Step 4 and Personal House Cleaning – Sunlight of the Spirit Group Workshop – Part 3 of 3 – Tim M.

very good thanks base of minds tim i'm an alcoholic and an addict and i don't know all sorts of things if it works and then stops working i've done it um so why are we talking about step four for those of you who've missed the earlier steps that one says that um i'm screwed the way i'm living i'm screwed there is no way out i cannot change i need a power greater than myself to change step two there is a power great myself step three i can i can gain access to that power greater then myself provided i take further steps literally the further step step three is a decision Which means it's a pivot point where I, from being pointed in the direction of me, decide to point myself in the direction of God. Now that's meaningless unless it's immediately followed by action. if you're standing in hell and you turn 90 degrees round or 180 degrees round uh and you're now pointed in the direction of heaven you're still in hell unless you start moving you're gonna stay in hell so a decision has to be followed by action so then it says uh i'm already i'm only going to be rude and controversial i'm afraid in one of the big american cities uh it's very common for people to say i wish you a long slow recovery they wish people a long slow recovery uh i don't wish anyone i wish people a fast recovery I don't want people to suffer any longer than is necessary I don'T WANT TO SUFFER ANY LONGER THAN IS NECESSARY so page 63 if you want to follow along on the laser display screen it's on page 63 next week next that means next not next week not next month not not when I've cleaned the house not when work is quieter I love that one when work has quietened down work will never quieten down just just be aware of that uh when the children have grown up well next we launched out on a course of vigorous action um if you're going to act vigorously with step four. I find it's a really good idea to schedule the time to do it first thing in the morning before the phone starts ringing, before your boss calls, before the emails come in. Just get it done first thing on the morning. Five o'clock in the morning, six o' clock in the morning before kids are up where the only other person that's up is the cat. Do it then. If you schedule it later on in the day it won't get done that is the experience of a billion people so learn from their experience it won'T get done I'll do it when I've done literally everything else yeah but you won't do literally everything else and then you'll be too tired and then you'll get morbid and weird so don't do it first thing in the moon uh if you have trouble getting up go to bed there's a very interesting solution to that problem um next we launched out on the course of vigorous action the first step of which is a personal house cleaning uh which many of us had never attempted what we're after is beliefs thinking patterns and behavior patterns how do we get to them feelings you have to start with the feelings and the feelings will tell you what your beliefs are, what your thinking is, and what your behavior is. My feelings are downstream of my beliefs, my thinking, and my behavior. They cannot be manipulated directly. People say they do things to change the way they feel. Can you? I think you can mask the way you feel. I don't think you can change the way you feel directly unless you do some upstream change in belief thinking and behavior um sometimes people say you need to feel your feelings let me just ask you if ever you felt anxious if you try to not feel anxious does it work no doesn't work so this injunction to feel yourself now you're going to be feeding them anyway you can admit them or deny them but you can't not feel them it's in the nature it's like physical pain if it's there it's that you can be aware of it uh dimly or aware of its acutely but it's their feelings are the way in and i've got some very very bad news so if you're not sitting down then i i do suggest sitting down maybe pausing for a moment if you are holding a hot drink put the hot drink down if you're doing anything to get in the way of your feelings you won't be able to do a step four because the feelings are the way in so if there is another addiction which acting out on good luck because it's gonna block some or all of the feelings and the feelings of the way in. There are three inventories in step four, plus some clearing up odds and ends, but essentially there are three infantries. Resentment, fear, and sexual relationships. The way into the resentment inventory is when I'm resentful, which is an umbrella term for all of my upset at the present and the past fear is an umbrella term but all of my upset about the future or what might be so resentment and fear are the same in substance their time frame differs so the two categories really merge into one they're being upset about something past present or future covers all upset that's the way into the first two inventories if you can't admit you're upset you can'T do the inventory um the third inventory is the sex inventory and the emotion that is the gateway to that is guilt and shame which is when i'm upset very specifically about my behavior that's how you identify chiefly what's gone wrong in those relationships so it's and this is very clever uh it's unbelievably clever the way it's set out in the big book because the one thing you are aware of if you are away from it aware at all when you get to step four is you are very I was very very unhappy and whenever I'm doing step four I'm addressing the unhappiness of which I'm aware you don't need analytical skills to identify the fact that you are unhappy I'm if I know nothing else when I was drinking before I was drink if I knew nothing but that I did know that are you happy no there we go very clear so the inventory meets you where you are and I'll just give you by way of contrast I don't want to be too rude about Al-Anon I love Al-Aman but um uh in in the step four in Al- Anon there are lots of different methods and one of them is in a book called paths to recovery and there's a bunch of step four uh questions and it asks a question like this is one of the step four questions how am i humble like i've been doing this for 30 years i don't know how i'd answer that and i don t know what an answer to that would look like does that mean in what when it says how is that the method by which i'm humble or examples of humility i don't even understand the question um whereas in aa we say it's a little bobby is doing his first step four has anyone ever pissed you off bobby yeah any anger about anyone did anyone do a bad thing has anyone never done a bad is there anyone you don't like. A five-year-old could do it. It doesn't require, and then it gradually leads you through. And now there isn't time, you could do a month of Sundays on step four. So I'm just going to be able to do headlines and highlights here. But the resentment inventory basically boils down to this. the starting point of someone who is full of self, this is me when I'm full of self, is you're very bad people and I hurt and it's your fault because you're very bad. And you did a bad thing so I'm upset. Here are the modern words we use to say that we're upset i'm offended i find that offensive i think that is offensive or here's another one i'm going through a lot of grief at the moment oh are you i heard something out there is i don't want to belittle grief grief that is a thing but i heard someone say a while ago that uh they're going through grief and i thought i i said i'm so sorry have you lost someone close to you she said no my car was stolen now you're pissed off that someone stole your car Let's call it what it is. There are so many ways of legitimizing basically an immature reaction to an ordinary event of the world, turning myself into the victim and other people into the persecutors. So now we know who's good and now we Know who's bad, who's Good? Me, the long Suffering person with My little, my brave Bitter little smile In the world that Treats me so badly And all the wrong is Out there, it ain't in here It's out there That's the starting point of the Resentment industry, so it meets you Where you are, so you say to Bobby right who who pissed you off and bobby writes down 200 names um uh i i had a a friend once who's uh she's sick she comes from a very large family everyone has a thousand children and i think her first column in the resentment imagery that who who pissed her off i think it had 670 names and 650 were relatives i like i couldn't remember the names of that many people but she was impressive um so the staff that's the starting point and it goes in very very gently so you say right okay bobby you've got your list of names we're going to examine a few of those because really resentment is it's not you think you've Got 600 resentments or 10 000 actually you've got about 15 but they wear different hats and you're not very bright so you think that you've got different resentments but it's the same as them wearing a different hat but now it has a french accent and you think it's a different but it is not it's exactly the same but now it's speaking latin you think he's a new person but he's not he's the simple person putting an next thing done um it it's the same resentment over and over so pick a few just pick a handful if you get to the end of that you feel there's more we'll look at half a dozen more if we find genuinely new material great if not we'll just stop at that and then you say to bobby what did the bad man do and you just write down what what they did very concretely uh my favorite one uh is a friend of mine uh from Plymouth um where her first draft of A Resentment was this I always tell this story but it's I think it's so illustrative uh so what did this person do you know Sally what did Sally do Sally put me down I thought what do you mean put you down or euthanized you I did what do you mean we we we talked about it and got to the facts it changed from Sally puts me down to my boss in work meetings presents points of view which differ from my own that's a very different situation the fact of that you're in a work meeting you're supposed to have different points of view um so you strip away the interpretation and you get to the fact and the magic then starts to happen after this. To be upset about anything, I must have an idea of how I think things should be. And the upset is coming from my comparison between what I see going on out there or what I think is going on out there. And on the other hand, how I think things should be. If you have no idea how things should Be, you have no point of comparison, you don't know to be upset. But that comparison is happening unconsciously most of the time. The point of Comparison, the the blueprint for the universe is also usually unconscious you don't know it's there is this person has done that meeting or presented a different point of view uh and now i'm upset but beneath that a little computer program has been running which said what has sally just said let's compare what sally's just said to what we think sally should say oh my god she said something different from what i think she should say now we're upset and what sallie should say is let's say this is bobby doing the inventory bobby that's a very good idea let's do what you think we should do why actually in fact what you should be the manager no you should be the director I'm not going to give you the company but it should belong to you because you're far more intelligent than anyone else I know you're only 24 and you've only been in this business for six months but you clearly know more about this business than the rest of us who've been doing it for 30 years so we're going to bow down to you you see that's the plan and all you have to do is say what do you want sally to do and it's like lancing assist and all the pus comes out there's a plan there and it'S amazing when people find the button to press to release that material it's all that the plan is beautifully thought through um why do i want to do well at work so I can have money. Why? So if problems happen in my life, I can throw money at them and I don't need to rely on God. Security, I need to pay my bills but I need to have so much money that I don t even need to be frightened about not paying my bills. I don T want just enough money to pay my bills, I want a blanket, a safety blanket and another safety blanket and another safety blanket my idea of security is i live in in a sealed room at the top of a tower in a castle and the castle is surrounded by a huge wall with men posted all around the fortifications and there is a moat full of alligators and there isn't army outside the walls uh in the field so that if anyone comes to attack the castle i'm so gonna be okay there is no way i can ever be hurt by anything a friend of mine called sheldon w from los angeles says i want just enough money that i don't have to rely on god and it turns out that no amount of money is ever enough. I know people that earn £500,000, £700,000 a year, and they are no less financially insecure because now they've built a life that costs that much money. Except now they're working 80 hours a week. and they know they need 10 million to retire and stay in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed so there's a plan there there is a plan for what would people think of me if I'm just you know what my the greatest insult that was ever launched in my direction for years was this one you're only human i was so affronted by that the idea that i'm just it's fine for other people to be ordinary but it's not okay for me to be ordinary i need to be special uh and clancy puts it very well that uh when people tell you you're okay you feel terrible when people tell you your special you feel okay but however special you start out you're not going to stay that special to any employer to any uh partner you can't keep that type of intensity up and then the person stops delivering the specialness and now they've become the enemy. They're withholding from you the thing which they've stolen from you and they need to give it back through constant praise. I heard someone say all I want is for everyone to love, adore, respect, praise, validate and talk well about me in the superlative degree of comparison to everyone else at all times. Is that too much to ask anything that falls short of that someone said that was very good and the little voice says not excellent then oh okay when someone says that was one of the best pieces of work i've ever seen not the best then oh okay nothing is ever good enough because whatever you feed the monster it's now bigger and it has a bigger appetite so feeding the monster people think they're going to get rid of the monster by feeding it no so the point of all that is the resentment inventory what it reveals is that I have a gargantuan set of demands which arise out of a blueprint for what my life should look like and what my set of roles and characters and personalities should look like within that in romance, in finance, in AA. Whatever domain I'm in, the ego will build a blueprint for my role how other people should see me uh for what my circumstances should look like my financial position the meeting of my so-called needs and the resentment comes from the fact that the world will not comply with my wishes that's all that's what the first three columns show me is that my unhappiness comes from me not from them if I didn't have the set of demands I couldn't be upset when people behave as they behave every single demand is either unreal unreasonable or unrealistic so I want to be praised constantly is uh unreasonable I want everyone in my home group to like in a sense that's reasonable to want people to like you is it realistic it's not realistic how do you know that a demand is not realistic or reasonable because it's not being met if it was realistic and reasonable it would already be met so that's why no demand is ever realistic or reasonable it's a it's what I call an axiom now this sounds horrid it's a it's one of those the ego's got so many um defenses um one of them is to say well this is just victim blaming the re trying to take responsibility yourself aren't you just exonerating other people no when i realize that i'm caught if you're the cause of my unhappiness i'm going to remain unhappy forever because that there are eight billion people and if you've ever tried to correct one person you'll realize how difficult it is then you realize you have eight billion to correct you got a pretty big task there before you can be happy if the only person you have to correct is yourself there is some some hope of improvement at any rate so you better a hope that the problem lies with you now it's not zero sum does it mean that other people don't suck sometimes of course not on page 66 the world and its people were often quite wrong so the book concedes this very clearly that other People are wrong 67 other people are spiritually sick too but we're not interested in that we're interested in why I'm interested in Why I'm Hurt and my sponsor's sponsor Bill says the reason you're unhappy is because you didn't get your own way the only way not to be unhappy is not to have a way an unresolved unhappiness always spurts out in my experience in the activation of an addiction so if I want the addictions not to being reactivated the I've got to find a place of peace and calm and cheerfulness and what forgiveness means uh i mean there is some unpicking so very often it is not the fact which is causing the problem it is my interpretation of the fact so there is an unpicking there um but essentially it boils down to this If I don't need people to behave in order for me to be okay, then I can let go of the resentment against them. Resentment is a form of a mental attack. So I recognize that the demands don't meet need to be met for me. To be okay. I look at their bad behavior if there is bad behavior and so what is motivating that? Well, they've got the same set of blueprints as me that there are variations. there are variations between people but it's like a color palette that the fundamental colors available are the same for everyone they get mixed differently so i recognize that other people when they behave badly are driven by self as opposed to being led by god and i seek to identify with them and mentally extend love towards them rather than mentally extending attack um and once that starts to be cleared out of the way i can look at the so-called page 67 questions where i simply look at my behavior my thinking my behavior and it starts out with this question about mistakes and this always needs an awful lot of help from a sponsor or step buddies or other people what i do on the mistakes is i unpick the wrong thinking and replace it with right thinking so that i know what the right attitude Let's take the example of Sally is always putting me down. That gets unpicked and replaced with, in work meetings, I'm there to present ideas. In those meetings, everyone else is there to represent an idea. The purpose of the meetings is to present different ideas and decide as a group which we think is best. when other people's views differ than mine it doesn't mean that they hate me or dislike me or disrespect me it simply means their idea is different than mine sometimes i'm right sometimes i i'm wrong and that's okay sometimes they're right sometimes they are wrong and that's okay. I am not being attacked, I am perfectly safe, I'm there to do a job which is to speak when asked, take part in the discussion, decide with everyone else what to do and get on with it and if I adopt that attitude then when Sally gives an idea my job is to listen to the idea and maybe take it on board if she's got a lot more experience take it on board and so there's a little journey that goes from the you know what's that line from 1960s film I think it's one of the carry-on films the carry on Cleopatra where Romans stabbing each other the whole time one of them says infamy infamy they've all got it in for me moving from infamy to a sane sound ideal for how a mature balanced calm poised adult would handle this ordinary situation and under the mistakes question we go on that little journey from the hysterical victim to the ordinary grown-up and then we got some other questions where was I selfish? Selfishness is where I'm unreasonably prioritizing myself and my goals over the common good or the interests of others, or even my own future good. If I eat a huge tub of ice cream and it's going to make me ill tomorrow, then I'm being selfish. The person who's suffering is me in a larger sense i'm prioritizing one tiny aspect of me which is my immediate comfort over the bigger question of my well-being selfishness self-seeking what am i after what's the game plan fear is the other side of that what am I what is the game play an antidote to what am i frightened is going to happen um the game plan is almost always to do with one of seven things sex money power prestige comfort thrills and appearance and you can accommodate almost well pretty much everything under that fear is the specific thing i'm frightened of in one of those seven areas dishonesty is a very simple question where did I lie where did I distort the truth where did i conceal the truth and where did i scheme and just a footnote on that sometimes the dishonesty question goes a bit wrong where um uh someone will put something like you know it's the resentment against the wife and they'll put dishonesty i never told her how much i hated her and then no no no the point about the dishonesty is when you lie when you should have told the truth um uh reasonable discretion is not is not i should have taught my boss where to stick it uh no that's not what we're after we're off to um real deceit here unreasonable deceit not not the ordinary social lubrication of tact, consideration and judicious deployment of information. But where was I to blame? What did I do? There's a line in the book at some decision, at some point we made a decision based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. I think it's around 62. And later on with fear where do we set the ball rolling um in my job when i started my current occupation i'm very careful not to say career when i said it's an occupation it's a way i occupy myself during the day um heaven forbid it should become a career uh but when i stated doing it uh i'd previously had a different occupation which drove me nuts i i i drove myself nuts um it was i worked in very unhealthy settings where there were very unreasonable unhealthy demands of the individuals working and it was just not something i was suited to i was so glad to get out of that i didn't care as long as i had enough to pay the bills i didn t care then over the years an image built up of who i should be this new occupation so that if i don't get enough work if there isn't enough of a pipeline if i'm not earning enough money even though i've got more than enough the image of myself in this career is is tarnished as first as threatened almost everything is ultimately about self-image my experience where was i to blame so i recently had some some very low level worries but they there have been some worries there about the direction my so-called industry is going and where that leaves me in the type of work I do. Where was I to blame? Well, I'm the one that has a notion of what my role should be. If I were just to say I'm here to serve, which means to do tasks on a daily basis, whatever comes down the tubes, if you ask me to do something i'll do it there's no problem i always always set the ball rolling and with one of the most startling examples for me over the last few years of a particular friendship which uh went pear-shaped i think was the term uh the little journey i went on was from feeling very victimized by the other person to i'm really bad at choosing friends uh i made a mistake of thinking a friendship was possible in a particular situation when it wasn't and i was i fooled myself because the destination was printed clearly on the ticket i am always there it's just like having the car unlocked yeah the jerk shouldn't have stolen the car but who left the who left who leftthe keys in the door who left the car on locked and i'm whenever i'm hurt i've left the car unlocked uh what else do we have the seventh question on page 67 is about faults that's my character defects which beautifully enough gives me a list of character defects for my step seven and then the eighth question wrongs what are my wrongs this is where i've wronged other people i've harmed other people gives me the basis for my step eight, as if by magic. A very important point and I've only realized this over the last eight or nine years. The traditional approach with step four is to only ask those page 67 questions if they're being asked at all on relationships, on people where I've got a resentment. What I've learned to do is to ask those questions, mistakes, selfishness, self-seeking, fear, dishonesty, blame, faults and wrongs in every area of my life. So diet, exercise, looking after myself physically, sleep, how I handle money, my relationship to earning, my relationship to spending, my interests, my long-term financial provision. Do I look after my home? My relationship to animals, to nature, to the community, to society. Because very often the devil lies not in the resentments themselves but in all those other areas. sometimes people just don't understand uh why they're so unhappy because they're working really hard at the program then you discover that there's no physical self-care they don't do any exercise they're eating crap they're staying up watching screens till one in the morning not getting enough sleep um constantly wiring themselves with red bulls and then they wonder why the spiritual side of the program seems to be a little elusive well there are some really basic if you and with those things in other areas like if you took a really healthy person uh and let's say someone in their 40s or 50s and you eliminated their pension scheme at the back of their mind, it would scratch the whole time. What am I going to do when I'm 70? What am I going To do when i'm 80? Just one of those things. If you took a healthy person and you fed them seven red bulls a day, you'd make him crazy. So I've got to be looking at everything in those page 67 questions. And most people have, in my experience, it was true for me, 40 or 50 things going on in their lives, each one of which will be enough to turn the whole system upside down. Not to mention all the unmade amends, not to mention all the resentment. This bad diet alone will do it. No exercise alone will doing it. Staying up too late will do it any one of those things will make ordinary functioning impossible as i say most people have dozens of things like that um a lot of people i've known in recovery don't go to the dentist because who has time and their gums bleed every time they do that they brush their teeth and there's this anxiety every single time they doing that it's a very common thing people don't talk about a bit it's amazing how often that comes up I haven't been to the dentist in 10 years 20 years 30 years uh you add those up and you're in hell unfortunately yeah relying on God is really great but I do need to do my part too uh sister Ignatia um used to give people a Saint Christopher's medallion and Saint Christopher i understand is the patron saint of uh many things but one of the things was traveling and she said so when you're driving take your medallion uh of saint christopher with you uh but don't drive over 50 miles an hour because above 50 miles now he gets out uh you know trust god but tie your camel to a tree god will do for me what i won't do for myself like god will give me what i can't do myself that won't give me what i can do for yourself and these page 67 questions can be usefully employed to uncover all the things I should be doing for myself, which God cannot do for me. And then you can set to work. Second inventory is the fear inventory. And that's very straightforward. Just brainstorm the fears, you've already got a bunch of fears from the page 67 questions. You brainstorm the fears and then look at what's behind them. And you play the and then what game. So I'll give an example. I'm frightened that I won't get enough work. And then what? I won'T have enough money. And then What? I WON'T be able to go on fancy trips. People will think I'M a failure. I'LL be a fraud in AA. I'll be giving it large about the program, but I'll be someone who everyone knows is a failure in their real life. I won't be useful in AA, who will I be if I'm not useful in AAA? There you go. It's like dominoes, one domino falls hits the next on and you get down to the underlying fears. And they're almost always the same fear of being alone, fear of being separated, fear of emotional pain fear of physical pain fear of death fear of pointlessness fear of emptiness fear that I will make the wrong choices in life and it will be my fault for making the wrong choice is I mean lots of these overlap people express them differently. It really doesn't matter because the whole point is there is a sign that I've set myself up in opposition to God. I've identified myself with my physical body and my experience on this material plane so that if something goes wrong in this material plan i am fundamentally compromised and when i die there'll be nothing left um if you think about the image of the actors in the play when the play is over the actors are still alive and the experience of playing the characters in the play has enriched the lives of the actors even if the characters have been murdered horribly on stage or otherwise come to a sticky end, or even just have disappeared because the play is over. fear if you imagine um actors in um a play where all sorts of terrible things happen um titus andronicus if the actors think they're the characters in the play they're going to be frightened whereas if the actor's a good actor and simply play their parts there's nothing to be frightened of so what is happening inside the play cannot affect the actors there is a sign i've forgotten i'm the actor playing the role uh the only legitimate fear in a sense is the fear that i've separated myself from god but that can be remedied by saying they see what the ego says is imagine a in silmarillion there is actually a very interesting description of that of this beautiful music imagine being part of that and then a little voice in your head says where's my solo i want to solo i wants to sing the solo and god says no you can't sing the solo because there is no solo i would have to dim other people's voices for you to sing the solo and i'm not going to do that because why and so you said well f you then i'm going to go and sing a solo on my own completely separate so you come down into the material world trying to sing your little solo everyone can look at you and say aren't you good aren't you clever don't you do that well oh you are special oh i feel like i've known you forever you're so special oh i i can we be together forever can we be special friends uh so i've got to say no to that hell are you seeing you can't say yes to god unless you've said no tothat you're not unless you're done drinking it's no good trying to trying to be sober it unless you're done with self-seeking and vanity and appearances and sex and romance and unless you have money unless you've done with those then pasting the program on top of all of that is like when 14 year old boys don't uh shower but they just spray links all over each other and they pile onto the top deck of the bus and stink it out that's what doing the program without a surrender is that the old the old system has to be surrendered first to create a space for the new system or the new sistem and the old sistem will argue with each other inside you so if you meet someone in aa who is tense it's because the old sistem is still there people who just live by the old system haven't tried to take on board the new system they're doing way better than the people that try and adopt the new system without getting rid of the old system that's why there's this very strange phenomenon sometimes of people in AA that haven't done the program at all they just go to meetings and chat away they haven't even tried and they're happy because they're confident their ideas match what they're doing they're not trying to pretend or do something that they haven't signed up to they're going to be more comfortable than the people who are trying to do the program but haven't given up the old belief system yet so it's a funny paradox the people Who Are Actually Further Ahead Spiritually Will Look As Though They're Doing worse until the real surrender happens and harry teabout talks about this about the difference between compliance which is a tense state of affairs like an elastic band which is pulled and at some point the elastic band will snap in one direction or the other whereas in surrender you haven't got two opposing forces pulling you in different directions uh you've got just one force which is gently uh rolling you down the stream merrily when there's no you're not resisting anything you're just going with it and you meet people sometimes three days sober who are going with it who haven't got any fight left in them and they're doing very well they're the winners stick with the winners stick with it find some newcomers who don't give a shit because at least they're sober they're very good to spend time with that's the fear inventory this sex inventory uh i'm going to let you into a little secret at big book meetings where when they read the big book and they discuss it when it gets to the sex inventory sometimes i don't go to that meeting because when people are invited to share on the sex inventory what they hear is please do your step five with us right now about all the things you've got up to and it's oh it's bad enough having one's own sexual history without having everyone else's paraded before the room so um the the s fellowships are very good about this uh about you you can talk specifically about what is going on without being explicit so without conjuring or creating images in people's minds people do not need a mental image of what you've been doing just say acting out that's enough right um no visuals anyway hobby horse let's forget that but the the sex inventory is very interesting uh it is solely solely about behavior in other words how i will have come across to other people in my behavior how i actually affected them and it's very very difficult people find this almost impossible to separate the inside from the outside and they'll write it's very common almost everyone does it i was selfish yeah but what did you do well i don't know i just was selfish well you need to think about a little more they're very very specific questions um once you've done these three inventories uh you're basically done although there's an important point um that the steps are far broader than they appear to be what I mean by that is if you look at the step on the scroll on the wall in your AA meeting the step looks very simple and straightforward so continue to take personal inventory and when we're wrong promptly admit it in step 10. You read the instructions for step 10 on pages 84 and 85 and the question is much bigger than just this same with step four same with all of them there is a lot more in the step when you look at the content in the same way that uh if you want to make a black forest gato the words black forest and gato will not get you very far unless you know how to make a sponge and chantilly cream and all of the other things and you have the right source of cherries you will not have a black Forest Gato I don't know what you if you've never had one imagine what would you what would you make and it's like that with the steps you need to read the full recipe in the book to know what the step really means um and in step four there's some very interesting stuff about uh solving problems whatever our ideal turns out to be we must be willing to grow towards it we must be willing to make amends where we have done harm provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing and then it says a very interesting thing in other words we treat sex as we would any other problem now it hasn't told us anywhere else how to handle problems but here it's implying well this is how you handle the problem but they do it backwards. They say this is why you handle problems in the area of sex and this is therefore how you can handle any problem. So how do you handle a problem? It says here in meditation that means you have to be meditating. In meditation we ask God what we should do about each specific matter the right answer will come if we want it um and it says above that a couple of other things we subjected each relation to this test with its selfishness we asked god to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them and later on it says god alone can judge our take the word sex out of it our situation counsel with persons is often desirable but we let god be the final judge we avoid hysterical thinking or advice that narrows the field of the people to call uh and then uh middle of 70 we earnestly pray for the right ideal for guidance in each questionable situation for sanity and for the strength to do the right thing it says if sex is very troublesome but let's expand it if anything is very troublesome if food is very trouble some if your sponsees are very troublesome we throw ourselves the harder into helping others we think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge when to yield would mean heartache. This line, this takes us out of our selves. The answer to any problem is not solving the problem of self within self, it's getting out of self. you're not well I'm not there to fix self I'm there to escape from it so I'm not peeling the layers of the onion I'm realizing there's no onion to peel in the first place it's a bloated nothingness and it's got in those that page and a half, a complete presentation of how to solve any problem. And everything else is detailed. The traditions are very good with problem solving, of how to rub along well with other people. And the concepts are very good on how to resolve delegation of responsibility and authority in organizations to get work done. So there's lots of specific principles between um 110 and 135 in the big book there are several dozen principles of how to have a successful intimate relationship um which are horrifying that they're they're horrifying um don't argue just don't ask you if you get heated withdraw from the situation i mean that will save you 10 years of therapy I'm not allowed to criticize or argue there we go that's the idea so there's lots of stuff later on but this is the Christmas tree that passage from 69 to 70 is the Christmastree everything else is the decorations on the Christmistree so we get a lot out of this a lot out in step four beyond uh the actual inventories top of 67 there is a complete answer to all resentment in other words all trouble emotional trouble at the present and the past 68 there's a complete answer for all fear which is to place the matter in god's hands and say what would you have me be what would she have me do 69 70 we've got a complete answer to relationships and solving problems in general so if ever you have a problem the program proper starts on page 63 that's where we convert from consideration to action by the time you get to 70 seven pages in we've now given you an answer to every problem you have ever had and will ever had at least in broad outline so never think you don't have an answer to a problem you have it's in there now how to apply it might require a bit of consideration a bit of help but the solution is not 20 years away it's seven pages away it's there it's right in front of me and it's my job to use it so i think it's time now for questions if there are any um so jason should we just go straight into those maybe people would like to raise their hands or put any questions they have in the chat uh hello uh hello latin thanks thanks for your share um i'm very grateful it was very helpful uh i have a question about the fourth step how long uh it should take or how long did it take you take you to complete the fourth step thanks that's a good question um my first fourth step was terrible it did the job but it was terrible um uh it took i think uh four months and two hours it took two hours spread over four months i could have finished it in two from the amount that i wrote i could finish it in two hours but it took four months to uh to to find the time as if the two hours were lost they weren't lost i didn't need to findthe two hours or people say i have to make time no time is given to you you have to reallocate your time from other shit to this that's what anyway now the thing is um uh most people in this room i i think as i know many of the people will have will be doing step four it with a very very in a very Very thorough way now if it takes longer because you're doing more work you're getting more out of it so you're not slowing yourself down the journey is the destination so if you do a step four which takes 10 hours versus a step 4 which takes 100 the one which takes a hundred will give you 10 times as much as the one Which takes 10 Hours so it doesn't matter if it takes longer because if you've already surrendered you're already in God's hands and you're being looked after so it's fine this isn't a race to get anywhere there is a race against the ego but that race is won by giving oneself to the process daily giving time to it daily how fast you get there wherever there is there's neither here nor there people that do a step four very very thoroughly make a lot of spiritual progress during the process so they're not going slower because they're doing it more in a more detailed way very important that um i don't worry about how long it takes to get through what matters is the time that you give it every day i know people uh i sponsor quite a few people in in israel where in some of the communities people get married very young so by the time they're 24 25 they got four children five children and it's tough because they're young they haven't you know i didn't know much about how to live at that age and they're trying to juggle four children and two jobs and there's a lot going on in london most people who are 25 are not married have no dependents have no obligations except themselves they might have a job working in a in a we work somewhere lots of nice music on in the background on a pool table it's a very very different life so how much time you can give to it just depends on the circumstances in particular who else is depending on you yeah single mothers very very difficult to give it a lot of time every day um people who are primary school teachers in particular sometimes secondary school teachers but i've sponsored a few primary school teachers during term time the step four is not going to get done because it's just not possible with the type of schedule people have sometimes with nursing it's a very you know you've four days a week when you're on 12 hour shifts uh just not for those four days all you have to do is not die that's there's nothing else you can do um but a lot of people aren't in that position so you have adjust the amount of time you give based on the circumstances if you give it the time you'll get through it um uh when you get through and also people come to this with different degrees of damage um step four is a moral inventory but it also unpicks crooked twisted thinking if your thinking is very very twisted it takes more untwisting it takes longer to start to see the truth uh and it takes as long as it takes and that's all right it's better to do it right than to do it badly and but quickly um very often that i think one of the most dangerous things we do is to get people through the steps too quickly without it going in properly because all that happens is they say they've done the steps they think they've gone the steps but it hasn't touched the sides and they just spent a lot of time looking at themselves but they haven't had the spiritual progress hasn't been made because it's been done superficially so i'm a fan of doing it thoroughly and carefully in a context of fellowship and service so that you have support there's not easy to look at uh michael s thanks for the talk tim um while doing my step four some of my personal relations included things like i wish this person would attend sa or i wish this would intend ethanol recognizing that that's selfish thinking but coming from a place of i seriously believe this would help them how can i if i can at all recommend they go into sa or okay there's a lot in that question uh i mean the the first observation the first observation i'd make is yes of course one wants people to do well but if one is more concerned about a close friend getting into SA than random people in Mozambique and Bolivia who are sex addicts getting into essay this is not about concern for others if it was purely about concern for others it would be universal to all but all people in that position so there's often a mixed motive there um with getting other people into recovery it's hard enough getting people who say they're willing to do the steps to actually do the step work like people will be so super excited in step three say i really really want to do my step four then they disappear so the people who are who say they're super willing have huge trouble doing what they agreed they would do after incredibly careful consideration so i don't try the idea of getting someone outside into a up outside recovery into recovery I don't bother anymore because all I have to do is be an example and they get to know that I'm in AA or in Al-Anon and if I'm just less of a jerk than I used to be that's about as good an advert as I can hope for but people can't be persuaded I don'T I've never persuaded anyone i've never it's it's attraction but it's alcoholics anonymous not um alcoholics invisible so uh people have got to know that i'm in aa to be attracted but i don't i don t push it on anyone because it doesn't my experience work there may be more skilled advocates for it out there but i'm not one uh texas there we go howdy everybody i'm texans team an alcoholic great to see you tim uh i i'm so glad adam's been telling me to come come to these uh we had tim speaking in berlin at one of our conventions and i've just adored you ever since and let me tell you something i'm a pretty hardcore sponsor i'm not a sugar coater but you're up in my ante and and i want to thank you because because uh your directness saves people's lives it's when people are not as specific that um i don't i feel like i'm Not doing my service to them because i'm letting than live in their alcoholism so i love your directness and there's one thing i wanted to point out uh that that um i usually do as a sponsor but you know i'm not trying this is tim's workshop not the texas tea workshop because i love that you know when i finally was uh sober insane enough to realize about about how the sex inventory is my my my conduct as a human it has nothing to do with my sex it's like it's like well for me sex is like drugs I'm going to do whatever it takes I'm going to forget about God I'm gonna I'm manipulate self-seek and I always get myself in trouble you know that's where the ball starts rolling because I make a decision based on self I want sex so then I start acting funny and and the thing is I love those questions there because I didn't, you know, until I realized, I didn'T realize, oh, I act funny when I want sex. I let it become my higher power. And so, and when it, you Know, I love all these questions that they have me ask in the middle of page 69. And one of my favorite questions in all areas of AA is what should I ask my higher power? Because I don't know what I should have done instead. And so I asked my higher power to help me see what I could have done instead. What would you have wanted me to do? And then that next paragraph, it tells me that in this way, I try to shape a sane and sound ideal for my future sex life. And so, I did some writing on that myself. But I asked God to help me. What would be a sane and sound ideal for my future sex life. And then, of course, it turned into any relationship in my life. So what is sane and sound? And then I finally realized it became into what kind of person did I want to become? And it really opened up my eyes to what kind OF person I really wanted to become in all areas of my life and and it was all about that as you call it my new system working with my spiritual uh thing so um i i don't know how much you ever uh concentrate on on uh bringing that people's attention about the sane and sound way to be in life um so can you bring that yeah so thank you yes yeah so i touched on it a little bit about looking at the 69 to 70 as a problem solving mechanism but yeah i specifically uh i specifically do get people as it's what i do myself systematically go through each area of my life and write out a sane and sound idea of what i think god would have me be what i think God would haveme do but then i've got something active to work towards as opposed to something negative to work away from and it's much easier to substitute the right thing than it is to clear up the wrong thing kate thank you hi i'm kate i'm an alcoholic tim thank you so very much fantastic workshop i have a question which is do you have any um advice for sponsors that get lost in the third column um i don't know with the seven areas of self or the seven you know stimuli or whatever is there any advice to really clarify what each area it's asking us to look at thank you yeah very good question so uh at this point in the inventory what you're saying is well something has pissed you off and you're so well what what do i want to have happened what do i wish had happened what would everything look like if i had my own way because it talks on 66 about we want our own way and the way you do it is this So the first two areas are personal relations and sex relations. How do I want the person to relate to me? What do I want theperson to do? If it's in the domain of sex, it's on the sex relations, everything else is on the personal relations. And the way to cut through the crap is say, literally, what do Iwant them to do or say? So not I want Bobby to respect me it doesn't mean anything no I want Bobby to come into my office twice a day and tell me how good my work is good now we have something concrete to work um and then you say well if I got my own way if everyone is now behaving correctly how would my actual life be better so let's say let's I'm going to give the example because It's a good one because it covers all areas where a particular agency I work for, they brought in one of their senior people to really slam me on a couple of things that I'd done. And it was actually relatively trivial, but they went in very heavy, sarcastic, patronising and it was an unpleasant little email that I got. um personal relations was praise me if i make a mistake don't bring it up with me if you do bring it out bring it off apologetically play it down and be kind and constructive when doing so so you imagine you're giving them commands for how they should behave now i then ask the very specific question if they behaved right according to my idea of right how would my actual life be better and i think well first of all the agency would give me more good work so security agency gives me good work uh pocketbooks uh i earn more money Bracket. Pound sign and how much money I think I should be earning from that per year. Make it very concrete. Well, what would that do? You play the if you you play the then what game? Well, then what? Well, Then I would be secure under security. I would have a secure financial future. um ambitions i want to be a successful the thing that i do as an occupation i want to be perceived as a successful accomplished talented flawless um uh self-esteem uh i want to uh and more than that there might be another ambition um oh no i won't get too complicated with this you but you get the idea it's very very specific exactly how my actual life be different and then pride and self-esteem with pride i say how do I want them to see me? How do I think they see me?' So, I think this person sees me as lazy, negligent and stupid. I think I want them to say me as smart, accomplished, professional. And I always write those as three adjectives for each adjective maximum or you can use a a descriptive noun like you know a failure or a ne'er-do-well or whatever but what people write sometimes is um uh i want pete rather than i want people to see me as accomplished or i want People To See Me As Professional they'll write something i want people to see me is the sort of person that they don't think they can push around when they think i've done something no no we don't want you to tell a whole story here we want the image of the person is the image which is affected here same with self-esteem i see myself as i would like to see myself asked so if you keep it very concrete personal sex relations specifically what do i want the person to say or do instead of what they did do not just don't do that but the positive image of what you do want them to do how you would want them to behave in an ideal world if they did that what would change in the actual my actual external life and then my experience of that slot those under pocketbooks if it's financial security if it is the meeting of a basic human need and ambitions for everything else and then pride and self-esteem does that answer your question Kate very good okay Jay my question Tim this is really helpful by the way because I've been in AA in a way many years but you're helping it become fresh and more applicable so thank you and you and Al-Anon you were talking about where other where other areas of your life are out of order and how that impacts on your resentment and your perception of other people how do you when you're sponsoring someone get them to think about that in their fourth step uh so good question so that all comes up it's in the page 67 questions once they've written once they've answered those eight questions on all the people they resent I get them to write a list of areas of their life and now I've got a kind of starter pack for those areas so areas which are common to everyone like diet and exercise and you know the family if the family are not on the resentment list uh looking after the home so you start off with a list but other people are gonna people are going to have areas on there uh which are going to be unusual so not many people have flamenco dancing but if flamenko dancing is a big part of your life you're going to need to look at how you're operating in that area if you are if you work in the community in some way if you belong to a political party if you have religious observance basically whatever you spend your time doing is an area of your life whatever part of your life needs maintenance in some way that is something you need to attend to so people have got chronic diseases will have the management of that chronic disease or that long-term injury so i i'm i do a lot of sport and i so i have to be very very careful about physical injuries and i have routines every day to look after that i have that as an area of my life and most people don't because they don't do as much sport as me so you just have to if the person can be honest about what areas their life has and ask those questions if they're sincere then the answers will come out in due course but people have got to want to find these things you can't make people want to do this it's it's hard enough because the thing is the ego does not want you to look at any of this and it pulls every single trick in the book to stop you from looking at it so even with a very willing people discover much to their horror their own resistance to the process and their own unwitting unconscious sabotage of the process so if someone is not entirely willing you absolutely can't force it because even the willing struggle but it's worth you you never get everything on one go it takes you have to go through it the process repeatedly over the years and gradually you get to the back of the cupboard as it were you never clear everything out in one go so don't worry about that you can always if you've got lots of very big things going on deal with those and you can get to the small things later and and i found that over the years uh that i would have two maybe two years dealing with one thing and then another two years doing with another thing there would be a big topic for a year or two and then that area will subside for a bit and you'll coast for a few years then the area will come back up again um so sometimes at the moment my sponsors may disagree with this i'm having a reasonably okay time with poncees at the minute it's not too turbulent i've had times when it's really turbulent on all fronts so at the momento it's relatively it's relatively calm um uh because the thing is you're you're if you're alive if you re if you'll really alive, you're growing. And if you're growing, you'll grow into new areas. And if you'll growing into new area, as you're going into new difficulties, a new opportunities for your ego to act out. So just because you're having difficulties at 510 1520 2530 years sober doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It means you're growing and these are the latest challenges that the higher power is allowing you to face in order that you can become better than you have been. Any other questions before we go and have our lunch? i think that's it so jason is jason still here