Step 4 and Personal Housecleaning – Big Book Awakening Workshop – Part 1 of 3 – Dan S.

In my relationship, right? Seeing how I play God in my relationships and God in my own life, right. Because I got to get to this place where I see that playing God doesn't work. It says on the bottom of 62, it says most good ideas are simple, right? I made it pretty simple, breaking it down into those three questions makes the third step pretty simple and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we pass to freedom because we're building this spiritual arch I pointed out the base of that arch is the powerful cement which binds us that it talks about on page 17 the cornerstone of our willingness to believe that there is a God that would work in our life and now it's talking about this concept as being the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we pass to freedom I look at a concept like a concept car it isn't necessarily a car that you can go out and buy but it might be a car that you could get in the future it's a vision of what a car could possibly look like well they're talking about the concept of a spiritual way of life not necessarily one that I have but one that hopefully I could have in the future and a keystone is like the center stone in an arch in a stone arch. And it supports all the weight of the arch, all the stones that are on each side of it. And I like to picture this arch over a doorway and we're going to walk through that doorway into this new way of life. And the way we do that is by working the rest of the steps. That's the process of walking through this arch to this newwayoflife. at this point, I like to jump ahead and it's really the only place in the book that I do jump ahead except for in step one when we go to page 52. But I like to look at what does that vision, what does that concept of that new way of life look like? And go to page 87. the bottom of page 87 and the 11th step this is my spiritual practice this is my spiritual way of life as I go through the day I'll pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action it's because I trust that God will provide what I need if I turn to him in the third step it's just a decision in the 11st step it's a practice, it's part of my spiritual practice, pausing through the day and turning to God. I constantly remind myself I'm no longer running the show, right? God's directing my life now. In the third step it's just a decision. In the eleventh step it is a way of life. It's a practice. Humbly saying to ourselves many times each day thy will be done. What would God have me be? To you? To myself? Right? That's the principle and agent relationship. Again, it was just a decision and a third step. But that's this concept of this new way to live and that's what I'm deciding into. so the bottom of 63 is where the fourth step starts it says next we launched out in a course of vigorous action now look at the words it's using here launched out, vigorous action all right the first step of which is a personal housecleaning that kind of suggests that we're supposed to jump into this thing one of the things that you're going to understand probably at a little deeper level certainly the first three steps we're designed to keep taking you down another notch that self-reliance can't work but I need to find this reliance and empower greater than myself well now the four steps going to lay out this blueprint of my life run on self-will and what that looks like so it's going to take me down some more notches you know chip away at some more of the idea that Dan doesn't need God and again it's this is not about me feeling good it's going to tell me why I write inventory on the next page on 64 where it says though our decision was a vital and crucial step this is the top paragraph though our decission was a viral and crucial step it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which have been blocking us. And that's a great prayer. God, please help me face and be red of the thing in myself that are blocking me from you, other people, and myself. I just wanted to mention this. I know that a lot of people are taking notes. I have all my notes written down in a guidebook. And if there's any interest in that, it's easy to get and also I'm going to be talking about the four step and it could start to feel like a math class starting to talk about, because I get really into how each part relates to each part and you might walk out of here blinking your eyes crazily, I don't know but I have actually if you go to the internet you can actually download some examples of this there's no charge for it just if you type in this URL if you goto bigbookawakening.com slash step4.pdf it should open right up for you if you've got Adobe Acrobat which comes on most computers these days it should just pop open bigbookawakening.com no spaces in between that slash, that's where the top leans to the right then all lower case step and then the number 4 dot pdf and that's like a direct link to that one file it should pop right open for you or download into your computer one of the two are you going to have any extra or not i probably won't i didn't bring very many just brought a couple okay and you can buy those online yes you can yeah but basically it walks you through at a deeper level all the things i'm talking about so okay where are we now a lot of people approach this um thinking that the four steps going to make them feel make you feel better right the better you feel the less you need god let's be honest right this would not be as effective if it makes you feel better it doesn't mean that when you have god in your life that you're not going to feel good but I go through this thing where and I think it's somewhat normal that it's desperation that gets me to God and I say that over and over again because it was true in the beginning and it's true today it's the things that I feel the most desperate about that drive me back to that source of power in fact I want to read something if I can find it in there is a solution page 25 where it says there is a solution almost none of us like the self-searching the leveling of our pride, the confession of our shortcomings which this process requires for its successful consummation underline almost none of us liked. If you liked it, you're not going to be looking at things that are going to drive you to God. You're going to have to look at things and find the things that you find objectionable about your behavior. And it's that behavior that you don't like about yourself that is going to get you to that power. So I don't write inventory I don't write inventory just to seek comfort I write inventory to face and be rid of the things in myself that are blocking me from God, other people and myself so okay let me see I don's want to read it I just want to pick up the parts where I can just discuss with you the highest the high points um therefore we started upon a personal inventory this was step four business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke right a spiritual life that takes no uh regular inventory will you could go spiritually broke okay taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and fact-facing process spiritual inventory is effect finding fact-facing process it's an effort to discover the truth about the stock and trade one object is disclose damaged or unsaleable goods or to disclose where I fall short to get rid of these promptly and without regret if the owner of the business is to be successful he can't fool himself about values we did exactly the same thing with our lives we took stock honestly. Searching out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure and being convinced that self manifested in various ways is what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. Common manifestations of self are selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty fear, the way I treat people in relationships sex so it's important here to look at the idea is that I can't fool myself about the value of hanging on to these resentments holding a resentment towards somebody else is like me taking poison and hoping you die that person might not even know that I'm resentful at them The thing is that resentment separates me from a spiritual place. Anger completely blocks me off from being in a place of comfort, at least the way I've been living it or doing anger. Today I just look at anger as a vehicle to get closer to God. so i can't fool myself about the value of hanging on to a resentment right it says resentment is the number one offender not alcohol it says resentment it that it resentment destroys more alcoholics than anything else from resentment stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have not only been spiritually mentally and physically ill we have been spiritually sick now here's a really important point that there's talking about here it says when the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically right, and that's what we talked about in step one the unmanageability of my spiritual condition sets up the condition conducive for the insanity that mental obsessions return and the physical problem comes back I drink again and I lose control and I get consequences in my life so here it's saying exactly that if the spiritual malady is overcome you're going to straighten out mentally and physically if the spirituality is never overcome well then you won't you won' t straighten out mentally and physical and I think that's a big part of a lot of the therapeutic parts of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it never gets into the spiritual side in some areas. And I have to see that this is a spiritual program and I have a spiritual solution. So in dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. So the first instruction that I give the people that I work with immediately after we say the third step prayer, before they leave we start a list and I send them home to make that list and to give it some thought and I actually don't only work with people one on one I also do a lot of groups a dozen people in a room or 20 people in the room and one of the biggest problems was getting everybody through together And I found that giving it to them in little pieces seemed to help in a number of different ways. If someone was dragging behind, it gave them time to catch up because we're moving so slow through it. The other thing was I found that a lot of people don't take responsibility for their own spiritual practice, their own spirituality. Their own spiritual growth. You give them the whole instructions, say, call me when you're done, and then you don't see them. You meet every week up until this point and there's a momentum that builds and if you give them a little piece at a time that momentum keeps them moving forward so I find it really helpful to do this a piece at the time this isn't this is not the easiest inventory that I'm going to talk about today but it's going to change your life if you try it I can guarantee that so first I give them the list I tell them to make a list of the people principles and institutions with whom they're angry at. Now, sometimes I work with guys that will come to me and say, well, I'm not angry at anybody. I have no resentments. Right? And the people that come to my mind, you know, the tall, long hair, you know... very self-driven, self-willed guys, yeah, I am not angry at anybody It's like, yes, because you're too selfish to give anybody that kind of credit or energy to be angry at them. Just make a list of the people who bother you. And then the list looks exactly the same as the next guys. Because they have tons of people that bother them, but they're not going to give them enough energy to actually say I'm resentful at you. But they tend to be bothered by plenty of people. when I work one-on-one with people I don't limit it but when I'm doing a group it has a large variation of people sometimes people that are new sometimes people that have written inventory sometimes people that have never written inventory but I want to move them through as a group so I tell them pick the 20 to 30 grosser handicaps is what I call to pull a word out of the book the grosser resentments because that way they at least learn how to do this and they can continue to write inventory forever because inventory is a spiritual tool and it's not something that I ever necessarily am going to stop writing and it's something that this inventory is something that I actually have gotten better at the more I've done it and the more i've taught it so um and one of the important things about that is the better I am at seeing the truth about a situation and identifying the things that I need to see the quicker I get to the solution of that situation and the less time I spend in it or sometimes I don't even fall into it because I understand what's going on around me so there's an experience that has to happen from this that we'll talk about actually later in the 10th step because this is about learning basically how I can turn out of these things that are blocking me from God. So, I tell them to make a list. Just come back next week with it done. Then we talk about the second column. Now, the book never refers to actual columns, but there is this chart in the book. People have picked up the word columns and the cause of the resentment. and if you look in the book on page 65 it talks about it gives some examples like his attention to my wife I'm sorry, I should start at the beginning Mr. Brown, his attention to my life told my wife of my mistress Brown may get my job at the office those are that's basically how I tell them to list them 1. Mr.Brown A. His attention to my wife B. Told my wife and my mistress C. Brown might get my job at the office We've got some paperwork here I just want to see what kind of inventory I have What I found really helpful though is to pray into that list and ask myself, what's underneath all of those resentments? What's really driving that resentment? And I use everything I've wrote down here to kind of get clear on it. If you start... Just plenty of times you'll see someone when they start putting names down like their mother or father or husband or wife or boyfriend where there will be 20 causes of the resentment the more causes to the resentment is the more I'm trying to validate to you my right to hang on to this resentment because the more I can list in my mind then the more I have a right to be mad but remember what it said in the page before not to fool ourselves about the value of holding on to these resentments I pray into that list and I ask myself what am I really angry at here? usually I could come up with one sentence that covers the whole list because I will have them write a separate page on each one of those things they come up with so it's it's to their benefit to come up with the bottom line here all right they'll end up writing a lot less in the long run and i don't believe that the amount you write is necessarily more beneficial it's not about how many you write it's about getting clear and it becomes an incredible spiritual exercise to look at all of these things that i'm angry about with you and just ask what am I really angry at what's underneath all of that and just look at that so we take that list and come back with that done next week giving them a piece at a time there's no reason why they can't have it done I've had people with 100 resentments have it all done by the following week and I've given people all the instructions and I don't see them for a year that's the difference then it affects my sex relations, self esteem all these things that are next to that stuff on the list here well there's seven things that are actually mentioned in this area of the book that's self-esteem, pride, ambition security, personal relations, sex relations and pocketbook those are all things that are listed here see the chart here only gives me the first two columns right and it gives me some lists of what it affects next to it with fear bracketed alongside of it but it doesn't tell me what those are a lot of people look at this and say this is the whole inventory right, and I've tried those check box inventories where you just check little boxes and say yeah, yeah, yeah, right and it felt really good that I finished it but the trouble was nothing really changed I had a lot to comfort because I've accomplished I felt like I accomplished finishing my fourth step but nothing really changed in my attitude towards the people towards the situation right the value of this dunk like i'm talking about here is makes up what carl jung says earlier on the book just jump out page 27. here's what carl young told roland hazard here and there once in a while alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences to me these occurrences are phenomenal meaning he saw them he saw these spiritual experiences but he couldn't explain why again you know doctors really aren't trained in in spiritual situations and spiritual matters of the spirit they appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements other words everything seems to change right now here's what you're going to see in the in the inventory in the f in this third column i'm going to look at my ideas emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces in my life that's what I'm going to see in this third column right and in the fourth column what I am going to see is what it goes on to say these things are suddenly cast to one side and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them, that's where the fourth column is going to give me a new set of conceptions and motives that if I practice this way of life those will begin to dominate me rather than the things in the third column that's what Carl Jung says our spiritual experience looks like they didn't know how to give it to us and we're going to talk about that right now i look at this as just um as i said the first two columns so the next paragraph below this chart on 65 says we went back through our lives nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty check boxes don't didn't give me thoroughness in honesty all right don't get me wrong a lot of people use them and it helps a lot of people but it didn't take me to where something that took more consideration got me as i said in the beginning i had five sponsors in my first year the first four gave me different types of inventories i had a questionnaire that i answered the ones that i thought applied and i ignored the onesthat i figured didn't somebody else gave me an autobiographical pass through it where i wrote a bunch of stuff that i already knew Again, it just looked like I was trying to validate my reasons to be resentful to the person that was going to read it. Never gave me any new attitude or new information. And I did the checkbox inventory, so I had personal experience with it. Again, I felt really good that I finished my inventory, but no new attitude, no new conceptions, nothing that I needed to get to move on from here. But then it goes on to say is when we were finished with the first two columns here it says we considered it carefully so how can you consider something carefully there's two ways, once you can talk about it that's one way, the second way is to write it down and if you're going to read it to someone later, writing it down makes a lot of sense so some of you might have heard of an extended third column, that's the validation for the extended third column because next to these seven areas of self we're going to write how they affect us all right so i have an example microphone i'm going to write the notes and then i'll come back here to explain oh maybe i could just move this closer pardon me no no i was going to move the board I was going to move the board. This board? Yes, I'll move that one. Can everybody see that? No. Let me get a little... This edge over here. There you go. All right. Rough. All right, here we go. I'm going to write that down. Lori, my first wife left me when I needed her most I had just gotten you know I was still drinking and it became convenient for her to move back in after I'd gotten sober because she needed to make a change in where she was living and she needed plus we thought we would see what would happen if we got back together and see if it would work again well she moved in when I had about 3 months sober at about 6 months sober she moved out so Lori left me when I needed her most so here's another place that I found really helpful to give people pieces of it because it can get a little overwhelming with this third column. So we're going to just do two things at a time, the self-esteem and pride. So I'll write that first. you know what I'm just going to write the headings and talk about the rest I'm not used to writing on a board and it's going to get worse as we get down to the bottom self-esteem now Now, in order to get some focus here, we've defined how we approach each part of it. And it holds me to a method. And I know some people don't like the word method or mechanics, but it's a great teaching tool. Because what we're trying to learn is how to do this and to do it effectively. And what I found is taking it in bite-sized pieces will give us a focus that will keep it to a certain format that has proven more effective. So self-esteem is the role that I've assigned myself here. Who am I? Remember, between the third step and the fourth step, it doesn't change chapters. He's talking about the actor trying to be the director, right? Well, self-esteem is the role I've assigned myself here in my little play. And the role i've assigned Myself here in the marriage was i'm the best husband she could get Right You could say well, I don't have high self-esteem Um, I didn't think I was the best Husband she could give But see if I thought I was the worst husband that she could have had that when she left, I would have been mad at myself. Right? Right? Because I would have figured that she was going to leave anyway. But my self-esteem says nobody could leave me. Right? Now notice in this chart here that it has fear bracketed alongside. Let me just put something bigger here to mark my page so I can go back to it. All right. So, it's good to jump ahead to look at what the instruction is for the fears. It says, last paragraph on 67, it says, notice the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulty. Self-esteem and pride are not my difficulties. Those are the things that I need to get back. My difficulty is what I write down, how it affects me. How was my self-esteem affected? So self-esteem was, I'm the best husband that she could get or want. So to bracket my fear alongside of that, the difficulty that I have with self- esteem, I just look at that statement that I just said and it's like, well maybe I wasn't, maybe I weren't good enough. Maybe that was really the issue. That's my fear. Whereas I write next to self-esteem, I am the best husband she could get, the fear bracketed alongside of it was not good enough. The second one here is pride. Pride is the role I've assigned Lori, the role I've designed you and how you're supposed to look and interact with me, how you are supposed to see me, see me feel about me, Now, the role I've assigned her glory in this marriage is that no one should think I'm not worth staying with. And the fear that I bracketed alongside that was worthless. If I'm Not Worth Staying With, then that fear is that I'm worthless. So I use what I'm writing here to give me the fear. I'mnot just going into my head to get the fear, I'm using what I'm writing next to these to show me what my fears are. So, this is the role I've assigned me and this is the role I've designed Lori and how she's supposed to interact with me. The next two are I might run out of room. Ambition and security. Ambition is what I want out here. Security is what I need in here, right? So what did I want from Lori? I wanted to be loved, but my fear was that I wasn't. She left me when I needed her most. I wanted to be wanted. My fear was that I wasn't wanted, but not wanted. That was my ambition. Now the template for this is on that URL that I just shared with you before, the step4pdf.pdf and so if you wanted to look at this closer, you certainly can, and that also gives a bunch of examples. so that was at bigbookawakening.com slash step4pdf dot pdf okay so that's my ambition that's what I want out here and what I needed inside here is I need to be not abandoned to be okay so the fear here was that I was abandoned the fear of being abandoned so these two I've given the person I'm working with after they've the week following this, I give them self esteem and pride go home and do them and they come back I give him ambition and security the next week, go home и finish them or call me as soon as they're done and I'll give you the next instruction however you want to work that in a workshop if they haven't finished this and you're explaining this there hasn't there isn't too much work for them to catch up right but workshops are good from this perspective is you could you can use you can manipulate them with the pressure from the group like you don't want to you don' t want to keep the group back you don''t want to be the one that makes this thing die you know you know it's you know but people can be more accountable to a group than they will be for their own spiritual growth so i found that to be really helpful not everybody needs that some are hungry enough to have it and be motivated you know but but it it hasn't it's helped some people that normally wouldn't finish an inventory get through one but then there's the others that are impossible but that's another story but look at this this is what i need inside and to get what i mean need inside, Lori had to do certain things out here between us. In order for her to do certain things out here, she had to live up to the role that I've assigned her and how she's supposed to interact with me in the role I've designed myself. I send them home after explaining all this stuff and they finish all those and then I come back and I give them the following three. personal relations, sex relations and pocketbook you can see I'm not used to writing on one of these boards okay I'll give them the last three after they've done Ambition and Security I give them instructions for the last three personal relations, sex relations and pocketbook personal relationships are my deep seated beliefs on how the relationship is supposed to look remember I'm the director here and I'm directing the show this is the way a relationship is supposed to work and that comes from wherever the people and experiences that I've had growing up the examples I've had in my life. I have these deep-seated beliefs of the way this relationship with Lori was supposed to look so what came off the end of my pen was wives never leave their husbands no matter what they do and the fear was that I'd be alone then there were sex relations and I look at sex relations because there's a complete separate sex inventory so I look at sex relationships from the perspective of what is a real man in this relationship because this is not this is not about Lori, this is my inventory, not hers. So what if it's a man in this relationship? A real man commands the respect of their wife. Commands the respect of their wives. Right, men? The fear is that I'm not respected. And then pocketbook. No one should disregard the value of my financial support. So the fear is not valued. Again, the fears come from what I write in the third column. The process shows me the fears. So let's look at this. In sex relations, this is what a real man is. And I'm putting that real man into this personal relationship with my wife. and this is the way that relationship is supposed to look like between that real man and my wife Lori and in that relationship there's certain things I need in here to be okay with what's going on, that's my security and based on what I need in here these are the things I want to happen between us while we're interacting and in order to get that from her I've assigned her a role in my little play here and me a role in my play. So this is starting to pull me down into this place where I see that all of these fears that are bracketed alongside the difficulties that I've written are really it's proving what it says on that paragraph in 62 this is selfishness and self-centeredness driven by a hundred forms of fear, right? And there's the fear and we're going to look at some of the other stuff on the next part so let me just check my timing here any questions on this so far? I know, it feels like a math lecture again, doing this is how you learn it not listening to someone talk about it question? the fear for sex relations sex relations was a real man commands the respect of their wife so the fear is taken right out of what I wrote not respected see if I didn't have that fear I'd be neutral to the resentment but we'll get back to that and the fears so I get all this down and then it takes me to this part in the book the bottom of 66 where it says we turn back to the list for it held the key to the future the key of the future would be pretty important to have wouldn't it we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle we began to see that the world and its people had really dominated us in that state the wrongdoings of others, fancied or real doesn't mean if it was true or not. It still hurt us. It still affected us. I had the power to kill because it separates me from a spiritual place. How long does it take for resentment to separate you from a good place? Not long, right? Boom, it's gone. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. So the key to my future is being in a place where I can master my resentments. Would that be a good place to be in? I think so. This was our course, so it's going to tell us how to do it. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us, they, like ourselves were sick too so if the key to my future is being able to see this, if this was the course I'm going to have to take, I have to understand what does it mean by they like myself are sick too the only thing I have to go on really and to keep some focus to this is what I've written so far so if Lori was sick like I am, that means that I would do the things that Lori does. So I go back to the first column and the cause of the resentment. She left me when I was just getting sober and needed her most. So I ask myself, how have I done the things in column one to the person in column two and or others? How have I done the thing in column one to the person in column, I'm sorry, how have I done the things in column two to the person in column one or others? And not did I do but how did I deal with them? Because if I'm spiritually sick like she does that means that I've done those things to her or other people. So I look at the statement that I wrote that she left me when I was just getting sober and needed her most and I see through my fears how worthless and unloved and unwanted and abandoned that that made me feel. And I look back at my own experience and I ask, well, how did I do that to her? And what I see is that, really? I abandoned her way before she abandoned me. Because near the end of my drinking I was hanging out in bars and sometimes not coming home, sleeping in my office because we were drinking with buddies and not really caring that she was home alone, not knowing what was happening. I abandoned her way before she abandoned me. And when I realized that, when that came off the end of my pen, something just flipped inside of me. Flipped from perspective-wise. I mean, just turned. It changed me because I realized I never intended to hurt her it's not something I ever was I was just not thinking about her and when I realized the things that I didn't like about Lori were the things that I find so objectionable about my own behavior and I couldn't do anything different and that leads me into the fourth column. So referring to our list again, putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done, we resolutely look for our own mistakes. Our own mistakes That becomes an important phrase especially with some people's inventories when they can't see what they've done. There's usually, even when somebody hasn't done anything, sometimes that's their mistake, right? Surrendering to being powerless and not doing what they were supposed to do, right. It says, where have we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Okay. All right, here we go. Welcome back. Hope you had a good lunch. Sorry I was running a little late because the downstairs restaurant was a little slow, but I got my salad, I think it was 10 or 15 to 1. I swallowed it and then alright so at the what we talked about before was the fourth column and the next there's three separate inventories for the fourth step. There's the resentment inventory, which we just looked at, and there's also a fear inventory and a sex inventory. Now, what it says on the bottom of 67 is notice the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones, the employer and the wife. The way I explained it, we've done that. Because it says, notice the word is bracketed, so it implies that you've already done it. And even in the chart on 65, it brackets fear next to those things. So part of the fear inventory is already done. This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives. The way we looked at it, we put fear next to each of the seven areas of self, or you could call them the seven aspects of our life, self-esteem pride, ambition, security, personal relations sex relations, pocketbook it was an evil and corroding thread the fabric of our existence was shot through with it eat everywhere I turned everywhere I looked at things there was some kind of fear behind that and it set in trains of motion circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve so set in motion trains of circumstances see I had the fear so when column 1 does column 2 the only way I could react is out of that fear that I already had, so I had to fear first then the reaction, then the resentment based on what they did if i didn't have the fear then when column one does column two i might have the thinking but without the fear attached to it i'd be neutral right which is hopefully where we can get it's not that situations aren't going to annoy me anymore but if i'm not driven by if I'm not driven by the fears behind it, then column one does column two, asshole, and I go on with my life or my day. I don't give it another thought. Being mad at someone isn't necessarily a resentment. Hanging on to that anger, re-sensing it every time you think about it is the thing that eats away at my gut. But did we not ourselves set the ball rolling? I saw through the fourth column that there was mistakes that I made. Then relying on what I had been relying on, it couldn't have gone any other way. Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. because fear robs me of the life that I might have had if I didn't live by fear because isn't it fear that pretty much controls all of your decisions it seems to cause more trouble so we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them and we asked ourselves why we had them so for this part of the instruction what I was shown was something that was really helpful and it's hard to really the results come out the results are explainable in what the book says but the way I do it I can't necessarily say well the book says to do exactly this but all I know is that it really impacted my life when I saw this so I'm going to show you what I was shown. What I do is I have whatever amount of resentments we're talking about here. If I have 30 resentments, right, and seven areas of self with a resentment next to each one, that's 30 times 7, 210. 210? Yes. All right, so that's a little bit more than 100 forms of fear, right? Right. So certainly there'll be duplicates, so maybe it'll get down to 100 forms or close to it, which is kind of what the book says, right, 100 forms for fear. 100 forms to fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity. What I'd like to do is just pick some of the fears that come up. Not good enough. Not good. won't get what you want what you wanna would you deserve I can spell really Um, financial insecurity, what else? Financial insecurity. Oh, okay. Insecurity. See who you are. Hurt. Death. Illness. Health. Death? Health? Okay, I think this will be enough to start with. Okay. So basically what I do, oops, I take all of the fears off of the inventories that I wrote, which I normally would have just taken the ones that I broke but you thought it wouldn't hurt to do the ones you yelled out, so that's okay. but I'll take a piece of paper and I'll fold it in half and then I'll hold it in a half again to give you columns right and I take all of the fears off all of the third columns and all of the fourth column and I write them into that first column so I have the one long list of fears right I don't have time to do that now but let's start with we'll start with financial insecurity. Why would I have the fear of financial insecurity? If I'm financially insecure, why would I have that fear? Because you don't have money. You don't know money. Thinking into the future. What about if I'm financially insecure then I'll have no value. could that be underneath it I'll be worthless does that work for you okay so I'm not loved what would the fear be under not love to be but about alone if I'm not loved I'll be alone all right that works why would I fear death I get I have an idea where I go with this but it isn't where everybody goes with it what I get when I look at the fear what's underneath the fear of death is that I really don't know what that means. Because there are religions that would tell you that after death, you get virgins. That's not necessarily my idea. The truth is, I have no clue what that is. What that means, and with my agnostic behavior, I believe it means that I don't know what to expect. And the fear is, just to write it with less words, I just write the unknown. But what it means to me is I fear I don't know if it's going to be worse and I don'T know if IT'S GOING TO BE BETTER or I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S GONNA BE NOTHING. I'M FAMILIAR WITH WHAT I'VE GOT HERE, BUT I DONT KNOW WHAT THAT'S GONA MEAN. So I like just writing unknown. Does anybody have a different change? I don't know that I would put change next to fear because we're looking for what's underneath not necessarily it could be good, it could be bad, I don' t know But if I'm afraid I'm going to hell and that's what's in my head then that's the end of it. Yeah, again different people will have to write this differently on their own inventory so you just have to pray about it and see what comes for you. Right? So Not good enough. Why would I fear not being good enough? Failure. Fear of failing? I think that would kind of go the other way if I fear being a failure it would be because I'm not good enough if I'm if I're not good enough, that means maybe I'm worthless right I have no value so worthless But since we already have worthless there, since we уже have worthless up there, I cross that out. What about alone? Why would you fear being alone? What about emotional pain? I don't want to be alone because I don' t like the way that feels. It hurts. So, emotional pain. Pain. so normally I would have more columns to go across on so what I'm going to do here is erase the first one and this is a duplicate so we're going to erase that so why would I fear emotional pain? oh wait did we what was why would I fear not getting what I want emotional pain again unhappiness would be emotional pain yeah emotional discomfort okay so let's leave it with that this list is getting smaller all right so again why would I fear being alone emotional pain so let us write that over here from the microphone why would I fear being worthless if I feel worthless I'd be alone right or which alone would translate into emotional pain right because we already saw that from before and then why would I fear the unknown just put that on top why would I fear being worthless did we do that already no if I'm worthless I'll be alone you won't want me so we already got that up there so why would I fear the unknown remember it was death the unknown I fear dying because I don't know what that means and my agnosticism tells me that there's nothing on the other side that's going to save me because there's no God so So, naturally if you have 100 of these and it starts, you get a couple more on there. But usually it comes down to, for me, when I do it, different people get some different stuff in there. But what it usually comes down is alone, emotional pain. And if I sit in emotional pain a lot, long enough, when I go through a big list, I end up with these at the bottom of my list. alone, if I don't like being alone because I don' t like the way that makes me feel it's emotional pain. If I sit in emotional pain long enough I could drink again and for me to drink is to die and I don''t know what dying means so what I relate to is that I fear what I don ''t know about dying and the reason I fear what I don't know is because I don' t believe that there's a God on the other side that's going to catch me so so it says we asked ourselves why we had this why we had them. It says, wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? So because self reliance fails me and I continue to turn back to self-reliance over and over again because I doubt that there's a God that's going to help me and that's where fear comes from. Fear comes from self- reliance failing me. Self-reliance was as good as far as it went but it didn't go far enough some of us once had great self confidence but it did not fully solve the fear problem or any other when fear made us cocky it was worse so at the base of my agnosticism there is the doubt that there really is a God that is going to help me so I keep defaulting back into self reliance and I have to see that that underneath all of those fears is this fact that self-reliance fails me. Because if I relied on God, when I rely on God when I rely on God, if I believed that there was a God on the other side of death that was going to catch me, I wouldn't be afraid of the unknown or dying. If I relied on God, I know that I wouldn' t drink. if I relied on God we talked about it in the bedevilments that I wouldn't feel like I was alone so I wouldn' suffer the emotional pain that comes from feeling alone because when you're in a fit spiritual place you're fine when you are alone so you could go all the way back up this list of fears seeing that with a simple reliance on God, then the fears seem to dissipate. So it goes on to say perhaps there's a better way. We think so. For we're now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We're in the world to play the role that He assigns. remember just before the fourth step it talks about us being in the world playing God and the inventory was full of examples of how we're in the role of God in the word assigning roles to all these people that we had resentments to, that we just weren't playing their part right they weren't playing the role I assigned them correctly and here it says we're in the world to play the role that God assigns when you tell people you can have their own idea of God whatever higher power you want, but in the end it still says God which fits. I don't know, as being agnostic as you were, what to use than God? What's God? I've been asked that before. Like it says God, it's not higher power. I think what they're referring to, you have to keep it in context, is that they're not pushing a religion on you. That whatever sits right with you, as long as it makes sense. The reason I say this, it refers to that it has to make sense in here. In other words, I was told that if I don't believe in God, then I can just believe in the ocean. But I can't stop a wave or that I can believe in a tree as a god. That doesn't make sense because a tree can't keep me sober. A tree will not change the way I'm interacting with the world. So whatever you come to, nobody's here to tell you how to believe. But it's a journey you have to take on your own. Doesn't the book say specifically that God is in our hearts? Why are we reaching out to outside things like the doorknob, the ocean, the mountain, your dog? Why do we do that? Why do We hear people at meetings constantly bringing up that kind of stuff? Good question. I think it's got more to do with the group itself because it wouldn't have flown in my home group crosstalk is allowed in my home group and if somebody said that there would be plenty of crosstalk so we're going to talk more about that and more about the things that are going to help you understand the practice of leaning into the idea of God as we move through this. Let me look at the timing. Okay. So, there's a sex inventory. I make a list of all of the relationships that I've had, love relationships that I'm in. It actually talks about or reviewed or sex conduct, this is not about the sex inventory is not about what kind of sex you want or how well you've done in the past or how poorly you've been in the past physically. This is about again my behavior in relationships my conduct in relationships One thing was obvious. There was one common denominator in all of my pages of sex inventory is that I was in the relationship. The other thing that was obvious was that there was certain behavior that was repeated because there were certain attitudes and belief systems and ideas about what that's supposed to mean and how that's opposed to look and what's okay and what not okay. So obviously, if I expect to have a new type of relationship other than continue to make the same mistakes over and over again, this becomes a really helpful process to look at. Not because I'm going to fix the way that I've lived in the past, because what we're really looking at is what are the things that keep coming up that I haven't been able to do differently? Because it would be more like a self-help program if I was going to find the problems in my behavior and then stop doing them. I haven't been able to stop doing certain behaviors. Again, it's about a spiritual process and I have to identify the things that I need to turn to God for help with. This is what I like to do. I take one piece of paper And if you download that four-step guide sheets, there's a sex inventory sheet on there. And on one side is some basic questions. And they're not necessarily in the book, but it helps when you're fifth-stepping to look at how did the relationship start? What were the specific situations that came up in the relationship? And how did it end or how is it now? and it's better to be brief because it's just so that the person listening to these questions have an idea of what's happening and then there's some set questions here and we ask these questions where had I been selfish? where had i been dishonest? where had been inconsiderate? whom did i hurt? i look around the relationship not just at that person did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy? Did we arouse suspicion? Did we arrouse bitterness? Where were we at fault? And then this last question, I believe, is the most important. It's what should we have done instead? Now, I think it goes a long way to stress the fact that the wrong answer is not should have gotten involved in the first place. because you could have probably put that with every failed relationship it's what should I have done instead in the relationship because we're looking for our conduct and it becomes really important after we've listed all these things that we look at now from this place where we want to look at this to see really because the idea here is to grow and to move towards being in a place where I can do better in future relationships. So I have to see where I fell short in the past to see what I need to turn to God for help with in the future. So what should I have done instead? Obviously, it was something I couldn't do. We got this all down on paper and looked at it. And in this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. we subjected each relation to the test was it selfish or not we asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them so after I finished doing all the pages of sex inventory and get all this stuff down I create a sex ideal again it's not a list of what I I don't make a list of what the next the future her should be right what I make a list of is what do I need help with in my future relationships what is that what is the ideal Dan in a relationship what do i need more power to to become the person that I need that I feel as though his would be better in a relationship so we take all of question nines, all the question nimes what should we have done instead and I create a prayer starting off God in the future please help me to be dot dot dot. And I list the things in question nine or adjust it to make it simple. The simpler I make it the easier it will be to say. And I keep that prayer. And I continue to ask God to help me live up to whatever my ideal turns out to be. again it's because the hope is that we'll continue to grow and not just maintain sobriety but to grow spiritually and there's a difference between growing mentally and growing spiritually and there's a difference between seeking comfort and seeking God we're going to talk about that more in 10 and 11 too so at the end of each section there's usually a summary and it says if we have been thorough about our personal inventory we've written down a lot we have listed and analyzed our resentments we have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality we have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness we have began to learn tolerance, patience and goodwill towards all men, even our enemies for we look on them as sick people because they're sick as I am as I see through that realization exercise that we do just before the fourth column we have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. So with that, check my timing real quick. Now comes when we're finished with all this stuff and one of the instructions that I got just as I was done with my first inventory which at that time, there was a lot of obsessiveness and a lot of, I don't know, I would just, well, in a, it wasn't uncommon for people to have 500 or 1,000 names in the inventories. I'm glad that that's not the case anymore. We're not doing that anymore. I think we've got to be realistic. Is it really a resentment? There's a difference between resentment and temporary anger. Am I really still angry at this person? Having these long lists for inventory in some ways can be just another way to validate my right to act like a victim. We're looking for the things that are blocking us spiritually. When I think about this person, does it still bother me? When I look at this person when I think about the situation, does it still bother me? That's the things we're trying to clear away. So we try to be realistic with it. It helps in a few different directions. One is when you have a lot of pages to write some people I've seen people with so many pages to write on that they weren't able to finish it but if you stay on top of it with the person you're working with from the beginning and help them be realistic, the other part of that is you're not going to have to sit for so many hours listening to this stuff and they're not going to die from being realistic if anything it's going to be another exercise in reality. It's like, are you really angry at this person or are you just hanging on to the idea of being angry at these people? I don't tell them who to write on. I tell them to pray about it and make the list. Just try to be realistic about it. So then we get to the fifth step which is having this is the top paragraph of page 72 Having made our personal inventory Or what shall we do about it? We have been trying to get a new attitude and a new relationship with our Creator and to discover the obstacles in our path. You can see that there's a shift between the third and the fourth column in the way that I'm looking at the resentment. And hopefully it's moved me enough that my attitude towards that person, usually I find as I'm moving through this process that the heat in these relationships seems to dissipate. And it becomes most obvious with my attitudes. And if I can get a new attitude towards them, towards the situation or towards the person, I can find a sense of freedom. Somebody brought up a great question before, and how do you deal with someone that's hanging on to some kind of abuse? All right. It's not always easy to get to work with someone who's attached to hanging on to something. Right. It'S their spiritual path. ItS not mine. I can suggest what they need to do to get free of it. Right. But some people just want to hang on to things so tightly. Right. Uh, but that wouldn't necessarily stop me from moving forward. because we'll talk about that in a minute as well. What we're looking for is a new attitude. It doesn't necessarily mean that just because I wrote inventory I automatically have a new Attitude. But I have to acknowledge that my old Attitude is what's continuing to separate me. And in case I forget to come back to it, it would be addressed in the sixth step when we ask if we're still clinging to anything we're not willing to let go of. Because that would pop up again in that question.