Step 4 and the Four-Column Method – Workshop – Part 2 of 3 – Earl H.

That's what it is. Step four, I just pulled the trigger in step three. Boom. I'm in. The ride stopped clicking. Here we go. Right? It says I must immediately, I get up from step three and I embark upon a plan of action immediately. What's the action plan for me? Four through nine. Four through five is me. Six and seven is God. Eight and nine is you. Nobody else to play with. That's everybody. We're all covered. What do I do in four? Well, according to this, according to this, I do a resentment inventory, a fear inventory, and a sex inventory. Why do I do it on those three things? Because if you want to see where I can leave the playing field, those are three pretty good areas to take a look at. We're going to see a pattern develop here that a blind man could see all right then that's why I do it and I just do it out of the book I do a resentment inventory right I do what in four columns there are those little sell you it's three columns that are lows it'll tell you you need there's four columns but three of the columns are broken down into four specific areas there are others that will tell you that there are two columns that have broken down into one into three areas and one into two there's another that we'll say we do it in black and white so when you do your fourth column we suggest you use these four things and write a sentence detailing specifically how those things have come into being. To all of this I say, okay. Sure. Whatever floats your boat. Whatever you can look at and go, well, you know, that makes sense to me. I can see that. Great. Then dive into that. Just do it. Just do It. First inventory I did, I went to my sponsor who was not a big book guy. Donald wasn't a big Book guy. He used to rant and rave at us. He called us little book thumpers. your little book thumpers he goes before there was a book there was one alcoholic down in the dirt sharing his experience strength and hope with another alcoholic well that's true we're going back to the book now and you get into the book and my first inventory I said what do you want me to do he said get rid of the garbage so I wrote 27 pages of garbage and told him about it and I got my first direction from my sponsor and hey my first reaction was we don't kill people here one day at a time, which I thought was very reasonable, doable, just one day of the time, just today. And I haven't killed anybody one day all the time. I was actually planning a murder when I came to AA, so he felt compelled to tell me immediately, we don' t do that. yeah my best thinking again so i do a resentment inventory i make a list of and it talks about in the book i mean if you guys want me to i can waste a lot of time up here put my glasses on and read it to you exactly what it says and why you do it that way but i'm figuring these are readily available you know these are readily available you want to see precisely how it is in here go here and look read it what i'm telling you is what i did was i went for 20 years and when i finally did an inventory that was out of this book that's when things changed for me the getting rid of the garbage was great it made it possible for me to take action that suggested i was making a commitment to being here that was a value doing it completely different than the book told me to do it was a valuable absolutely a value I think what that did was it allowed me to then feel like I'd earned the seat I was sitting in naa that I was an active member I wrote written 27 pages of this stuff and right down on paper. I was doing something in support of my own life, in support of my recovery. I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem. I wasn' t acknowledging that it was my solution. I wasn't quietly slipping off the couch to my knees saying the third step prayer and popping back up. I was actually at the direction of another human being, my sponsor, writing down all my secrets, all the stuff I was going to my grave with. It was really, really valuable. Did it change my life? Yeah. Did doing out of the book have a more profound effect on my life than that? Yeah. Much more so. Much more so because I was able in this inventory out of the books to see the pattern of behavior in my life. When I looked at my inventory, when I looked at my side of the street, when i looked at how resentment, fear, my sexual behavior was isolating me in the world. When you looked at my whole inventory, I saw one word. Powerlessness. A powerlessness to be effective in the world. Powerlessness in terms of my own individual well-being. Powerlessness in terms of my relationships with other people. That I was, in fact, a self-centered, frightened man and that this was ruling my life. In my sexual relationships, I was either completely in control or totally unavailable. Right? Never in the middle. Never an equal participant. Unable. completely unable to do that. My relationship with God, I already told you about that. That wasn't doing so well. Relationship with self, filled with self-loathing. All of my relationships were just in the trash can. This was a painful experience. I listed my resentments. I listed the individuals that I resented. I listedthe institutions that Iresented. I listedtheprinciples that I had great objection to. you know loving and being loved being on time being accountable for my actions hated all that stuff and when i did my when i got to this enough i realized i just got out my address book because it basically got down to because the question i asked myself when doing an inventory is, how free do you want to be? How free do you wantto be? When that thing goes by and you go, well, not really, right? Eh, well if it floated by write it down. We can discuss it later whether or not it's pertinent. And people always ask me, Earl, can you have a resentment in your life that you have no part in? And my answer to that is, probably. There weren't any in mine. But I have actually sponsored a couple of guys that had some things listed and there was, they had no part in it. Right? They had no part in It. There are circumstances that can occur in life that can cause you great deep-seated resentment that you have no part of. Yeah, I've actually seen it and I'll be happy to discuss with anybody at one of these breaks that we have along the way. For you smokers of which I am now a proud non-member of that group. The smokers. No, here's the smokers Anyway So you do the inventory, right? I list my resentments I resent my father Call him too Why do I resent him? What's my specific resentment against my father? Well, I got 54 resentments against my Father right 54 listen 1a 1b 1c 1d or 1 1 1 2 1 3 and 1 4 1 157 1-57 i got 57 resentments against my father specifically what areas of my life are affected by this i use the seven things that i was taught to come up in the book affects my personal relations sexual relations pride self-esteem security, ambition pocketbook? Yeah, that's seven. Right? I list any or all of those that are affected as a result of this specific relationship. What's my part in it? List four things in the book. Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened. What are these things that aren't in the books? And specifically, how did this come about in my life? Next. Now, other guys break it down way more than that. One other guy that I hold in high regard, adore him has now come to the belief that there is no fourth column that it's a three-column inventory i have yet to discuss this with him i have absolutely no idea what he's talking about but i'm willing to listen i'm not going to reject it out of hand fine you got another way of doing it let's hear it if it works for me i'll give it a shot because this isn't about this way it's about doing it it's about getting this stuff down on paper and being relieved of this this is the stuff that i put between you me and you and me and god so i get out my phone book because basically I realized at one point, my address book. If I knew you well enough to put your name and phone number in my addressbook, at some point you had frightened me. And if you frighten me, you piss me off. You frighten Me, I resent you. Right? Now, early on, all you had to do to frighten me was walk up and say, how's it going? Well, what the hell are you asking me that for? How the hell am I supposed to know what's going on? I don't know what is going on. And clearly you don't either or you wouldn't be asking me. I hate you. This is all entirely too much work talking to you. Write them down. I had Thomas Jefferson on my inventory. Have you ever read this guy's life story, the stuff that he did? Who could live up to this? Hated that man. Institutions, groups of people. See, this is and what you write down, it doesn't have to look good. You don't say, oh, well, you know, I don't really like that. I feel that way. Write it down. That's your best way out of it. Right. You may discover that you're a bigot, a racist, a liar, a thief. You May Discover That You're All Of Them And That You Don't Like That About You. Maybe those lessons your daddy taught you are not lessons you should have embraced or cared to embrace. And you've gotten to a point where to be who you really are, which is not a racist, not a bigot, not a thief, not a liar, that the ills of your father that you can say, no, this is not who I am. I disagree with this. That you can get to a place in order to save your own life where you can make your own father wrong. Not easy to do for a lot of us. But we get there in this process. If we write it down and see the pattern of your own life, see it right there. I resent this stuff, right? Fear inventory, what am I afraid of? Fear of flying, why? Because I crashed, right. It's not a, what do they call it when it's just, it's not phobia. Thank you. He gets an extra bagel. It's based on my experience, right, that I'm afraid of flying. Why am I afraid of a crash? And then move through your inventory, move through. Basically what I've discovered is I'm afraid of two things. I'm scared of rejection and I'm terrified of abandonment. That's what I'm worried about. Pretty much every fear I've got you can put under one category or the other. In the 12 in 12, in the 7th step, right second to last page, it says self-centered fear is the chief activator of all my defects of character. Either I'm not going to get something I want or I'm going to lose something I already have. Rejection and abandonment And it gets real, real simple so that when I'm functioning in my life, I don't have this blanket, vague, unexamined wall of fear that I can throw up in the world. You know what I mean? So when you walk up to me and suddenly you're confronting me, oh, I hate your discussion about step three. Wall of fear. Now lob things over the wall until this person goes away. Yeah, well, I don' t like your clothes. i don't like your discussion on step four i hate you i don'T LIKE YOU EITHER SCREW YOU make him go away he's scaring me then the person goes away but if i recognize all i'm afraid of is is is fear i have a fear of not getting what i want or losing them i am i'm afraid of two things right so you come up when you scare me and i throw up my wall of fear and I just go, huh. Well, that didn't work. I got to take a deep breath and go, what am I afraid of here? I'm afraid I'm not going to get something I want to be accepted by you or I'm going to lose something I already have. A reason for being here. Or just fill in your own blank, whatever it may be. What works for you, right? And it's just silly and so then you say, you know, I don't like your thing on step three and I go, well, you know what? Let me take you back to the room back there. There's a whole bunch of tapes and stuff of other guys back there, Some of whom I think are really good at talking about the book. Maybe one of them has got a way of breaking down step three or step four that you like. May I suggest Joe and Charlie? Right? It's got nothing to do with me. You don't like it? Okay. Fine. I personally delight in the way I do this. Find your own way. Find your on way. This is just one little glimpse of it. I don't have this thing wrapped up. I'll come back here next year, sit down and go, remember that time I was out here? You got a tape of that last one? Burn it. We've got a whole new way of doing it. What would that mean? Would that mean that I was wrong today? No. No. It would mean that I've continued to explore the process. I have another way of communicating it. I have a different experience of it now which requires yet another way of communicating it. So you just find your way through. Some of you are going to become big Joe and Charlie fans. So it's going to be your guys. So that guy and that guy and that one, and that other guy? Crap! Then you're going to pick up a Joe H. guy. The rest of us are peasants. Find your own way. It's all good. Because what you are, if you're prescribing to a particular path is, is that you're saying, I'm an alcoholic and I seek this thing. I seek the truth. I seek to make this process. I seek these unfolding in my own life. And that's what it's about. So that's how we're doing here today is wrestling with it this way today, all right? So I do these four-column inventories on resentment, fear, and sex, right? Now in step five, I'm supposed to reveal these before God to another human being. I'm not supposed to sit down with somebody and get it out. I would suggest doing that. Really, it's not that deep. Do you know what I mean? What you have to do, the specific way you go about it. The book will suggest, the 12 and 12 will suggest it was the book will suggest this how you go about it right you sit down with somebody the the 12th of a bill talks about all kinds of stuff in the fourth step he talks about only thing in the 1212 i disagree on this just me i actually disagree with something he says he says well if you got a bunch of really really heavy stuff that you're reading most of it to your sponsor and then you go to another person there's one paragraph and talk about at the rest of it with somebody else i don't go for that personally. I was so good at compartmentalizing my life when I was out there. That was one of my major problems, was that nobody knew the whole story. This guy knows a little bit. She knows a little bit that kind of a little bitch, you know, a little but nobody knows her. Oh, really? Nobody knows the whole deal. And there's pieces in each of those compartments that say an awful lot about who I am. So I had to find me. That's just me. I had defined what place where I could give it all up all of it in one place. So that's what I did before God to another human being. And I sat down and I laid out my four columns and resentment inventory, and I did it in columns, right? And I read it in rows, right. I wrote my resentment list until it was done. Then I went to column two and answered the stuff in column two. When that was done, I went into column three. When I read it to the individual that I read it to, I read across in the rows. One, one, one, two, one three, one four, one five, until one was done and then I went to two. And I read a cross. And that was how it became a completely different document. Doing it that way. Instead of just this way, all of a sudden I'm doing it in another way. And this incredible pattern of behavior in my life is revealed to me. That was the fifth step. I sat down and I did it. Was I happy about this? No. Was it a comfortable experience for me? Absolutely not. Did I have a lot of discussion with my sponsor as I was reading it to him? No. Anything that was said in that meeting other than what I had written down was conversation that he introduced. My job was to show up and read what I hade written, not offer further explanation, not going to read what was written, not an occasional preemptive strike where I would sit and go, now this next one. Let me discuss this next thing with you. I want to restate that I was not in my right mind, that I personally do not consider this to be an example of who I am. None of that. He just shut up and read it. And I read it, and occasionally he would say, time out, right? Read that last one again. I loved that one. And he would he would do that to me or he would do the wonderful loving sponsor type thing where he would say that reminds me of a story because you'd see that I'd read one that I was particularly ashamed of and he would said that reminds of a story and he tells some atrocious story about something he done it was very very similar this hideous event in my life right and it will it relieved me I mean there was healing went on as the process took place because of who he was just an amazing amazing experience Did I feel, and at the end of the fifth step, I felt different. What I felt was remarkably exposed. That's what I felt. And it was remarkably uncomfortable. But it was the only way I was going to discover for myself that I could tell you the truth about who I was and you wouldn't throw me away. that you would just consider me more as one of yours as with you than before, right? That was it for me. And that was the only way a guy like me was... Believing you because you told me some? No. Not like I got it when I did it. When I did It, I was in. I was In. I showed up and I looked at my sponsor when I was done with my fifth step And I said to him, now all I have to do is wait for you to die. And he looked at me and he said, oh, isn't that lovely? And then he walked away. Amazing experience. An amazing experience. Let's take a break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just glad it's almost lunch. Yeah. Okay, where the hell are we? What am I talking about? Five? Five. We were talking about five, weren't we? Yeah? Talk about six? Okay. You're going to hate me for this. I love this part. You say that as if you know what I'm looking for. And you were correct. I love the guys, there's a guy I know that does the thing, I mean he knows where everything is on what page blah blah blah. He'll see, he talks and says in the bottom of page 83 top of 84 it says right? He does that through his whole talk and everybody sitting there going they're all laughing like just making this up right then you go back to the book and you go oh my god he's nailing it every time he's got it like memorized i'm one of those guys that believes in libraries i believe in books information's in here i don't keep it in my head where is it wow it's in there can find it which might reminds me it says something on the page page 25. Don't shout it out if you know. We love the suspense. That I wanted to say because there was something somebody said to me during the break that made me think of it, and I figured, what the hell? I get the backtrack if I want. It says, there is a solution. Right there. Almost none of us likes the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings, which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others and we had to come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When therefore we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. I don't know about you, that's pretty good news to me because I've been living in a state of what I consider to be unparalleled madness and pain. So to discover that the tough part is going to be self-searching, leveling of pride, and confession of shortcomings, I'm in. Do I like those things? no. Am I willing to do those in an effort to get my I was about to say to get a life back but to get a life? I'm in. I'll do them. Tell me how to do them Luckily that's exactly what this step stuff is all about right? Is doing this stuff Remember the whole idea here is to be restored to sanity soundness of mind to be relieved to the obsession to drink and use, to be free of the beast, to have that voice stop whispering in my ear. That's the whole point. So I'm doing this to bring about an experience. If I've done the fourth step to the best of my ability, which I have done on more than one occasion. Some people do one a year. To this I say, terrific. Some people say they do one and that's it. To these people I say wonderful. There are other people that say I do spot inventories monthly. Fantastic. I don't go more than five years without doing an inventory. That's me. To this I say, good for you, Earl. Do I advise that you do the same? Nope. Do I advice that you sit quietly doing things that we suggest later in the steps so that you can do a proper assessment of where you're at, if you discover that you have once again in sobriety become restless, irritable and discontented on a consistent basis if you find that you are no longer reveling in the life that you live if you found yourself out of sorts I might suggest that you reinvest in the path. And a great way to do that is to engage in the action plan set forth before us. That action plan begin step one what's the problem lack of power step two what's a solution a power step three make a decision to do something about this third step prayer begin the action plan that brings this solution about in my life four and five me six and seven god eight and nine you me first gotta clear away the stuff that i put between me and you and me and god because you guys are coming up in six and seven and eight and nine. I'm going to be engaging you all. I've got to get this stuff out of the way so that that becomes possible for me. I put it there, I get it out ofthe way. Now people can say, newcomers will say to me, but you know these resentments are well founded. I beg to differ, Earl. I do not put this stuff in the way. People have done me great harm. Just the other day I was just horribly insulted. well really what happened i was making the coffee at the meeting and a guy walked up to me and said your coffee sucks i consider this a heinous act girl and my resentment is well founded i say great now here's what i want you to do now what are you going to just say it again yeah yes i am i'm just going to say it against you again, just do this and see what happens. See what happens? The discovery comes as a result of the action of doing it, right? So my feeling about stuff like this, this one always gets me in trouble. If what you do is you come listen to Ezra sees it, dangerous at best. To then go out there and figure, well, I'm doing the steps because I sat there and I listened to him you're in trouble don't do that no actually get one of these one of the best kept secrets in Alcoholics Anonymous the big book read it and do what it suggests do it, if you don't do it you ain't gonna get it like you could so you understand what i mean that's about watching golf on tv and then turning off the television and saying i'm an excellent golfer no you're not you have not experienced the horrifying moment when the perfectly struck four iron, duck hooks. Right? You can't watch people surfing and go, I understand. No, you don't. When you go out there and try to catch 50 waves in a row and catch none of them, and then the one that you do catch shoves you to the bottom of the sea and back up again, and you come to the surface with sand and salt water exploding from every orifice of your body, right? When you go through all that and then suddenly the day comes where it all clicks and you catch the wave and you stand on the board and you slide down the face of a wave and you shoot, you do a bottom turn, goofy foot into the wave, right, and suddenly you realize, you know, I'm not in the way here. I'm a part of this. I am not interfering with the process of this wave at all. I'm riding with the wave. I am in a very natural experience. I am in rhythm that is of nature, not my own. I have found my way into that and I'm getting a real buzz out of riding this wave, right? Now you know about surfing. Skydiving? I assure you that I know nothing about skydiving. And I can also assure you that I never will. Jumping out of a perfectly good plane is lunacy. But you don't know until you do it, right? So when people come to you with problems in AA and you have no experience in those problems? Say so. And give them the numbers to the people that do. I was sponsoring a guy who came to me and he had a great problem. He was suffering, and he has a sexual identity crisis going on. And he came to him and he said, Earl, I have a tremendous sexual identity crisis going on. And I said, bummer. Now here's a friend of mine, call him and talk to him immediately because he also suffered from a sexual identity crisis and he has resolved that to his own great satisfaction. Maybe he can help you with his experience in that. I don't have any. I mean, if somebody came to me and said, Earl, I struggle with being tall. I got to give you a number. Short guy back there laughing his ass off. It's not, you know, what do I know? Right? However, I did have a guy, conversely, this is also true. I had a guy I was sponsoring ring, call me up and say, we got to have lunch. Okay. I do that daily. We'll have lunch so we go and we have lunch and he goes, Earl, I got to get another sponsor, you know, because I'm married now. I go, I know I was the best man at your wedding. He says, I'm marriage now and you're single and you know I think I need a married sponsor so I'm getting him I'm going to get a married sponsor and I said okay that's fine you know what I'm not upset by that however however I would So just as a passing thought, you're also French. And I would suggest that you get a married French sponsor. You're also quite tall, so clearly a tall French married sponsor. And I live on the west side and you live in the valley, so I would suggestion a tall married French sponsored that lives in the valley. He was pissed off enough at this point to pick up the check and take off. So what? This isn't about that stuff. This isn'T about the facts of our lives. I remember that there was a meeting in L.A. that started. It was a cocaine anonymous meeting for cocaine-addicted Jewish attorneys. I was told of this when I was done laughing. They said, What do you think of that? And I said, Fine. You know, my experience says it ain't going to be there very long. And it lasted, I think, like six weeks. And then that meeting dissolved. Common problem, common solution. Our common problem is not that we are Jewish or that we're gay or straight or tall or short or where we live. Our common solution, our common problem is that we are alcoholic. Period. And our common solution is this process. So, that brings me to page 76, where it says, and it speaks at great length, great length! In a very, very detailed manner, precisely how to do step six and seven. It says, if we can answer to our satisfaction, these questions concerning step five and prior to that, we then look at step six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can he now take them all, every one. If we still cling to something, we will not let go. We ask God to help us to be willing. When ready, we say something like this. I didn't say precisely like this, it's something like that. My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. We have then completed step seven. Any questions? I have an opinion here. If you're taking notes, note that. Opinion number 47. Very short section on 6 and 7. And notice, 1 through 5, we covered 75 pages plus doctor's opinion, forwards, all kinds of stuff, right? Circles, triangles, a lot going on up there, right. We get to 6 and 9, tremendous amount of conversation about 8 and 9 and rightly so because they're actually going to, if you'll notice, they're actually going to let us out of the house for the first time. Right? One and two on the couch. Three, kneel down, get back up on the couch. Four, right. Five, guy comes in before God I read this to him, he says good luck, he leaves. Six and seven, two paragraphs, getting ready to leave the house. Can they know how dangerous I can be armed with a little bit of information? So they're very, very cautious about how they let me out of the house, right? It's a very, very short thing. And the reason I think is this. We're talking about a relationship with the unknowable. The one whose name cannot be spoken. The face no man has seen. Right? We're taking lots and lots of drugs. I've tried to wrap my head around infinity and it just doesn't seem to get there. I get as far as I can go, spook myself, back in the room. That was close. You know? it's unknowable right i'm going to embrace something on a significantly different level than any other relationship i'm ever going to have and in my opinion again number is opinion number 48 my opinion the most powerful and influential relationship of my life a relationship with the power greater than myself god for me i should and it says, my creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me good and bad. Taking my judgment out of it. That's taking me out of the loop. Here it is, all of me. The things that I consider good based on my belief system, my moral psychology, the things that i consider bad, all of it, good, bad, look at it any way you want. Here it is. Here I am. Take it. All right? I pray that you now remove from every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. It does not say, please remove this stuff from me, God, so that I can be one hell of a guy. So that I can walk the earth with people as I walk by, people saying, why, that's Earl Hightower. Charming, charming man. Delightful fellow. He does a lot of good, doesn't he? Please. My usefulness to you and myself is that I can be of service in my life. This isn't about glorification of self. This is about getting out of your own way so that you can be a maximum service to God and your fellows. That's the whole idea. That is where the buzz is. I don't get off on me anymore, but it is an amazing experience to sponsor some guy and play some infinitesimal small part of being a catalyst maybe to get him to do something that pushes him closer to God than to you so that he has the experience of God and he has the experience of you. And the light comes back on in his lives and he lit in his eyes and he lives instead of dies. Wow. I never stuck anything in my arm that got me a buzz like that. Nothing. I remember sitting in me. I was crying when I tell this story. Why do I tell it i know i'm going to embarrass myself going in why do i go in apparently it must be told so i'm in a workshop and we're doing this workshop and there's a woman in this workshop and her name is kathy i had watched kathy wrestle with the obsession to drink and use for nine years and she finally became willing to go to this book study. She was really one of the reasons I agreed to even do it so we got about 25 people and we're going through the book and the format is we read two paragraphs and we stop if anybody's got any questions regarding these two paragraphs we mix it up if anybody has got any experience with them they share that experience and we mix it up. And when everybody's done with whatever they need to say or whatever questions they need ask, then we move on. We have no time frame. We're in no hurry. We get through it when we get through it. And we're sitting in the meeting and then we're going through the book. And then one day, we're goin' through and it's not a different day than any other day. And before we start the meeting, Kathy raises her hand and says I have something I want to say to the group. And we said, sure, go ahead. And she said, I've had the obsession to drink or use, drunk or sober, for nine years. I've been drinking and I've always come to you. I've never been relieved of the obsession to drink and use. And she says, I have not had the obsession to drink or use since our meeting last week. For this week, I've been free I defy you to experience something like that and not be changed by it not be change by it to watch that woman struggle so courageously in the face of a disease that's going to win it's gonna win to suddenly be free. She's free to this day. She's married to a guy we knew was never going to get sober and stay that way. We knew. He's sober in staying that way, she's sober and staying thatway. They are mighty examples of what can happen if you engage the process. they have a child their two absolute maniacs are raising a human they made and are growing their own personal human and may I suggest that that little person is very, very fortunate. Questionable gene pool. But a very fortunate child. Because those parents have in their lives something that the normal man takes for granted. They do not. They do now. That is the gift of today. This is a remarkable deal, right? So I think that it's important to continue in the process, engage the process. Keep moving. And I think the original 100 knew that when I got to 6 and 7, that I was suddenly going to humbly ask God to remove my defects of character. That I was going to give up the defects of characters, which I have so enjoyed along the way. that I would spend on step six, I don't know, you know, 12, 15 years. You know? I mean, I'm entirely willing. You know, I've been doing this and I'm making great strides, but I'm not entirely there. I mean entirely. I can... These ethereal concepts and ideas, I can just stay right there forever. Because I've read ahead. I've seen 8 and 9. And this needs to be delayed because I have letters to write to central office suggesting that this needs to re-considered. 8 and nine is absurd. That's absurd. It's like Scott R talks about the guy who gets up at the podium and was asked to read a portion of Chapter 5. And you can tell as he's reading it that he's never seen it before. He's reading it for the first time, and as he reads through the steps, he reads, you know, made direct amends whenever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Have you seen this? Just shocked that anybody would think that was a good idea. So I don't want to go anywhere near that, so I'm going to hover in six and seven. Great hovering steps, right? To get into just all the vagaries and the humility, willingness to learn. I'd love to get to eight, but I'm on seven, and I have to go to India to really make sure, you know, come back as Mahatma Hightower before I can go on to 8 and 9. 8 and nine. Should we get into 8 and9 now? We have 20 minutes. Not nearly enough time for 8 and 09, is it? But I do have some lovely questions on the table. Should we have a moment for questions? So 6 and 7. Humbly ask God to remove your defects of character. Go ahead. And you know what? I ask God to remove the defects of character because I'll remove the wrong stuff. If it's up to me, right? I have defects here. I'll hang on to this for a little while. We'll talk again. Maybe we'll swap. I got to get out of that. God, good and bad. Take it. Take it, take it. Thy will, not mine. Thy will not mine." Donald used to always say from the podium when he would talk about me, He'd say, and I'm constantly having to tell Earl, your name is not thy. So I would sit out there going, you know. Which just made his day. He loved it. Here's a question. What do you say to a sponsee who has no part in any of his resentments? Let's try this again. That's what I said. Let's try this again. Give them some examples. Give them examples. You know, where I would say, well, see, you got a resentment? Yeah, what's your resentment? This. What are you, you know, who? This person. What's the areas of your life, what specifically do you resent? Well, this, obviously. What areas of my life are affected? Let's pick from these. Let's just see. What areas are your life affected? Oh, this. This, this and this. Oh, all seven. Yeah, okay. Okay. Well, now, in my own life, here's an example. In a situation like that, I might find that I might be dishonest in this way. That I might be frightened in this way. I might be self-seeking in this way. Can you identify? Just kind of, you know, by the hand, a little bit by the hand, walk through and say, let's just suppose for a moment that this applies, right? And you just kind of like ease them into it. Ease them into it because it is extremely difficult for a lot of us. We feel so self-righteous in our anger and in our resentment. We feel so incredibly justified in feeling the way that we feel. Well, I've been told that my feelings are my feelings and that they shouldn't be judged. Yes, well, that's lovely. You know? And I would never in any way attempt to discount your feelings about anything. You feel the way you feel. But we're talking about something else now. Right? We're not talking that this is the way you feel. Of course it's the way you feel, right? Let's deal with the rest of it and let's see if we can't rid ourselves of some of these feelings. So resentment is to re-feel, is that you're feeling this. An event occurred when you were five, and to this day you continue, given the certain triggers or certain events line up a certain way, you re-fuel this resentment towards this individual over and over and ever again. Who is suffering as a result of re-sealing this is you. We're looking for a way out here, a legitimate way out. We are looking for legitimate relief, legitimate relief. Not smoke and mirrors, legitimate relief. So I think you kind of got to walk them through sometimes. I saved... I did a huge inventory when I was 10. I had 518 resentments. apparently more does get revealed as we move along right and it was a lot of people said I would have been splitting hairs and I say fine you think I was splitting hairs then don't do it I mean how free do you want to be and I've since looked back at that red inventory and three of those resentments are questionable now out of 518 not bad you know that doing the rest of the in that inventory stuff seemed to work very well on that stuff what else have I got here Was I talking about something, or did it just fade away? Am I all right? Somebody answer me. He says, what is your advice for AA members who only sponsor members that have sober time versus newcomers? Okay. If you only want to sponsor people with time, fine. But who are they going to sponsor? The people that you sponsor. right I remember there's a there's like there's a certain credential that you can get if you want to work in the field of treatment for chemical dependency and on the test one of the questions is I actually wrote him a letter about this and I don't write letters but that one I'm going to write them a letter. As soon as I'm done with the four columns on this. Question, how much time should you have before you're a sponsor in AA? The answer to the question is five years. To which I thought, really? So if I'm sponsoring a guy and he comes to me with five days and said, I'm afraid I'm going to drink any moment. What should I do? And I say, here we go. And we enter into this process and I engage the guy and we're going to meetings and he's working through the steps and he works through the tips and this guy completes all 12 steps while he's going to meanings, has commitments in meanings, calling me on a daily basis. We're going through this thing. It's good. It's fierce. The guy's getting it. He's got 18 months of sobriety. He's completed all 12 stats. The lights have come on. This guy's on fire for Alcoholics Anonymous, at which point I then say to him, okay, in three and a half years, I'm going to want you to begin to give this away to someone because we find it a bit premature for you to be giving this away until you're five. The fact that you have it to give away at 18 months is irrelevant. so again we have this room we have the half measures room and then we have the holding room where all individuals who have worked the 12 steps but are not yet 5 hover we have them over there please give it away you want to keep it give it a way that's what we tell them so give it give it do it do you have any idea what took me there Oh, this. So sponsors and only people sponsored with sober time? I don't understand doing that at all. Unless possibly somebody thinks that sponsoring somebody who's new is an inconvenience. Because the new ones are oftentimes less than thrilled with the process. Again, though, I think sponsoring people who's knew is easy because if they come to me and say, Earl, I'm in big, big trouble. What do you think I should do? Well, read the doctor's opinion you in the first eight pages of Bill's story. Ask yourself with each sentence, is this true for me to identify with this? And if you do identify it, if it's big for you, underline it. If you don't identify with it at all right now, if you don' t know what the hell it means, put a question mark, right? And then call me back. Well, I don't want to do that. Okay. And don't do it. But if you want what I got, you got to do what I did to get it. And if your don't wanna do that, that's fine with me but maybe you should get somebody else to sponsor you who's, you know, going to do it your way, which I may add so far going very well. Right? I mean, I don't want him to like me. I want him to live. Do you know what I mean? I don'T want him to like ME. I WANT HIM TO LIVE. That's why I love Donald Madden. I needed my ass kicked I got my ass kicked when I needed a hug I got a hug right he did Donald Mann didn't care if I liked him he wanted me to live he loved me enough to tell me the truth and his truth was far more evolved than mine this is from remarkable man absolutely remarkable man so people said to me well how can you tell the new guy, okay, when you know it's not going to work. And this is my reason. If alcoholism has not beaten that individual into a state of reasonableness like the book suggests, how the hell am I gonna? We've already proven beyond the shadow of a doubt alcoholism is far more powerful than I am. Okay. I fought the beast and I lost every round. Okay? So what I can suggest, by my example, is a contrary way of living to a new person. If somebody comes to me and says, I like the light in your eyes. I like this buzz idea. Let's catch the buzz. I say, fine, this is what we do to get it. If you do what you'll get it, it won't have anything to do with me. It'll be your journey, your experience, your victory, your life, your understanding, your buzz. It won't be people, if you walk around, catch the bus, this thing, people are not going to say, oh, look, he got Earl's bus. They'll say, oh, look, Bob caught the bus. Bob fired up. Bob's smiling. Bob was a nasty individual. Bob's not nasty anymore. Bob's kind of nice. I had a woman come to me and say, she's a mean woman. It's a Mean Ornery Woman. Whenever she gets called on, everybody just kind of hunkers down in their seat. right because it's going to be venomous yeah this goddamn program and all you little people chirp chirp charred character character calling the party line bunch of sheep whenever I'm leading a meeting and I call and fish like say Thank you for sharing. She's just to piss her off a little more. I said, well, you know what? Why don't you... One day she was doing it and I was just in a bad mood and she came out. And I said... You know what ? How annoying are you ? We all know you're pissed off. We get it, okay ? You're angry. You're not happy. Got it ! don't want to know anymore about it how about this if you want something different why don't you stop doing what you keep doing because you keep getting the same thing why don'T you do something different I got an idea once you get a commitment here why don´t you be a greeter and every time I come to meeting you shake my hand and say hi welcome I'll know what you're really thinking. And I dare you to smile at me and tell me, welcome, girl. She got a commitment. You know what? She loves that meeting now. Now how can that be? How can that beat? It's just, it's, see, that's the cool thing about this. It's really simple. That's why it's so tough for us. We're so dramatic, you know? I mean, as alcoholics, I mean it would probably work better if they, when we got sober, they said, okay, you're sober now, you want to do this AA thing? Good. Here, here's an address on this piece of paper. If you go to this address, you will find the AA library. We have over 100,000 volumes of how this works. We suggest you get started immediately. 100, 000 books. Right! I'm on my way. Where are you going? Can't talk. I got 100, 00 books to read. By when? Friday. I'll be done by Friday. It's intense, it's big, it's grandiose. Instead we're coming to go, wow, dying of alcoholism, going insane, alienated from family, friends, God, isolated beyond belief, right? Experiencing a level of madness you did not think the human mind or the human body could bear, right ? I mean, have you sunk to levels you thought below the human experience? You couldn't, you're in an unknown, unreal place of madness and despair? Bummer. Here's a book. You know, and people just go, yeah, okay. Coaster. Not dramatic enough. Just not dramatic enough, so then you go to the meetings, and of course, we're all lone wolves. We're all the bad guy. We'RE all the cocaine cowboy, aren't we? Everybody's a tough guy. It's just hysterical to me. I can't tell you how many times in AA I've heard somebody say, you know, I'm going to kick his ass. Please. I've been to thousands of AA meetings. I mean, I've seen like four ass whippings in the whole time I've been here. Everybody's a tough guy. What was I talking about? Questions? More? Do another one? I feel like I should say when I have a question, here's a question. Does the fear inventory have four columns? I know it's not big. The person who asked this question, don't feel insulted. That's a really good response to the question. It's in here. This will tell you. My favorite, favorite, I was living with a woman. We got engaged at some point. Neither of us knows why. We were living together. This is a woman who'd been in and out for years and years and years and we met it. I mean, it was just boom, right? One of those across the crowded room things, you know, the ones that I've learned that when that happens, turn and run, right. It's not going to go well. And she came up to me and we were living together. She goes, where's the third step? It's in the book. Yeah, I know. Where in the book? I said, who am I to rob you of the experience of discovering that for yourself? Take your own journey. Stop asking for everybody to smooth the bumps out for you. Invest something. Sit down, find two, and read from there. You're going to hit it into the book. Find it. Don't ask me. She looked at me and she goes, I know where it is. It's in that chapter We Antagonists, isn't it? And I said, you got me. Go find it in the chapter entitled We Antigonists. I've often thought, we've got to write that chapter. That's a great chapter. You're going to love that. Anyway, so that's the discovery, the process of doing it. We're not going to sit in here and go through this. No, no, no. Get in a book study. You don't have one? Start one. You know how to lead it? Buy the Joe and Charlie tapes from the original Joe and Charlie series. The big book comes alive, right and use that and go through the book stop the tape talk about it put a little more stop the tape talking about it but Scott are in put me and put us all on and debate about who really understands this come up with your own set that says we're all full of it this is the way to go love that love that find your own way that's all it's going to work right did you you didn't drink his way you didn't use her way come on out of it together this is this the roadmap these are the guidelines this is the text suggesting that we study it you got to get in and wrestle with it wrestle with you're gonna get it perfect nope we're gonna give you a degree be happy to be happy to give you one a degree give you one call me up give me a fax number I'll put a diploma together for you and shoot it right out I actually made one up for guys sponsored who said he was finished with the steps I said really hey so we had a graduation ceremony for him Nino we graduated him from AI I said now what do you want to do this is I'm getting the feeling that you would like me to go to another meeting beautiful yeah what good we'll go together right because I got I got a red light so I've answered that I've answered that have answered that answer that one very well this one is an outside topic so as soon as we're done on this just shut off I'll answer that one and that one. And I'm on time. Look at that! Look at that! I'm one time. Go to lunch. See you in an hour.