volumes of how this works. We suggest you get started immediately. A hundred thousand books. Right! I'm on my way. Where are you going? Can't talk! I've got a hundred thousand books to read. By when? I'm going to... Friday. I'll be done by Friday. It's intense, it's big, it's grandiose. Instead we're coming and go, wow, dying of alcoholism, going insane, alienated from family, friends, God, isolated beyond belief, right? Experiencing a level of madness you did not think the human mind or the human body could bear? Right? I mean, have you sunk to levels you thought below the human experience? You're in an unknown, unreal place of madness and despair? Bummer. Here's a book. You know, and people just go, yeah, okay, coaster! Not dramatic enough. Just not dramatic enough So then you go to the meetings and of course we're all lone wolves We're all the bad guy We're al the cocaine cowboy, aren't we? Everybody's a tough guy It's just hysterical to me I can't tell you how many times in AA I've heard somebody say You know, I'm going to kick his ass Please I'm in thousands of AA meetings I've seen like four ass whippings in the whole time I've been Everybody's a tough guy. What was I talking about? Questions? More? Do another one? I feel like I should say when I have a question, here's a question. Does the fear inventory have four columns? I know it's not big. The person who asked this question, don't feel insulted. That's a really good response to the question. It's in here. This will tell you. My favorite, favorite... I was living with a woman. We got engaged at some point. Neither of us knows why. We were living together. This is a woman who'd been in and out for years and years and years and we met. I mean, it was just boom, right? One of those across the crowded room things, you know? The ones that I've learned that when that happens, turn and run. Right? It's not going to go well. And she came up to me and we were living there. She goes, where's third step? It's in the book. Yeah, I know. Where in the book? I said, who am I to rob you of the experience of discovering that for yourself? Take your own journey. Stop asking for everybody to smooth the bumps out for you. Invest something. Sit down, find two, and read from there. You're going to hit it into the book. Find it. Ask me. She looks at me and she goes, I know where it is. It's in that chapter, We Antagonists, isn't it? And I said, you got me. Go find it in the chapter entitled We Antigonists. I've often thought, we've got to write that chapter. That's a great chapter. This is going to love that. Anyway, so that's the discovery, the process of doing it. We're not going to sit in here and go through this. Go get in a book study. You don't have one? Start one. You don'T know how to lead it? Buy the Joe and Charlie tapes from the original Joe and Charley series. The big book comes alive, right? And use that and go Through the Book. Stop the tape, talk about it. Put a little more. Stop the tap, talk abouT it. Put Scott R. in. Put me in. put us all on a debate about who really understands this. Come up with your own set that says we're all full of it. This is the way to go. Love that. Love that, love that. Find your own way. That's all that's going to work, right? Did you, you didn't drink his way. You didn't use her way. Come on out of it together. This is, this is the road map. These are the guidelines. This is the text suggesting that we study it. You've got to get in and wrestle with it. Wrestle with it! You're going to get it perfect? Nope! Are we going to give you a degree? Be happy to. Be happy, want a degree, I'll give you one. Call me up, give me a fax number. I'll put a diploma together for you and shoot it right out. I actually made one up for a guy I sponsored who said he was finished with his steps. I said, really? Great. So we had a graduation ceremony for him. Nino. We graduated him from AA. I said now what do you want to do? He says, I'm getting the feeling that you would like me to go to another meeting. I said beautiful. Yeah, what? Good, we'll go together. Right? I got a red light. So I've answered that. I've answer that. I've asked him. I've said that. I answered that one very well. This one is an outside topic. So as soon as we're done and this is shut off, I'll answer that one. And that one! And I'm on time. Look at that! Go to lunch. See you in an hour. Thank you for listening.